CC Sabathia shows signs of dominance in loss to Toronto Blue Jays

By Nick Ziegler | Apr 10, 2015

CC Sabathia finally made his much-anticipated return to the mound for the New York Yankees in their Thursday night loss to the Toronto Blue Jays.

The Yankees may not have won the game, and Sabathia’s line was not that impressive by going off a box score, but there was a lot to like in Sabathia’s first outing of the season.

Sabathia will be key to either the Yankees’ success or failure this season, as the once dominant Sabathia only pitched in eight games last season before needing a knee surgery. In 2014, Sabathia was trying to rebound from an awful 2013 season, but before the injury, Sabathia wasn’t pitching all that well either with an ERA of 5.28.

Thursday night couldn’t have started much better for Sabathia in his first outing in nearly a year, as he struck out Jose Reyes, got Russell Martin to ground out, and then struck out Jose Bautista.

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In the second inning however, things would turn south for Sabathia. Despite not allowing an extra base-hit, Sabathia allowed four runs on five hits. Out of the four consecutive singles, two were hard hit, and the other two were infield singles, which were the two unlucky ones for Sabathia.

“He didn’t give up a lot of hard-hit balls,” Joe Girardi said of Sabathia’s performance. “There were a lot of ground balls. They just found some holes. I thought he threw the ball a lot better than what it looks like.”

After Reyes singled home the final run of the inning, Sabathia would show signs of dominance. Sabathia would rebound by striking out six of the next seven batters in quite possibly his most dominant stretch of a game in years.

After a few more innings of good pitching from Sabathia, he would allow an unearned run in the sixth inning, as a Carlos Beltran throw hit Josh Donaldson and went past Chase Headley. Sabathia should have been backing up Headley, but was instead in a bit of no-man’s land in between the mound and third base.

“It was something to build on,” Sabathia said afterwards. “No walks. Not a lot of good contact. We threw the ball pretty good. It was just bad luck.”

It may have been a loss for Sabathia, but for the first start of the season against a great Blue Jays’ lineup, it should be encouraging for Sabathia moving forward. The knee will be a concern all season, but Sabathia showed during the middle part of his outing that there is still a lot left in his tank.

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