CC Sabathia’s bothersome right knee has felt better since he underwent a stem-cell procedure, but the left-hander said he won’t really know how it’s going to hold up until after he starts throwing — which could happen this week.
“I think I’ll be at ease once I play catch outside, standing up,” Sabathia said Monday in his first comments since Dr. James Andrews performed the procedure on May 15 in an attempt to build up his knee cartilage. “This week we should have a little more clarity with how long it’s going to be.”
General manager Brian Cashman had previously said the lefty will be out until at least July and doctors familiar with the procedure said it could be even longer.
“It’s just whenever I think, once we start throwing, that I progress enough,” said Sabathia, who has so far only thrown lightly from a chair. “It could be the end of this month, it could be July. I don’t have a day.”
Since the procedure — which involved taking stem cells from his hip and injecting them into his knee — hasn’t been done often with baseball players, the Yankees and Sabathia are somewhat flying blind in terms of how long he will be out, as well as how effective the treatment will be.
“I feel great right now so I do feel pretty confident [that it will work],” Sabathia said. “I didn’t know going into it and obviously when I woke up, my leg was stiff and I didn’t know what was going on. Three or four days later, I felt pretty good and I’ve been feeling good ever since, so I’m excited.”
He said he has also been doing non-weight bearing exercises, both in the pool and on an ant-gravity treadmill.
“We’re taking it further and further each day with more stuff,” Sabathia said. “We’re trying to see if it’s going to swell up. I have no pain so far.”
Sabathia also checked in with Knicks forward Amar’e Stoudemire, who Sabathia said had a similar procedure done on his knee.
“I talked to [Stoudemire] a lot about it,” Sabathia said of the Knicks’ injury-prone star. “He had some knee procedures done and did the stem-cell thing, too. He’s given me some advice on what to do.”
Of course, Stoudemire has become a shell of himself since battling knee and back injuries, so perhaps that’s not the most encouraging example for the Yankees.
“He said it worked for him and he had a pretty good year last year,” Sabathia said.
The other issue is Sabathia’s knee only bothered him in his final two starts before he went on the disabled list. His struggles since the beginning of last season can’t be blamed on the knee, something Sabathia acknowledged Monday.
“I’m not going to sit here and make excuses,” Sabathia said. “It is what it is.”
Sabathia’s performance this season has been even worse than last season, when he went through his worst year as a pro.
He declared himself the ace during spring training, but is just 3-4 with a 5.28 ERA. His other numbers are no better, with a career-worst 1.478 WHIP, 11.3 hits allowed per nine innings and 2.0 homers per nine innings, nearly twice his previous career high.
Perhaps the only positive sign for Sabathia is he has struck out 9.4 batters per nine innings, a higher rate than he ever before.
But that hasn’t resulted in much. Sabathia has given up four runs or more in six of his eight starts.