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CC Sabathia had to be pulled away from a fight and put into a cab early Saturday morning outside of EFS Nightclub in Toronto, according to TMZ Sports.

The site shared a video of the incident. (Note: The following video contains some violence and profanity and is NSFW.)

It’s unclear what instigated the confrontation, though TMZ Sports reported that “hecklers were yelling ‘Go Blue Jays.'”

Per Brendan Kuty of the Star-Ledger, Sabathia said he regrets the incident and “just made a bad decision.”

According to Anthony McCarron, Christian Red and Bill Price of the New York Daily News, the fact that he had his Monday start against Minnesota pushed back to Tuesday had nothing to do with the incident.

Sabathia, 35, is 4-9 on the season with a 5.23 ERA, 1.43 WHIP and 107 strikeouts. He’s pitched well in August, however, giving up just three earned runs in his past two starts. The team expects him to play a vital role in its push for the postseason.

For that reason, the Yankees are surely grateful that Sabathia was put into a cab rather than further engaging in Saturday‘s incident.

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Houston Astros pitcher Brett Oberholtzer got rocked by the New York Yankees on Saturday, allowing a grand slam to catcher Brian McCann and a two-run dinger to outfielder Chris Young.

Having allowed six runs and still not out of the second inning, the lefty was frustrated. So he took his anger out on Alex Rodriguez by throwing a fastball at his midsection.

Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia was having none of that, though, as the big fella had to be held back by manager Joe Girardi.

After the Yankees won, 9-6, Girardi was candid about the near-scuffle, per Evan Drellich of the Houston Chronicle:

If you thought McCann and Young beat up on Oberholtzer, just imagine what Sabathia would’ve done.

The left-handed pitcher won’t have to worry about that in Triple-A, though:

[MLB.com]

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First place in the American League East will be on the line this weekend at Fenway Park in Boston as the division-leading New York Yankees (13-9) visit the Red Sox (12-10) in the opener of a three-game series on Friday.

Despite losing five of their past eight games to fall out of first place in the AL East, Boston remains one of the favorites to win the AL Pennant at 11-2 odds on the MLB betting futures. New York has improved slightly to 10-1 from 18-1 on April 15.

The Yankees have won 10 of their last 13 games to put themselves into position to contend for the division crown this year after taking two of three from the Tampa Bay Rays, who are tied with the Red Sox for second place.

New York saw its three-game winning streak come to an end Wednesday following a 3-2 home loss to the Rays, with the under cashing for totals bettors on the baseball betting lines for the third straight time in the series.

Boston has been involved in a lot of high-scoring games recently but saw its over streak end at five after a 4-1 victory against the Toronto Blue Jays on Wednesday. There had been an average of a little more than 15 combined runs scored in each of the previous five Red Sox games.

Recent history between the two fierce division rivals also suggests a high-scoring game and series, with the past five meetings all going over the total along with nine of the previous 11 games between the teams, according to the OddsShark MLB Database.

Boston starting pitcher Justin Masterson (2-0, 5.16 ERA) has seen the over cash in three of his four starts this season as well. The Red Sox lost for the first time in Masterson’s four starts this year in his last outing, as he allowed three runs and seven hits in seven innings of an eventual 5-4 loss to the Baltimore Orioles April 25 for a no-decision.

The Yankees will send CC Sabathia (0-4, 5.96) to the mound still looking for his first victory of the season. Sabathia got hit hard last time out on Saturday against the New York Mets, surrendering a season-high seven runs and nine hits, including three home runs, in five innings with no walks and two strikeouts.

Sabathia has seen the under cash in two road starts, while the over has gone 2-0 in his two at home. Sabathia’s previous trip to Fenway last season saw the total go way over the closing total of 8.5 runs, however, in a 14-5 road victory last April 24.

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And now for something we all ought to be used to by now:

A discussion about whether veteran New York Yankees left-hander CC Sabathia is good at pitching baseballs again, which will inevitably skew toward an “I’m not so sure, man” conclusion.

But first, the basics. Sabathia made his 2015 spring training debut Tuesday evening against the Toronto Blue Jays at George M. Steinbrenner Field, and he was hit-and-miss. He struck out two without a walk in two innings but also surrendered two earned runs on four hits.

On the surface, that’s a rough way for Sabathia to start getting his pitching legs back after a prolonged recovery from a right knee surgery that ended a season in which he had a 5.28 ERA in eight starts. And once you get into the finer details, there are some concerning things to talk about.

But that can wait. There are also some positives to be pulled from the 34-year-old’s first start since May 10, 2015, including one that I doubt anybody saw coming.

Lo and behold, Sabathia’s velocity was pretty good.

That was apparent when the first fastball the YES Network gun clocked came in at 96 miles per hour, a speed that BaseballSavant.com says Sabathia has hit only twice since 2012. From there, the YES gun had him sitting comfortably in the 89-92 range.

How much we can believe these figures is unclear. On the one hand, here’s Wallace Matthews of ESPN New York saying not to trust the YES gun:

And on the other, here’s Mark Feinsand of the New York Daily News citing a scout who also had Sabathia in the 89-92 range:

So yeah. But the good news is that, no matter which way you look at things, Sabathia’s velocity readings are very much encouraging.

Even if Sabathia only topped out at 92 miles per hour, that’s still good. He hit 92 only twice in 798 total pitches in 2014, so to see him hitting 92 already is a good sign.

If Sabathia was in fact sitting in the 89-92 range, that’s even better. FanGraphs put his average fastball velocity in 2014 at 88.8 miles per hour, and he was sitting in the 86-88 range early last spring. Relatively speaking, 89-92 mph is him coming a long way.

The difference  between last year and this year? The easy answer is that Sabathia is a lot heavier, as he came into camp at 305 pounds after entering camp at 275 pounds last year.

And according to the man himself, this weight is good for something.

“I feel like this is a good weight,” the 6’7″ pitcher told Feinsand. “I feel a little stronger. I feel my legs under me, being a lot stronger, and being able to push off the mound.”

Good velocity isn’t the only positive to take away from Sabathia’s debut. He also showed that he still has a slider capable of missing bats, notably getting Josh Donaldson swinging at one in the dirt for the first of his two strikeouts. MLB GIFs has the moving picture:

With a hard(er) fastball and a good slider, there were thus some moments in which Sabathia looked more like the guy who pitched to a 3.22 ERA in his first four years with the Yankees. It’s only spring training, but the Yankees will surely take it.

So long as they’re also willing to take the bad with the good, of course. And there was also some of that on Tuesday.

Sabathia’s first inning was as clean as can be, as he retired Jose Reyes, Donaldson and Jose Bautista in order. But his second inning was significantly less clean, as he served up hits to Dioner Navarro, Dayan Viciedo, Devon Travis and Josh Thole.

It’s hard to call any of the four hits cheapies, and Sabathia has himself to blame for that.

Navarro’s hit was a sharp single to left field that came on a fastball that was up in the zone. Viciedo‘s was a double to right center that came on a slider that caught way too much of the plate. Travis’ hit was a sharp single to left that came on a heater right down the middle. Thole’s hit was a double to left field that came on a slider that also caught too much of the plate.

In short, the four hits Sabathia gave up all came on bad pitches.

He didn’t throw too many of those, mind you. I don’t have an exact count, but the majority of his pitches seemed to find Brian McCann’s glove precisely where he was putting it. It was on those pitches that Sabathia looked like the guy who had a very sharp 4.8 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 2014.

The other pitches, however, were the ones that made him look like the guy who got battered around the tune of a .301 average and .528 slugging percentage. Those figures overruled his strikeout-to-walk prowess, and the main force in creating them was his futility within the strike zone.

Hitters hit .405 with a .766 slugging percentage against Sabathia’s in-zone pitches last year, easily his worst marks of the PITCHf/x era:

That’s what it looks like when a pitcher has a margin for error roughly equivalent to zero.

And while you’d hope that Sabathia’s margin for error would increase with improved velocity, his second inning raises obvious doubts about that. It indicated that he still can’t beat hitters in the strike zone, which for a major league pitcher is a concern big enough to overrule any positives.

Of course, this is where we grant that Sabathia is far from categorically doomed based on one bad inning in one spring training start.

And there is indeed a bright side, as you’d much rather have a guy struggling with command during the spring than struggling with stuff. One of those things is a lot easier to fix than the other. With more reps, perhaps Sabathia will slowly reinvent himself into a Cliff Lee-type pitcher who simply doesn’t make mistakes within the strike zone.

Either way, the Yankees surely have their fingers crossed. Given how thin and volatile their starting pitching depth is, it’s hard to disagree with general manager Brian Cashman’s assessment, per ESPN New York‘s Wallace Matthews, that Sabathia is a “vitally important” part of the club’s rotation. If he’s ineffective and/or injured again, the Yankees will be faced with filling a hole that they don’t look prepared to fill.

For now, they wait and see. They can take heart in how Sabathia’s right knee didn’t buckle and how his arm produced some encouraging radar gun readings, but they should also be wary that the 2014 Sabathia doesn’t look like a thing of the past just yet.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted/linked.

If you want to talk baseball, hit me up on Twitter.

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Sunblock, infield dust and…scorpions? Pitchers and catchers have barely unpacked, and we’ve already got the best and the worst of camp openings.

1. Best Use of Weights

It ain’t the heavyweight division it once was, but with Yankees ace CC Sabathia making it a point to add weight for 2015 and early photos of Boston’s Pablo Sandoval already sending him into a defensive crouch, it does make you wonder whether the AL East will need to hold weekly weigh-ins.

Sabathia told reporters in Tampa that he thinks he came in a little too light last spring, and before you start your calorie counting, allow, for just a pinstriped moment, that Sabathia may be onto something.

The late Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett didn’t exactly have a model figure, nor did old Detroit starter Mickey Lolich, who threw 300-plus innings over four consecutive seasons from 1971-74.

No telling whether Sabathia will follow in Lolich‘s footsteps and open a doughnut shop after he retires (no joke, Lolich did), but the big lefty did pitch at a Cy Young level for many years without limitations, weight or otherwise.

The 6’7″ Sabathia says he’s planning to pitch between 295 and 305 pounds this season after checking into spring camp last year at 275. He thinks that his significant weight loss before the 2013 season resulted in a so-so summer: 14-13, 4.78 ERA.

So far this spring, he’s checked out fine following right knee surgery last season. The knee will bear watching, of course, because a heavier Sabathia means more wear and tear on the legs.

As for Sandoval, a tweeted picture raised his ire during his first few hours with the Red Sox. It was unflattering, with his belly sticking out.

Panda’s response was to quickly challenge the tweeting reporter to work out with him. His best response, though, is to ignore it. As late Baltimore manager Earl Weaver, a Hall of Famer, once said about Boog Powell (and recounted here in this excellent Dan Shaughnessy column in The Boston Globe), “He don’t look fat to me when he’s running around the bases after hitting those homers.”

Look, not all sluggers fit the mold. Sometimes, in the cases of Jell-O, they’ll eat the mold. So what? As long as they can hit.

Why do you think they call the weighted rings placed on bats in the on-deck circle doughnuts anyway?

(And see, we got through all that without any reference to Alex Rodriguez being dead weight in Yankees camp).

2. Best Updated Reference to U.S. Steel

No-nonsense Yankees manager Joe Girardi quickly brushed off the expected spring circus around A-Rod, basically saying that it’s always a circus around the Yankees. Or, as former reliever Sparky Lyle famously called it, it’s a Bronx Zoo.

“One of the things I learned in 1996 when I came here is that this is a different place,” Girardi told reporters. “It’s different when you put on a New York Yankee uniform.

“You’re on one of the most recognizable companies in the world.”

So if rooting for the Yankees, as Red Smith, Jimmy Cannon, Bill Veeck and whomever else said, once was “like rooting for U.S. Steel,” what’s the modern equivalent?

We’ll go with this, while taking requests, for now: Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for Apple.

3. Best Dodge

Whew, what a media session for Cole Hamels on Saturday at Bright House Field in Clearwater, Florida. The Phillies ace did everything but go all Bill Clinton and say that his desire to stay in Philadelphia or to be traded “depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”

He says he wants to win, and he told Bob Nightengale of USA Today that “I know it’s not going to happen here.”

He’s right.

Except, now Hamels is in the uncomfortable situation of basically preparing for the season in a clubhouse surrounded by teammates who know Hamels doesn’t think they can win. And when he addressed the media, several Phillies officials, including club president David Montgomery, were in the room. So what is an ace lefty still owed $90 million to do?

“At this given moment, I’m a Phillie,” Hamels said carefully.

For how long, it’s difficult to say. The Red Sox have the prospects to deal for him, and who knows, Monday’s signing of Yoan Moncada may send them even more aggressively toward the Phillies.

One team that was interested over the winter, San Diego, is out. When the Padres signed free agent James Shields, sources tell Bleacher Report that effectively ended their pursuit of Hamels, a San Diego native.

4. Best Quote

The Dodgers acquired Yasmani Grandal from the Padres in the Matt Kemp deal over the winter, and largely because of his stick, Grandal is expected to eat into A.J. Ellis’ playing time behind the plate.

Ellis’ take?

“You know, in all honesty, I don’t need a title of starting catcher or a title of backup catcher,” Ellis told reporters. “I want to have the title of World Series champion catcher.”

5. Best Sight in Arizona

Easy: San Francisco Giants manager Bruce Bochy back in uniform Sunday following a procedure to have two stents placed in his heart.

These spring training physical exams not only are wake-up calls, sometimes, for the players and managers themselves, but they also can be lessons to all of us. You see how a visit to the doctor might have saved Bochy‘s life. It is a good example to all of us that we should regularly see the doctor.

So, the man who employs one of the most delightful expressions in the game, “buzzard’s luck,” when the breaks don’t go the Giants’ way, starts 2015 with some excellent good fortune.

And his sense of humor wasn’t harmed, either. He promises, “I’ve got another 200,000 miles on me,” and he described his condition as not being “a widow-maker.”

6. Best Sight in Florida

Matt Harvey back in a New York Mets uniform and actually, you know, pitching from a mound.

He left us far too soon, for Tommy John surgery, not long after starting for the National League in the 2013 All-Star Game at Citi Field. He went 9-5 with a 2.27 ERA in 26 starts in ’13, then the elbow blew.

Between him and the Marlins’ Jose Fernandez blowing out last May, the game lost two sensational young starting pitchers. Now, at least, Harvey should be back. The Mets are talking about him pitching between 180 and 200 innings this summer, including beginning in their Opening Day rotation.

What a treat that would be for all of us. But especially for Mets fans, whose team is very close to blowing past the Yankees as the best club in town.

 7. Worst Development

Josh Hamilton could be out a month longer than expected following surgery to repair his right shoulder, and now it’s fair to wonder whether the five-year, $125 million deal the Angels bestowed on him will wind up being one of the worst of all time.

He’s 33, and in his final season in Texas (2012), he hit more home runs (43) than he has in his first two seasons combined in Anaheim (31). Battling the sore shoulder, he looked badly overmatched last September and in October, as the Angels were getting swept out of the playoffs by the Royals. (He was 0-for-13 with two strikeouts, and most of his swings were painful to watch.)

As of now, he likely won’t be back until at least May. And because he’s rehabbing at home in Texas, the Angels don’t even have a locker for him this spring.

8. Worst Spring Visitors

Did you hear the one about the scorpions in the White Sox camp?

It’s reminiscent of the time an alligator decided to visit the pool at the Detroit Tigers’ team hotel in Lakeland, Florida, back in the 1970s—or the time Torii Hunter “kissed” one there last March.

Not sure which is worse, but I may take the alligator before the scorpions.

9. Best Use of Time

The new Pace of Game rules, which I wrote about Friday, are sensible and, best of all, unobtrusive. Batters should be required to stay in the box during an at-bat. Pitchers and hitters absolutely, positively should be ready to go the moment the between-innings commercials are finished. If we’ve already waited more than two minutes for the commercial break, why wait another 30 to 60 seconds while players aren’t ready?

Maybe these changes will not shorten games significantly, but I’m not sure anybody is looking for that. Just tighten things up and remove some of the dead time. Play ball.

9(a). Best Backstage Visitor

At a concert earlier this month in Tampa, whom did Bob Seger see backstage but…Hall of Famer Al Kaline.

Kaline has a winter place in Lakeland, about 40 minutes east of Tampa, and the two Michiganders obviously share a connection. Seger told the crowd in Tampa how happy he was to see the Tigers’ Hall of Famer.

This reminded me of one of my favorite baseball stories involving Seger.

In the late 1960s, Ted Simmons was looking to get home to his family for a weekend with his then-girlfriend from the University of Michigan.

This being the ’60s, they did what lots of other folks did: hitchhiked.

Simmons was a first-round pick—10th overall—by the Cardinals in 1967, and he was working toward his degree during the offseasons. As Simmons told me two springs ago, it was November or December, it was cold, and snow flurries were making conditions even worse.

As Ted and Maryanne (now his wife) hitchhiked out of Ann Arbor alongside U.S. 23 North, a van pulled over to pick them up.

After Ted helped Maryanne into the front seat, he hopped into the back.

“I get in, all the seats had been removed, and there was a full drum set in the back,” Simmons told me.

As they drove away, Simmons thanked the driver profusely for picking them up.

“Where ya goin‘?” the driver asked.

“Detroit,” Simmons answered.

The van was headed toward Interstate 96, where Ted and Maryanne wanted to go, but the driver explained that he was heading west toward Lansing instead of east toward Detroit.

“He said, ‘I’ll drop you, and you can pick up another ride from there,'” Simmons said.

Simmons noted the drum set and asked whether the driver was a musician.

“What’s your name?” Simmons asked.

“Bob Seger,” came the response.

“I remember it like it was bigger than life,” Simmons told me. “He was just starting out back then.”

A local legend in the ’60s, Seger was known for playing hundreds of nights a year throughout Michigan and the Midwest. Then came 1976, when the release of Live Bullet in April and Night Moves in October catapulted him to superstardom.

As Simmons recalled, Seger had played the famous Canterbury House in Ann Arbor that evening and had another date scheduled in Lansing.

“He wasn’t huge yet,” Simmons said. “Then he got huge. It was just super for anybody to stop.

“He could have been a serial killer.”

Instead, he soon would be singing “Night Moves,” “Against the Wind” and many other beloved hits.

Simmons? Today, he’s a senior advisor to Mariners general manager Jack Zduriencik. And when his playing days were finished, Simmons, a physical education and speech major, went back and earned his degree from Michigan in 1996.

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report. He has over two decades of experience covering MLB, including 14 years as a national baseball columnist at CBSSports.com.

Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball @ScottMillerBbl. 

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The New York Yankees have a ton of question marks heading into spring training. It will be the first time in a long time without Derek Jeter at shortstop. Alex Rodriguez will likely lead the league in publicity, but he may or may not hit. And there is no clear-cut choice to start at second base.

But the biggest concern might be ace pitcher Masahiro Tanaka.  The Yankees signed the Japanese star to a seven-year, $155 million contract last January, and even though he pitched wonderfully in his first 20 starts of big league action, a huge scare jolted the organization when he tore the ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching elbow in July.

After throwing his first bullpen this spring, a 21-pitch session at the Yankees’ spring training facility in Tampa Bay, he said he feels better than ever.

“I actually feel a little bit better than last year,” he told ESPN.com. “My overall body and health is better.”

When healthy, Tanaka is an absolute beast. He is already one of the most dominant pitchers in baseball, and he makes opposing pitchers very uncomfortable by repeating his delivery and mixing his pitches with tremendous efficiency.

Last year, he used his fastball, splitter, slider and curveball with impeccable variety.  But the thing that makes him to most effective is his ability to repeat his delivery.  He threw his fastball 40.6 percent of the time and his splitter 25 percent of the time, according to Fangraphs. Those two pitches have about a five mph difference, and when the batter cannot tell what pitch is coming until it is out of the pitcher’s hand, it is nearly impossible to hit.

But even if he comes back and pitches similarly to how he did last year, will the Yankees even be able to contend?

On the surface, it looks like 2015 will be a bleak year for the Bronx Bombers. In Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA rankings, the Yankees are projected to finish fourth in the American League East with a record of 80-82. But they do have some talent on the roster, and manager Joe Girardi has shown he is willing to be creative if it will help the team win.

There is a chance the Yankees start the season with a six-man starting rotation.  Pitching coach Larry Rothschild hinted at that possibility to reporters last Wednesday, per Anthony McCarron of the New York Daily News.

While it is definitely unorthodox, teams generally use five starting pitchers, and it actually makes a lot of sense for the Yankees because the rotation has a history of injury.

Tanaka is coming off of surgery, CC Sabathia is coming off of knee surgery, and Michael Pineda spent time on the disabled list last year with a strained back muscle. 

The Yankees acquired Nathan Eovaldi in the offseason in exchange for Martin Prado, and the hard-throwing righty should be ready to contribute immediately in the upcoming season. Adam Warren and Chris Capuano are two quality arms that would likely thrive out of the bullpen, but if management decides to go with a six-man rotation, one of those two would be the sixth starter and the other would be the club’s main long reliever.

That rotation, although injury prone, has the potential to be among the league’s best. Tanaka is an ace, Sabathia used to be an ace, and Pineda still has his better days ahead of him.

Sabathia has been brutally ineffective in the past two seasons, but one scout is confident that he has what it takes to resurrect his career going into his age-34 season. The scout, quoted in an article written by Andrew Marchand of ESPN.com, feels Sabathia is smart enough to be successful even though he doesn’t have the dynamic arsenal he once did.

“When a guy gets into their 30s, they have to have a second career,” the scout said. “I always felt CC could do that because he really knows how to pitch.”

If Tanaka returns from injury fully healthy, Sabathia has a good season and Pineda builds on his excellent 2014 when he went 5-5 with a 1.89 ERA and a phenomenal 59-7 strikeout-to-walk rate, the Yankees will have one of the best starting rotations in the American League.

In the bullpen, things look bright as usual.  While former closer David Robertson opted to sign with the White Sox in the offseason, the Yankees were able to lure Andrew Miller to the Bronx.  Miller will pair with breakout star Dellin Betances to form one of the most formidable late-inning reliever duos in the MLB.

The offense, however, does not look nearly as promising as the pitching staff. 

The Yankees finished 13th out of 15 American League teams in runs scored last year, and the starting lineup is filled with players who are past their primes.

Jacoby Ellsbury and Brett Gardner are both solid, speedy outfielders at the top of the order, but after that, Carlos Beltran, Mark Teixeira, Brian McCann, Chase Headley, Alex Rodriguez, Didi Gregorius and Stephen Drew are either unproven or over the hill.

It’s not entirely hopeless, though. 

Beltran is only one year removed from hitting .296 with 24 home runs in his age-35 season with the Cardinals. He is a good enough hitter to continue to produce even as he ages.

Teixeira struggled last year with a career-low .238 batting average on balls in play, according to Fangraphs. He was one of the best power hitters in the game as recently as 2012, and while he might never hit over .230 again in his career, he could easily hit 30 home runs in 2015.

Catcher Brian McCann faced big expectations when he signed with the Yankees last offseason. His powerful left-handed swing was supposed to result in huge home run totals in hitter-friendly Yankee Stadium, but he struggled mightily all season.  However, he told Mark Feinsand of the New York Daily News that he expects to have a huge bounce back in his sophomore season wearing pinstripes.

Third baseman Chase Headley is a steady third baseman, great defensively and a solid hitter, but he is not the type of player who can anchor a lineup. He is a nice complementary piece, but if he is forced to be the go-to guy in the middle of the order, the Yankees are in trouble.

And then there’s Alex Rodriguez. He will undoubtedly command a huge crowd when he arrives at spring training, but if he can hit, nobody will care about his questionable past. Despite the fact that he has been arguably the most criticized player in sports for the past few years, he is still a gifted hitter. If he can get in a groove, he could have a decent season playing as the designated hitter.

Finally, Didi Gregorius and Stephen Drew are good defenders but don’t provide much with the bat. Rob Refsnyder may have a future at second base, but it is unclear whether or not he will have an opportunity to crack the big league club in 2015.

All in all, the roster does not look intimidating. The Yankees have the potential to be a good pitching team and a decent hitting team, especially if Tanaka comes back strong from surgery. He is the key.

If Girardi can count on Tanaka every fifth (or sixth) day to flummox the opposition with his filthy fastball-splitter mix, the Yankees will be in a good position. But if Tanaka shows some of the ill effects of elbow surgery and the Yanks are forced to rely on Sabathia and Pineda, it could be a long year.

The Yankees likely won’t make the playoffs. They are just too old, and there are too many questions regarding the team.

But with the way the postseason now works, with two wild-card spots, anything can happen. Last year seemingly every team had a chance to make the playoffs until the final days of the regular season. The Yankees have a chance to be one of those teams, and a healthy Tanaka would drastically improve their chances.

And if the Yankees did find a way to qualify as a wild-card team, a healthy Tanaka would ideally pitch the one-game playoff in an attempt to take the team to the ALDS for the first time since 2012. 

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At least where CC Sabathia is concerned, the good news for the New York Yankees is that the big left-hander is feeling healthy and ready to go for the 2015 season.

Trouble is, if Sabathia will actually pitch in 2015 is only one of the question marks next to his name. With two years of bad pitching behind him and his power stuff long gone, the other is how he’ll pitch in 2015.

Sabathia didn’t have much to say about that in a recent chat with ESPN. The main focus was his recovery from the right knee surgery that ended his 2014 season after only eight starts, which Sabathia said is going well.

“That was the shortest year, having my year cut short by injury last year,” he said. “Hopefully this year I can go out and try to make 30 starts and just be healthy and try to help the team win.”

Judging from the way their rotation is put together, the Yankees seem to be banking on Sabathia making 30 starts. But in reality, who knows? The previously sturdy southpaw has run into a couple health woes other than his bad knee since 2012 and is unlikely to find the fountain of youth in his age-34 season.

But what the heck. Let’s imagine that Sabathia will stay healthy in 2015—would he produce quality starts?

Based on what Sabathia did in 2013 and 2014, and the answer would appear to be no. After pitching to a 4.78 ERA in 2013, he got lit up to the tune of a 5.28 ERA in 2014. Along the way, it’s been no secret that his fastball has lost a ton of steam. A power pitcher, Sabathia is not.

According to the projections, however, Sabathia’s immediate future is not without hope.

Here’s what Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA projections, and the ZiPS projections and Steamer projections at FanGraphs see in store for Sabathia in 2015:

There’s some disagreement here, but the agreement that matters is in the ERA column. Relative to what he was doing in 2013 and 2014, the projections think Sabathia can rebound in 2015.

Mind you, it won’t be a big rebound. The American League‘s ERA last year was 3.81, so any of those ERAs would only make Sabathia a roughly average AL hurler, or safely, worse than an average AL hurler.

The bright side, however, is that this is at least an attainable goal. Maybe not easily attainable, but more attainable than you might think.

Former Yankees hurler David Cone told WFAN last week (via Ryan Hatch of NJ.com) that it’s “tough to go from a four-seam power guy to a two-seam sinker kind of guy,” but that he believes Sabathia can do it.

Cone believes Sabathia can do what his stuff is telling him to do and make the transition from a power pitcher to a finesse pitcher.

Sabathia’s 2014 performance suggests he has a lot of work to do. He put up that 5.28 ERA while pitching with an average fastball that FanGraphs marked at 88.8 miles per hour. That’s a bad correlation that hints Sabathia is struggling mightily with his transition into finesse-style pitching.

But in reality, it’s not so bad.

Last spring, there was a lot of talk about Sabathia working with longtime Yankees southpaw Andy Pettitte on developing a cutter, with the general idea being to use the pitch to make his arsenal more diverse and, in turn, his pitch selection less predictable.

Well, the cutter itself didn’t quite do the job, but Brooks Baseball can show that Sabathia’s pitch selection did become less predictable:

Before 2014, Sabathia was pretty much all four-seamer and sliders. But in 2014, he featured his four-seamer, sinker, slider and changeup almost equally, with a few cutters on the side.

Mixing things up isn’t the only thing Sabathia did well. He also did an outstanding job of keeping the ball low, as BaseballSavant.com can vouch that he kept a career-high 56.4 percent of his pitches at or below the knees. 

When you’re keeping your pitches down and mixing up your sequencing, good things are going to happen. And they did for Sabathia. His swinging-strike rate jumped from 9.6 to 10.5, helping his strikeout rate jump back above league average. And thanks mainly to his extra sinker usage, his ground-ball rate also experienced a rebound.

Couple those performances with how Sabathia’s walk rate remained strong, and you get a pitcher who did all the things you want pitchers to do. 

Sabathia’s poor 2014 thus looks like a case of a pitcher being killed by bad luck. Most notably, that appears to be the case in the HR/FB (home runs per fly balls) and BABIP (Batting Average on Balls In Play) departments, where Sabathia’s 2014 figures were well above his career norms.

Anyone who watched Sabathia pitch, however, will know that there’s a problem with chalking the homers and hits he surrendered up to bad luck. As much as bad luck can influence things like that, so can hard contact.

And yeah, Sabathia gave up a lot of that.

ESPN.com’s Mark Simon has numbers that can drive that point home, but it was obvious to the naked eye. And it was weird, too. One minute, Sabathia could be missing bats and getting grounders like gangbusters. Then next, BANG.

It’s easy to point to Sabathia’s suddenly lackluster fastball, and the .352 average and .722 slugging percentage hitters had against his four-seamer suggest it’s that simple. But the pain of his velocity loss extends even further than that.

The best way to overcome a velocity loss is to be more effective changing speeds. And despite his more unpredictable pitch selection, Sabathia was actually worse at that in 2014. Though his fastball velocity went down, his slider and changeup velocity stayed steady. 

That resulted in very little velocity differential between his heat and those two pitches:

Where there had once been a big velocity difference between Sabathia’s heat and his primary off-speed pitches, there was very little in 2014. Knowing most hitters sit fastball and adjust to off-speed, that’s not good. Even if a hitter guessed wrong against Sabathia, he wasn’t necessarily going to be off-balance.

And this isn’t the only issue Sabathia had with his 2014 approach. Though it looks good that he kept the ball down so much, you wonder if he kept it down a little too much. According to BaseballSavant.com, Sabathia gave up a .223 average (second worst of his career) and .408 slugging percentage (the worst of his career) on low pitches.

So on the one hand, you have the good: Sabathia’s pitch selection became less predictable in 2014, and he showed he could still do what he wanted in terms of locating the ball.

And on the other, you have the bad: A more unpredictable pitch selection didn’t come with increased deception, and his location might have been a little too predictable.

Frankly, the velocity differential issue will be tough to fix, and it’s the biggest reason nobody can expect too much from Sabathia in 2015. And though he got hit harder than usual doing so, the last thing to tell a pitcher to do is stop keeping the ball down.

But again, there’s hope. If Sabathia can achieve some progress by embracing more of a finesse-oriented approach, he should be able to achieve progress by taking it even further.

To this end, the key to Sabathia’s next step could be Brian McCann, provided he can do for Sabathia what he did to Brandon McCarthy.

The popular narrative is that McCann got McCarthy to throw his cutter more, which McCarthy himself confirmed. But in addition, Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs uncovered how McCann got McCarthy to mix in some straight heaters up in the zone to keep hitters from focusing too much on the bottom of the zone. These adjustments worked like a charm, as McCarthy’s ERA went from 5.01 in Arizona to 2.89 in New York.

In 2015, similar adjustments could be in store for Sabathia.

If not more cutters, perhaps McCann will look at how badly Sabathia’s four-seamer got knocked around and encourage more sinkers. But knowing that Sabathia basically stopped throwing high fastballs last year, there’s a lesson to be learned about what four-seamers Sabathia does feature needing to be high. 

Granted, these are just some educated guesses about where Sabathia’s reinvention could go next. But the overarching point is that he made more progress with his reinvention than his limited 2014 production suggests, and taking it the next step may not be that difficult.

Don’t take this to mean that Sabathia can be an ace again. He likely can’t be. But in fairness, he never said he wanted to be an ace again. He only said he wanted to be healthy and help the Yankees win.

It will be up to his body to make the first thing happen, but he doesn’t need to be an ace to make the second thing happen. He’ll just need to be better, and the bridge from here to there is one that can indeed be crossed.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted/linked.

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Over the last 20 years, the New York Yankees have claimed five World Series championships, seven American League Pennants and five AL East titles. The success of the Yankees has come in large part from the homegrown talents of the “Core Four.”

Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada and Andy Pettitte were certainly the faces of the Yankees dynasty—and arguably the most eccentric part of the success the Yankees had. However, the shrewd moves in free agency are what helped build this team into the force it has become.

Over the past two decades, there have certainly been some great free-agent signings by Brian Cashman, as well as some bad ones. Guys like Mark Teixeira and CC Sabathia have certainly contributed to recent success for the team, but what about the guys in the 1990s? What about the guys who helped the Yankees win four championships in five years? What about guys like Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez and David Wells?

This article will break down the Yankees five best free-agent signings of the past two decades, and it somehow manage to rank them. I will do that by looking not only at the statistics, because gaudy numbers do not necessarily lead to positive results.

Ahem…A-Rod.

Stats are helpful, but this article will go beyond the statistics and rank the Yankees top five free-agent signings of the past decade according to value to the team and contributions to overall team success.

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There’s seldom good news when a player is ruled out for the rest of the season. For CC Sabathia and the New York Yankees, there’s actually very good news in the announcement that he’ll miss the remainder of the 2014 season due to impending knee surgery, as noted by Bryan Hoch of MLB.com.

Sabathia has been out since mid-May with knee problems. He made a rehab start and had a setback. Instead of heading back to Dr. James Andrews, Sabathia checked in with several surgeons, leading many to expect Sabathia to have microfracture surgery. Instead, the Yankees announced that Sabathia will have an articular cartilage debridement, which is a cleanup and smoothing. This type of procedure is far less problematic than microfracture. 

Sabathia saw several surgeons, but when it was announced he was seeing doctors that did not specialize in microfracture, such as Dr. Dick Steadman, who pioneered the procedure, there was some hope. After seeing Yankees team physician Dr. Chris Ahmad and Rangers physician Dr. Keith Meister, Sabathia chose to go with Dr. Neal ElAttrache. 

All are qualified surgeons, but ElAttrache has a great track record with knees. One of ElAttrache‘s best known cases is not in baseball, but the return of Tom Brady after an ACL reconstruction is one of the best results we’ve seen. ElAttrache also put Zack Greinke’s collarbone back together aggressively, getting him back on the mound quickly, and repaired Kobe Bryant’s ruptured Achilles.

The normal recovery period for this type of surgery is varied. In some situations, a player could return in as little as two months, but the Yankees realize that Sabathia’s size and the internal damage in his knee are significant enough that rushing him back for this season would be counterproductive. Instead, they’ll focus on getting him ready for next season, much as they did with Derek Jeter late in 2013.

“Because we’re in July, I think he’ll come into spring training, in theory, ready to go,” Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said via Hoch of MLB.com. “Given the number of things that have gone on, we’ll have to be careful with him nonetheless.”

The rehab for this type of operation is relatively straightforward. Sabathia will have around eight weeks of normal therapy as they focus on making sure the knee heals up well after the procedure. There will likely be a focus on making sure his secondary stabilizers are strong and that his pitching mechanics will not put an undue stress on the repaired portion of the knee. 

Past that, the Yankees will focus on maintenance. Making sure Sabathia doesn’t have problems between starts or at least making sure the problems are manageable will be key. Overall conditioning is not likely to be a major concern, but if any specific mechanical changes are needed, the Yankees want to give Sabathia plenty of time to adjust.

The fact that Sabathia has avoided microfracture is a major positive. While the procedure has been used for nearly 20 years in helping certain knee issues, it still has a very low percentage of success in baseball. There’s really no explanation for that, but the fact remains that there are few successes. Avoiding the procedure, at least for now, gives the Yankees one less thing to worry about heading into 2015. 

The best comparable situation in baseball is not a pitcher. Instead, it’s Chase Utley, the Philadelphia Phillies second baseman who had two straight years of problems with damage inside his knees. The Phillies struggled to get Utley back to function, unable to find a maintenance program that would keep him on the field without significant swelling.

It took some time, but Utley has been very solid since coming back. Utley faces a different situation than Sabathia. He has less specific demands on his knees, but he has to play every day in the field. Sabathia will have the normal off time between starts, so some swelling wouldn’t be devastating, though it would indicate that there are further issues.

While the Yankees can’t count on having Sabathia back for 2014, they certainly have to feel better about the chance of having him take his turns in 2015. If they can get Sabathia at the top of the rotation alongside Masahiro Tanaka (who is still hoping to avoid Tommy John surgery, per Howie Kussoy of the New York Post) and keep them both healthy, they’ll be a far better team.

To do so, New York’s medical staff will have to overcome a lot of challenges and show better results with maintenance than it has in the past. As Mike Axisa of RiverAveBlues suggests, Cashman and the Yankees should take a hard look at their plan for 2015.

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The saying in baseball goes, “It, the season, is a marathon, not a sprint.”

It’s nearly impossible to predict what will happen over the course of a major league season. Teams slump, players get injured, and the improbable and impossible are always right around the corner.

With that said, it’s fun to look into the future, especially when it’s the future of a team with as much potential as the New York Yankees. So, with that said, here are three bold predictions for the remainder of the Bronx Bombers’ season. 

All stats were obtained via Baseball-Reference.com.

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