Ned Yost did not, apparently, pay attention to last season’s C.C. Sabathia vs. Josh Beckett debate and their ensuing playoff performance. To recap: Sabathia and Beckett had very similar numbers last season, with innings pitched their most distinguishing statistic. Sabathia pitched 241 innings while Beckett pitched 200.2, meaning Sabathia threw 20% more innings than Beckett, and this difference likely tipped the Cy Young voting in Sabathia’s favor.
But then the postseason rolled around, those extra 40+ innings took their toll. Sabathia’s ERA went from 3.21 during the regular season to a whopping 8.80 during his three postseason starts; meanwhile, Beckett’s 3.27 regular season ERA paled in comparison to his 1.20 ERA in 4 postseason starts. Are their postseason stats skewed due to small sample size? Sure, to some degree, of course they are. But an 8.80 ERA? It seems clear that by October, Sabathia just didn’t have anything left in the tank, and with his workload, who can blame him?
Okay, so fast-forward to 2008. Sabathia is a Brewer now, and Ned Yost is hoping against hope that he can hold off the mighty, surging Cardinals to deliver Milwaukee’s first playoff appearance in (believe it or not) 26 years (ouch). Sabathia has been nothing short of brilliant, going 8-0 with a 1.60 ERA in nine starts for the Brew Crew. And perhaps even more amazing: of those nine starts, he’s completed five of them. Five! C.C. Sabathia, who’s been in the NL just about a month, already leads the league in complete games. Incidentally, guess who’s second with four CG? Teammate Ben Sheets.
Going into last night’s eighth inning, the Brewers were leading Houston 8-2. Sabathia went on to finish the game (which ended 9-3), needing 130 (!) pitches to do it. So: Why on earth did Yost let him complete the game? Why even let him pitch the eighth? The night before, the Brewer bullpen logged two innings; the night before that, three. Pretty typical for a major league bullpen; it’s not as if they’d played a fourteen inning marathon and needed the rest. With only two innings left to play, did Yost really think a 6-run lead wasn’t safe against Houston, whose offense is currently only good enough for 10th in the NL?
Sabathia has pitched 195+ innings already this season, and it’s only mid-August. He’s on pace for 249. I know the Brewers are trying to win the Wild Card, but this game was, for all practical purposes, in the bag (I mean, if your bullpen can’t hold a 6-run lead going into the eighth… well, perhaps I shouldn’t finish that thought). Maybe just making it to the playoffs is good enough for Yost, but if so, that’s a real shame for Brewers fans: if Sabathia can be his dominant self, along with Sheets pitching second in the rotation, Milwaukee is poised to be a serious threat come October.
Addendum: When I wrote this, I hadn’t yet read this blog post from Buster Olney over at ESPN.com, who makes pretty much exactly the same point. The biggest difference between his post and mine is that he seems to think the decision to finish the game was Sabathia’s, not Yost’s. This doesn’t make sense to me. The manager, obviously, has the responsibility to manage the pitching staff, and he’s got to be thinking both about today’s game as well as the long-term effects on his pitchers. No one volunteers to leave a game; the more honest pitchers will at least admit they’re tired when asked, but Sabathia wasn’t going to bow out of the game unless Yost made him—and that’s exactly Yost’s job.
The complete game certainly seems unnecessary and you’d think Yost would want to have Sabathia well rested for postseason play. At the same time, there are still more than 30 games remaining. Yost would do well to protect his key starters better than this over those last 5-6 starts, Cardinals/Cubbies permitting.