Enough With the CC Sabathia Weight Loss Takes

This week, a picture went viral that showed former Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia in a Jordan Brand tank top suddenly looking like a prizefighter:

Not Photoshopped. The big fella has been getting after it during quarantine! @R2C2 https://t.co/UPZIdf7Dbq

— Ryan Ruocco (@RyanRuocco) May 12, 2020

When Sabathia retired at the end of the 2019 MLB season, he was listed at 300 pounds. Even on his 6’6″ frame, that usually meant a proud, hefty gut, which Yankee fans came to know well after 11 years of seeing the southpaw take the mound in form-fitting pinstripes. So the internet was understandably confused by this picture. It took confirmation from Ryan Ruocco, the other half of Sabathia’s sports-talk podcast “R2C2” for people to believe it. Ruocco tweeted: “”Not Photoshopped. The big fella has been getting after it during quarantine!”

Acceptance, though, quickly turned to annoyance, as baseball fans bemoaned Sabathia waiting until retirement to “get in shape.” The takes are endless, but can be summed up with a tweet from one commenter, who wrote, “Great, the Yankees pay him millions and millions of dollars for years and years, and now he decides he should get in shape. Excellent.”

There is a lot wrong with that line of thinking. For starters, the implied laziness is completely uncalled for; Sabathia was a workhorse during his tenure with the Yankees, pushing past the all-important 200-innings-pitched mark in five straight seasons. He held down an average ERA of 3.81 (for reference, the league average has been well above 4.0 the last four years), and won 134 games and a ring. He also had a fierce penchant for defending his teammates, and once got tossed out of a game knowing full well he’d sacrifice a $5 million performance incentive for not completing it.

But more significantly, baseball bodies look different than those in other sports, and even vary by position. Sabathia tried various diets over the years. He lost 30 pounds before the 2012 season, and switched to a vegan diet to expedite his recovery process from knee surgery before the 2018 campaign. His lone Cy Young Award, though, came when when he was well over 300 pounds, during his 2007 season with the Cleveland Indians. Sabathia was absolutely dominant that year. And his greatest success with the Yankees — two straight 19-win seasons — also came when he was at his heaviest. According to data from FanGraphs, that’s because Sabathia’s fastball lost velocity as he lost weight. He began to rely more on secondary breaking ball pitches … and lose more games.

The most frustrating misconception about Sabathia’s post-retirement body changes is this concept that he still owes anyone anything. The 39-year-old has a right, like any of us, to pursue the body he wants. During his career, MLB Hall of Famer Jim Rice made fun of him for his “donut and chicken weight.” That was wrong. But so is claiming that a different physique means Sabathia is obligated to head back onto a baseball field once this lockdown ends, and perform for fans again. He did his time and he did it well. Now let the man get his squats in — and post about it, if he wants — in peace.

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