Sabathia Sabathias hapless Mariners, striking out career-high 14

What else is there to say? (Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)

As you can see by the title of this post, I’ve run out of words to describe ‘s awesomeness. Sabathia has now become a verb.

I know the Mariners are ostensibly a minor league team (that happens to have one of the best pitchers in baseball) at this point, but holy smokes was this dominance. Sa-beast-ia was perfect through 6 1/3 before yielding a single to , and ended up going seven-plus and striking out a career-high 14 batters, helping the Yankees to a 4-1 victory. At one point Sabathia struck out seven straight men. For poor Seattle — who only managed that one hit — it was their seventeenth straight loss. CC may well have gotten his perfect game had there not been two rain delays, and many were questioning ‘s sanity after the manager sent Sabathia back out after the second delay. It appeared the second-guessing was justified, as Sabathia promptly walked the first three men he faced, leaving the Yankees in a bases-loaded, no-out situation and only up by three at the time. Thankfully fireman extraordinaire came out and did what he does best, and the Yankees were able to escape the inning having only yielded one run. As an additional game note, I haven’t been able to confirm this, but I believe this was the Yankee pitching staff’s first one-hitter of the season.

To his credit, also pitched seven and only gave up three runs, but that wouldn’t end up being good enough against Sabathia on a night like this. got the Yankees on the board with a solo shot — his 28th — while an (welcome back!) RBI single and ground out helped build a 3-0 lead. Oh, and decided he didn’t want Grandy to have the team led in home runs for too long, and blasted a solo shot of his own in the eighth for his 28th of the season.

As our own Matt Warden , Sabathia’s been out-of-control good in July (1.7 fWAR!), throwing 39 innings of four-run ball (0.92 ERA) with 50(!) strikeouts and 13 walks. Sabathia’s put together so many incredible months for the Yankees in the two-and-a-half seasons he’s been in pinstripes, but this is almost certainly the most dominant month he’s ever had as a Yankee. Just when you think he can’t possibly get any better he does, and as far as I’m concerned he can ask for all the money in the world and the Yankees will have no choice but to give him everything he wants.