Andy Pettitte: Is New York Yankees Texan Knight a Hall of Fame Pitcher?
February 4, 2011 · Josh Benjamin · Jump to comments
Article Source: Bleacher Report - New York Yankees
This afternoon, New York Yankees pitcher and baseball postseason icon Andy Pettitte finally addressed the speculation surrounding his future. After keeping fans and team management waiting for three months, the tall lefthander announced that he would retire and not return for a 17th season.
“It just didn’t feel right for me anymore,” Pettitte said at a press conference at Yankee Stadium. “I didn’t have the hunger, the drive that I felt like I needed. I know that my body would get where it needs to be, but my heart’s not where it needs to be.”
Having been a Yankees fan for practically all of my life, I am truly sad to see Andy Pettitte retire. Here’s a man who despite some ups and downs in his career, always stepped up when he was needed. As far as big-game pitchers go, Andrew Eugene Pettitte is simply one of the best.
He won five World Series rings with the Yankees and pitched in one for the Houston Astros. His pitches were never electrifying, as he wasn’t a hard-throwing pitcher. Still, he knew how to get batters out and handled pressure well. That being said, is Andy Pettitte worthy of a plaque in Cooperstown?
Let’s take a look at Pettitte’s career stats. His career record is a very respectable 240-138, good for a winning percentage of .635. His ERA is 3.88, not bad for someone who pitched 16 seasons.
In terms of strikeouts, Pettitte has a very modest 2,251. The man relied more on his cutter than he did on a traditional fastball, so his strikeout totals were never ridiculous. His career high was 180, achieved in the 2003 season.
So, on career statistics alone, Pettitte’s case for the Hall of Fame is hit or miss. He’ll either get in or he won’t, as is really the case with any player. In my opinion, he definitely deserves a plaque.
Many people forget that Pettitte missed parts of three seasons with injuries. He missed much of 2002 and 2004 with elbow trouble and two months of 2010 with a groin injury.
His records for those seasons were as follows—13-5 in 2002, 6-4 in 2004, and 11-3 in 2010. Given how he was pitching those seasons, let’s make some conservative guesses as to how many more wins he could have gotten had he not been injured.
He was pitching fairly well pre-injury in 2002, so let’s tack on six more wins. He was doing a great job against hitters in 2004 (holding them to a .226 average), so he gets nine more wins as he wasn’t on as dominant a team. In 2010, he was having a career season before getting hurt, and we’ll give him eight extra wins.
Those 23 extra wins would up his total to 263 wins, far more respectable than his current career total of 240. His strikeouts would probably number around 2,400. Not unbelievable, but not bad either.
Now let’s dive into his postseason career. Out of all pitchers in baseball history, Pettitte’s 19 career wins in the postseason are the most by any pitcher. The same can be said for his postseason innings, an astounding 263.
More importantly, ask any baseball fan who he would want on the mound to start a key playoff game were they the manager, and their answer would be Andy Pettitte. The man was simply a force in games that mattered. In Game 5 of the 1996 World Series, with the New York Yankees and the Atlanta Braves tied at two games apiece, a then 24-year-old Pettitte shut down a dangerous Atlanta lineup as the Yankees won the game 1-0 and took the Series back to New York. To this day, he counts that as the biggest game in which he has ever pitched.
In the 1998 Series, he pitched Game 4 as the Yankees clinched another World Series title against the San Diego Padres.
However, his most memorable postseason came in 2009.
In the 2009 playoffs, Pettitte pitched the clinching games in each of the three rounds. When it was announced that he would pitch Game 6 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium, Yankee fans knew that their championship drought was over. Sure enough, the tall southpaw from Houston controlled the game against the Philadelphia Phillies. That postseason, Pettitte went 4-0 with a 3.22 ERA.
Based on those numbers alone, combined with his regular season statistics, Andy Pettitte deserves to be enshrined in Cooperstown.
Still, there are plenty of naysayers.
In 2007, Pettitte’s name was one of 89 mentioned in the Mitchell Report. After being considered one of baseball’s elite pitchers for many seasons, his career was now about to be marred by accusations of the potential use of performance-enhancing drugs. Still, Pettitte handled the situation with class.
He admitted to using human growth hormone twice in 2002. Unlike his contemporaries Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds, Pettitte used these drugs not to enhance his already exceptional performance, but to recover from an injury. He publicly apologized to his team and his fans for his actions, and all was forgiven (at least in Yankeeland). Later, one of the members of the committee investigating the matter commended Pettitte for being the most honest player questioned during the hearings.
That all being said, is Andy Pettitte a Hall of Fame pitcher? The answer is simple—absolutely!
He was remarkably consistent throughout his career. While his pitching repertoire might not have included electrifying “stuff,” it was nonetheless effective. Long story short, in an important game, Pettitte was always one to put his team on his back and shut down opposing hitters.
This quality was extremely evident in the postseason. Like Reggie Jackson, Andy Pettitte was the “Mr. October” of his generation as he did some of his best work in the playoffs. As I mentioned before, Pettitte is the career leader in postseason wins and innings. That just screams effectiveness.
So, as the baseball world says goodbye to Andrew Eugene Pettitte, fans are truly losing a legend. A man who is a truly great individual, both on and off the field. It’s only right that he be elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
He may not make it on the first ballot, but perhaps on the third or fourth. Were he not to be enshrined in Cooperstown, it would be a grave injustice to one of baseball’s last white knights.
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