The Cost of Revenge

C.C. Sabathia has picked up the habit of sticking up for his fellow Yankees. During Friday night's affair against the Dodgers, C.C. Sabathia plunked Vicente Padilla after Padilla had hit Robinson Cano with a pitch. To me, this was ill-advised on multiple fronts. Firstly, retaliatory HBPs offend my sensibilities because I find the practice of trading beanballs to be dangerous, primitive, and infantile. In addition, I feel it is impractical to essentially gift the opposing offense with a base-runner, especially in close games. Giving the opponent the opportunity to score a run is irresponsible. This post will focus on the latter point.

Sabathia hit Padilla in the bottom of the 5th inning. While this wasn't exactly a high-leverage situation, the game was very close at the time (the score was knotted at 1). With one out, Sabathia had given away a near-sure out and put a man on base for the top of the Dodgers' order. Fortunately for the Yankees, Sabathia induced a ground-ball from the next hitter, Rafael Furcal, and a 6-4-3 double-play resulted. In a similar scenario earlier in the year, however, the Yankees did not fair as well.

On May 8th, with Sabathia again on the hill for the Yanks against the Red Sox, Sabathia drilled Dustin Pedroia with two outs in the bottom of the 3rd inning. With the Yankees ahead by only one run, Sabathia had, like on Friday, needlessly put a runner on the basepaths with an above-average hitter coming to the plate. Unlike Friday, however, the Yanks got burnt in the next at bat. Victor Martinez stepped up to the plate and proceeded to stroke a 2-run homer over the Green Monster at Fenway. The home-run resulted in a 21% swing in win expectancy, according to Baseball Reference. The Yankees ended up winning this game by the score of 14-3, but was drilling Pedroia really worth raising Sabathia's pitch count and falling behind in the game?

I understand the desire to protect your teammates, but to me, the cost of putting your team in a position to lose a game far outweighs the intangible benefit of being "manly" and showing that you are willing to back up your teammates. The objective of Major League baseball clubs is to win baseball games; any macho nonsense is extraneous. Maybe Joe Girardi should have a little talk with Sabatha about toning down the intentional HBPs.