Originally Posted By: Joe Mama
He's 28, so he's in or near is prime, and he's definitely got ace stuff, so that takes some pressure off Wang and Joba. He's got great stats, but not in the postseason. What would concern me, if I was a Yankees fan, is that he's heavy (hell, he weighs more than I do!), and there's a lot of wear on that arm - a criticism voiced when the Tigers traded for Dontrelle Willis, and we all saw last season what happened there. Also, Sabathia voiced a lack of desire to play in New York (always a bad sign). I see this deal working out for the Yankees in the first three years before really starting to bite them in the arse in year four. Also, since they're also giving up their first-round draft pick, I guess Cashman's plan to develop players in-house is temporarily on hold...


A few notes:

1.The "not great" postseason stats are almost certainly attributable to the enormous workload he shouldered during the regular season. His usually superb command disappeared in the playoffs; a tell-tale sign of a tired pitcher. The role he played in Milwaukee's stretch run doesn't suggest that he's one to cave under pressure.

2.Dontrelle Willis is not really a good comparison, in my view. The larger concerns about him was that he relied heavily on deception as opposed to pure stuff, and that he had poor throwing mechanics(significant in that it affected his control and also made him more susceptible to injury, independent of workload).

3.From what I read, Sabathia wasn't unenthusiastic about New York, just interested in playing in California, his home state. Personally, I think the "homeward bound" assumption about free agents has always been sort of a sports journalist kneejerk comment(just to create hot stove league banter), or in the case of the current Teixeira-Baltimore negotiations, a bargaining ploy used by agents to get the big market teams to offer that extra chunk of cash.

4.All the above being said, I agree that this move comes with some enormous risks. A note in the the times had Sabathia's listed weight as 311 pounds. It's pretty hard to forecast what a guy's physical condition is going to be seven years down the road when he's over 300 pounds at 28. In the short term, the Yankees appear to have their ace, and at $14 million next year he'll be a bargain, but something tells me that in 2012, the Yankees are going to be right back where they were at the start of this season: old, injured, and overpaid. So they better hope they win a World Series in the meantime.

MisterJLA is RACKing awesome.