CC takes a hike
The $161 million pitcher is sitting in the dugout trying to figure out what happened to his breaking stuff. CC Sabathia had no command of his offspeed repertoire today and the Orioles showed terrific plate discipline in the middle innings to take control of the opener.
The Orioles just scored three times in the fifth inning to take a 6-1 lead, and it should be a blowout right now. Gregg Zaun had a chance to bust it open with the bases loaded and one out against reliever Jonathan Albaladejo, but center fielder Brett Gardner ran under his shallow fly ball and threw out Melvin Mora trying to tag and score from third.
Sabathia left after 4 1/3 innings, giving up six runs on eight hits and five walks. It was only the fifth start of his career in which he did not strike out a batter.
Instant update: Don't put this one in the win column just yet. Jorge Posada just opened the sixth with a mammoth home run and Jeremy Guthrie has allowed another run with nobody out. Brian Bass is up in the bullpen.
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Comments
Pete,
I completely disagree with your take on Sabbathia. His off-speed stuff was serviceable but he had absolutely no command over the fastball. He was barely touching 90 on the gun on the broadcast. I live in Indy so I had the game on the YES network and they had a few shots of him in the dugout putting a heating pad or something on his side. They thought it may have been an injury of some kind. Did you hear anything like that.
Posted by: Dale | April 6, 2009 9:07 PM
The Oriole Way: great hustle from Izturis!
the Yankee way.... no hustle from Nady!
Posted by: joningermany | April 6, 2009 10:48 PM
Great day at Camden Yards after the rain! Go Jonesy! Go O's!
Posted by: Andrea Bradley | April 6, 2009 11:38 PM
Great day at Camden Yards after the rain! Go Jonesy! Go O's!
Posted by: Andrea Bradley | April 6, 2009 11:38 PM
I was able to watch the game on TV and man, is that CC out of shpae or what? He looks in worse shape than most guys at my local curling club..you'd think he'd want to shape up just a bit. He isn't that old but if he keeps putting on the lbs.that can't be good for the legs/etc. I know there's the old argument that Mickey Lolich/David Wells were in less than stellar shape but for the most part, I would guess that there haven't been too many 300 lbs 'aces'.
I hope our opener is just a sign of what CC is in for all year and for the rest of that over-priced contract. Nothing against him personally but maybe a few more Zito-like failures will send a message to teams that paying huge $$$ can backfire.
Anyway, good wins are likely going to be few are far between in '09 so any time we can beat the 'mighty' Yanks and have 2 of their big ticket items fail as well, is cause for celebration.
Posted by: TerryP | April 7, 2009 11:29 AM
Its only one game. I would not throw C.C. under the bus yet. He would not be the first pitcher to get off on a slow start at the begining of the year, and then be dominating later on.
Posted by: Capt Jack | April 7, 2009 3:42 PM
Pete-
The sad truth is that today's thirteen-win pitcher is yesteryear's twenty- game winner. Anything after thirteen wins is just gravy. It's incomprehensible that the Os had four (yes FOUR) twenty game winners on the same staff. Baseball can be played for 10,000 more years, and we will never see the likes of that feat again. And yeah, it makes me proud that it was done in Os uniforms
Posted by: Patrick Lynch | April 7, 2009 8:10 PM