CC Sabathia in rehab

CC Sabathia at age 35 isn't the stud hoss top-of-the-rotation pitcher he once was, but he still led the Yankees in starts and innings pitched this year. He was going to be part of their postseason rotation.

Note the past tense. On Monday Sabathia announced he was out for the postseason and checked into inpatient rehab for alcoholism.

It is to the Yankees credit that both Brian Cashman and Joe Girardi are vocally supporting Sabathia in this. The cynic in me whispers that they might not be so accepting if Sabathia's ERA were 2.73 rather than 4.73, but I am telling my inner cynic to shut up. This is the way workplaces ought to deal with illness, and alcoholism is an illness.

The timing is interesting, however. I will seldom -- I am tempted to say never -- question the competitive desire of a professional athlete, and particularly one who has the track record of Sabathia. Yet, for whatever reason, he has chosen the start of the postseason to enter treatment. This suggests to me that he's hit some sort of crisis point.

I don't know what that would be. There has been no revelation of some sort of trauma -- a DUI, a domestic call, a barroom brawl -- that might trigger a sudden acceptance of a problem.

Whatever happened to prompt Monday's announcement, I wish Sabathia well in dealing with his problem. This is different from wishing him, or the Yankees, well on the field. There I hope, always, that they lose.

Verlander-Sabathia II

CC Sabathia eats his glove.

A few observations on Monday's Tigers-Yankees game:

*The TBS crew seems startled at how Justin Verlander geared up the velocity for the final couple batters of the game. Their amazement merely underlined how little they know about Verlander in particular, and -- here I extrapolate a bit -- probably about baseball outside the New York Boston axis.

Velander ALWAYS does this. In fact, it's the surest way to know that he's in his final inning. For that last out, he's leaving nothing in the tank. He opens the game throwing low 90s, dials it up to 100 or more when he's in a jam, throttles it back down when not in trouble -- and lets it all out for the final few pitches.

*Maybe it's just me, but CC Sabathia looked fatter than ever. Perhaps I've mainly seen him in the (slimming) home pinstripes this year, but man, in the road grays, he looked particularly blimped out.

* The beauty of that matchup is that Sabathia and Verlander appear to be the workhorses of their generation. It comes out in different ways. Sabathia is probably the most equipped current pitcher to work on short rest. Verlander hasn't done that nearly as often as Sabathia has, but he probably throws more 120-plus pitch games than anybody else -- and, as noted, holds that velocity.

* I was happy to see the Tigers use the bunt on Captain Cheeseburger, and not at all surprised that after Alex Avila missed on his first bunt attempt, Sabathia came up and in on him.  Sabathia hates it when people bunt on him, hates having to field his position and move his poundage.

* Even without his command, Sabathia is still impressive. When he needs a strikeout, he can do that; when he needs a ground ball, he can do that too. No, he didn't pitch well (neither, really, did Verlander, at least by his own standards). After a season spent watching Twins starters (and infielders) make bad situations worse, it was striking to see Sabathia and his infielders display their mastery of damage control.

*The TBS boys were surprised to see Sabathia pitch at all in the sixth; they figured he was done after five. On the surface, I agreed. But here's the thing: Sabathia's shortest outing in 2011 was 5.6 innings (once in April, once in September). Joe Girardi expects more than five-and-fly from the big man. He didn't get it Monday, and today he's counting on A.J. Burnett, which is something he probably doesn't want.

A poor slide by Nelson Cruz

Nelson Cruz makes a poor sliding decison.

The TBS booth has two old pitchers and a "real" broadcaster, none of whom noted the real problem with Nelson Cruz' failed attempt to score on a CC Sabathia pitch to the backstop to end the first inning.

Cruz slid to the inside of the plate, not to the outside. Had he executed what Twins fans of a certain age will always think of as the Randy Bush slide -- sliding far to the outside and reaching out with the fingers to touch the plate -- there's no way Captain Cheeseburger can make the tag. Even with the bad slide, Sabathia barely got there in time.

Postscript: That run Cruz didn't score mattered. The Yankees win 6-5.

Series-ous pitching choices

One thing I've found to admire in Joe Girardi's handling of the Yankees this postseason is his willingness to drop the hammer.

Two-inning save from Mariano Rivera? Done that. Strip the two weak links from his rotation and go with three starters? Doing that.

He was aided in this plan by the TV-driven schedule, which has given the Yankees more days off than games played (the fact that the Yankees cleaned up the Twins and Angels in quick fashion helped too). He was also aided by the fact that nobody seriously questions the use of CC Sabathia on three days rest. The man's an obvious horse with a track record of short-rest success.

Now, however, Girardi — for the first time — has to push A.J. Burnett (above) and Andy Pettitte. And the result with Burnett on Monday was not good.

But it was justifiable:

1) The old-school pitchers from the '60s and '70s heyday of the four-man rotation generally agree that three days rest may detract from velocity but sharpens control. Burnett has had a season-long issue with wildness — remember, he led the AL in walks and wild pitches and was among the leaders in hit batters — and he was out of control Monday. It happens.

2) Burnett had a good, if small, track record on three days rest: 4-0, 2.33 in four starts.

A good decision; it just didn't work.

Now it's Pettitte's turn, and his record on short rest isn't quite so good: 4-6, 4.15. The ERA isn't out of line with his career stats, and this is still a tolerable decision.

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Meanwhile, Charlie Manuel has his own decisions to make.

*Can he trust Cole Hamels in a Game 7?

*Should he start J.A. Happ on Wednesday (Game 6) and save Pedro Martinez for Game 7?

* Can he use Brad Lidge to close a game after Sunday's disaster?

Pedro, by reputation, prospers on long rest. The career numbers don't really bear that out, however, and this year's numbers are too skimpy to put any weight on.

Hamels has not fared well this postseason. The stat mavens suggest it's been tough luck, that the key ratios of walks, strikeouts and innings are all in line with last year. Luck or bad pitching, it's added up to a lot of opposition runs.

There's there's his now notorious quote after Game 3: "I can't wait for it to end. It's been mentally draining. At year's end, you just can't wait for a fresh start."

My guess is that Manuel will go with Pedro on Wednesday and Hamels on Thursday if needed. Hamels did it for him last year. And off Monday's pitcher use, I expect Ryan Madson to get the ball late — but at this point, it's all hands on deck for the Phillies.

Greinke and the tyranny of the win column

The old-school argument against Zach Greinke's Cy Young candidacy can be summed up in one sentence:

Sixteen wins from a starting pitcher isn't enough to win.

Not when there's a CC Sabathia hurtling to 20 wins.

Sabathia is a fine pitcher having a fine season. He's doing essentially what he always does, and he does it well. His durability is without peer in the current generation of starting pitchers. If anybody deserves the salary he's getting, he does.

He's not having as good a season as Greinke.

Sabathia's current W-L record (19-7) works out to a .730 winning percentage. That's 89 points above team — which is impressive enough.

Greinke's 16-8 record (.667) comes for a .410 team. That's 257 points above team. Or about three times Sabathia's margin.

And then there's this: The Royals —a bad team to begin with — are, in a sense, even worse with Greinke pitching.

Of the 36 AL pitchers with at least 140 innings, none —zero — have as few runs scored for them as Greinke does. Teammate Brian Bannister, for example, gets 5.9 runs of support per game; Greinke gets 4.8, more than one run less.

Grienke has had eight no-decisions this season. In four of them, he allowed either zero or one run. Twice he gave up two runs, twice three. He has had five starts all year in which he allowed four or more runs; he 0-5 in those starts, He has, in short, zero cheap wins.

Sabathia? He's had a couple of cheap wins, giving up four runs in six-plus innings for a W once, five runs in seven for another.

Really these two are the Cy Young argument. Felix Hernandez is, like Greinke, racking up better stats than Sabathia, but whatever argument one makes for King Felix, Greinke trumps.

It's the old-school guys who value wins over all else versus the new wave. The old-school argument prevailed in 2005, when Bartolo Colon (2-8, 3.48) won the award over Johan Santana (16-7, 2.87); there seems to be a general consensus since then that the electorate blew it.

Sabathia's season is better than Colon's but Greinke's is better than Santana's.

This year, I think, the writers will get it right. Greinke will win.

A (pointless) rant on the non bunts

10-2 is 10-2. You get beat by that score, there's no one thing to point to as the reason. You just got your clock cleaned.

And having made that concession to reality ...

Those who've read me over the years know that I am a big advocate of bunting on power pitchers. Most of them — almost all of them — hate fielding bunts. Their follow-throughs generally leave them off balance. They often throw poorly to the bases. Bob Gibson was a superb fielding pitcher; you'd have a hard time coming up with another power pitcher who was a Gold Glover.

CC Sabathia is not only a power pitcher, he's fat. He hates getting off the mound to field a bunt.

Add to that the current word on the post-operative Alex Rodriguez at third base — that word is "immobile" — and you have an obvious recipe for the Twins on Tuesday night. Bunt.

Build the lineup with that in mind. First two guys up, bunt. Maybe even the third (Joe Mauer is perhaps the best bunter on the team.) Make CC move his fat self. Get into his head. (Carlos Gomez last year, explaining why he bunted repeatedly against Justin Verlander of the Tigers: He is a great pitcher, but his mind is weak. Sabathia has been known to lose his composure when bunted on repeatedly.)

Make him move, make A-Rod move.

And to hear Bremer and Blyleven chatter on the tube coming into the game, the Twins had that in mind. The Twins want to bunt and run on Sabathia.

So what happened? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. If anybody even showed bunt, I missed it.

Of course, by the time Carlos Gomez came up, the Twins were down three runs and the bunt probably wasn't in order.

But Denard Span certainly could have tried to bunt for a hit in the first inning. While I'm not sure I've ever seen Brendan Harris try to bunt for a hit, it sure couldn't work any worse than what he's been doing lately at the plate. He is now 2-for-23 this month.

Yes, 10-2 is 10-2. They could have at least made Sabathia work a bit.