Why Do People Make These Claims?

The All-Star game. Granted, it's a contest to see who fans like the most, but when you're arguing a case for who should be the starter at a given position for the All-Star game, clearly, you're advocating the guy that has been the best at his position in his respective league all year. There's been exceptions, like people making a case for Cal Ripken Jr. starting the game towards the end of his career when he wasn't as good for the sake of celebrating one of the greatest careers in recent professional sports, but I don't think C.C. Sabathia has that kind of leverage. Here, we learn why John Donovan thinks Sabathia should be the A.L. starter this year.

I'm here today to make a pitch, as it were, for C.C. Sabathia as the starting pitcher for the American League in this year's All-Star Game.

I'm afraid it will be difficult for me to agree. There are a few good candidates for "best pitcher in the A.L. thus far" (Sabathia not among them), with the most qualified being Dan Haren.

This, for those of you who haven't delved deeply into the pros and cons of All-Star selections quite yet -- or haven't bothered delving at all -- is not an easy pitch to make. In fact, for those who have started to crunch the numbers and do the comparing and contrasting, this borders on a "get the heck outta here" argument.

Hell, give the guy credit for at least admitting he sounds crazy. Saying that Sabathia has been the best pitcher in the A.L. this year is a "get the heck outta here" argument in my book. He's been very good, but not justifiably at the top. Go on Donovan, convince me.

First off, the All-Star Game is still almost a month away. It's almost ridiculously early to even think about picking a starter. A lot can happen in a month. A lot bad can happen in a month. Sabathia, the Indians' left-handed ace, could slip in the shower tomorrow and sprain something important.

Of course, if he did, I'd worry a lot more about the shower than I would about Sabathia. C.C.'s a big guy, you know.

I refuse to accept that this is a joke, and would prefer to believe that you, John Donovan, care more about the well-being of an inanimate shower than a human being.

And then there's the serious matter of the competition for the starting spot. Oakland's Dan Haren has been fantastic and then some, a winning pitcher for a team that barely can hit. His numbers, other than his strikeout numbers, are unassailable. Better, for the most part, than Sabathia's.

Okay, finally, into the argument we go. You admit that Haren's numbers are unassailable. His 1.58 ERA and 0.86 WHIP are tops in the A.L. I refuse to believe that just because Sabathia strikes out one more guy per nine innings that he's more qualified.

A couple of other Oakland pitchers, Joe Blanton and Chad Gaudin, are off to great starts, too. Boston's Josh Beckett has been lights out. He hasn't lost a game yet, and neither has Detroit's Jeremy Bonderman. Neither has James Shields, for that matter, and he pitches for Tampa Bay. Undefeated for the Devil Rays. Think about what that takes. And maybe you've heard this news: Detroit's Justin Verlander no-hit the Brewers on Tuesday night. He's probably worth a vote or two.

You could make an argument for John Lackey with the Angels, and maybe even Fausto Carmona, Sabathia's teammate with the Indians.

Fair enough, these pitchers have all been excellent.

Boston's Curt Schilling threw a near no-hitter last week.

No. No No no no no no no no.

Mark Buerhle threw an ACTUAL no-hitter and has better ERA/WHIP than Schilling. Do I think Buerhle should go anywhere near the baseball during the first inning of the All-Star game? Of course not. But that just goes to show you how little Schilling belongs in this article.

They're all good choices, and if they don't hurt themselves pitching or attending to any personal hygiene responsibilities in the next few weeks, any one of them could find his way onto the AL squad when the All-Star Game is played in San Francisco next month.

This "C.C. Sabathia falling in the shower" gag isn't going to become a running joke now, is it?

But for a starter, let's turn to Sabathia, who, by the way, is more valuable to his team than any of those guys are to theirs.

How can you possibly argue this? First of all, arguing players as being more valuable to a specific team lends itself to a host of subjectivity, but come on! Haren is pitching for an Oakland team with a depleted offense. Oakland needs Haren to pitch amazing for them to get a lot of wins out of his starts. Plug in an average pitcher for Sabathia, and behind the Indians' run support, their difference in record wouldn't be that great. And for the statistically minded, since we're talking about "value", here's the A.L. pitching leaders in VORP.

1) Dan Haren: 40.1
2) James Shields: 29.7
3) John Lackey: 29.1
4) C.C. Sabathia: 26.9

Haren is head and shoulders above Sabathia. Period.

Right now, no matter who you throw into this discussion, Sabathia has to be near the top of the list -- or at the top, in my way of thinking -- for a few reasons.

I smell a cherry-pick coming on.....

• For those who care about old-school stats, he's 9-1

I don't care.

with a 3.09 ERA.

Nearly double the size of Haren's 1.58. I love how these numbers are right there on the page in a chart that shows that Sabathia by no means has been the best starter in the A.L.

• Ten of his 14 starts have been quality starts, one of the best percentages in the league. Haren has made 13 quality starts in 14 tries,

Good evidence for Sabathia. Keep it coming.

but Sabathia has left a game with his team trailing only once, which is something even Haren can't claim. (Admittedly more of a statement about Oakland's offense, but still worth noting.)

So even you admit that this carries little weight. It's also a statement about Cleveland's very good offense.

• C.C. -- it stands for Carsten Charles -- ranks among the league's Top 10 in strikeouts per nine, strikeout-to-walk ratio, opponent's batting average, opponent's on-base percentage ... you get the idea.

8th, 2nd, 20th (so you're going to lie now???), and 10th. This can go along with 9th in ERA and 9th in WHIP. So yeah. He's among the very good. He's not the best.

(Haren is 16th, 11th, 1st, 1st, 1st, and....1st.)

He's also up there in a bunch of esoteric stats that take into account the defense behind him (Cleveland's isn't very good), the park he plays in (Jacobs Field is a good hitters' stadium) and those sorts of things.

"Up there", eh? Well he is 5th in DIPS, at 3.34. Haren edges him out even in that category at 3.27.

• Among left-handers he's probably the best in the league this year, though you might get an argument from the Johan Santana and Erik Bedard factions. He's at least keeping hitters from hurting him as much as Santana and Bedard are (based on OPS against), and his ERA is better.

Nope. You won't hear me say that Santana or Bedard have been better. You also won't hear me say that what arm Sabathia throws with has anything to do with him starting the All-Star game.

• And then there's this, maybe most important of all: Almost no pitcher in the AL has been as good as Sabathia in the past year. Some people like to include the second half of the previous season, not just the first half of the current one, when picking All-Stars. In his past 25 starts, going back to the All-Star break in '06, Sabathia has a 3.03 ERA. Only one AL pitcher has a better ERA in that span. That's Minnesota's Santana, the reigning Cy Young Award winner, at 2.99 since last year's break. Yet Santana, as good as many of his peripheral numbers are, is only a .500 pitcher at this point this season.


Ah. Here's that cherry-pick I was worried about. I've never even heard of people doing this, but if they did, good luck having anyone start besides Santana this year. We're talking about the 2007 All-Star game. Not the half 2007 / half 2006 All-Star game. But that's just my opinion.

Sabathia is also one of the hottest pitchers around in the last week or so. He has thrown two nine-inning gems in a row, though he didn't get a decision in the last one, a 1-0 loss to the Reds in 12 innings last Sunday.

Hottest pitcher in the last week? This isn't a position player we're talking about, we're talking about a max of 2 games played in a week. Yeah he's been good in his last 2 games, but who said that June 7th-13th was the most important time to rate a pitcher?

"He really worked hard in the middle part of '05 to make some adjustments, to put it all together, mentally, fundamentally," says his manager, Eric Wedge. "It didn't happen overnight. It took a little bit of time to see the fruits of his labor, if you will. But he never gave in. I mean, he was a good pitcher before that, but he wasn't going to settle for that."

Irrelevant.

The Indians are 12-2 in Sabathia's starts this year, a number undoubtedly aided by a Tribe lineup that backs the 26-year-old Californian with a gaudy 6.3 runs of support each outing. (Except for last Sunday, that is.)

Hence my point. Sabathia has done his share to win those games, but that 9-1 record is largely a product of that 6.3 runs per game. And you didn't include last Sunday's game....why? It actually would have strengthened your case to average that one in and lower that 6.3 number, but oh well.

Still, a lot of the credit has to go to the 6-foot-7, 290-pound Sabathia, who stands tall in a rotation that includes 23-year-old newbie Carmona, 36-year-old Paul Byrd and, at this point, a couple of prayers.

Haren, Shields, Lackey, Beckett, and Gaudin, by contrast, deserve very little credit.

This is not an argument.

Sabathia, who made his big-league debut as a 20-year-old in April of 2001, has settled down over the years from an excitable hard-throwing, hard-headed kid who used to get enraged when opponents tried to bunt on him -- he moves well for a big guy, but he's still a big guy -- to a fiery, determined veteran of nearly 200 starts. He's still fastball-slider first. He still can reach into the upper 90s with the four-seamer. But his changeup has improved along with his control -- last season, he had the best strikeout-to-walk ratio of his career -- and he's now the kind of pitcher who can get into jams without getting so jazzed up that he can't get out of them. "He knows what it takes," says Cleveland catcher Victor Martinez. "It doesn't matter what happens, he always keeps his mind in the game."

This has nothing to do with why C.C. Sabathia is a better choice to start the All-Star game than other candidates. Oh wait. I see it now. Fiery. Determined. James Shields just kind of glances towards the plate with dull eyes and nonchalantly tosses it to Dioner Navarro every game.

Sabathia has been selected to two All-Star Games, in 2003 and '04. He pitched an inning in the '04 game and was shelled -- three hits, three earned runs -- in an AL win. "I'm just trying to go out there and play hard and pitch hard every time out," Sabathia told me the other night when I raised the All-Star prospect. "I'm not even trying to think about that right now ..."

This is your third irrelevant paragraph of the last 4.

Detroit manager Jim Leyland, who will manage the AL team in the All-Star Game and make the choice of who starts, might be a little partial to Bonderman or Verlander. You could hardly blame him. Part of his decision also will rest on who's healthy and who's rested when the game rolls around.

Still, if Leyland's after the league's best over the last year, a veteran with a live arm and a mean streak, if the skipper is actually trying to win this thing, and home-field advantage for the AL in the World Series -- this time, you know, it counts again -- he could hardly do better than Sabathia. As long as the big lefty keeps this up, and as long as he stays away from those nasty shower-time accidents, he'd be one heck of a choice.

Again with the shower cracks. Did Sabathia fall and hurt himself in a shower recently? Can someone explain to me whether this is like, a legitimate joke based on something or whether John Donovan made it up and finds it funny enough to reference/repeat it 3 times?

It doesn't really matter that much who pitches first in a game where like 9 different pitchers get used for roughly the same amount of time, but Haren has unquestionably been better than Sabathia this year. He should get the ball as a reward for, as you put it earlier, putting up unassailable stats.

Lets close on a note of recanting the times you agreed with me!

1) (the stats chart on the page, not seen here, that show Haren's dominance)
2) Oakland's Dan Haren has been fantastic and then some, a winning pitcher for a team that barely can hit. His numbers, other than his strikeout numbers, are unassailable. Better, for the most part, than Sabathia's.
3) Ten of his 14 starts have been quality starts, one of the best percentages in the league. Haren has made 13 quality starts in 14 tries
4) but Sabathia has left a game with his team trailing only once, which is something even Haren can't claim. (Admittedly more of a statement about Oakland's offense, but still worth noting......The Indians are 12-2 in Sabathia's starts this year, a number undoubtedly aided by a Tribe lineup that backs the 26-year-old Californian with a gaudy 6.3 runs of support each outing.