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Do IT this week: Layering
Tribe ace folding under pressure of millions
By Patrick McManamon
Beacon Journal sports columnist
Published on Thursday, Apr 17, 2008
CLEVELAND: Indians fans let C.C. Sabathia have it Wednesday night at Progressive Field.
Most booed lustily after Edgar Renteria's grand slam in the fifth inning gave the Detroit Tigers a 9-1 lead.
It was not unwarranted — even if it is a short time after Sabathia's American League Cy Young season.
Sabathia gave up nine runs in four innings — six with no outs in the fifth.
The reigning Cy Young winner now is 0-3 with a 13.50 ERA.
Go back to the playoffs last season, and Sabathia is 1-5 with an 11.34 ERA (42 runs, 331/3 innings) in his past seven starts.
How about that $18 million per year contract extension now, eh?
Last week Sabathia was asked about his slow start and said he wasn't pitching well. He seemed to scoff at those who theorize that there had to be a reason other than he's just not doing well.
With all due respect, there usually is a reason when guys don't pitch well.
That a guy is not pitching well is fact. The reason explains why.
And right now there is every indication that Sabathia is
letting his looming free agency affect him.
He might have forgotten how to pitch, but that's not likely.
Or he got himself all messed up trying too hard in the playoffs and hasn't retooled his approach.
Bottom line: He tried too hard then, and he's really trying too hard now.
It's armchair psychology to pin it on the contract, but the circumstantial evidence makes quite a case.
In the offseason, the Indians offered Sabathia a rich extension. He turned it down, saying there just was not enough ''common ground'' to sign (apparently the literal baseball translation of ''common ground'' is ''cash dollars'').
When spring training started, Sabathia said he would not discuss his contract during the season, and he would not negotiate it until the season ended.
He did not want it to be a distraction, he said.
In essence, though, Sabathia did just what he didn't want to do — he made the contract a distraction.
This occurrence is a corollary to the ''I don't mean to interrupt'' theory. Any time someone says they don't mean to interrupt, they've just interrupted.
So it is when someone says ''I don't mean to be sarcastic.'' What follows absolutely will be sarcastic.
So by saying he did not want the contract to be a distraction, Sabathia made it one.
Because it's there, always and all the time.
If he didn't want the deal to be a distraction, Sabathia would have done one of two things.
He would have signed that offer and stayed in Cleveland, a place he has said he loves. That surely would have ended the distraction.
The other thing would have been to say, ''Well I've thought about it and I love Cleveland, but this is going to be my last year here.''
End of distraction.
Johan Santana essentially did just that with the Minnesota Twins.
He turned down a four-year, $80 million contract extension and told the Twins that he would not discuss a new contract once the season started.
The writing was on the wall, but not on the contract, so the Twins pretty much had to trade him or lose him and get nothing but a draft pick. Santana wasn't going to stay in Minnesota, so the Twins sent him to the New York Mets.
Santana then gave the Mets 72 hours to sign him to a new deal, a deadline they, of course, met.
That's called eliminating a distraction.
Sabathia might have been well-meaning and sincere when he put off talks, but effectively all he did was make his contract a constant distraction.
It's just what happens.
Consider the case of Paul Byrd, who said over and over and over again that the possibility of being suspended for using HGH was not bothering him.
Once it came out that Byrd was not going to be suspended, he conceded that the issue weighed on his mind.
The Indians' start now can be classified as miserable. There's the 5-10 record, the problems with closer Joe Borowski and the bullpen and the lack of timely hitting.
And Sabathia, an expected mainstay, is a mess.
Sabathia had a marvelous 2007 season.
He deserved to win the Cy Young Award.
He's a team leader.
But in the playoffs last season he tried too hard, overthrew and had a tough time.
Early in this season he's pitching exponentially worse.
Sabathia might deny it, but it sure seems like he's trying to justify the many millions that he's supposed to receive.
Patrick McManamon can be reached at pmcmanamon@thebeaconjournal.com.
CLEVELAND: Indians fans let C.C. Sabathia have it Wednesday night at Progressive Field.
Get the full article here.
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