As you are aware, for the second time Andy Pettitte is calling it a career in Major League Baseball. Bloggers around the country have been consistent in the belief that he falls a little short of the Hall of Fame threshold. Recently, our own, DDT posted a brilliant piece on the what Wins mean for a Hall of Fame induction and he touched on Pettitte, who until the end of this year’s regular season is the active leader in Wins.
“The active leader in wins, Andy Pettitte is also the active leader in games started, innings pitched, and strikeouts, and the left-hander will continue to add to those totals before he retires. Again. When he retires—again—and whether he will stay retired is another story; he retired following the 2010 season, but attending the New York Yankees' spring training camp as an instructor in 2012 renewed his desire to play, and he resumed pitching in the Major Leagues in May of that year. What might be the case is that even if Pettitte pads his résumé for another year or two, he has probably already written his legacy.
The question becomes: Still-active or not, is that legacy strong enough to put him into the Hall of Fame? Pettitte's career, which began in 1995, coincides with the rise of the Yankees as a powerhouse that saw them appear in the World Series seven times between 1996 and 2009, winning five of those Series, and it might not be such a coincidence: Along with shortstop Derek Jeter, catcher Jorge Posada, and relief pitcher Mariano Rivera, Pettitte is considered to be one of the "Core Four" of those championship Yankees. Indeed, Pettitte is the lifetime leader in postseason wins (19), games started (44), and innings pitched (276.2), and is second in strikeouts (183), and fifth in games pitched (44). This also includes his postseason appearances with the Houston Astros in 2005, for whom Pettitte pitched from 2004 to 2006 before returning to the Yankees.
Pettitte has been in double digits in wins for 14 of his 18 seasons, and for a 14-year period, from 1996 to 2009, he averaged 16 wins against 9 losses (.633 winning percentage), winning 21 games twice and 19 games once; 31 games started (he led the league in this category three times); 197 innings pitched; and 145 strikeouts while generating a 3.89 ERA, a 117 ERA+, and a 3.6 bWAR. With Rivera, Pettitte holds the Major League record for win-save combinations, in which Pettitte earned the win and Rivera the save, with 81 (70 during regular-season games, 11 in the postseason), which also points to a curious fact about Pettitte's career: in 510 games started, Pettitte has only 25 complete games.
Pettitte began his career after interventionist bullpens had been established as part of contemporary pitching strategy, and he ranks seventh (tied with Tim Hudson) among active pitchers. So, it is no demerit to Pettitte that he is not a starting pitcher from a bygone era who battled through the entire game—baseball is simply not played like that any longer. Yet it is curious that Pettitte isn't the leader in complete games among active pitchers, particularly since the runner-up to him in games started, Tim Hudson, who is tied with Pettitte in complete games, has made 83 fewer starts than Pettitte. The active leader in complete games, Roy Halladay (67), has made 125 fewer starts, and if Halladay is an outlier (which, as we have seen, makes him a probable Hall of Famer), consider that a number of pitchers, all of whom have started fewer games than Pettitte, have either more complete games than Pettitte or have a higher proportion of complete games than Pettitte.
Several pitchers with 100 or fewer starts than Pettitte have already passed Pettitte in complete games (Pettitte's last complete game, by the way, came in 2006), while Cliff Lee with 200 fewer starts than Pettitte has already passed him. Meanwhile, Felix Hernandez, James Shields, and Justin Verlander are only a few complete games back of Pettitte with half as many starts.
The point is not to show which pitchers are willing or able to "gut it out," but this comparison suggests indirectly that Pettitte might not have been such a dominant or "big-game" pitcher over his career. It is instructive that in this sample Pettitte ranks last in shutouts; next-to-last is Verlander, who has already passed Pettitte in this category in half as many starts (and two of Verlander's blanks were no-hitters). Over his career, Pettitte has averaged 6.3 innings per start and 101 pitches per start, giving the impression that he is something of a "hothouse flower," designed only to get his team to the later innings.
Five times Pettitte has placed in the top ten for Cy Young voting, with his best showing in 1996 when he was runner-up to the Toronto Blue Jays' Pat Hentgen, but neither in 1996 nor in any other year was Pettitte robbed of the award. In 18 seasons, Pettitte has been named to an All-Star team only three times, which is not necessarily an indictment as the honor is subject to partiality and is based only on a half-year's performance. However, his seasonal-average bWAR during his 14-year peak was 3.6; a bWAR of at least 5.0 is considered to be at the All-Star level, and Pettitte generated a per-season bWAR of at least 5.0 only three times in his career. Pettitte posted an ERA under 3.00 only three times, and one of those seasons was his return season of 2012 when he started only 12 games and pitched 75.1 innings. As it stands, his career ERA of 3.88 would be the highest of any Hall of Fame pitcher unless Jack Morris, with a 3.90 ERA and also at the 250-win mark, is elected next year.
In fairness, though, Pettitte has pitched most of his career in the American League East, the toughest division in the Major Leagues, even if his Yankees were the toughest of those teams a number of times. Indeed, Pettitte has enjoyed career run support averaging 5.4 runs per game while the major-league average during his career has been 4.7 runs per game. Pettitte has had 40 career tough losses, meaning he pitched a quality start—at least six innings and allowing three earned runs or fewer—but his team could not score enough runs for him, and 11 of those came during his three seasons with the Houston Astros. He has 41 career losses saved, or games in which he was in line to get the loss when he left but the relief staff and his offense at least tied the game subsequently, against only 34 wins lost, or games in which he left the game with the lead but the bullpen allowed the opposition to at least tie the game.
Unmentioned until now has been the specter of PEDs that clouds examination of Pettitte's career. Having been named in the Mitchell Report in 2007, Pettitte admitted to using human growth hormone (HGH) twice in 2002, explaining that it was to enable him to heal more quickly from an injury. However, he admitted subsequently that he had used HGH again in 2004, and he also claimed that friend and teammate Roger Clemens had told him that he, Clemens, had used HGH in 1999 or 2000. Clemens then stated that Pettitte "misremembered" the comment, but by then the PEDs taint was enveloping them both, with Clemens becoming the face of drug cheating in baseball along with Barry Bonds.
Leaving aside how Andy Pettitte will be regarded with respect to PEDs come voting time, he could be elected to the Hall of Fame for his 250-plus wins and his postseason pitching record, but both underscore his dependence on his team: As has been the theme throughout this article, wins are a team-dependent statistic, and a pitcher has to be on a winning team in order to get to the postseason in the first place.”
I defy any Baseball writer to sum up Andy Pettitte’s Hall of Fame chances better than DDT can.
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