Times Facing Opponent in Game for CC Sabathia. And a peak at Whitey Ford.

CC Sabathia is a 38 year old left handed starting pitcher for the New York Yankees. He is in his 10th Yankee season and 18th overall. Sabathia joined the Yankees in 2009 at age 28.

2007 was his final full season with his original team, the Cleveland Indians. For the only time in his career Sabathia led the American League in innings pitched: 241, the most in any of his seasons. Sabathia won the AL Cy Young award as its best pitcher: 19-7, 3.21 ERA. Sabathia led in starts (34) and batters faced (975).

In 2014 Sabathia threw only 46 innings. His second lowest innings for a full season: 148 in 2017. So far in 2018 Sabathia has 122 innings.

We often hear that starting pitchers become much less effective the third time that they face batters in a game. We hear especially about Sabathia and especially in 2018.

Sabathia was never a big strike out pitcher. In 2007 7.8 per 9 innings. Career 7.7. High in AL with DH: 8.7 in 2011. 2015-2018: 7.9, 7.6, 7.3, 7.3.

Sabathia topped 200 innings in Yankee seasons 2009-2013. Sabathia led the AL in wins in his first two Yankee seasons.

OK, so let's look at his OPS (On Base Plus Slugging averages) for the first, second and third times through the batting order in his Yankee seasons. Remember that he threw only 46 innings in 2014.

	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018
1	.626	.648	.586	.652	.682	.796	.712	.615	.711	.630
2	.706	.643	.728	.741	.804	.892	.782	.715	.708	.676
3	.609	.688	.662	.681	.842	.954	.953	.793	.710	1.068

2018 is by far the most extreme season of his OPS being higher third time through: 1.068. But just the year before his numbers are almost dead even, so much so, that it's not worth making the high number bold.

Ignoring the 46 innings in 2014 leaves us with seven more Yankee seasons. His high is third time in four of those seasons, including the three most recent: 2013, 2015, 2016. His high is second time through in 2009, 2011, 2012.

But 2017 saw Sabathia seem to turn the corner and adapt to his diminished power and bad knee and become elite at getting soft contact. And Sabathia had no trouble in 2017 the third time through.

Top pitchers may not have a problem. For instance, here is Max Scherzer, who won NL Cy Young in the two previous seasons, in 2018:
1 .499
2 .641
3 .640

How about a non power great from Yankee yesteryear, Whitey Ford, in his 1961 Cy Young 25-4 season when Ford threw a career high and AL leading 283 innings:
1 .696
2 .630
3 .550
4+ .700 (150 PA)

No problem for Whitey Ford in a big home run expansion season.

Times Facing Opponent in Game for Whitey Ford. Saturday, August 4, 2018 4:48 PM