After he was elected into the Hall of Fame on Tuesday, CC Sabathia recalled how he almost retired after the 2017 season and why he ended up sticking around for two more years with the Yankees. AP
CC Sabathia was devastated.
The Yankees had just suffered a season-ending loss to the Astros in Game 7 of the 2017 American League Championship Series.
In the Yankees’ first opportunity to advance back to the World Series with a win since their championship run in 2009, Sabathia started, didn’t make it out of the fourth inning and was charged with the loss.
Between that heartbreaking ending to the season and the grind of that entire year — Sabathia’s 17th big-league season — the left-hander had a feeling he couldn’t shake as he left Houston.
He thought that he was ready to call it quits.
“We come up short and I was done,” Sabathia said Tuesday. “I was over it. I was ready to retire.”
Sabathia made that comment as he looked back on what will now be enshrined as a Hall of Fame career. The left-hander was voted in by the Baseball Writers Association of America in his first appearance on the ballot, joining Ichiro Suzuki and Billy Wagner in the Hall of Fame’s 2025 class.
Had Sabathia retired after that crushing loss in Houston, however, there’s a good chance he’d never make it to Cooperstown.
Sabathia was contemplating retirement up until he received a phone call from former big-leaguer and MLB Network broadcaster Harold Reynolds.
“He started telling me all these numbers,” Sabathia said, “all these different numbers and how close I was to 3,000 strikeouts, how close I was to 250 wins and how all these guys that had those numbers are in the Hall of Fame.”
Sabathia had 237 wins and 2,846 strikeouts over 3,317 innings pitched at the time. With an extra boost from that conversation with Reynolds, and a recognition of what he can accomplish, Sabathia stuck around for two more seasons. He reached 3,000 strikeouts and 250 wins in the first half of the 2019 campaign, his last year in pinstripes.
Only 14 other pitchers — and just two other lefties — have reached both of those benchmarks in MLB history. He’s one of six pitchers ever with at least 250 victories, a .600 winning percentage and 3,000 strikeouts.
Of course, Sabathia’s Hall of Fame candidacy extends far beyond his 251 wins and 3,093 strikeouts. More than anything, Sabathia is known as all-time teammate and competitor. He’s a champion, a workhorse and his record-setting contract with the Yankees before the 2009 season paved the way for pitchers to make more money than anyone ever imagined.
Eclipsing those two thresholds put him in an exclusive club, though. Sabathia recognizes to this day how that decision, and his final push in those last two seasons in pinstripes, forever changed the way his remarkable career will be remembered.
“I probably wouldn’t be sitting here today if Harold wouldn’t have called me that offseason,” Sabathia said.