Pettitte stares down another hitter. Photo noahhunt.org
Andy Pettitte‘s retirement (see my previous post for thoughts on its effect on the Yankees season) has lead to a series of inevitable posts about his Hall of Fame worthiness. Si.com’s Joe Sheehan wrote this opinion piece after Pettitte’s retirement, saying that “Modern era of baseball demands Cooperstown find place for Pettitte.” I won’t really go into his arguments except to say that he believed that Bert Blyleven was “wildly overqualified” for the hall, a position that I “wildly” disagree with and posted as much here about a month ago. So its doubtful that I’d agree with his sentiments.
(Note; for the purposes of this article we will ignore the fact that Pettitte’s chances of getting voted into the hall in light of his PED usage admissions are somewhere between zero and nil anyway, and just think of his career in its merits).
So far, from what I’ve seen from the baseball columnists who have opined on the subject, there seems to be about a 50-50 split pro and con for the Hall. Joe Lemire seems to agree with Pettitte’s own assertion that he is not Hall-worthy, Buster Olney thinks he’s a borderline candidate but th inks that he may be a Veteran’s committee inductee some day, and Jayson Stark thinks he’s not quite Hall worthy.
For me, Pettitte is NOT a Hall of Famer. His career numbers show him to be a consistent hurler who was essentially a very good #3 pitcher on a number of very good Yankees teams. He finishes his career with a 240-138 record, a career 3.88 era, 1.357 career whip and a 117 career ERA+. His season-ending accomplishments include:
- 3rd place in his Rookie of the Year voting (losing out to Marty Cordova and Garrett Anderson)
- 5 years (out of 16) receiving Cy Young votes, though only one of those 5 years was actually meaningful in terms of the voting. He finished 2nd to Pat Hentgen in the 1996 voting.
- 3 all star appearances.
His enduring legacy is his post season career, where he has more appearances and more wins than any other pitcher. He pitched in the post season in 13 of his 16 professional seasons, had 42 starts altogether, and compiled a 19-10 record with a 3.83 era and 1.304 whip. These numbers are more or less in line with his career numbers, indicating that he was a good pitcher but not great.
I would be a stingy hall voter. For me the qualifications of a Hall of Fame pitcher include all the analysis of career achievements, but also some semantical arguments:
- Was the pitcher ever the best player on his team for a consistent period of time? (no)
- Was the pitcher a guaranteed shut-down hurler who was worth the price of admission? (no)
- Was the pitcher regularly an all star and frequently STARTED the all star game? (no)
- Were you, as a fan of the opposing team, ever “scared” to hear that Pettitte was going against your team? (not really).
At the bottom of Pettitte’s B-R page, his Hall of Fame Monitor score puts him at 42 .. which is better than Jack Morris but below the 50 range that generally qualifies a player as a HoFamer (this is Bill James‘ concoction and the one overall HoF score that I agree with). But also more telling is the list of pitchers that Pettitte is most like. Top two: David Wells, Kevin Brown. . Ironic that these guys were also middle-of-the-rotation Yankees hurlers who gained many wins by virtue of being along for the ride on one of the best teams ever constructed (the late 1990s Yankees teams).
Bottom line; Pettitte was a good teammate and by all accounts a nice guy who made an awful lot of money in his career and goes down as one of the most decorated Yankees ever. But he’s not one of the BEST ever.