Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports
Things turned ugly early on Monday for New York Yankees‘ ace C.C. Sabathia. Before the first inning was over he was down 4-0 and New York was never able to recover. The Yankees lost to the Tampa Bay Rays 5-1 dropping their second game in a row.
Sabathia had no zip on his pitches and had little command early. He left pitches over the plate and Rays hitters jumped all over them. The Rays crushed three home runs, two of them by Ryan Roberts. The one good thing was he battled for seven innings and didn’t overwork the bullpen. He was able to hold them scoreless in his final four innings to give his offense at least a small chance of coming back, which of course they didn’t. This bad outing will raise his earned run average .80 of a run to 3.34.
Sabathia was flexing his pitching hand a lot on the mound, as if he was trying to get some feeling into it. As the game went on he was doing it less and less so hopefully it isn’t anything serious. If he does have an injury and winds up missing some time it will be the worst injury to hit the team this season. They can’t afford a hit like that to the pitching staff.
So far this season, the big lefty has had two bad outings and three good ones. It is probably what Yankee fans can start to expect from him. If he doesn’t have his good stuff it takes him some time to make in game adjustments. Hopefully as the weather warms up he will gain a bit of velocity and he will come closer to be the Sabathia of old.
Darren Pare is a MLB writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter at dpare71, like him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google.
