CC Sabathia will undergo season-ending, arthroscopic surgery to repair his right knee, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said Friday. Cashman made it clear the big left-hander is not yet out of the woods in terms of needing the more invasive microfracture procedure that would jeopardize his career.
“It doesn’t mean that’s off the table, I just think that if anybody looks at that circumstance realizes that it’s a bad thing and there’s no predictable outcome,” Cashman said of the possible microfracture surgery before the Yankees kicked off their second half with a 4-3 win over the Reds at the Stadium. “Some people could say, ‘Hey, it could work.’ But it’s one of those things you don’t want to mess with if you can avoid it.
“Hopefully next year will be a different story.”
Dodgers team physician Neal ElAttrache, who examined Sabathia on July 11 in Los Angeles, will perform the debridement, or arthroscopic cleanup, on July 23.
As Cashman put it, Sabathia, who last pitched for the Yankees on May 10, tried the path of least resistance by rehabilitating the knee, a process that failed when Sabathia woke up the morning of July 3 with pain after pitching on a rehab assignment for the Yankees’ Double-A Trenton affiliate the night before. Now he’ll try the path of middle resistance, with the most drastic option still looming in the microfracture surgery.
“There is an option that we could try to keep going … and see if we could get him going again, but we just went through that and it didn’t work,” Cashman said. “So it’s like, do you want to try again on something that just failed or do you want to just go the next step and try and get it taken care of and hopefully have a better storyline next year, although there’s no guarantee it’s going to be a better storyline.”
Sabathia’s uncertain future is only further blurred by his descent from the dominant ace the Yankees re-signed to a five-year, $122 million contract after the 2011 season.
In his first four seasons with the Yankees, Sabathia compiled 74 wins and never posted an ERA higher than 3.38 while the team won a World Series and made the playoffs each season, but he has since looked little like the former Cy Young award winner, having struggled with a career-worst 4.78 ERA last season, before topping that with a 5.28 ERA in eight starts this season.
If the debridement accomplishes its mission, the 33-year-old should be fully rehabilitated for spring training next year.
“Because we’re in July, he’ll come into spring training, in theory, ready to go,” Cashman said. “But I think given obviously the number of things that have gone on with him, we’ll have to be careful with him nonetheless.”
Sabathia is now the Yankees’ second starting pitcher to undergo season-ending surgery, following Ivan Nova’s Tommy John surgery, while the returns of Masahiro Tanaka and Michael Pineda remain in question.
“It’s horrible,” catcher Brian McCann said. “He’s a horse. He’s a top of the rotation guy. He’s been like that his whole career and we just hope he can recover and be back as soon as possible.”
With the trade deadline looming, Cashman said he may look to acquire further depth in the rotation, while he has not ruled out the possibility of calling up a starter from Triple-A.
“In the meantime, the people who are getting the ball are going to try and make every opportunity that they have while they have it, and some guys have really stepped up for us,” Cashman said. “Can they maintain it? That’s obviously the one question. Also, we’re more vulnerable, because we can’t afford any more injuries this season.”