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The San Francisco Giants used five pitchers in a four-run, ninth-inning rally that saw them get ousted from the National League Division Series by the Chicago Cubs on Tuesday night, and veteran Santiago Casilla was highly emotional about not being among them.

Following the Giants’ shocking 6-5 loss in Game 4, the 36-year-old veteran was in tears as he commented on manager Bruce Bochy’s decision to leave him on the bench.

According to Carl Steward of the San Jose Mercury News, Casilla said:

I never had that moment before during five years here. I had a little struggle. But everybody [in the bullpen] has had their bad moments. I think they forgot all the great moments I’ve had here. I’ve pitched a lot in the playoffs and done my job. I know I am a good pitcher.

Casilla’s career postseason numbers are sparkling, as he boasts a 0.92 ERA, 1.02 WHIP and four saves in 19.2 pressure-packed playoff innings.

The 13th-year major leaguer struggled mightily down the stretch during the regular season, however, as he posted a 5.87 ERA in September and October. Casilla ended the campaign with a 3.57 ERA and nine blown saves in 31 opportunities, which prompted the Giants to remove him from the full-time closer role.

In Casilla’s stead, Bochy used Derek Law, Javier Lopez, Sergio Romo, Will Smith and Hunter Strickland in the ninth inning Tuesday.

They combined to allow four runs on four hits and one walk without recording a single strikeout.

Casilla finished the 2016 playoffs with just 0.2 innings to his credit, allowing two hits and no runs. While he has posted a combined 69 regular-season saves over the past two years, Casilla’s time with the Giants may have come to an end Tuesday since he is set to hit free agency.

Although Casilla’s late-season play didn’t inspire much confidence, his experience in big moments may have trumped that on the playoff stage.

Bochy is a likely future Hall of Famer, with three World Series titles to his credit, and he often seems to push the right buttons during the playoffs, but leaving one of the best clutch playoff relievers of the past several years in the bullpen was a questionable decision.

It may not have quite reached the level of Baltimore Orioles manager Buck Showalter opting against using dominant closer Zach Britton in an American League Wild Card Game loss to the Toronto Blue Jays, but Bochy’s choice is likely to be second-guessed for many years to come.

Follow @MikeChiari on Twitter.

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Despite getting swept in three games by the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League Division Series, Texas general manager Jon Daniels hasn’t lowered his expectations for the Rangers in 2017 and beyond.

“We expect to win,” Daniels told reporters at his season-ending news conference, per MLB.com’s TR Sullivan. “We will be better.”

With much of the roster still under contract and one of the game’s premier managers, Jeff Banister, in the dugout, Daniels’ job isn’t quite as daunting as those facing some of his counterparts around the game, whose teams aren’t in nearly as good of shape as the Rangers are.

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For the first time in more than a decade, the Boston Red Sox head into the offseason knowing that David Ortiz and his larger-than-life personality won’t be a fixture in the middle of their lineup when the team reports for spring training next year.

“No one wanted it to end like this,” said Xander Bogaerts, Boston’s 24-year-old shortstop, following the Cleveland Indians‘ series-clinching Game 3 victory over the Red Sox in the American League Division Series, per the Providence Journal‘s Tim Britton.

Whether the “it” Bogaerts was referring to was Boston’s season or Ortiz’s career is irrelevant—he’s right.

The team wasted little time in making one of its biggest offseason decisions, deciding to maintain the status quo in the dugout for 2017.

“John Farrell will be our manager for 2017,” president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski told reporters Tuesday, per the Boston Herald’s Jason Mastrodonato. “So he is all set and his full staff will be invited back. … Everybody is welcome back. I think they did a very fine job for us.”

Exactly how the roster he’ll be managing will look come Opening Day, however, isn’t quite as clear.

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In Terry Francona’s script for the latest season of MLB‘s hit drama Postseason Baseball, the most important role in the American League Championship Series may be a middle reliever.

This one just so happens to be played by one of the nastiest pitchers in the league.

It’s a departure from the usual script, but it’s a reality the Toronto Blue Jays must be prepared for with Game 1 of the ALCS set for Friday. Francona used Andrew Miller twice in the Cleveland Indians‘ AL Division Series sweep of the Boston Red Sox, and the lefty took no prisoners:

Short version: 16 batters faced, four baserunners, seven outs the easy way and, most importantly, no runs. 

These outs loomed large in real time, when there was no ignoring how the postseason bullpen mantra of “Just have a lead after six” changed into “Just have a lead after four or five.” These outs also loom large on paper. Baseball-Reference.com calculates Miller swayed Cleveland’s win probability by 26.3 percent. Through Monday’s action, only three pitchers had done better in the divisional round.

So much for the decree that elite relievers must handle only high-leverage innings, much less the last three outs. This was Francona and Miller acknowledging that all postseason innings are high-leverage innings. But also, this was acknowledging that the big picture is really quite simple.

“The point isn’t to use your best relievers in the biggest moments,” wrote Neil Weinberg at FanGraphs. “The point is to maximize your odds of winning the game.”

Indeed. And for Francona and Miller, the revolution began well before the postseason arrived.

With a 1.77 ERA and 14.9 strikeouts per nine innings in the first year-and-a-half of his four-year, $36 million contract with the New York Yankees, Miller was an obvious trade target for an Indians bullpen that needed another shutdown arm to pair with closer Cody Allen. But to justify the price of acquiring Miller—the remainder of his contract and a package of prospects headlined by Clint Frazier—the Indians would need to get a lot out of him down the stretch.

That was precisely what Francona had in mind, telling The Ringer’s Ben Lindbergh that he saw “a guy that is willing to pitch any inning.” He put that theory to the test when he called on Miller in the sixth inning in just his second appearance with the club on August 4.

That equaled the number of times Miller had come into a game before the eighth in his entire tenure with the Yankees. It ended up being one of nine times he did so in his 26 appearances with Cleveland. He dominated the whole way, racking up a 1.55 ERA with 46 strikeouts and two walks in 29 innings.

Miller obviously still has the stuff that’s made him one of baseball’s elite strikeout relievers since 2012. He throws a mid-90s fastball with good life and a slider that can make hitters dance as if an old-timey Western villain is shooting at their feet.

Observe an example here, courtesy of The Pitcher List:

When necessary, Miller also has the goods to last more than one inning: a background as a starting pitcher and efficiency that, even despite his now-extreme slider usage, has never been better.

He walked a career-low 1.1 batters per nine innings this season with control that, given his history as a left-handed clone of Nuke LaLoosh, even his biggest believers from back in the day didn’t see coming. Here’s Aaron Fit of D1Baseball.com:

And whereas other late-inning relievers might scoff at being used so far away from the almighty “save,” Miller has an aw-shucks attitude about it.

“I don’t know why I get credit for that, I think most guys would do the same thing,” Miller said on the eve of the ALDS, via Erik Boland of Newsday. “I think at the end of the day if everybody’s on the page that winning’s the most important thing, something like that doesn’t matter.”

One question for the future is whether Cleveland’s usage of Miller will be the start of a league-wide trend, or if it’s a unique situation. It seems everyone wants to believe the former, but it may be the latter.

After all, relievers with great stuff and great control and a previously stretched-out arm and a willingness to do heavy lifting before the late innings aren’t plentiful. If teams want them, they’re going to have to cultivate them. That runs the risk of overextending a relief pitcher or diminishing the role of an otherwise promising starting pitcher.

The question for today, however, is for the Blue Jays: How are they going to avoid letting Miller do to them what he did to the Red Sox?

The most obvious solution is to not repeat the Red Sox’s mistake of letting games fall into Miller’s hands. He had leads to protect both times he pitched in the ALDS because Boston hitters couldn’t get to Cleveland starters, scoring only five runs off Trevor Bauer, Corey Kluber and Josh Tomlin.

The Red Sox had the best offense in the league this year, but it got passive. Per Baseball Savant, Boston hitters swung at only 40.9 percent of the pitches they saw, the lowest mark of all playoff teams as of Tuesday morning. Even against Tomlin, a notorious strike-thrower, too many bats stayed on too many shoulders.

The Blue Jays must change the way they operate to avoid falling into that same trap. They had the most patient offense in MLB, seeing a league-high 4.03 pitches per plate appearance. That had the purpose of feeding the team’s .330 on-base percentage and .426 slugging percentage, but it could backfire if it doesn’t lead to runs before Miller Time.

Failing that, whatever aggression Josh Donaldson, Edwin Encarnacion, Jose Bautista and the rest of Toronto’s hitters don’t take out on Cleveland’s starters should be saved for Miller himself. In the regular season, anything after the first pitch was thin-ice territory:

• First pitch: 1.214 OPS
• Even count: .724 OPS
• Batter ahead: .556 OPS
• Pitcher ahead: .282 OPS

In this context, “be aggressive” isn’t meant to encourage Blue Jays hitters to string hits together off Miller. For all his dominance, he gave up eight home runs this season. That’s an open invitation for the Blue Jays to be true to their nature.

“We rely upon that home run ball,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said after his team slugged eight dingers in their ALDS sweep of the Texas Rangers, via Brittany Ghiroli of MLB.com. “You know what? Whether you like it or not, that’s the kind of players we have.”

The Blue Jays will be in trouble if they can’t get to Indians starters or to Miller himself. Give or take, that would leave them with three innings to do damage against the rest of Cleveland’s pitchers. That’s a small window that will be populated by good arms. Although not on Miller’s level, Allen, Dan Otero and Bryan Shaw are quality pitchers.

And the Blue Jays may need more than just one or two runs if they can’t break through before the late innings. The Indians have a deep lineup that features a near-constant platoon advantage. Following a season in which it finished second in the AL in runs, the Cleveland offense hit a solid .271 and scored 15 runs in the ALDS.

So while Miller won’t be the best player on the field in the ALCS, he will indeed be the most important. He’ll be the ace everyone knows Francona has up his sleeve, forcing Gibbons and the Blue Jays to play their cards accordingly. If they do that well, Miller’s ALDS dominance will be an anomaly.

If not, things will keep going according to Francona’s script.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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For the last 107 seasons, any hope the Chicago Cubs held heading into postseason play was almost immediately followed by agony.

What took place in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the National League Division Series on Tuesday night is supposed to happen to the Cubs. Chicago is never the team that dishes out heartbreak.

But at AT&T Park, the Cubs borrowed—or maybe stole—some of the magic that has guided the San Francisco Giants to World Series titles in each of the last three even years.

Down by three runs, with a decisive Game 5 on the minds of everyone in attendance and watching at home, the Cubs scored four runs to take a 6-5 lead.

Chicago closer Aroldis Chapman saved the game with three swinging strikeouts in the ninth.

While the Cubs have been the champions of misfortune, it’s important to note that only one team has ever done what they did Tuesday.

Chicago’s comeback from a three-run deficit tied the largest ninth-inning deficit overcome in a clinching postseason game. The 1986 New York Mets did the same in Game 6 of the National League Championship Series.

It gives reason to believe this is the year for the Cubs.

Tuesday’s theatrics are commonplace at AT&T Park in October, only fans are used to seeing them performed by the home team. Chicago’s victory snapped the Giants’ 10-game winning streak in elimination games.

That means en route to winning the World Series in 2010, 2012 and 2014, San Francisco faced elimination nine times. Their 10th win in an elimination game came Monday, when they captured Game 3.

That’s suggestive of the kind of magic it takes to raise the Commissioner’s Trophy. It’s what the Cubs have been missing but finally seem to have.

All series, Chicago struggled offensively. Only third baseman Kris Bryant, who hit .375/.412/.688 in the four games, was hitting. And he began the ninth-inning rally with a leadoff single.

But seemingly everyone got in on the action. Anthony Rizzo walked, Ben Zobrist lined a run-scoring double and Javier Baez singled home Jason Heyward, who has struggled all year at the plate, for the game-winning run.

Manager Joe Maddon added a little of his out-of-the-box style to the inning, too.

With shortstop Addison Russell, who had 95 RBI this season, coming to the plate and the game-tying runs on second and third, Maddon elected to pinch hit.

He used left-handed batter Chris Coghlan, who hit just .188 and drove in only 30 runs this season, to get a lefty-righty matchup against Giants pitcher Sergio Romo.

Coghlan turned out to be a decoy.

Once his name was announced—the official designation that a player has entered a game—San Francisco manager Bruce Bochy countered by bringing in southpaw reliever Will Smith.

Maddon then removed Coghlan before he even stepped into the batter’s box and inserted right-handed hitting catcher Willson Contreras, who hit .311 against left-handers this season.

The Cubs had the matchup they wanted, and it paid dividends: Contreras singled home Rizzo and Zobrist to tie the game.

It was a picture-perfect ending for Chicago, which is typically the victim in a horror film.

The Cubs await the winner of the NLDS between the Washington Nationals and Los Angeles Dodgers. Those two teams will play a Game 5 on Thursday.

As if winning an NLDS wasn’t enough for Chicago, the Dodgers used ace Clayton Kershaw in Tuesday’s Game 4. The Nationals will throw their ace, Max Scherzer, in Game 5.

That means regardless which team the Cubs play in the NLCS, which starts Saturday, they will not face that team’s ace until at least Game 2.

But by virtue of closing out their NLDS in Game 4, Chicago will get to throw its ace, Jon Lester, in Game 1. Had San Francisco forced Game 5, Lester would have pitched Thursday, and had the Cubs advanced, he would not have been available until Game 3 of the NLCS.

Everything that could have gone the Cubs’ way Tuesday night did.

And while Chicago’s shocking comeback reverberated around the baseball world, it also left onlookers wondering whether the sport’s even-year magic had changed addresses.

It seems as if the Cubs are finally destined for some good fortune.

Seth Gruen is a national baseball columnist for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter @SethGruen.

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Chase Utley saved Clayton Kershaw from being the goat. Again.

As far as the Los Angeles Dodgers are concerned, there was a happy ending to Game 4 of their National League Division Series on Tuesday. With the Dodgers’ season on the line with two on and two out in the bottom of the eighth inning of a 5-5 game against the Washington Nationals, Utley plated the go-ahead run with an RBI single off Blake Treinen.

After that, Kenley Jansen retired the Nationals in order in the ninth to preserve a 6-5 victory and send the Dodger Stadium faithful home happy and knowing Los Angeles had lived to fight another day—specifically Thursday, for Game 5 at Nationals Park.

But Kershaw? He presumably went home feeling relieved. Because it wasn’t long before Utley’s clutch hit that the Fox Sports 1 cameras had caught him reduced to this:

That’s the look of a man who (at least in a general sense) was not only painfully aware of that bottom number but also how much worse it had been made by recent events.

The top of the seventh inning started well for the left-hander. He allowed a leadoff single to Danny Espinosa but got Pedro Severino for his 11th strikeout and then Chris Heisey to fly out. All he needed was one more out.

It did not come. Instead, this happened:

• Trea Turner: infield single
• Bryce Harper: walk
• Pitching change: Pedro Baez
• Jayson Werth: hit by pitch, RBI
• Pitching change: Luis Avilan
• Daniel Murphy: single, two RBI

When it was over, the “ER” portion of Kershaw’s line score had ballooned from two to five. With it, his career postseason ERA went from an ugly 4.48 to a 4.83 mark that’s about as ugly as the public perception of his postseason track record.

It’s the latest cruel twist of fate October has thrown at Kershaw, whom most of the world knows as a three-time Cy Young Award winner and generally the best pitcher in the sport. And like most of the others, this one was made crueler by how smoothly things had been going.

Kershaw’s day started with promise. After holding out on everyone following an 8-3 loss in Game 3 on Monday, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts announced Tuesday morning he would start Kershaw on three days’ rest rather than put Los Angeles’ season in the hands of 20-year-old rookie Julio Urias.

“One, Clayton gives us the best chance to win,” Roberts said (via ESPN.com), “and No. 2, he gives us the best chance to go deeper into a game.”

The Dodgers needed the latter after getting only 7.1 innings out of Rich Hill and Kenta Maeda on Sunday and Monday. Had Urias struggled under the postseason spotlight, the Dodgers would have been doomed before they even knew what hit ’em.

For Kershaw, it was a shot at redemption under circumstances he’s fared well in. While one of them is remembered for a hanging curveball to Matt Adams, Kershaw’s previous postseason starts on short rest had each consisted of at least six innings and no more than three earned runs.

At first it seemed unlikely Kershaw would add another to the pile. The Nationals got to him for a run on 27 pitches in the first inning and tacked on another in the third. But he settled in after that, and the Dodgers offense got him three runs of breathing room.

Kershaw wasn’t at his sharpest. Brooks Baseball showed he was working up in the zone, where he could have been hurt. But he was sitting around 94-95 mph with his fastball, which climbed as high as 96 mph. He got nine swinging strikes on his heater and 12 more on his curveball and slider. When location fails, it’s good to have that kind of stuff.

This is where my copy of Hot Takes for Dummies says I’m supposed to write that Kershaw then let the pressure burst his pipes rather than turn him into a diamond. I’m supposed to write that he choked.

But, nah. What really happened was an unfortunate series of events that didn’t go Kershaw’s way.

Turner’s infield hit probably should have gotten Kershaw out of the inning. Turner didn’t put good wood on a curveball, hitting it just 83.7 mph, per Baseball Savant. If Corey Seager had been playing a step to his left or had gotten the ball out of his glove quicker, that would have been an out.

Then came the walk to Harper. It pushed Kershaw’s pitch count to 110 but didn’t feature a bad pitch and may have ended differently if he’d gotten one very close call:

Give Harper credit for working a tough at-bat, but don’t take too much credit away from Kershaw. The fact he was still making pitches after having thrown so many on short rest is admirable.

“A matter of will,” Nationals manager Dusty Baker said (via Dodger Insider). “Kershaw was on empty. They knew it; we knew it. That was some battle.”

Once Kershaw was in the dugout, he was powerless to stop the horrors Baez and Avilan released. Baez needed only one pitch to hit Werth. Avilan failed two pitches into his lefty-on-lefty matchup. That their debacles—merely the latest in a trend well covered by Bill Baer of Hardball Talk—resulted in three runs should not to be forgotten when looking at the five runs on Kershaw’s line score.

Had the Dodgers lost the game and the series, there would be a “But…” to talk about. Utley made sure that didn’t happen, though, putting this game in a gray area as far as optics go.

Postseason legacies are defined just as much by memorable achievements and failures as they are by numbers. Had Kershaw’s line loomed large in a Dodgers loss, it would have been another one of his visible failures to carpe the hell out of the diem in October. Since they picked him up and carped the diem on their own, Kershaw’s performance didn’t go down as another visible failure. It’s more of a missed opportunity.

The same can be said of Kershaw’s performance in Game 1, in which he had to rough it through five innings to pace the Dodgers to a 4-3 win. The fact a series they were heavily favored to win is tied 2-2 has little to do with his shortcomings and more to do with those of his rotation mates.

That is to say it remains to be seen whether Kershaw will find redemption or grow another pair of goat horns in his latest trip to the postseason. If either happens, it will be in the National League Championship Series or the World Series.

For now, it’s a push. The Dodgers are still alive, and Kershaw’s postseason legacy is no better or worse than it was at the outset.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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The Chicago Cubs have moved a step closer to ending its 108-year title drought, while at the same time putting an end to the San Francisco Giants’ even-year magic.

The Cubs scored four runs in the top of the ninth inning to win 6-5, clinching the National League Division Series win in four games. Javier Baez’s RBI single scored Jason Heyward for the game-winning run, but before that Ben Zobrist had an RBI double and Willson Contreras added a two-run single as a pinch hitter.

Chicago forced the Giants to use five pitchers in the ninth, scoring three times before recording an out. Before that, San Francisco starter Matt Moore had been electric with 10 strikeouts and only two hits allowed in eight innings.

San Francisco built a 5-2 lead in the bottom of the fifth on an RBI single from Conor Gillaspie and a sacrifice fly from Joe Panik. Three Giants runs cameon outs, two on sac flies and another on an RBI groundout. The fifth runs came when pitcher Moore singled with the bases loaded in the fourth to help his own cause.

The Cubs got their earlier runs on a solo home run from David Ross in the second and a sacrifice fly from Ross in the fifth.

Hector Rondon, the fifth of six Cubs pitchers, picked up the win in relief of starter John Lackey who was pulled after allowing three runs in four innings. Aroldis Chapman struck out the side for the save, a night after he blew a save during the Giants’ 13-inning victory that extended the series.

The Cubs will host either the Los Angeles Dodgers or Washington Nationals, who meet Thursday in Game 5 of their NLDS, on Saturday in the National League Championship Series.

Scroll down for all of our real-time updates, analysis, statistics, tweets, pictures and everything else worth noting from AT&T Park in San Francisco.

Follow Brian J. Pedersen on Twitter at @realBJP.

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After blowing a three-run lead in the seventh inning, the Dodgers got an RBI single from Chase Utley in the bottom of the eight inning to retake the lead and send the series back to Washington for a decisive fifth game.

Utley’s single drove home Andrew Toles gave the Dodgers a 6-5 lead. Manager Dave Roberts summoned closer Kenley Jansen from the bullpen in the ninth and he retired the Nationals in order as the Dodgers to preserve the one-run victory.

The series is tied at 2-2, with each team winning a home and a road game. The fifth game will be played in Washington Thursday.

The Dodgers held a 5-2 lead with Clayton Kershaw pitching in the seventh inning, and with a runner on first and two outs, Washington’s Trea Turner lined an infield single that kept the inning alive. Roberts left Kershaw in the game to face Bryce Harper, and he walked the 2015 MVP on a 3-2 pitch. 

Roberts pulled Kershaw at that point, and Jayson Werth was hit by a pitch to drive in one run and Daniel Murphy followed with a game-tying two-run single.

Joe Blanton came on to put out the fire for the Dodgers, and one inning later, Utley got his game-winning hit.

Max Scherzer will be the fifth-game starter for the Nats, while it appears that Rich Hill or Julio Urias will get the ball for the Dodgers.

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Despite being swept out of the 2016 American League Division Series by the Cleveland Indians, the Boston Red Sox reaffirmed their commitment to manager John Farrell on Tuesday. 

Dave Dombrowski, the team’s president of baseball operations, announced Farrell will stay with the team in 2017, according to Pete Abraham of the Boston Globe.

In February 2015, the Red Sox extended Farrell’s deal to keep him on board through the 2017 season, with an option for 2018. Dombrowski declined to say whether Boston will exercise that option.

“Something of that magnitude I need to sit down with ownership and discuss that,” he said, according to Evan Drellich of the Boston Herald.

While the Red Sox finished the regular season with a 93-69 record, their postseason exit led to some criticism of Farrell’s handling of his team.

In particular, many questioned his decision to pinch-hit Chris Young for Andrew Benintendi in the bottom of the seventh inning in Game 3 of the ALDS. While Young walked during the at-bat, Boston was without Benintendi to lead off the bottom of the ninth as it looked to come back from a 4-3 deficit.

Boston.com’s Chad Finn was among those who thought Farrell made a big mistake:

Eric Wilbur of Boston.com thought the ALDS as a whole helped to illustrate the gulf between Farrell and a tactically astute manger such as the Indians’ Terry Francona:

Yet, this series perhaps exposed Farrell’s shortcomings as a big league manager all the same. You could give him and [Francona] two seats to deal with, and Farrell would probably still lose playing musical chairs to his old friend.

Farrell doesn’t have to stay because of the success that the Red Sox found this year, winning the American league East after back-to-back last-place finishes. He needs to go because of the continued promise of watching his in-game decisions backfire, and particularly after watching Francona manage circles around him, almost as if he were in his pickup willingly doing donuts on Farrell’s own manicured lawn.

In August, Abraham also took issue with how Farrell handled Red Sox pitchers:

Farrell also has had less of an effect on the pitching staff than you would have expected from an accomplished former pitching coach. Certainly, he needs to respect boundaries and let coaches do their jobs. But Farrell should be having more direct impact on somebody like David Price.

As a pitching coach, Farrell was an authority figure with the pitchers to a point that some feared him. He was their boss. As the manager, he seems too much like their protector.

Expectations will be high for the Red Sox in 2017, yet it’s doubtful a slow start to next year would result in Farrell’s firing in the first few months. The team hasn’t fired a manager in the middle of a season since Jimy Williams in 2001. Even Bobby Valentine finished out a disastrous 2012 campaign before losing his job.

With only one more guaranteed year left on his deal, Farrell will be under heavy pressure to deliver. Anything short of a trip to the American League Championship Series could put his job in serious jeopardy.

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New York Yankees starting pitcher CC Sabathia is expected to recover in time for spring training after undergoing surgery on his right knee Tuesday.

Continue for updates.

Yankees Call Procedure ‘a Routine Cleanup’

Tuesday, Oct. 11

The Associated Press reported Yankees head team physician Dr. Christopher Ahmad handled the surgery after Sabathia pitched the entire 2016 season with a knee brace on the bothersome joint.

Sabathia is no longer the ace he was during his prime seasons with the Cleveland Indians and early in his Yankees career. He can still serve as a valuable piece of the rotation, however, especially with New York being limited in terms of pitching depth. He finished this season with a 3.91 ERA in 30 starts.

He had previously established himself as one of baseball’s most reliable workhorses for more than a decade. Injuries have become an issue over the past couple of years, though. He missed most of the 2014 campaign because of knee problems, and a groin injury sent him to the disabled list earlier this season.

Since he should be back to full strength in time for spring training, the Yankees don’t necessarily have to focus on filling a void. But starting pitching is one area the team will probably try to address in the offseason after ranking 19th in starter ERA (4.44), per ESPN.com.

Sabathia should still have a place in the rotation after his solid bounce-back year. But the Yanks will probably take it easy on the 36-year-old lefty during camp to make sure there are no setbacks before the start of the new season.

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