After the Orioles stunning victory over the Rangers in the Wild Card game, the team heads home to face the division rival New York Yankees in the best of 5 American League Division Series. The ace of the New York Yankees C.C. Sabathia will be handed the ball against the Orioles in Game 1 of the ALDS. In a somewhat surprising move for the Orioles, he is going to be opposed by Jason Hammel. Over the last 4 years in New York, Sabathia has been an ace by anyone’s definition of the word. His ERA’s in New York have ranged from 3.00 to 3.38, while his FIP has ranged from 2.88 to 3.54. He’s also an extremely durable innings eater who has pitched at least 200 innings in each of the last 6 seasons.
But you know all of this already. Everyone knows that Sabathia is an extremely effective pitcher no matter what stats you want to look at. Let’s find out how he’s able to be so effective. Sabathia throws four different pitches. He throws a fastball, a sinker (2 seam fastball), a slider, and a change up. Here is a table showing the total of his pitches to all hitters during the 2012 season.
| Pitch | Count | Freq | Velo (mph) |
| Fourseam (FA) | 1118 | 39% | 93.1 |
| Sinker (SI) | 427 | 15% | 92.54 |
| Slider (SL) | 936 | 33% | 81.14 |
| Changeup (CH) | 352 | 12% | 86.6 |
Sabathia attacks hitters mainly with his fastball and slider, while mixing in 15% sinkers and 12% change ups. This season he threw less fastballs than at any other time in his career. Because he has lost about 2 mph off of his fastball, he chose to throw it less than he ever had before. Early on in his career when he was averaging 95 mph with the fastball, he would throw it as much as 60% of the time. Now, he turns to his slider much more often. We’ve seen what he throws to all hitters in the aggregate, but does he change his repertoire based on what handed hitter he’s facing? You bet.
Against lefties, he completely eliminates the change up and goes solely with the fastball, sinker, and slider. That makes sense since the change up is more effective against opposite handed hitters, while the slider is most effective against same handed hitters with it’s down and away break from lefties. Left handed batters will only need to be ready for these 3 offerings.
| Pitch | Frequency |
| Fourseam (FA) | 32% |
| Sinker (SI) | 13% |
| Slider (SL) | 47% |
The Orioles likely lineup against CC is below. I anticipate them putting Lew Ford at DH over Thome and substituting Robert Andino for Flaherty at 2B. That leaves the Orioles with only 2 left handed hitters in the lineup.
- Nate McLouth (L) LF
- J.J. Hardy (R) SS
- Adam Jones (R) CF
- Matt Wieters (S) C
- Chris Davis (L) RF
- Mark Reynolds (R) 1B
- Manny Machado (R) 3B
- Lew Ford (R) DH
- Robert Andino (R) 2B
Considering C.C.’s success against left handed hitters, that’s a good thing. Against lefties this season, Sabathia has struck out 35.3% of batters, while only walking 3.4%. That’s pretty incredible. More than 1 out of every 3 left handed batters that faced CC this year struck out. That number leads the league for starters by 8%! Chris Sale is 2nd and he only strikes out 27.3% of left handed hitters. That’s more than enough reason to leave Thome and Flaherty on the bench to start Game 1 of the ALDS. Thome is a strong option for Showalter to use as a pinch hitter in the late innings against the Yankees predominantly right handed bullpen.
Sabathia does have some pretty strong tendencies against lefties that the remaining lefties in the lineup (McLouth and Davis) can look for. During September (small sample size warning), Sabathia started left handed hitters with a fastball 73% of the time. Considering we saw earlier that he only throws his fastball 39% of the time to all hitters, that is a pretty big jump. McLouth or Davis could look to jump on a first pitch fastball from CC. They’d be better off doing that than getting to two strikes against him when he looks to bury a slider low and away to get the strikeout. When C.C. gets to two strikes against a left handed hitter, he throws his slider an unreal 66% of the time. You’d think that since a lefty knew what pitch was coming 66% of the time it would make it easier to hit, but the quality of Sabthia’s slider is so high this isn’t the case. It’s a devastating pitch whether the batter knows it’s coming or not.
Against right handed hitters, Sabathia brings his change up out and replaces some of the massive amounts of sliders he throws to lefties with the pitch. Here’s his pitch mix to righties.
| Pitch | Frequency |
| Fourseam (FA) | 41% |
| Sinker (SI) | 15% |
| Slider (SL) | 27% |
| Changeup (CH) | 17% |
This season, Sabathia has held righties to a .239/.291/.374 slash line. His FIP against righties is only 3.66 so he’s been human against opposite handed hitters. Sabathia doesn’t have any huge tendencies against righties, as he has the ability to throw any pitch in any count. One thing the Orioles right handed hitters could look for is a change up when they are ahead in the account. He throws his change up a full 28% of the time when the batter is ahead in the count. This situation is the one where he is least likely to throw his slider, using it only 13% of the time. He prefers to use the slider as his out pitch even to righties, throwing it 47% of the time when a righty has two strikes against him. Not quite as much as he throws it to lefties with two strikes, but a lot nonetheless.
The one thing that stands out to me in all of this is just how much Sabathia has relied on his slider this year. There were only 4 pitchers in all of baseball who threw a greater percentage of sliders this year than Sabathia. They were Ryan Dempster, Madison Bumgarner, Bud Norris, and Ervin Santana. Only Matt Cain got more value from his slider this year than Sabathia. It’s really the key to his whole pitching repertoire. As devastating as the pitch is, the Orioles should probably try to pick on a few fastballs early in the count before they get into a situation where he can bury the pitch at their back foot. His fastball has really diminished in effectiveness as he’s gotten older and lost velocity. Picking on his fastball early in the count could be the Orioles opportunity to get to Sabathia early and get some runs against him.
The Orioles have a tough job ahead of them going up against the Yankees burly ace, but if they have an idea of what to expect going into it, they can have success against him just as they did back in September.
Kevin was the owner of the Orioles blog Eutaw Street Blues. He had operated the site since the beginning of the Orioles magical 2012 season. He tends to focus on sabermetric analysis of the Orioles and their minor league affiliates. He balances his analysis between what he sees with his eyes and what the analysis of the data says. The Columbia, MD native attended the University of Colorado at Boulder while obtaining a Bachelors of Science degree in Business Administration. He also attended Loyola University Maryland obtaining the degree of Masters of Business Administration. When Kevin is not reading or writing about baseball, he finds time to work at M&T Bank.