Americans love a good redemption story. Hollywood is full of them and the sports world is too. When you are able to combine a struggling player who rediscovers his game with a person that has struggled off the field (or off the court) with things in his or her personal life. In the case of C.C. Sabathia you have both. He famously left the team prior to the wild card game last year to go into alcohol rehabilitation. Of course, Sabathia’s personal health and well-being is much more important than the baseball end of the story.

Still, Sabathia had struggled mightily the past three seasons where he went a combined 23-27 with a collective ERA of close to five. Sabathia pitched seven scoreless innings on Friday night and moved his record to 4-4 with a 2.28 ERA. He’s 35 years old and he doesn’t throw nearly as hard as he used to back in his prime, but he is still capable of being a productive pitcher. Still, he has 49 strikeouts to go along with with his 59 innings pitched. If we extrapolate that over a full season, that will end up being around 170 innings pitched with 150 strikeouts. Again, it’s not great, but the Yankees will certainly welcome that in their rotation.

If you read one thing

With unbalanced schedules, you would think that won-loss records would normalize some, but the AL East is shaping up as the best division in the sport. The Orioles and Red Sox are the class of the division at 36-24 and 35-25 respectively. However, the Blue Jays and Yankees are lurking behind with 33-30 and 31-30 records. The Rays may be under .500, but they aren’t in horrible shape at 28-31.

When divisional races get this tight it becomes more of a problem as teams move from June into July. When there are fewer sellers there are fewer trades that can be made. This inevitably  helps teams like the Braves, Twins, and Reds because they are definitely sellers at this point. The same is probably true for the Brewers and Padres, but that is probably it at this point.

We probably expected

The Cardinals and Pirates are beginning a three game series for the right to be the second place team in the NL Central. Predictably, the battle went to extra innings and remained even until the Cardinals scored six runs in the top of the 12^th. Brandon Moss hit his 14^th home run of the season in that inning. Matt Carpenter had the biggest day with two hits and a home run of his own, but the biggest surprise was Adam Wainright’s two run pinch hit single. The pitcher is hitting .261 on the season.

We didn’t expect

The White Sox have seemingly gone on a full-fledged youth movement. At least, it’s as much of a youth movement as they are capable of. They have DFAed their second significant veteran (Jimmy Rollins) in order to give Tim Anderson a shot to become the full-time shortstop. Anderson might be worth an immediate add simply because he’s a candidate to steal up to 20 bases even in his abbreviated season.

Save Opportunities 

• Jesse Colome (Converted #18)
• Jonathan Papelbon (Converted #16)
• Tony Cingrani (Converted #6)
• David Robertson (Converted #15)

Injury News

• The White Sox also found out they are losing Austin Jackson for at least six weeks with torn meniscus. They also announced that Jake Petricka and Daniel Webb are out for the season.
• The Twins have placed Phil Hughes and Trevor May on the disabled list.