Andy Pettitte and CC Sabathia spent enough October nights together in pinstripes to know how quickly a baseball bond can stick. Now that connection has found a new lane in the minors, where their sons are matching each other almost step for step.
Luke Pettitte and Carsten Sabathia III both went deep Tuesday night for their Single-A teams, and both homers were the third of their professional careers. Pettitte’s came for the Tampa Tarpons in a 10-5 win over Jupiter in Florida, when he jumped on a slider from right-hander Yohanfer Santana in the eighth inning and drove it 321 feet to left-center. Sabathia answered from several hundred kilometers away, homering for the Wilson Warbirds in an 8-5 loss to Hickory in North Carolina on a fourth-inning shot against right-hander Connor O’Hara that also went to left-center.
The timing made the night feel even stranger. Luke Pettitte is just five games into his pro career and is hitting .350/.435/.900.
Carsten Sabathia III has 11 games under his belt and is batting .405/.468/.690. Together, the sons of two former Yankees rotation mates have six professional homers and 17 RBIs through 16 games.
For Pettitte, the path to the Yankees started with the 248th overall pick in the eighth round of the 2026 MLB Draft out of Dallas Baptist. He opened college as a right-handed pitcher, posting a 3.19 ERA over 48 innings across his first two seasons, but injuries - including Tommy John surgery - kept him from pitching in 2026 and shifted his development to the other side of the ball. At the plate, he broke out with a .337/.403/.693 line, 16 homers and 48 RBIs, enough for the Yankees to draft him as a two-way player.
His first pro game already delivered a family echo. Pettitte went 2-for-3 with two walks and homered at George M.
Steinbrenner Field with his parents in the stands. That homer came 20 years and seven days after Andy Pettitte hit the only regular-season home run of his 18-year MLB career.
“It was just a pretty surreal moment,” Pettitte said.
Sabathia’s route was a little longer. Milwaukee took Carsten Sabathia III with the 611th overall pick in the 20th and final round after four college seasons split between Georgia Tech and Houston. The 22-year-old came back from shoulder surgery to hit .283/.374/.511 with six homers in 107 plate appearances as a Houston senior.
There’s a Brewers thread in his story, too. CC Sabathia spent only part of one season in Milwaukee, but he went 11-2 with a 1.65 ERA in 17 starts in 2008 and helped the club reach the postseason for the first time since 1982.
Carsten’s first professional homer came Aug. 16, when he went 3-for-4 for Wilson with CC watching from the family suite. Tuesday’s blast gave the Sabathias another link back to the Yankees through Pettitte.
The fathers’ careers already gave this story plenty of weight. Andy Pettitte finished with 256 major league wins and still holds the MLB record with 19 postseason wins. Sabathia won 251 games, struck out 3,093 batters and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2025 as a first-ballot selection.
Their biggest shared Yankees chapter came in 2009. Sabathia started Games 1 and 4 of the World Series against Philadelphia, while Pettitte took Games 3 and 6 and won both, including the clincher at Yankee Stadium. Pettitte had already been a five-time World Series champion when Sabathia arrived before the 2009 season, and Sabathia later leaned on Pettitte’s advice as he reinvented himself.
Now the next generation has a box-score connection of its own. Both sons are right-handed first basemen, not left-handed pitchers like their dads.
Both opened their pro careers in Single-A this summer. Both had their fathers present for their first professional homers.
And on Tuesday, both reached homer No. 3 on the same night.
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