Next month, when CC Sabathia is inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, he’s going to be remembered as one of the most durable pitchers of his generation.
Club owners and coaching staff today should be so lucky as to have a pitcher like Sabathia.
As the pitching ace of the Cleveland Indians and the New York Yankees, Sabathia could always be counted on to be available when his spot came up in the rotation. Besides that, he would more than likely hang around until the end of the game. His 38 complete games in a stellar 19-year MLB career with Cleveland, Milwaukee, and New York are a statistic of a bygone era. In 2024, there were a total of 28 complete games pitched in all of MLB.
Other accomplishments associated with Sabathia’s career illustrate why he has a date in Cooperstown next month—251 wins and only 161 losses. A career 3.74 ERA, 3,093 strikeouts registered, 3,577.1 innings pitched.
The sum total of Sabathia’s numbers screams accountability. Of the top starting pitchers in the game today, it is highly unlikely that fans will witness another starter reach 250 victories, let alone legitimately have a shot at 300 wins.
Max Scherzer of the Toronto Blue Jays currently has 216 wins, and the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw sits at 214 wins. Only San Francisco Giants’ Justin Verlander, at 262 wins, has an outside chance of reaching the elusive 300-win plateau.
Aside from Kershaw’s being just 12 shy of membership in the 3,000 strikeout club, Atlanta Braves’ Chris Sale, at 2,521, is the only active pitcher with 2,500 or more strikeouts. It has been many seasons since baseball has seen an arm as dominant as Sabathia’s.
Batters knew they were in for a tough day when facing Sabathia, who skipped college ball, as he chased his MLB dream straight out of Vallejo High School in California.
“When he first came up to the big leagues as a young player, I respected him right away,” says former MLB National League Batting Champion Gary Sheffield.
“The first time that I faced him, CC wasn’t really scared to pitch me inside. I was a veteran player, and CC lived off of that 95 mph fastball. That told me that he was taught the right way—old school.”
Sabathia’s performances were lengthy. During the 2007 season—also the season Sabathia won the American League Cy Young Award—the ace of the Indians’ rotation led the league with 241 innings pitched. During the 2024 MLB season, Seattle Mariners’ Logan Gilbert was tops in all of baseball, registering 208.2 innings.
In December 2008, he signed with the Yankees a seven-year $161 million contract, at the time the largest deal ever awarded to a pitcher. Also being selected for six All-Star games is what made Sabathia such an attractive free agent.
“You can’t speak enough about the talent Sabathia showed. No doubt, the guy was an impact player. Everywhere that he went, CC, the person, impressed his teammates and guys in the opposite dugouts,” explains Sheffield, who is scheduled to participate in Thursday’s East-West Classic in Birmingham, Ala.
Regardless of where he played, Sabathia came through in the clutch. During the 2008 season, when traded by Cleveland to Milwaukee, clearly a rental for the Brewers, he helped the club from July to the postseason—the Brewers’ first postseason appearance since 1982. That was when they won the American League pennant and played the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series.
What did Sabathia do for an encore in 2009? He went 19–8 over 230 innings, leading the Yankees to their 27th World Series championship. This remains the last time that the Bronx Bombers have won a World Series title.
At age 20 during his rookie season of 2001, Sabathia pitched the fifth game of the young season for Cleveland against a veteran-loaded Baltimore Orioles lineup. Although he wasn’t the winner of the 4–3 game, the 40,000-plus in attendance at Cleveland’s Jacobs Field (since renamed Progressive Field) showed Sabathia their appreciation for his effort with a standing ovation. Future Hall of Famer Cal Ripken, Jr., Jeff Conine, and Delino DeShields led the Orioles’ offense during Sabathia’s debut, and collected but one hit among them.
Be it a first game pitching or at-bat, big moments in a baseball player’s career aren’t easily, if ever, forgotten. For Sheffield, taking his first swings in the batter’s box, staring at Sabathia going through his wind-up remains fixed in his mind.
“I hit a foul ball home run against CC. From the next pitch on, he started coming at me with more gas. CC was always tough to hit off. Over time, I figured him out and got a few hits off of him.”
Today, Sabathia, 45, is preparing for baseball immortality with a place in the Hall of Fame’s plaque gallery. The great Yankees’ teams in recent years that produced Hall of Famers Derek Jeter, Mike Mussina, Mariano Rivera, and manager Joe Torre, will welcome a newcomer to their elite club. When giving his Hall of Fame acceptance speech at the podium on July 27 in Cooperstown, the 6-foot-6 Sabathia should be easy to spot as his legion of fans applaud his accomplishments once again. A number of his fellow Hall of Famers, who no doubt will be seated behind him, will have flashbacks of how intimidated they felt watching a Sabathia baseball heading their way from just 60 feet 6 inches away.
Whatever level of talent batters were facing Sabathia, they knew better than fans, broadcasters, and writers just how tough of a day they were in for.
