Carsten Charles Sabathia Jr. (born July 21, 1980) is an American former professional baseball pitcher who played 19 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Cleveland Indians, Milwaukee Brewers, and New York Yankees. Sabathia batted and threw left-handed.
Sabathia made his major league debut with the Cleveland Indians in 2001 and placed second in the 2001 AL Rookie of the Year voting behind 2001 AL MVP Ichiro Suzuki. Sabathia played the first seven and a half seasons of his career with the Indians, with whom he won the 2007 Cy Young Award. He led the Indians to the 2007 AL Central Division title and their first postseason berth since his rookie year. Following a trade, Sabathia played the second half of the 2008 MLB season with the Milwaukee Brewers, helping them make the playoffs for the first time in 26 years.
In the 2008 offseason, Sabathia signed with the New York Yankees for seven years and $161 million; at the time, this was the largest contract ever signed by a pitcher. With the Yankees, Sabathia led all of Major League Baseball in wins in both 2009 and 2010 and won a World Series ring in 2009. He was also voted the 2009 American League Championship Series Most Valuable Player. After mid-career struggles attributed to lost fastball velocity, chronic knee injuries, and alcoholism, Sabathia again found success in the late 2010s after reinventing himself as a control pitcher. In February 2019, he announced that 2019 would be his final season as a professional baseball player.
During his career, Sabathia was named an All-Star six times and won the Warren Spahn Award three times in a row (2007–09). In August 2017, Sabathia became the all-time American League leader in strikeouts by a left-handed pitcher. On April 30, 2019, he became the seventeenth pitcher in MLB history to reach 3,000 strikeouts and the third left-hander to do so (joining Randy Johnson and Steve Carlton). When he retired following the end of the 2019 season, he led all active Major League players in career wins, career innings pitched, and career strikeouts. With 251 career victories, Sabathia is tied with Bob Gibson for the second-most wins by a Black pitcher in major league history (behind Ferguson Jenkins); he was the first pitcher to debut in the 21st century and post at least 250 career wins in regular-season play.
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