Pure Class: Farewell to Andy Pettitte

One of my favorite baseball moments happened two years ago at the Rogers Centre in Toronto. In a close Blue Jays Yankees game I got to see Mariano Rivera strike out Frank Thomas looking to end the game. As entertaining and amazing as the moment was, I was equally delighted to finally watch one Andrew Eugene Pettitte pitch in person. It is a memory I will forever treasure now that the lefty with the laser eyes has trotted off the mound for the last time.

Although Chip wrote a brief post about Andy Pettitte's impending retirement already, I'd be remiss if I didn't add my own personal thoughts. What kind of Yankee fan would I be? Tomorrow Andy Pettitte will host a press conference announcing his retirement from baseball after a brilliant 16 year career. Although you could make a case for Ron Guidry, I believe that next to Whitey Ford, Andy Pettitte is the best Yankee pitcher of all-time. With a career record of 240-138, Pettitte leaves behind a winning percentage of .635 with 2,251 Ks. A paint the corners pitcher with an amazing sinker and an even better cut fastball, Pettitte never had a season where he walked over 89 batters. In addition his pick-off move was the best in baseball, good for at least five to ten outs a year and he was a work horse, racking up over 200 innings in ten out of the sixteen seasons he pitched.

In the post season Andy was lights out most of the time. With an all-time record 19 post season victories, Pettitte's best game came in only his second year at the age of twenty-four. In a key Game Five matchup with the Atlanta Braves in the 1996 World Series, Pettitte out-dueled Cy Young winner John Smoltz, going 8 1/3 innings allowing only five hits. The Yanks went on to win 1-0 and take the Series in Game 6. You can't discount his veteran savvy in the Yankees 2009 championship run either. At the age of thirty-seven, Andy Pettitte won the series clincher in the ALDS, the ALCS, and the World Series.

Although my co-contributors don't put a lot of stock in "intangibles" it's hard to discount some of Pettitte's. His work ethic was second to none and he was the anchor that often kept that pitching staff together. Aside from being a great club house guy, Pettitte also led by example. His record after a Yankees loss is quite impressive.

New York is also a city that appreciates tough guys and for my money there weren't a lot of pitchers tougher than Pettitte. There was many a time I saw him on the mound gutting it out even though it was obvious his shoulder, or his elbow were bothering him. Unfortunately it was probably his desire to help the Yankees win that drove him to use HGH in 2002. Pettitte has admitted he used HGH because he felt an obligation to return to the team as quickly as possible. Call me myopic, but I believed Pettitte and I still believe him today. Unlike that delusional megalomaniac Roger Clemens, one of the most glory hungry, self serving, and egotistical pitchers ever to mount a pitcher's mound, Pettitte was forthright and honest. It takes a big man to admit when he's wrong (ya listening Roger the Dodger?) especially when he's in the glaring lights of New York City.

Equally as important as his skill on the field were Pettitte's actions off the field. A family man with four children, Pettitte never sought the spotlight but was often active in the community. A man of faith, he also never flaunted his religion but was happy to talk about it if approached. Always accessible with the media and the fans, the 6' 5" 225 lb native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana never shied away from a autograph or a handshake. In an era when too many pro athletes are classless, Pettitte was just all class.

I hold no delusions that Pettitte will one day be a Hall of Famer. His ERA of 3.88 is less than stellar and he never won the Cy Young. But I'll always remember his laser intense focus on the mound, his easy smile, and his big game heroics. Moreover, I think I'll remember Pettitte the man as much as Pettitte the pitcher.

In the "City that Never Sleeps" Pettitte gave New Yorkers something to stay awake for every fifth day. And for that we were all blessed.

Pettitte Announces Retirement

BREAKING NEWS

According to Michael Kay of ESPN New York, Andy Pettitte has informed the Yankees he's decided to call it quits.  Press conference arrangements are being prepared for Friday afternoon.

This has to be a difficult day for both Yankee fans and the organization.  While the Yankees admitted they've already started to plan for life without Pettitte, there was still a lot of hope that he would return to the Bronx to don pinstripes once again.  That dream is gone.  Now, instead of planning for life without Pettitte, they actually have to live life without him.  That's not going to be easy.

Going into the 2011 season, the Yankees will have a rotation that features Sabathia, Hughes, and Burnett at the front end, and some combination of Freddy Garcia, Ivan Nova, Sergio Mitre, and Bartolo Colon for the four and five spots.  While it's not an ideal situation, it's certainly workable.  Luckily, the Yankees' offense and bullpen is good enough that it should be able to cover up the deficiencies of the starting rotation.  Still, they'll need to find a way to trade for at least one starting pitcher (Billingsley, Buehrle, Cook, Dempster, Pinero?) by the July 31st trading deadline if they plan to be serious championship contenders down the stretch.

Andy Pettitte was a member of the Yankees for the bulk of his career.  His career started with the Yankees in 1995 and remained with the team through 2003.  Prior to the 2004 season, Pettitte left the Yankees to join the Houston Astros, and would remain there until after the 2006 season.  In 2007, Pettitte rejoined the Yankees, and had been an integral part of the team ever since.  Over the course of his career, Pettitte produced a 240-138 record with a 3.75 FIP, 6.63 K/9, and 2.34 K/BB and 66.9 fWAR.*  Throughout his career, he was one of the best left-handed starting pitchers in baseball, and had a devastating cutter that was known for inducing ground balls.  Pettitte was a three time All-Star (1996, 2001, 2010), and received votes for the Cy Young Award five times (1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005).

*  By the way...For those of you who think Pettitte doesn't have a legitimate Hall of Fame case, I'd like to point out that Tom Glavine (who most consider to be a slam dunk HoF case) accumulated only 1.6 fWAR (68.5) more than Pettitte despite having a career that spanned six additional seasons.  

Pettitte's postseason track record speaks for itself.   Over the course of his sixteen year career, he posted a 19-10 record with a 3.83 ERA and a 173/72 K/BB ratio in 263 postseason innings.  His 19 postseason wins are the most in major league history.  As a member of the vaunted "Core Four," Pettitte helped return the Bronx Bombers to glory by leading them to five World Championships and seven American League Pennants over a fifteen year period between 1996-2010.

Don't 'Brett Favre' Me, Bro!

Yankees General Manager has but one small request to Andy Pettitte, "Don't Brett Favre us."

"He’s opting not to play right now but that might change it might not. I told him don’t ‘Brett Favre’ us. You got to be all in and fully dedicated to play. Do I need him? I need him, but I don’t want him to play if his heart’s not in it.”

As much as I love the newly coined phrase "Don't Brett Favre us," wouldn't "Don't Roger Clemens us" be more appropriate?  Clemens was jerking around teams long before Brett Favre.  If anyone deserves that dishonorable distinction, it's Clemens.

Also, I don't think Pettitte is 'Brett Favre-ing' the Yankees.  He's been considering retirement for a few years now, and it looks like he's finally ready to give it the old college try.  It's possible that he'll get the itch to play sometime in late March or early April, but he and the Yankees will cross that bridge if and when that happens.  He's done the right thing by informing the Yankees that he doesn't plan on starting the 2011 season in uniform.  That's the difference between Favre/Clemens and Pettitte.  Pettitte is man enough to tell his team to move on without him, regardless of the potential consequences.

Pettitte Will Not Start 2011 Playing Baseball

According to Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News, Andy Pettitte has informed the Yankees that he will not be playing baseball to start the 2011 season. 

"I don't think he's determined if he's officially finished or not, but he's chosen at this stage at least not to start in 2011," Cashman said Wednesday at the baseball owners' quarterly meetings in Arizona. "If that ever changes he'll call us. We're not going to hound him or bother him."

(snip)

"These are personal decisions and they're based on him wanting to be home and every year it's been something tugging at him, and it's been tugging at him even more, and that's understandable, and so right now he's not someone we can focus on," Cashman said.

I know what the article says, but I don't think it takes a genius to read between the lines on this one.  Pettitte has decided that it's time for him to step away from the game, and this is his way of doing so quietly.  By not officially retiring, he leaves the door open for a potential comeback.  Will he ever comeback?  Doubtful, but that's not the point.  Unlike certain athletes who shall remain nameless, Pettitte has never been enamored with the spotlight.  While he loved pitching under the bright lights of New York, he never allowed it to consume him.  Pettitte's a quiet, humble family man.  In taking this route, Pettitte can slowly fade away from consciousness without having to go through the pomp and circumstance of a teary-eyed retirement press conference.

As both Corrye and I have both discussed in detail, Pettitte's retirement leaves a gaping hole in the Yankees rotation.  In my article titled Potential Targets for the Yankees, I identified five obtainable productive starters for whom the Yankees could trade.  Four of those pitchers are still available.  While I believe Cashman when he says that he's actively "out there," and I agree that the pitching market is "thin", the cupboard is far from bare.  To get the pitcher they desire, they may have to give up some of their prized prospects.  The Yankees have plenty of quality young catching depth in Montero, Sanchez, and Romine, and there are plenty of teams looking for major league quality starting catchers.  The Yankees also have some good minor league starting pitching prospects in Betances, Brackman, Noesi, and Banuelos.  If Cashman is going to nab the middle of the rotation starter he desperately needs, he's going to need to be aggressive.  He will probably need to include at least one (maybe two) of the above players, along with one or two high risk/reward prospects, in any trade. 

How vital is re-signing Pettitte for the Yankees Rotation?

With the Cliff Lee issue long since decided and Matt Garza going to the Cubs, it's starting to be crunch time for the Yankees rotation. Pitchers and catchers report next month and the Yankees have made no significant moves in the off-season.

As it stands now the Yankees starting rotation consists of CC Sabathia, AJ Burnett, Phil Hughes, Ivan Nova, and Sergio Mitre. Obviously Sabathia is solid and consistent, racking up 40 wins, almost 400 strikeouts, and an ERA of 3.275 in two years with the Yankees. After that though the possible results of the Yankees rotation is more distressing than Mel Gibson at a Jewish synagogue on Yom Kippur.

AJ Burnett is coming off a horrible 2010 in which he went 10-15 with an ERA over 5 and didn't even reach 200 innings pitched. It remains to be seen if 2010 was a fluke season or the beginning of the end for the thirty-four year old right-hander. While Phil Hughes continues to develop with each passing year and seems to have settled into a starting role, questions remain about his durability down the stretch and he needs to do better than a 4.19 ERA. Ivan Nova had a strong season for Scranton Wilkes Barre last year going 12-3 with a stellar 2.86 ERA and only 48 walks. However, as of this moment he's a young unproven commodity with only 3 starts to his name. Then there is Sergio Mitre who I have zero confidence in. Not only does he seem to have a sub-par fastball but he's 3-6 so far with the Yankees and given up a whopping 17 HR in just over 105 innings pitched.

No one seems to want to talk about the elephant in the room either, namely the Yankees's lack of left handed starting pitching. While the pitchers the Yankees may bring up during the course of the season including Hector Noesi, Andrew Brackman, David Phelps, Adam Warren, DJ Mitchell, and Dellin Betances are all fine pitchers, most are quite young and NONE of them are left handers. That means at this point the Yankees have exactly one starting left handed pitcher in Sabathia.

Given all of this information how important is it to sign Pettitte? In a word: very. You cannot go into a season where you have only one lefty in your starting rotation and no lefty prospect to bring up during the regular season. Pettitte is coming off his best season in recent years despite an injury shortened season. He posted an ERA under four for the first time since 2004 and had a WHIP of 1.271 with only 41 walks. Pettitte's record after a loss is impeccable and for the most part he is very durable. His pick off move is the best in baseball and is good for 5 to 10 outs a year as well. While it is unlikely that he will be able to put up 200 plus innings this year, you can't ignore his success in the postseason, and let's face it the postseason is where it counts most with the Yankees. He holds the record for most starts and innings pitched with a 19-10 record and a 3.83 ERA. Andy Pettitte also won three game clinching victories in 2009 and as a member of five World Series teams it is patently obvious he knows how to win. Even though leadership is an intangible you also can't ignore how much his presence, experience, and knowledge will bring to young pitchers either. That very well could be a stabilizing force if the Yankees trend toward younger pitchers in 2011.

While the Yankees have paid Pettitte around ten million dollars a year over the last four years, they may have to up their offer to fifteen or sixteen million. Giving Andy's track record and New York's desperate need of another proven left-hander, I'd say it would be a worthy investment. (It's not like the Yankees don't have cash to spend after the Cliff Lee deal fell through in any case. So what if they overpay him a little?) Bottom line though is this is up to Andy. At this point he's leaning towards retirement. With his home, wife, and children in Texas, five World Series rings, and two twenty win seasons under his belt, I don't think he has much more to gain by coming back. He might want a shot at becoming the Yankees all-time leader in wins but he needs twenty-four to overtake Whitey Ford. I'm not sure if that goal even motivates him. If Pettitte does come back it will be because he still loves the competition and wants to be with him teammates.

One thing's for certain though, the Yankees desperately need a left handed pitcher. At this point Pettitte has to be there best option. And barring that...well there aren't a lot of options are there unless a trade materializes, which is always possible. The Yankees know how much they need Pettitte. It remains to be seen whether Pettitte still needs the Yankees.

Pettitte Leaning Toward Retirement?

And the hits keep on coming for the Yankees...

A person with knowledge of Pettitte’s thinking, who requested anonymity because the 38-year-old left-hander is still deliberating and nothing has been announced publicly, pinned the chance of a Pettitte return at just 30 percent.

“There is a very real possibility that he will retire,” the person said.

Cashman didn’t rule out a return by Pettitte, but with Christmas approaching, he is proceeding with the rest of his offseason plans as if the pitcher will not be back.

“As of right now, he’s not intending on playing,” Cashman said.

A 30% chance?  Ouch.  Is it just me or can feel the tension in the Yankee front office from where your sitting?  Everything that could go wrong for the Yankees this offseason has gone wrong.  This has to feel like the bizarro world to Cashman and the Brothers Stein.

As of right now, there aren't a lot of great pitching options for the Yankees either on the free agent or trade markets.  If Pettitte was announce he was officially retiring tomorrow, the Yankees rotation would be incredibly shallow:

1. C.C. Sabathia
2. Phil Hughes
3. A.J. Burnett
4. Ivan Nova?
5. ???

Yikes!  Sabathia and Hughes look like as good of a 1-2 punch as any in baseball.  After Hughes, it gets ugly in a hurry.

Burnett was maddeningly inconsistent in 2010, and no one is sure which Burnett will show up in 2011.  On one hand, he appeared to be a little unlucky with home runs and on balls in play, which inflated his ERA and affected his W-L record.  On the other, for the second season in a row, his contact rate increased, while his strikeout and whiff rates plummeted.  Of even more concern is Burnett's fastball velocity.  After registering an average fastball velocity of 94.2 MPH in 2009, it dropped to 93.3 MPH in 2010.  While this may not seem like a huge drop, it is when you extrapolate it over the course of an entire season.  Furthermore, his plus-curveball became a liability last season, registering -3.9 runs on Fangraphs pitch value scale.  Burnett has made a career out of being a strikeout pitcher.  Without a strong fastball and knee buckling curve ball, Burnett loses the one asset that made him one of the better pitchers in baseball.  The Yankees need him to rediscover his pre-2010 self if they're going to have any shot of getting beyond the first round of the playoffs.

Then there's the issue of Ivan Nova.  Nova, 24, has never been considered to be one of the Yankees top ten prospects.  While being in a team's list of top ten prospects is not a pre-requisite to being a solid major league player, it doesn't hurt either.  Nova is a ground ball pitcher that neither has good control, nor induces strikeouts--or as I like to call it, a recipe for long-term mediocrity.  While a pitcher of Nova's caliber would be fine as a number four for the Royals or Pirates, it just doesn't work with the Yankees.  When the Yankees consistently put together a team with an average annual payroll around $200M, you tend to expect a deeper starting rotation.  Nova might be acceptable as a number five starter, but even that's a stretch at this point.

If Pettitte does retire, it would be a shame.  He still has plenty left in the tank as he put up healthy K/9 (7.05), K/BB (2.46), and ground ball (43.9%) rates to go along with a 3.85 FIP in 2010.  If Pettitte chose to return for 2011, it would allow the Yankees to slide Burnett and Nova down another spot, thus aligning their rotation a little more efficiently.  Furthermore, it would reduce the need to trade for an ace (or near ace) quality pitcher.  Instead of focusing on the Felix Hernandez's and Josh Johnson's of the world, they could focus on trading for solid, middle of the rotation starters like Mark Buehrle and Joe Blanton.  These players would not only put less strain on the Yankee farm system, but also allow them to stash Nova in the bullpen or in AAA.

While I hope Pettitte doesn't retire, it appears he's probably already made his decision (and possibly notified the Yankee front office).  Despite being a Yankee (semi-kidding here), he's one of the classiest players to step on a baseball field in recent memory.  Did he make his share of mistakes?  Absolutely, but he owned up to his mistakes each time.  That's both commendable and refreshing--especially when so many players "misremember" certain circumstances and choose "not to talk about the past."