CC Sabathia: Elbow Injury to Ace Pitcher Makes Yankees’ Offseason Even Worse
October 21, 2012 · Adam Wells · Jump to comments
Article Source: Bleacher Report - New York Yankees
As if the New York Yankees needed more bad news following one of the worst American League Championship Series performances in franchise history, CC Sabathia is dealing with some kind of elbow problem.
According to Peter Botte of the New York Daily News, Sabathia will be going to see Dr. James Andrews to get his left elbow examined:
The Yanks will send CC Sabathia to renowned surgeon Dr. James Andrews for medical tests on his balky left elbow next week, GM Brian Cashman said Saturday, and the $191 million ace admits he’s “a little bit” concerned about the findings.
Baseball fans everywhere know that the worst sentence they can possibly hear where a pitcher is concerned ends with the words “…is going to visit Dr. James Andrews.”
Sabathia was clearly off the mark in every way possible against the Detroit Tigers in Game 4 of the ALCS, but no one could have expected this kind of news to make its way out of the Bronx.
Especially considering that the fans in New York are ready to riot.
Nick Swisher probably won’t be back, Alex Rodriguez is being shunned, Curtis Granderson still can’t hit left-handed pitching, Robinson Cano disappeared—though I am hardly concerned about him—Derek Jeter broke an ankle and Andy Pettitte and Hiroki Kuroda are free agents. And the statue of Mark Teixeira is still manning first base.
If there is anything wrong with Sabathia that will require him to miss a significant amount of time, the Yankees will be in big trouble. They have no contingency plan in the rotation—not that someone of Sabathia’s ilk is so easy to replace—and have a lot of questions about the lineup entering the offseason.
The Yankees could have to reshape their entire agenda this winter if Sabathia has to have some kind of surgery.
Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said in the same report that he is is not worried about any ligament damage.
We still don’t know what, if anything, is wrong with Sabathia. There is talk of having bone spurs removed, which likely wouldn’t take much time to recover from.
All this worry and panic could be for naught, if Dr. Andrews gives him the okay. After all, his velocity looked fine against the Tigers in that final game. It was just his command of everything that was off.
Maybe that was just a one-time incident, but it could be an offshoot of bigger problems in the elbow. Whenever you hear a player say he is concerned, it does make you wonder.
It would not be an offseason in the MLB without some Yankee news. This winter looks like it could be loaded with chaos and urgency from the Bronx Zoo.
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