CC Sabathia was supposed to play for the Dodgers.... TWICE!
A crazy story about how the Dodgers missed out on a Hall of Famer
I posted a new video to my Youtube channel yesterday. I went in-depth on how CC Sabathia should have been a Dodger not once… but twice.
If you’d like to watch that video and subscribe to my channel, I would greatly appreciate it. You can check out the full video here.
Since I wrote out the entire script, I figured I might as well post it as an article as well. I shouldn’t let all my hard work go to waste, right?
Over the years, the Dodgers have made a number of blockbuster trades. We’ve seen them pull off deals to acquire superstars like Manny Ramirez, Adrian Gonzalez and Mookie Betts, just to name a few.
It sounds like they should keep doing deals with the Red Sox, actually.
They’ve made so many deals to acquire MVP caliber players over the years. What if I told you there’s a trade that nearly happened that would have been included with those names? A trade that could have won the Dodgers a World Series? Unfortunately, it’s a trade that never happened. But it definitely should have happened.
According to former Dodgers general manager Ned Colleti, the Dodgers were on the verge of acquiring CC Sabathia at the 2008 trade deadline. As you all know, he was never traded to the Dodgers. Instead, he was traded to the Brewers, where he was the best starting pitcher in all of baseball.
So, what happened? Why didn’t the Dodgers pull it off? Why was CC Sabathia never a Dodger?
Let’s go all the way back to 2008. The Dodgers were coming off a season in which they won 82 games and finished 4th in the NL West. They had a pretty active offseason that was headlined by Joe Torre becoming their new manager. After a Hall of Fame career with the Yankees, Torre was now in LA.
On paper, it looked like the Dodgers had a really good team. Their rotation was led by Brad Penny, who was coming off back-to-back All Star campaigns. They had Derek Lowe, who had been really solid during his tenure in LA. Chad Billinglsey looked to be an up and coming ace as well.
You look at their lineup and they had solid veterans in Jeff Kent, Nomar Garciaparra, Rafael Furcal and Juan Pierre. Not to mention the young talent with guys like Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier, Russell Martin and James Loney.
This Dodgers team looked like they’d be set up to make a run. Only that wasn’t the case. In fact it was the opposite. They struggled… big time.
Entering July, they were six games under .500. Things weren’t looking great. Needing to make some sort of move to spark the Dodgers, GM Ned Colleti had something in mind. When the team was in San Francisco to begin the month, Colletti was working on what he calls the “Biggest deal he had on the table that didn’t go down”.
He was trying to acquire CC Sabathia from the Indians.
Sabathia was one of the top starters in all of baseball. He was only 27 years old and had already been a 3-time All Star and Cy Young Award winner. He took home the award the year prior in 2007.
He was having an okay 2008 season. Still posting solid numbers, but not like the numbers he had in 2007 or even 2006, for that matter. In 18 starts, he had gone 6-8 with a 3.83 ERA. His ERA+ was 111 and he was striking out one batter per inning.
The trade never happened.
Here’s what Ned Colleti said to ESPN’s Buster Olney about the proposed deal and how it ultimately fell apart.
You’ll have to watch the video to know what he said!
As if every Dodgers fan didn’t have enough reasons to hate Frank McCourt… this one is another. The Dodgers had a chance to acquire one of the better starters in all of baseball. It was almost at the finish line. But McCourt shot it down. In the deal, the Dodgers would have also acquired Jamey Carroll and Casey Blake. The Dodgers ended up acquiring Blake a few weeks later anyway in a separate trade.
At the time, there were numerous reports that said McCourt’s reasoning was due to financial issues with the trade. However, he denied those reports.
“It’s just totally false. The players didn’t match up, and that’s just the way it was. Trades are complicated, and (the Indians) weren’t just going to give us three players. They were asking for something in return. The point being that in this deal, the give and the get just didn’t match up.”
All three players were set to be potential free agents in the fall, although Carroll’s contract included a club option for next season. The 2008 base salaries of Sabathia ($9 million), Blake ($6.1 million) and Carroll ($2.15 million) total $17.25 million, a figure that drops to somewhere between $8 million and $9 million with more than half the season already gone.
Here’s my personal favorite quote from Frank McCourt in that LA Daily News article.
“Ned and I were on the same page,” he said.
Yeah, I don’t think that’s the case, Frank.
In addition to landing CC Sabathia, the trade as a whole would have been really beneficial for the Dodgers as they could have added some other key pieces as well. The Dodgers didn’t have an answer at third base, as Nomar Garciaparra had dealt with numerous injuries that year. Rafael Furcal hadn’t played in two months and they didn’t know if he’d return that season. It would have been a great trade for the Dodgers. Instead, it never happened.
The Dodgers ended up making some moves that summer, including a massive one a few weeks later involving Manny Ramirez. According to Ned Colletti, the players involved in the Manny trade weren’t the ones that would have gone to Cleveland in the CC trade. They could have made both trades happen.
It’s okay though, CC was having an okay season in Cleveland. The Dodgers couldn’t have used him, right? Yeah, about that….
CC went on to have one of the more dominant stretches we’ve seen from a starting pitcher over the last few decades. He made 17 starts with Milwaukee the rest of the way, posting a 1.65 ERA, 2.44 FIP, 255 ERA+ and 1.00 WHIP. His strikeout-to-walk ratio was 5-1. It was an absolutely insane stretch.
He threw seven complete games in those 17 starts. In six of his other starts he went at least seven innings. Not only was he giving Milwaukee length every outing, he was also going on short rest during the final month of the season. Over a 13-day stretch to close the season, Sabathia made four starts.
The Dodgers ended up making the playoffs without Sabathia, despite finishing just a few games above .500. They even swept the Cubs in the NLDS to advance to their first NLCS since 1988.
They could have definitely used him in the NLCS against the Phillies, where they lost in 5 games. With the exception of Chad Billingsley, who got lit up in both his starts, the rest of the rotation did pretty well. Again, it’s impossible to know how things would have fared with CC Sabathia in the rotation, but the Dodgers’ chances of winning the series definitely would have been a lot higher.
Well, that’s all for Sabathia and the Dodgers! Oh, wait… there’s actually more to this story? It actually somehow manages to get even worse?
How is that remotely possible?
Although the Dodgers didn’t acquire Sabathia at the trade deadline, they actually still had a chance to get him. CC was set to become a free agent that offseason. After the Dodgers desperately wanted CC during the middle of the season, the tables were turned in the offseason. This time, it was CC Sabathia who really, really, really wanted to be a Dodger.
From an ESPN article back in December of 2008:
“Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti told ESPN.com's Jayson Stark on Monday that he ran into [CC Sabathia] on Sunday night in a hotel lobby and the left-hander told him that he wants to be a Dodger. Speculation continued that Sabathia would want to play near the home he is building in Southern California.”
"It's a possibility," Colletti said. "It's an interesting dynamic with anybody who is long term at a salary that's higher than most. When you're talking about a player who is long term, it's going to change the dynamic of your team in some way."
More from ESPN.
“The Yankees' six-year, $140 million offer to Sabathia has been on the table now for nearly four weeks. Not only has Sabathia not said yes, he has been sending messages to the three interested West Coast teams -- the Dodgers, Giants and Angels -- that he would like to play in California.”
As if all of that wasn’t enough, hear it from the man himself. This is an excerpt from Sabathia’s book, “Till the End”.
Oh, I was playing for the Dodgers. No question. That was where I was going next. Because I was from Cali. Because L.A. was just far away enough from home. I wanted to play for one of the historic teams and have a chance to win all the time.
In 2008 the Dodgers had won the National League West before losing in the League Championship Series to the Phillies. The Dodgers had a great manager, Joe Torre, who owned four World Series rings.
They had Russell Martin, Matt Kemp, and Andre Ethier in the everyday lineup. What the Dodgers needed was an ace to go with Chad Billingsley, Hiroki Kuroda, and this 21-year-old kid named Clayton Kershaw.
Perfect setup for me. I was going to spend a couple of months over the off-season visiting all these other teams, go to the Winter Meetings in Las Vegas acting like I was shopping around and try to have the other teams drive up the price, then sign with the Dodgers. Hell, I would sign with the Dodgers even if the price didn’t go up very much, though I sure wasn’t telling them that.
All I cared about was signing with the Dodgers. In the hotel lobby I bumped into Ned Colletti, the Los Angeles GM, and told him I wanted to be a Dodger. He said he didn’t know if they could offer me enough years. We shook hands, said we’d talk again.
But to my amazement and disappointment, no meeting with the Dodgers ever happened. We only sat down with the Yankees, the Mets, and the Red Sox. Frank McCourt, the Dodgers’ owner, called me once or twice, but the conversation seemed like he was going through the motions; the Dodgers never made an offer. Their lack of interest hurt, bad, and the whole free agency process, the uncertainty, was ripping me up.
That night, about 3 a.m., I couldn’t sleep, so I went over to my friend Dee’s room. Woke him up. We were sitting in the dark, talking, and I was crying. “I need your help. I don’t know what to do,” I told Dee. “I have no idea. I feel like I’m being pulled apart. I want to sign with the Dodgers, but they don’t want me.
When doing my research for this video, this is actually the first time I had ever heard about this. I remember years back learning about the trade that never happened, but I didn’t know CC Sabathia wanted to be a Dodger THIS BADLY.
I mean, I was 12 during his free agency so maybe if I was older I would have known the significance…. But my god.
I’m now starting to get a much better understanding as to why everyone hates Frank McCourt so much.
Well, as you all know, CC Sabathia went on to have a Hall of Fame career with the Yankees. He’d finish inside the Top 4 of Cy Young voting during his first 3 seasons with New York. Overall during his 11 years, he won 134 games and had 1,700 strikeouts.
Imagine if the Dodgers had prime CC Sabathia with Kershaw just entering his reign of dominance.
Just incredible.
This makes me appreciate the current state of the Dodgers even more because I know for a fact that they wouldn’t have let this slide. No chance this would have happened. The Dodgers had a trade set up. They had a player who WANTED to be here. And yet, CC Sabathia was never a Dodger. Instead, he had a Hall of Fame career for someone else.
That last recall from CC himself is an unbelievably testimony against McCourt.
Amazing story. You never know where this would have ended up, but having CC on the mound from 2009 to the end of his career or close ... that would have been something! Are we sure this wasn't Dave Roberts' fault? Anyway, no one laments that Frank McCourt is no longer in control of the Dodgers.