Rookie Eloy Jimenez was a 4-year-old living in the Dominican Republic when CC Sabathia made his major league debut in 2001 for the Cleveland Indians.
After impressively hitting the first two homers of his career Friday, the 22-year-old Jimenez faces the 38-year-old Sabathia in the veteran’s season debut Saturday afternoon as the Chicago White Sox continue a three-game series with the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium.
Jimenez helped the White Sox snap a five-game losing streak by homering in consecutive at-bats in Friday’s 9-6 rain-shortened victory. He hit a tiebreaking two-run homer in the fifth and added a solo drive in the seventh shortly before a 41-minute rain delay after which the game was called.
“We’ve been waiting for that,” Chicago starting pitcher Lucas Giolito told the media of Jimenez’s breakout. “He’s got ridiculous power. He’s been hitting a bunch of singles, kind of warming up to start the year and now he’s busting out. So it’s good to see, really good to see, another bopper.”
After hitting his first two homers, Jimenez is batting .319 (15-for-47) and has multiple hits in four of his last six games.
“It’s taken a couple of days but I’m really happy about it and like I said many to come,” Jimenez said.
The Yankees will be attempting to halt a four-game losing streak and avoid to falling to 2-6 at home after blowing leads of 4-1 and 5-3 on Friday. New York’s latest loss occurred after putting catcher Gary Sanchez on the 10-day injured list with a left calf strain and after an MRI exam on Dellin Betances showed a spur causing inflammation in his right shoulder that will result in him being shut down for at least three weeks.
“We’re hurt but we’re still capable,” Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said. “But we do have a lot of poor play going on simultaneously with the group on the current active roster.”
Sabathia spent a brief time on the injured list as he recovered from offseason cardiac surgery. He was placed on the injured list April 3 after serving a five-game suspension for hitting Jesus Sucre with a pitch in his final start of 2018 at Tampa Bay.
“I feel good,” Sabathia said Friday afternoon. “I feel good about everything we did down in Tampa, all the work we got in and I’m ready to go tomorrow.”
Sabathia returned to the Yankees on a one-year contract in December and before spring training began, he announced he was retiring after this season.
The left-hander will be making his 539th career start and 285th with the Yankees. He went 9-7 with a 3.65 ERA in 29 starts last season and is 129-80 with a 3.74 ERA as a Yankee.
Sabathia is 19-7 with a 3.75 ERA in 37 career starts against the White Sox.
Former Yankee Ivan Nova will make his third start for the White Sox and second against New York since being traded to Pittsburgh at the non-waiver trade deadline in 2016. His only start against the Yankees was April 23, 2017, in Pittsburgh, when gave up one run in seven innings for the win.
Nova was 53-39 with a 4.41 ERA in 131 games (118 starts) as a Yankee from 2010-16. He is 27-19 with a 4.35 ERA in 67 games (62 starts) at Yankee Stadium.
The right-hander last pitched Sunday against Seattle when he was tagged for seven runs on seven hits in 2 1/3 innings in a 12-5 loss. The difficult outing occurred after Nova gave up one run on six hits over seven innings in a no-decision at Cleveland on April 1.