CC Sabathia wants to be a bully again.
Sabathia showed he can be in his outing Friday — his final start of the season for the Yankees, as he pitched despite suffering a moderate, Grade 2 hamstring strain that caused the team to shut him down for the season.
“I don’t think I’m ever going to be that same guy again,” Sabathia said, referring to previous monster seasons. “I am 33 this year. Pitching [Friday] I felt back to myself, more so than any other start. It wasn’t velocity because I was 90-93, but just pitching inside, being aggressive, throwing fastballs in hitters’ counts — just going out there and being a bully.”
Speaking before Tuesday night’s game with the Rays at Yankee Stadium, Sabathia saidhe felt the hamstring strain in the second inning against the Giants and still bulldogged his way to a seven-inning, one-earned run performance in a 5-1 Yankees victory.
“He didn’t let us know until he was done,” manager Joe Girardi said about Sabathia’s injury. “I went in the clubhouse after the game and that’s when I found out and I was shocked.”
The Yankees announced Monday the end of Sabathia’s season, one he alternately described as frustrating, inconsistent and downright bad.
“It was a bad year,” said Sabathia, who finished with a 14-13 record and 4.78 ERA.
The latest wrinkle of a hamstring injury certainly didn’t help.
“It is frustrating and it’s tough. You feel like you let your teammates down,” Sabathia said. “Everybody knows how much I care about winning and wanting to be there for the guys. Not to be able to be there this last week is going to be tough.”
Girardi, who stressed Sabathia did not do any additional damage by going seven innings Friday — “once it’s pulled, it’s pulled,” the manager said — emphasized the lefty had a decent year, just not one up to his standards.
“I don’t think it was the year CC probably expected he would have. He’s been so good for us,” Girardi said. “He still managed to have 14 wins, he still managed to give us over 200 innings, which at times with the way that we talked about CC, you wouldn’t have thought that those two things were possible.”
Both Girardi and Sabathia maintained everyone will see a new pitcher next season.
“He ended on a good note. I think you’ll see a different CC next year,” Girardi said.
“The easy thing is to question it. The harder thing is to say he’s going to turn it around and that’s what I believe he’s going to do. I still look at him as an ace.”
So will others, if Sabathia’s words hold.
“I’ll be back to myself. I know a lot of people have written me off and said I’ve thrown too many innings and whatever,” Sabathia said. “But I’ll still be here and still be accountable and still be the guy that signed up in 2009.”
Sabathia worked with pitching coach Larry Rothschild for several weeks and scanned video — a first for him. There were the expected finds — a different arm angle after offseason surgery, flaws in delivery — and no, his struggles were not related to his weight loss, he stressed. It is all stuff Sabathia wants to work on in the offseason so he can bully batters again in 2014.
“I’ve always been a guy that never watched video. That’s something that I need to change. Just my preparation for games probably has to get a little better,” Sabathia said.
Now the hard part. Thanks to the injury, it’s wait until next year to put those changes into effect. Par for this season’s course.
“Frustrating. Just inconsistent,” Sabathia said of his season. “Me and Larry did a lot of work lately that got me back on the right track and I felt like we were headed in the right direction and stuff was going better and this happens.”