Didn't read the article but I would imagine a lot of it is also because of his sobriety.

Best shape of his life claim in linked article, and accompanying photo suggests he might be.

I'm just spitballin here, but I assume that the muscle would have helped him pitch more than the fat did.

Apparently he tried losing weight when he was pitching and when he didn't pitch well. So I guess he figured he needed to keep weight on in order to be a pitcher

He looks great - good for him.

His 2008 season remains one of my favorite pitcher seasons. Started with a 13.50 ERA in his first four starts before putting up a 1.88 ERA over 235 innings in the remaining 31 starts, finishing with a 2.70 ERA (156 ERA+).

10 complete games
15 8+ inning starts
24 7+ inning starts

Also batted .235/.235/.392 with 2 home runs (not cheap ones either)

His 2008 season remains one of my favorite pitcher seasons. Started with a 13.50 ERA in his first four starts before putting up a 1.88 ERA over 235 innings in the remaining 31 starts, finishing with a 2.70 ERA (156 ERA+).

Sounds like the 2012 roto season when I took a flyer on a pitcher in the late rounds, but cut him after three starts after he put up an ERA of 5.71 with a WHIP of 1.67. Sure, he had two wins, but... damn.

And then R.A. Dickey reeled off 18 wins behind an ERA of 2.50 and WHIP of 1.00.

This is pretty much the opposite of most of the "retired and body comp changed" stories. Kudos to him, his back (and the rest of him) is going to love him for this.

Sabathia looks great today, and I am genuinely happy for him. He was one of the most interesting, entertaining, passionate, and ultimately successful pitchers of his generation, with a legitimate chance of getting into the Hall of Fame. And the fact that he truly in the best shape of his life now is awesome.

However, the idea that he was a worse pitcher *because* he lost a ton of fat is nonsense. It is the difference between correlation and causality.

It appears that what happened is that he went into an offseason knowing he needed to lose some legit weight, so he went hard-core on a near-zero-carb diet, lost a ton of weight, and then shows up at spring training with less velocity on his fastball, and a lot less energy. He concluded that he had lost his "oomph" because there was a lot less mass behind those pitches. He consequently regained some (but not all!) of the lost fat, and pitched better.

This is not evidence that the heavier you are, the harder you throw, or more energy you have. It is much more evidence that if you try to dramatically improve your fitness level with a fad diet (which he acknowledged in this article that there was no way he could maintain as a lifestyle), a couple of things are probably going to happen:
1) You're not going to be able to sustain it, anyway;
2) You aren't necessarily getting any more fit, from a cardiovascular perspective - you simply are carrying less fat around.

It looks like he had added neither significant aerobic nor anaerobic fitness into his life. Also, as somebody who did the low-carb thing while trying to improve my distance running many years ago, you will eventually "bonk", because the body isn't going to build stamina through a diet of protein and veggies - you need carbs as part of that regime.

A physician friend of mine told me many years ago that we can make healthy living sound complicated, but for most people of average genetic luck, it comes down to doing five things, and everything else is secondary:

1) Don't smoke, ever.
2) Don't drink a lot of alcohol, certainly not on a regular basis.
3) Be reasonably smart and balanced about what you eat - you don't have to fill your plate to the edges, you don't have to snack a ton after dinner, you don't have to run to the fridge the second you feel the first twinge of hunger, but you also don't need to be radical about what you eat/don't eat.
4) Get 30 minutes of legit exercise, on average, every day. A relatively vigorous walk for 30+ minutes a day goes a long way.
5) Get sleep.

And the funny thing is, a lot of these five points build on themselves: If you go to bed at a reasonable hour, you tend to not snack after dinner. You know when I snack at night? When I'm up for four hours after dinner watching a West Coast NBA game or something. If you go to bed by 10, you don't have a chance to get hungry again. And if you go for a vigorous 30 minute walk after dinner, you tend to sleep better because you'll be more tired. And so on...

I love C.C., but stories like this - with no push back in even a playful way - make it easy for readers to conclude that what he did makes any medical sense.

If only you had advised Balboni so well, maybe he wouldn’t have been done at 33.

Ah, yes - the SB12 Method!

His 2008 season remains one of my favorite pitcher seasons. Started with a 13.50 ERA in his first four starts before putting up a 1.88 ERA over 235 innings in the remaining 31 starts, finishing with a 2.70 ERA (156 ERA+).

He also tied for the AL lead and the NL lead in shutouts in the same year.

#9 -- good points, but a pitcher throwing off a mound is converting a lot of potential energy into forward momentum. It could be that, or it could be that the smaller weight was changing the timing on the power transfer.