Yankees' Sabathia to serve as ESPN analyst

New York Yankees left-hander CC Sabathia is joining ESPN as a baseball analyst this season, the network announced Tuesday.

Sabathia, who confirmed last month that 2019 will be his final season in the majors, is set to appear on a number of ESPN shows, including SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight. He will also serve as a guest host on ESPN Radio New York's Humpty & Canty show.

"As I begin to look toward the future, I'm excited to have this opportunity with ESPN," Sabathia said in a statement. "With that said, my singular focus is on winning another World Series Championship for Yankees fans and the city of New York."

Sabathia, 38, will be pitching in his 19th major league season in 2019. He is 14 strikeouts away from 3,000 for his career and four wins from 250. If he reaches both marks, he would become the 14th player to do so in MLB history.

He will make his ESPN debut for spring training coverage later this month.

Sabathia told reporters at the Yankees' spring-training facility in Tampa on Tuesday that he wasn't worried about wearing himself too thin by mixing in his ESPN appearances with pitching. He reminded that for parts of the past two seasons he has also been recording his "R2C2" podcast with commentator Ryan Ruocco.

A noted sports fan, Sabathia said his plan is to use his appearances to speak about much more than just baseball.

"I actually don't want to talk about baseball," Sabathia said. "I want to talk about other sports. I watch so many other sports, and am a fan of so many other sports, I think it will be fun."

Sabathia, who is coming off an offseason knee surgery and an unexpected heart procedure, has been taking it slowly returning to the mound this spring. He pitched in his first bullpen session last week, and expects to have another one this week.

"We're just building up the pitches in the bullpen enough to be able to face hitters, and then I feel like once I face some hitters and then either a BP or a sim game, it's going to go pretty quick from there," Sabathia said. "Everything's looking good. No setbacks. Arm, knee, heart, everything feels good."

ESPN's Coley Harvey contributed to this report.