What's Going On With: CC Sabathia

Year	Age	Tm	Lg	W	L	W-L%	ERA	G	GS	IP	ERA+	WHIP
2011	30	NYY	AL	19	8	.704	3.00	33	33	237.1	143	1.226
2012	31	NYY	AL	15	6	.714	3.38	28	28	200.0	124	1.140
2013	32	NYY	AL	12	11	.522	4.91	28	28	183.1	82	1.353

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 9/2/2013.

What's The Story? CC Sabathia entered the season as the Yankees' ace, a Sports Illustrated cover boy, and a presumed contender for the Cy Young Award. Um, it hasn't exactly worked out. His 4.91 ERA ranks 36th among the 39 ERA qualifiers in the American League. He's won more than he's lost, but that's because of his run support (4.7 runs per game,  24th in the AL, compared to a league average of 4.4) than his pitching. 



If You Don't Want to Read all the Rest of This: There are a lot of trends going the wrong way for Sabathia. The velocity on all his pitches are down; they've gone from above average to average. His changeup and slider, his two best pitches, aren't moving as much, and batters are having much more success against them. There's not anything here to suggest bad luck or some sort of fluke. This is not exactly encouraging for a guy who's owed $96 million over the next four seasons (the last $25 million is subject to his not suffering a shoulder injury in 2016).

What's He Throwing?
Against Lefties:
Year   Fastball  Sinker    Slider   Change
2011      50%      8%       42%        0%
2012      36%     13%       50%        0%
2013      40%     17%       42%        1%

Against Righties:
Year   Fastball  Sinker    Slider   Change
2011      44%     15%       22%       19%
2012      41%     15%       26%       18%
2013      44%     13%       23%       20%

Overall:
Year   Fastball  Sinker    Slider   Change
2011      46%     13%       27%       14%
2012      40%     14%       32%       14%
2013      43%     14%       28%       15%
He's not using his fastball as much against lefties. But there's nothing else there: He had unusual success against left-handed hitters with his fastball in 2011, accounting for the high percentage he threw that year.

What's His Velocity?
Miles Per Hour:
Year   Fastball  Sinker    Slider   Change
2011     94.7     93.8      82.2     87.5
2012     93.0     92.5      81.1     86.6
2013     92.0     91.0      80.5     85.2

Uh-oh. It's normal for pitchers to slow down as they age. But Sabathia's lost a lot of velocity. His fastball and sinker are now league-average. They were above average before.

How Much Movement?
Inches, horizontal/vertical:
Year   Fastball  Sinker    Slider   Change
2011    5.0/9/1  9.8/6.7  2.2/0.7  8.9/6.3
2012    4.4/8.9  9.7/6.4  2.5/0.0  8.2/6.6
2013    5.1/8.8 10.0/6.1  2.0/0.2  7.6/6.1
He's getting a little less movement on his slider, which is his No.1 pitch against lefties and No. 2 against righties. As a result, he's allowed a .328 slugging average when throwing the slider. That's still good, but well above his results in 2012 (.261) and 2011 (.232). The same is true of his change, which has gone from a good pitch to a hittable one (.488 slugging).

What's He Given Up?

Year  BABIP  K%   BB%   HR%   GB%   LD%   FB% HR/FB+LD Str%
2011  .322  23%  6.0%  1.7%   48%   20%   32%   5.5%    66%
2012  .290  24%  7.7%  2.6%   50%   17%   33%   8.6%    67%
2013  .309  20%  9.3%  3.6%   46%   20%   32%  10.6%    66%
(See glossary at end for definition of column headings)
Pretty much everything's going the wrong way. He's inducing fewer ground balls, and the balls in the air are going over the fence more often. He's striking our fewer hitters and walking more. 

(All data here from Baseball Reference and Brooks Baseball.) 
Glossary: BABIP = batting average on balls in play; K%, BB%, HR% are percentage of plate appearances resulting in a strikeout, walk, and home run, respectively; GB%, LD%, FB% are percentage of batted balls that are ground balls, line drives, and fly balls, respectively; HR/FB+LD = percentage of fly balls and line drives that are home runs; Str% = percentage of pitches that are swung at or called strikes.