C. C. Sabathia to Enter Alcohol Rehab and Miss Yankees’ Playoffs

C. C. Sabathia, a commanding presence and a key leader for the Yankees, if no longer a franchise star, left the team and said Monday that he was entering an alcohol treatment program.

Although Sabathia was not expected to pitch Tuesday night in the wild-card game against the Houston Astros — the Yankees’ first playoff game since 2012 — the announcement left the Yankees stunned. Many members of the team threw their support behind Sabathia.

“All that matters now is what’s happening now, which is obviously he’s going to get the help necessary in a structured environment,” General Manager Brian Cashman said in a news conference at Yankee Stadium, just before the team worked out. “He’s going to get professional help. That’s the most important thing right now.”

Cashman said that Sabathia had reached out to him, Manager Joe Girardi and other team officials on Sunday and told them he needed help.

That conversation, which took place shortly after noon — hours before the Yankees concluded the regular season in Baltimore — set the wheels in motion.

Sabathia’s wife, Amber, was involved in the discussions, and Cashman, Girardi and others encouraged Sabathia to seek treatment for alcohol abuse even if it meant he would not pitch for the remainder of the season.

“I love baseball,” Sabathia said in a statement released by the Yankees, “and I love my teammates like brothers, and I am also fully aware that I am leaving at a time when we should all be coming together for one last push toward the World Series. It hurts me deeply to do this now, but I owe it to myself and to my family to get myself right. I want to take control of my disease, and I want to be a better man, father and player.”

Cashman, asked several times if he or the Yankees were aware of any personal problems Sabathia had encountered or of any incidents involving alcohol abuse, said he saw no warning signs.

“Clearly there has been a number of occurrences that led him to come to this type of decision that’s necessary, but those incidents are personal to him,” Cashman said. “I was not expecting that situation to come my way yesterday, but it did.”

It has been a turbulent year for Sabathia, who endured the worst full season of his career in his return from knee surgery, going 6-10 with a 4.73 E.R.A. Sabathia, a left-hander, needed several injections to ease the pain in his degenerative right knee, but the pain became so great that he left a game on Aug. 23 and went on the disabled list.

Over the last few weeks of the regular season, he wore a bulkier knee brace, which allowed him to be effective. But Sabathia also had a number of outbursts in the last year — on and off the field.

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