{"id":582,"date":"2011-02-09T09:30:02","date_gmt":"2011-02-09T14:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=582"},"modified":"2013-01-13T11:08:53","modified_gmt":"2013-01-13T16:08:53","slug":"pettitte-was-a-very-good-pitcher-but-no-hall-of-famer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=582","title":{"rendered":"Pettitte was a very good pitcher… but no Hall of Famer"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Pettitte stares down another hitter. Photo noahhunt.org<\/p><\/div>\n

Andy Pettitte<\/strong>‘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.\u00a0 Si.com’s Joe Sheehan<\/strong> wrote this opinion piece<\/a> after Pettitte’s retirement, saying that “Modern era of baseball demands Cooperstown find place for Pettitte.”\u00a0 I won’t really go into his arguments except to say that he believed that Bert Blyleven<\/strong> was “wildly overqualified” for the hall, a position that I “wildly” disagree with and posted as much here<\/a> about a month ago.\u00a0 So its doubtful that I’d agree with his sentiments.<\/p>\n

(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).<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Joe Lemire<\/a><\/strong> seems to agree with Pettitte’s own assertion that he is not Hall-worthy, Buster Olney<\/a><\/strong> thinks he’s a borderline candidate but th inks that he may be a Veteran’s committee inductee some day, and Jayson Stark<\/a><\/strong> thinks he’s not quite Hall worthy.<\/p>\n

For me, Pettitte is NOT a Hall of Famer.\u00a0 His career numbers<\/a> show him to be a consistent hurler who was essentially a very good #3 pitcher on a number of very good Yankees teams.\u00a0 He finishes his career with a 240-138 record, a career 3.88 era, 1.357 career whip and a 117 career ERA+.\u00a0 His season-ending accomplishments include:<\/p>\n