Andy Pettitte And The Hall Of Fame

Yeah, yeah.  The Yankees (yawn) won the World Series last night.  Now everybody is hyping up the Yankees’ players again.  This time, it’s Andy Pettitte.  And they want him to get Hall of Fame consideration already.  Not so fast.  Let’s take a look.

Pettitte has played 15 seasons, with the Yankees and Astros.  Or wherever Roger Clemens told him to go.  The best pitchers on those teams have been Jack McDowell, David Wells, David Cone, El Duque, Mike Mussina, Clemens, Roy Oswalt, Chien Ming-Wang and CC Sabathia.  But you could say Pettitte was the best pitcher on the Yankees in 1996, 1997, 2000 and 2003.  He’s never won a Cy Young Award (he got second in 1996), and in the those years, the best pitchers in baseball were guys like John Smoltz, Clemens, Greg Maddux, Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson and Tom Glavine.  He was often very good, but never the best.

It might help Pettitte that he’s played in 12 post seasons and has 5 rings, including 1996 and 2000, when he was his team’s ace.  He’s even gone 18-9 in postseason games.  And he hasn’t been in his prime since about 2006 and has continued to pitch moderately well.  But he kinda played 11 of those post seasons with the Yankees.  And they’re the Yankees.  They always have a disgusting offense and a closer named Mariano Rivera.  This year was no different.

Then you have the 2006 steroid accusation and the Mitchell Report.  And the 2007 admission that he used HGH in 2002 for an elbow injury.  And the 2008 admission that he used HGH in 2004.  Then he threw his dreamlover, Roger Clemens under the bus.  But he admitted it, right?  Who knows what that’ll do for the guy.

If we look past his Yankees steroids and Steroids steroids, does the guy have the numbers, anyway?  Not really.  He’s currently tied for 95th all-time on the Hall of Fame Standards list.  And that’s just pitchers.  He’d be a below-average Hall of Famer, at best.  He’s still behind guys like Dwight Gooden, Jack Morris, David Cone, Bob Welch and Dennis Martinez.  Gooden, Welch and Kevin Brown are actually the three most comparable pitchers (currently) to Pettitte.  And those guys aren’t getting in.

I think Pettitte has to get 300 wins.  Right now he’s 63rd all-time with 229.  At his current pace, he’d need around 5 more seasons to get there.  We’ll talk in 2014.  Then we’ll also see if his roid elbow is still an issue.