Andy Pettitte

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Andy Pettitte

2020 Hall of Fame Ballot Series: Andy Pettitte

Five facts about Andy Pettitte:

Andy Pettitte had 20 or more traditional pitcher wins twice in his career (1996 and 2003), leading the league once. He also led the American League in games started three times.

Pettitte pitched the equivalent of somewhat more than one full regular season in postseason games over his career. For his career, Pettitte started 44 postseason games, pitching 276.2 innings, with a traditional won-lost record of 19-11 and a 3.81 ERA that was virtually identical to his career regular-season ERA of 3.85. Pettitte’s 19 postseason wins and 272.2 postseason innings are both major-league records.

Pettitte hit one home run in his career, against Chan Ho Park of the San Diego Padres on August 11, 2006, in the fourth inning to bring the Houston Astros into a 2-2 tie in a game the Astros – and Pettitte – would go on to win 4-2.

Mariano Rivera saved 72 of Andy Pettitte’s victories, a major-league record for a starting pitcher - relief pitcher combination.

The last game of Andy Pettitte’s major-league career was the fifth-best game of his major-league career, as measured by Player won-lost record (net pWins). Pettitte pitched a complete-game five-hitter with two walks and five strikeouts as the Yankees beat the Houston Astros, 2 - 1.

The first two tables below present Andy Pettitte's career as measured by Player won-lost records, in and out of context.

Season	Team	Age	Games	pWins	pLosses	pWORL	pWOPA

Basic Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1995	NYA	23	31	10.6	9.8	2.4	1.0
1996	NYA	24	35	14.9	10.8	6.1	4.3
1997	NYA	25	35	13.9	8.2	7.4	5.9
1998	NYA	26	33	13.6	11.9	3.7	1.9
1999	NYA	27	31	11.7	11.5	2.0	0.4
2000	NYA	28	32	12.9	10.7	4.1	2.5
2001	NYA	29	31	13.2	10.5	4.6	2.9
2002	NYA	30	22	9.5	6.2	4.5	3.4
2003	NYA	31	33	14.5	11.6	5.0	3.2
2004	HOU	32	15	5.6	5.0	1.6	1.0
2005	HOU	33	33	14.0	9.8	6.8	5.3
2006	HOU	34	38	14.8	14.6	3.1	1.2
2007	NYA	35	36	12.4	10.7	3.5	1.9
2008	NYA	36	33	12.9	13.5	1.5	-0.4
2009	NYA	37	32	12.8	10.3	4.4	2.8
2010	NYA	38	21	8.6	6.2	3.5	2.5
2011	-	39	-	-	-	-	-
2012	NYA	40	12	4.1	3.9	0.8	0.3
2013	NYA	41	30	10.7	9.9	2.4	1.0
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			533	210.6	175.1	67.4	41.1
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			44	17.0	14.2	5.5	3.4
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			577	227.6	189.3	72.9	44.4

Season	Team	Age	Games	eWins	eLosses	eWORL	eWOPA

Expected Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1995	NYA	23	31	10.8	9.6	2.7	1.3
1996	NYA	24	35	14.4	11.3	5.0	3.3
1997	NYA	25	35	13.6	8.5	6.8	5.3
1998	NYA	26	33	12.9	12.6	2.3	0.5
1999	NYA	27	31	11.4	11.7	1.5	-0.1
2000	NYA	28	32	12.3	11.4	2.9	1.2
2001	NYA	29	31	13.2	10.5	4.6	3.0
2002	NYA	30	22	8.8	6.9	3.2	2.1
2003	NYA	31	33	14.2	11.9	4.4	2.6
2004	HOU	32	15	5.7	4.9	1.8	1.2
2005	HOU	33	33	13.4	10.4	5.7	4.2
2006	HOU	34	38	14.5	14.9	2.5	0.6
2007	NYA	35	36	12.4	10.7	3.5	1.9
2008	NYA	36	33	13.4	12.9	2.6	0.8
2009	NYA	37	32	12.1	11.0	2.9	1.3
2010	NYA	38	21	8.0	6.8	2.4	1.4
2011	-	39	-	-	-	-	-
2012	NYA	40	12	4.6	3.5	1.7	1.2
2013	NYA	41	30	10.7	9.9	2.4	1.0
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			533	206.4	179.4	59.1	32.9
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			44	16.7	14.5	4.8	2.7
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			577	223.0	194.0	64.0	35.6

This is Andy Pettitte's second year on the Hall-of-Fame ballot. I wrote articles about the Hall-of-Fame candidates last year when Andy Pettitte first appeared on the BBWAA ballot. Much of these earlier articles are somewhat obsolete due to changes to my Player won-lost records over time. But, for the sake of posterity, these old articles are linked at the end of my general article on Player won-lost records and the Hall of Fame.

Vote Prediction

Andy Pettitte debuted last year with 42 votes, or 9.9% of the electorate. Perhaps appropriately, this put Pettitte directly between two players who share a weakness with Pettitte: Gary Sheffield and Sammy Sosa, who, like Pettitte, were connected to performance-enhancing drug use during their careers. Obviously, you can't identify a trend based on Pettitte's one-year vote total, but one could perhaps look to Sheffield and Sosa to see if their vote totals have shown much, if any, trend.

Gary Sheffield's vote totals in his five years on the ballot have ranged from 11.1% to 13.6%. That's not much of a trend. Sammy Sosa (whose vote total was considerably closer to Pettitte's than Sheffield's) has been on the ballot for seven years. After debuting at 12.5% of the vote, Sosa's last six vote percentages have ranged from 6.6% to 8.6%. Again, it's hard to see a lot of trend there - in 2017, Sosa got 38 votes for 8.6% of the total vote; in 2019, he got 36 votes for 8.5% of the total vote.

The excellent Hall-of-Fame tracker put together by Ryan Thibodeaux includes a column titled "If No 10-Player Limit, Would Have Also Voted For:". Pettitte was named 3 times there. The only players named less frequently were Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Curt Schilling.

Put it all together and I am skeptical that Andy Pettitte will gain any additional traction. I predict that his vote percentage remains unchanged at 9.9%.

Player Won-Lost Records and Andy Pettitte

Andy Pettitte's Hall-of-Fame case is broadly similar to Jack Morris's Hall-of-Fame case. Pettitte had the most pitcher wins in the first decade of the 2000s (2000 - 2009) and pitched in eight World Series, of which his team won five. He doesn't have the defining game that Morris had in Game 7 of the 1991 World Series, but, frankly, he has a stronger case outside of that - more wins, a better ERA relative to league in both the regular season and postseason. But like Morris, Pettitte doesn't particularly have a case as the actual best pitcher of the first decade of the 2000s - Randy Johnson, for example, won only five fewer games but three more Cy Young awards in the decade.

But that said, Andy Pettitte was a good pitcher for a long time and that has value. The next two tables try to gauge just how Andy Pettitte fits within the pitchers of his generation. The seasons used here extend just before and just after Pettitte's career to encompass a 25-year period (actually, 26 seasons) from 1990 - 2015.

First, just raw pWins. The top 25 pitchers over this 26-year period in pWins, which tie directly to team wins, but which, unlike traditional pitcher wins, are shared with batters, baserunners, and fielders as well.

		Most pWins, 1990 - 2015: Pitchers
	Player	pWins	pLosses	pWOPA	pWORL
1	Greg Maddux	282.5	229.4	72.8	104.7
2	Randy 'Big Unit' Johnson	268.9	209.4	70.2	101.8
3	Tom Glavine	251.5	219.9	47.7	77.1
4	Roger Clemens	236.0	172.1	69.1	96.7
5	Mike Mussina	223.1	174.0	52.7	80.1
6	John Smoltz	220.2	182.6	49.1	75.5
7	Andy Pettitte	210.6	175.1	41.1	67.4
8	Curt Schilling	204.6	170.2	45.9	70.3
9	Jamie Moyer	203.3	193.8	15.6	42.6
10	Tim Hudson	197.8	167.5	40.8	64.5
11	David Wells	196.2	170.4	30.4	55.4
12	Mark Buehrle	195.0	175.8	23.5	49.0
13	Pedro J. Martinez	192.4	137.8	62.6	84.7
14	Livan Hernandez	192.3	215.1	-8.8	17.1
15	J. Kevin Brown	191.8	152.3	47.8	70.3
16	Kenny Rogers	191.1	179.8	14.0	40.1
17	Tim Wakefield	189.8	189.4	3.8	30.5
18	C.C. Sabathia	183.8	154.3	33.6	56.6
19	Bartolo Colon	183.2	170.2	18.3	42.4
20	Javier Vazquez	177.4	174.6	12.0	35.0
21	Roy Halladay	170.9	133.2	43.4	64.0
22	Derek Lowe	167.5	152.5	21.9	44.1
23	Kevin Millwood	167.2	170.6	4.5	26.9
24	A.J. Burnett	167.1	172.2	3.8	26.1
25	Chuck Finley	165.6	152.0	16.5	38.2

Personally, I think that pWins are more useful when they are put into context measured against some non-zero baseline. The next table, then, shows the top 25 pitchers over this 26-year period in pWins over replacement level.

		Most pWins over Replacement Level, 1990 - 2015: Pitchers
	Player	pWins	pLosses	pWOPA	pWORL
1	Greg Maddux	282.5	229.4	72.8	104.7
2	Randy 'Big Unit' Johnson	268.9	209.4	70.2	101.8
3	Roger Clemens	236.0	172.1	69.1	96.7
4	Pedro J. Martinez	192.4	137.8	62.6	84.7
5	Mike Mussina	223.1	174.0	52.7	80.1
6	Mariano Rivera	125.9	61.1	61.4	79.0
7	Tom Glavine	251.5	219.9	47.7	77.1
8	John Smoltz	220.2	182.6	49.1	75.5
9	Curt Schilling	204.6	170.2	45.9	70.3
10	J. Kevin Brown	191.8	152.3	47.8	70.3
11	Andy Pettitte	210.6	175.1	41.1	67.4
12	Tim Hudson	197.8	167.5	40.8	64.5
13	Roy Halladay	170.9	133.2	43.4	64.0
14	C.C. Sabathia	183.8	154.3	33.6	56.6
15	David Wells	196.2	170.4	30.4	55.4
16	Roy Oswalt	147.3	123.3	33.9	51.1
17	Trevor Hoffman	100.2	62.7	35.0	50.3
18	Johan Santana	128.0	97.3	34.9	50.2
19	Mark Buehrle	195.0	175.8	23.5	49.0
20	Clayton Kershaw	109.0	81.2	35.5	47.3
21	David Cone	149.3	125.3	28.5	46.7
22	Felix Hernandez	139.6	114.1	28.2	45.5
23	Kevin Appier	159.3	137.6	24.9	45.1
24	Derek Lowe	167.5	152.5	21.9	44.1
25	Jamie Moyer	203.3	193.8	15.6	42.6

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide if the results here constitute a Hall-of-Fame case for Andy Pettitte.

Article last updated: December 15, 2019

2020 Hall of Fame Ballot Series

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