Andy Pettitte

Confirmed on stream.

Everyday on I see a new ballot posted and it's a sportswriter voting for andruw jones or Helton or rolen, but none of them are hall of famers. Andy is. Jones is a career .254 hitter I believe, Helton had coors field but other than '07 never played one important game. I'm convinced the Rolen stans exist because he was a cheat code in MVP baseball 2004. Andy was a big game pitcher and delivered every single time except for game 6 in 2001. He was an innings eater and clutch as can be. His seasons with a high ERA can be attributed to him pitching at the old yankee stadium during the height of the steroid era in a stacked American League. Also Torre had a propensity for leaving pitchers in for too long. The whole steroids thing is blown out of proportion, there is no evidence Pettitte used roids for his performance. Unlike Clemens his fastball never went above 93 mph. Anyways that's my rant, thanks for reading. Andy Pettite for hall of fame 2023!

Yo, best regular bit ever is when one of the Junks talks about petting a pet, and they do they whole "Yo, you Andy Pettitte the dog..?"

Just released by the BBWAA. You can find the rest of the ballot

EDIT: Also, final decision was W: Pettitte L: Clemens.

Sure, he never had the most brilliant counting stats and a lot of his case comes from being in a great team during that era, but he was a playoff ace like Jack Morris was and he's in the HoF. Also look at other stats like his FIP from 2001 to 2005 and he was damn brilliant in the peak of the steroids era, you can say that the PEDs helped him back then but then again Piazza got inducted and Ortiz will be a 1st ballot player. I would also have a similar argument for Sheffield and Clemens.

A disappointing '98 (for Pettitte) was a cause for concern entering the '99 campaign; the Yankees reportedly even discussed trading Pettitte to the Blue Jays for Roger Clemens prior to sending Wells to Toronto instead. The Yankees were not the only ones unsure about Pettitte's future as scouts around baseball believed that the quality of Pettitte's stuff was diminishing gradually

In 1999, from April 24 through July 28, he had a 5.98 ERA in 18 starts , and opposing batters were hitting .304/.385/.469 against him. As the trade deadline approached, Pettitte had an ugly 5.93 ERA over the previous calendar year, 28 regular season starts. Pettitte looked as ugly as ever in his last start before the deadline against the sub-.500 White Sox. He gave up three runs on eight hits and two walks in just 3 1/3 innings Needless to say, owner George Steinbrenner was frustrated.

The Yankees, hypothetically, would trade Pettitte to Philly in exchange for three prospects: righty starter Adam Eaton (the Phillies' top pick in '96), lefty starter Anthony Shumaker, and center fielder Reggie Taylor. General manager Brian Cashman, pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre, and Torre all pleaded with Steinbrenner to reconsider sending Pettitte away. After long talks, the Boss relented and Pettitte stayed a Yankee through the end of the deadline.

Buoyed by the reassurances of confidence, Pettitte pitched much better over the season's final three months into October, and only really faltered in his World Series start against the Braves. The Yankees won the World Series, and in the off-season, the Yankees re-signed Pettitte to a three-year, $25.5 million deal with an $11.5 million player option for 2003.

The contract turned out to be a steal for the Yankees, who received 13.3 rWAR and a 115 ERA+ from Pettitte over the next four seasons. None of those Phillies prospects ever panned out

Source:

And to be fair to , he also sits 2nd all-time in innings pitched in the postseason. (Add 5.2 IP to Verlander's total the table below)

Provided by : Generated 10/20/2023.

Andy's presence at the meeting was instrumental as Pettitte was Cole's idol as a youngster and was pitching at the time of Gerrit holding "Yankee fan today, tomorrow, forever" sign.

Home Stretch! We're finishing up big this week, with posts every day until the 20th. Today's is slightly out of order, because my list got mixed up; Pettitte shouldn't be for another couple of days, but what are we gonna do at this point? By the time I realized it, it was already written. So here we go!

Andy Pettitte

Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor: 128

Career bWAR (18 years): 60.3

Stats: 256-153, 3.85 ERA, 3316 IP, 2448 K, 1.351 WHIP, 117 ERA+

Awards: All-Star x3 (1996, 2001, 2010), 2001 ALCS MVP, 1996 World Series Champion, 1998 World Series Champion, 1999 World Series Champion, 2000 World Series Champion, 2009 World Series Champion

League Leading Stats: Wins (21, 1996), Starts x3 (35, 1997; 35, 2006; 34; 2007), HR/9 (0.3, 1997)

Teams Played For: Yankees (1995-2003, 2007-11, 2012-13), Astros (2004-2006)

Was Andy Pettitte good? It might sound like a weird question, but for real. His surface stats certainly look ok: 256 wins, five rings, most post season wins in history. But how much of that was just a product of being in the right place at the right time?

His somewhat dubious post season record almost certainly was, because Pettitte was almost uniformly pedestrian in the post season, highlighted by a career 5-4, 4.06 ERA line in 13 World Series appearances. He was never a bad post season pitcher, but he was rarely dominant. Instead, he was just always kind of fine-to-good. And on that era of Yankees teams, “fine” was usually good enough for a ring.

And then, of course, there was the PED issue.

There are two mirroring thoughts regarding PED use in baseball; neither is wrong and both are equally valid. The first is that players who used PEDs are cheaters and should not profit from their cheating with everlasting glory in the Hall. The other is that it’s abundantly clear PED use in the ‘90s and early ‘00s was RAMPANT, Major League Baseball actively avoided policing the problem because chicks dig the long ball, so users of PED need to be evaluated within the context of their time and voted on accordingly. Which one of those thoughts should take center stage varies depending on who you ask or how you feel on the matter. Personally, what galls me the most about suspected (or convicted) PED users is the continued dishonesty. By this point it’s CLEAR almost all of the top performers were using, so why not just say so? It’s one thing to categorically deny in the face of no proof, but when you’re caught with your hand in the cookie jar and the horse thyroid crumbs on your face, just man up.

But still, within the context of all that, Andy Pettitte had a pretty damn fine career. He was a stud right out of the gate, finishing third in ROY voting in 1995 and temporarily ushering in an end to the Sterling Hitchcock Era in the Bronx. (Eager to show Steinbrenner just how badly he’d fucked up, Hitchcock proceeded to go 45-47, 4.64 over the next four seasons, pitching for the Mariners and something called the “San Diego Padres.” Rightfully humbled, the Yankees brought him back in 2001.)

The following season, Pettitte led the league in wins for the first and only time of his life and kicked off the most productive portion of his career, from 1996-2003, when he would compile a 137-69 record with 1161 K in 1617 IP, a 1.381 WHIP and 117 ERA+, good for 32.2 bWAR.

During that same span, the Yankees signed Roger Clemens, where he teamed with Pettitte from 1999-2003. Inside MLB, everyone was like “signing late-career Clemens? Do you want HGH? Because that’s how you get HGH.” But everyone in Bud Selig’s office was too busy cashing the checks from record attendance numbers and fucking up the All-Star Game to notice.

From ’96-’03 Pettitte would make two All-Star teams, finish in the top give in Cy Young voting three times, and take home four fucking World Series rings, picking up an ALCS MVP Award for good measure. For his career, Pettitte is the all-time leader in post season victories, with 19.

After the ’03 season, Pettitte was convinced the Yankees weren’t that interested in keeping him around and jumped ship, along with Clemens, to join the Astros. Inside baseball, everyone kind of side-eyed and was like “you know about the HGH, right?” But Selig and his friends were still all “lol he’s a once in a generation athlete. Money please!” So it was fine.

UNTIL IT WASN’T!

In September of ’06, Jason Grimsley got busted by a federal PED investigation. Grimsley, by that point officially retired from a career of sabotaging Major League franchises with his arm, moved on to sabotaging Major League players with his mouth, and threw Pettitte under the bus with a quickness. Pettitte denied the allegations. The following year, Pettitte’s name was listed in the Mitchell Report, at which point he was like “No yeah, I DID use PED. But it was in 2002, and just to recover from an elbow injury. Because I care too much. But that was it, promise.”

That February, Congress was like “yeah?”, to which Pettitte responded “No yeah, ok. There was also 2004. But I stole that dose from my sick father, so it barely counts.”

Meanwhile, in baseball news, Pettitte’s 2005, age 33 season consisted of a 17-9 record, career best 2.39 ERA, career best 1.030 WHIP, career best 177 ERA+ and 6.8 WAR. The following five seasons were just kind of “whatever” for Pettitte, as he’d post a 4.11 ERA, 3.95 FIP and 109 ERA+ in that span. His body fell apart on him in 2010, when he finished the first half 11-2 and made his last All-Star team, then missed all of August and only took the mound five more times that year. Sensing his time had come, Pettitte retired and stayed that way for a full year before getting the itch to come back at the age of 40 and see if he had anything left in the tank.

Turns out, the tank held 42 more big league starts, posting a 3.64 FIP and 117 ERA+, before Pettitte hung his spikes up again, this time for good.

So what do we make of all that? Pettitte almost assuredly used PED more than he admits to. Again, there’s no actual judgement there, because it’s not like MLB was doing anything to stop it and everyone was doing it so the pressure to stay competitive must have been high. Besides, just being in the same locker room with ‘00s Clemens virtually assured you a contact pump, so it was mostly inevitable.

But Pettitte was also one of the “Core Four” players for a Yankees dynasty that included arguably the greatest single-season team of all time and collected four titles in six years. At least two of those four players are going to the Hall of Fame, and one of them could be the first ever unanimous selection. That’s a hefty pedigree.

Statically, Pettitte ticks a lot of the boxes you want to see from an HoF pitcher, even if he is a little light on hardware, excepting for all those rings. Individually, Pettitte never shined enough to win a Cy Young award, rarely led the league in anything, and could be argued to have been as much a product of his environment as he was a genuine talent. But he could hardly be the first player to be so described, and that hasn’t stopped that type of player from being voted in.

But Pettitte will always carry the PED stigma around. And he doesn’t have the sheer volume of numbers that a Bonds or Clemens or A-Rod does. And that’ll move him from a solid HoF bet, to a fringe case and, if the current numbers are anything to go by, a fringe case that’ll probably have to wait for committee vote.

Andy Pettitte played 18 years in the bigs, mostly in the Bronx. He goes into the Hypothetical Hall as a Yankee, where he is third all-time in pitching WAR, third in wins (219), third in innings pitched (2,796.1), first in strikeouts (2,020) and tied for first in starts (438, with Whitey Ford).

Chances of Making the Hall: Better than his chances of being invited to Clemens’ house for cocktails

Odds of Leaving the Ballot in His First Year: 30%