The evolution of Andy Pettitte
By
When Randy Johnson won his 300th game earlier this season, many pundits wondered whether any current pitcher would accomplish the feat. The state of pitching has changed considerably over the past decade, and pitchers just don’t put themselves in positions to rack up wins like they used to. Just look at the recent dearth of 20-game winners. Since few active pitchers are feasibly within striking distance, many determined no, we would not see another 300-game winner.
Yet one of my favorite baseball minds, Dave Pinto, wondered whether Andy Pettitte could win 300. The path wouldn’t be easy, but with 226 wins and a competitive streak, Pinto thought it possible. Well, that and a number of other factors, including his ability to induce ground balls and the Yankees presumed willingness to continue bringing him back if he remains effective. There was a thought that he would move his family back to Houston after this season, but given his effectiveness on the mound — not to mention his recent hints of wanting to play another season — we could see Pettitte again in 2010.
At this point last year, Andy looked cooked. He had just given up six runs to the Red Sox, and would give up six to the Blue Jays in his next start. His ERA rose from 3.86 on July 20 to 4.52 by the end of August. By season’s end, many wondered if it would be wise to bring him back, even if only to be the fifth starter. After protracted off-season negotiations the two sides agreed to a deal, though one laden with incentives, rather than a hefty guarantee. It was clear that the Yankees weren’t convinced Pettitte could produce again.
He has steadily erased those doubts this season, especially of late. Early on he had his struggles, including battling a sore back. It came to a head right before the All-Star Break when he allowed six runs over 4.1 innings to the Angels, bringing his ERA up to 4.85. Both he and Joba Chamberlain had struggled for a few starts leading into the break, and there was much concern over the Yanks ability to compete in the second half with such big question marks at the back end of the rotation — especially because Sergio Mitre was the guy charged with the fifth spot.
Since then Pettitte has been nothing but gold, outside the sixth inning on Friday against the Sox. He’s never been a guy who racks up the strikeouts (other than his first year in the NL), but he’s been doing that in the second half, fanning 54 in 51.2 innings. Not only that, but he’s done an excellent job of keeping the ball on the ground, a circa 1.50 GB/FB ratio, far higher than he achieved in the first half (1.19). This has further helped him keep the ball in the park, as Daniel Murphy’s home run last night was the first Pettitte surrendered since July 20.
How is Pettitte achieving this newfound success? Quite simply by mixing his pitches well. He’s talked a lot about how having his cutter working has been the difference. That certainly makes sense, because Pettitte really has two variations of the pitch. One is traditional cutter, a fastball-type pitcher that breaks hard and in to righties. But then he has a more traditional slider, which travels a bit slower but has a sweeping break toward righties. Less frequently he throws a slow curve and a changeup, meaning he has a bag of five pitches from which to choose.
That Pettitte has both the slider and the cutter working, even though they’re variations of the same pitch, is huge. He can use the harder cut fastball inside against righties, and the slider away to lefties. He also used the slider last night to nip the outside corner against righties. Having both pitches working also makes his slower stuff even better, and even can induce some swings and misses on bad fastball, as we saw from a few Rangers, including Mike Young, last night.
Clearly, Pettitte will not sustain his current 2.79 second-half ERA. Not for the rest of the season, and certainly not into next season. Yet he’s shown that he can have incredible stretches like this. Remember how he started the 2007 season? He carried the staff through April and part of May while the team struggled. Now, with Joba struggling he’s stepped up and provided the Yanks with a go-to guy after Sabathia and Burnett.
With Chien-Ming Wang‘s status in question — at best he’ll be back next July, at worst he’ll never wear pinstripes again — the Yankees could certainly opt to retain Pettitte and slot him into the rotation with Burnett, Sabathia, Chamberlain, and Hughes next year. Yes, there are younger guys who are going to need a shot sooner or later, but as the Yanks, among other teams, have proven this year, you can never have enough depth. Injuries happen. By retaining Pettitte, the Yankees are hedging against injury. Rather than sticking a young guy in the rotation and hoping for the best, they’d do well to go with a vet and plug in a young guy when they need another arm. Lord knows it will happen.
Will Pettitte win 300 games? Highly unlikely. Can the Yankees still get some use out of him? It appears that is the case. It’s far from a guarantee, but as we’ve seen over the past month and change, Pettitte has enough left to help this and future Yankees teams.
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The Mason Williams Watch
Andy Pettitte, Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada…
Think we were spoiled with this crop?
Absolutely redic
But the Yankees buy championships.
yeah, they totally bought melky, gardner, cano, jeter, pena, posada, cervelli, joba, phil hughes, joba, robertson, bruney, mo, aceves, phil coke.
i want to punch people when they say this seriously. and pettitte i left off because we did “buy” him this time as a free agent.
but also you cant even say a team “bought” someone they traded for because it means someone valued your players enough to give them up. so to tack onto the above you can’t say they “bought” swisher because he came from all yankee farmhands + wilson betemit who was also traded for scott proctor.
ok…im done…sorry, that stuff gets me riled..
What’s funny is that the 2004 Boston Red Sox had literally ZERO home grown players as starters…whether it be in the field or pitching.
Interesting eh??
No, Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, Pedro Martinez, Johnny Damon, and Keith Foulke were all homegrown Sox, I’m quite sure of it. They all played together in Pawtucket, I remember it like it was yesterday.
The 2004 Sox payroll was 17M, if I’m not mistaken. Scrappy team-firsting underdogs, the lot of them.
A gritty, gutty bunch to be sure.
don’t forget bernie
He was afraid to mention him. Too feared.
I swore he also had dreadlocks, played the guitar, and played the game the wrong way by being self-absorbed
[/rice’d
you forgot baggy pants
aah good point
my bad my brotha
pettitte only has 226 wins…where did 250 come from?
Looks like they accidentally took Moyer’s numbers from the article.
let’s say he wins 4 more this year and ends with 230. he would need 70. which means he would need 5 years roughly to break 300 averaging 12 wins a year….
do i agree it is doable? as of now yes, however, farfetched.
Math fail! 14 my man.
hahaha i did 60. oops.
DERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRP
12 x 5 maybe. 14 x 5 no way.
He can’t make 300.
16, 14, 15, 13, 15.
Done. I’ll bet a dollar that if we wants to he
canwill.Like I’ve said, I’m waiting for Pettitte’s strikeout rate to fall. Like Melky when he’s hot, that other shoe just isn’t falling yet. I hope that the shoe doesn’t fall at an inopportune time for the Yankees.
Yes, you are right that it will fall. Pettitte is bound to have some ugly starts at the end of year, but that does not mean we can’t celebrate what he has done thus far, just as we did with Melky even though many people knew those numbers were also bound to drop
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG8sq6aCbYs (SFW)
Excuse me if it is obvious, Pettite’s player bio lists 226 career wins, and 14 post season which I am assuming are not added in already. That would be 240. Where are the other 10? Even if it is 250, he still needs 50. If we say he averages 13 a year, unlikely as he gets older, he would need to pitch four more years, to age 41 as a starter without significant time on the disabled list right? He’s great, he has had a wonderful career and we’ve been lucky to have him for most of it. I even think he has a few years left, but not the four or four and a half that will be needed to get the wins.
http://riveraveblues.com/2009/.....ent-553719
plus, playoff wins do not count.
and 14 post season which I am assuming are not added in already. That would be 240
Don’t assume. You do not add post season wins. He has 226. That is the number.
I like Pinto’s analysis. I see one issue with it:
Yes, Andy is not a power lefty but more of a “stuff” lefty who thus, could hang around into his 40′s like Moyer and Glavine, giving him a shot to pitch another 6 years or so to get his 80 wins.
But I don’t think the YANKEES keep him around for those 6 years. I think he can pitch for us in 2010, maaaaaaaybe 2011, but eventually we’ll replace him. We’ve already got CC, AJ, Joba, and Hughes; we have other good options in the pipeline behind him; and there’s always lots of other appealing options in free agency. One of those years (like, say, after the 2011 season when Felix Hernandez hits the market), we’ll decide it’s time to upgrade.
So, yes, Andy Pettitte can get to 300, but it won’t be in pinstripes. He’ll probably finish around 230 this year, maybe get to 245 tops next year, and best case scenario for him we bring him back for one last hurrah in 2011 and throw him a lovely party on the Yankee DiamondVision when he gets win #250.
Then, he’ll have to choose between retirement or going back to the Astros for 3-4 more years to chase down #300 (with a drastically inferior offense).
I say he doesn’t make it.
you know what? pettitte, in 2011, after winning 250 with the yankees and getting his diamondvision congrats party could go home to texas…
and be the 5th starter for a solid texas rangers team one consistent veteran away from putting them over the top to win his 300th…
is your mind blown?
I thought about that.
It’s possible… I wonder if Andy would be better served going back to the NL, though. That’s why I think he’d pick Houston over Texas. Anybody can win games in the NL, look at John Smoltz.
http://www.instantrimshot.com
Plus, he’s a Houston guy, he knows the club, etc. etc.
true, but i was going on now, and now texas looks like a team on the rise looking for the last few complementary pieces the next 2 or so years and houston looks like a team on the downturn into basement dwelling status. Cycles and all, you know how it goes.
Also I wonder would the power of a texas offense lead to more wins for him in a hitters ballpark (a la yankees offense and ys3 this year) than a putrid houston offense in a mroe pticher friendly park (which minute maid is? i think? moreso than arlington? bueller?)
but maybe he would be in it for the wins, the hometown discount, etc. but if he wanted to get to 300 and have a chance to win, at least basing in on now and evidence as to how we can guess the future might turn out that shot might be in arlington.
Why don’t we just make a Wakefield style contract where it’s an annual option of like $4 million a year plus some incentives…
The contract part of it is moot.
Unlike the Sox, we’re not going to keep bringing him back. Eventually, we’ll become enamored of some other young hurler and bump Andy to the side, that’s my point.
A young hurler we already have? Or a young hurler that we pick up via free agency?
Either/or.
Unless something goes wrong in the development of a pitcher, I doubt Pettitte is around in ’11.
We’ve already got CC, AJ, Joba, and Hughes; we have other good options in the pipeline behind him; and there’s always lots of other appealing options in free agency. One of those years (like, say, after the 2011 season when Felix Hernandez hits the market), we’ll decide it’s time to upgrade.
After 2011 there’s a good chance that CC opts out. That increases the odds of Pettitte returning for 2012, if he’s still around in 2011.
Just tossing out ideas here, but, if Pettitte can stay effective and returns on short, reasonable contracts, at some point it may make sense to trade some of the pitching prospects for a shortstop or an outfielder. (No, I’m not rushing Jeter out, just acknowledging that he’s probably the first infielder that needs to be replaced)
And thinking about the pitching prospects in the system, I don’t think there’s anyone remotely close to the majors that we can expect to consistently perform better than Pettitt. Kennedy, Nova, Z-Mac, and Bleich are all expected to be back of the rotation guys. If a need pops up, I wouldn’t hesitate to trade a guy like that and bring back Pettitte.
The way things are going, I have a hard time seeing CC opt out at the moment. I guess it’s totally possible, but it seems like he’s plenty happy at the moment.
Pitchers are fragile. If CC is his usual self for the first 3 years, I expect him to void the last 4 years and try for a 5+ year contract. Of course, World Series rings may change that.
Maybe he’ll announce it during the World Series too.
/Boras’d
I wonder if after looking at the “walk year” performaces of Andy, Matsui and Damon Brian Cashman get sentimental and re-signs all of them? This might be a bad thing since their average performance is better then whats available in the 2010 F/A market, who knows. I don’t see anyone capable at S/B or Trenton, Shelly, JRod and Miranda are career triple A.
Totally unrelated, but having brad penny released made my morning
The Yankees KO’d both of their “quality depth” pitchers and sent them back to the scrap heap
Not me. I would have rather had them not admit to their mistake and let him pitch out the entire year. Maybe Henry won’t be so quick to OK paying millions of dollars to these high risk, high reward guys next time. The Yanks got Pettitte for similar money and got far better production.
The Yanks got Pettitte for similar money and got far better production.
Meh, half right.
Penny signed a 5M that could be an 8M if he hit his incentives. Pettitte signed a 5.5M that could be a 12M if he hit his incentives. So, technically we signed Pettitte for a little more money and got far better production.
And, thus far, he’s been worth $13.3MM so we’re coming out on top by $1.3MM. I like it.
He’s only earned about $1m of his incentives so far, so the team’s way ahead.
The bonuses start racking up from here on out though. Averaging things out a little, each start the rest of the way is worth about half a million in bonuses. (~$0.5m every 10 days on the roster and ~$0.5m every 10 innings pitched)
“similar money,” not exact. I think those contracts are pretty similar, but yes, you were more specific.
RAB has a policy against name calling.
If they didn’t my good man, I would call you a pettifogger. But since they do, I won’t. But you are. A pettifogger.
andy pettitte = known commodity. and even if you got what you expected (ie. a repeat of last year) he is still >>>>>>>>> brad penny
penny = good in the past but awful last yr before shutting it down and an unknown coming off serious injury.
but yeah i see what youre saying even so
Yes, but before the year, without the help of 20/20 hindsight, the Penny and Smoltz signings were supposedly the Red Sox’s way of counteracting our CC and AJ signing at a much lower price. Pettitte was more of a known quantity at this point of his career and we still got him for about the same money as the Sox paid for those two guys … and really, I was trying to keep my post on topic by talking about Pettitte … if Pettitte was not the main topic, I would have kept my comment to just Penny
Yes, but before the year, without the help of 20/20 hindsight, the Penny and Smoltz signings were supposedly the Red Sox’s way of counteracting our CC and AJ signing at a much lower price.
20/20 hindsight my ass. The only people who really thought, from the beginning, that Smoltz and Penny could “counteract” CC and AJ were delusional Sox homers and people predetermined to find a way to NOT pick the Yankees.
hahaha, I agree with you there, but it was not so out of the realm of possibility that Smoltz and Penny would have bounce back years and pitch well. I think hindsight made it far more obvious than it truly was at the time for most people. Maybe you were 100% sure they would be cut before the year was over, but I was not that sure, and neither was many of the talking heads.
So they have 10 days to get a “Smoak” type bat back in return?
/it never gets old’d
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw54-rCIrPs ???
The article talks about how Moyer had 59 wins at age 33 and now he has 250. I think he is implying that Andy could pitch longer and rack up wins like Moyer did.
Yeah that’s why I assumed they weren’t added. That’s what I mean, why is everyone saying 250?
Helpful hint: Use the reply button.
http://i435.photobucket.com/al.....tton-1.jpg
Thanks in advance.
We need a new one of those.
We gotta bring Andy back if he still wants to pitch. It is really a no brainer. Losing him would be a big blow to next years team unless of course we sign Lackey or someone. He has had some periods where he did not look so hot, but so has every other starter on the Yanks. (I think Pettitte only has like 225 wins or something, but I get what you are saying)
Ah, just read the above comments on how many wins Andy has
Losing him would be a big blow to next years team unless of course we sign Lackey or someone.
And I’d much rather have Pettitte on a year-to-year deal over Lackey for 3-5 years. With a rotation fronted by CC/AJ/Joba/Hughes, unless that fifth pitcher is a stud of King Felix-like proportions, I don’t want to lock into another long term deal.
Multiple years of Lackey scare me more than an Andy Pettitte that I can comfortably push the eject button on anytime I like.
+1
heh. im picturing a mound with an eject button that girardi pushes and the pitcher is thrown from the stadium..its quite humorous
http://vodpod.com/watch/207507.....jector-bed (safe)
I would have no problem if the Yanks went after Lackey in the off season, but I don’t think they will. I would probaby also stay away from Lackey and keep Pettitte on a year to year basis.
You know, I was looking at fangraph earlier, and it doesn’t seem like a slam dunk that Lackey is better than Pettitte even for next year. Lackey’s had injury both last year and this year. He’s slightly better than Andy right now but you are looking at 16-18 million for Lackey and 8-10 million for Andy.
I tend to agree, but you’ll stay say no to Lackey on a 3 year?
*you’d still say not to Lackey on a 3 year deal?
(haven’t had coffee yet)
I’d be more open to that, but I think that would eliminate Pettitte unless they fully commit to making Hughes a reliever (which would be tragic). So it could be:
CC
AJ
Lackey
Joba
Hughes and no Pettitte
OR
CC
AJ
Lackey
Joba
Pettitte and Hughes in the ‘pen.
I think I’d prefer option one IF Lackey is on the Yankees.
I like option 1, but I can name a few people who would be clamoring for option 2
As could I. Of course, I’d rather go Lackey-less and have it be CC/AJ/Joba/Pettitte/Hughes with someone else (Z-Mac?) ready to take a spot in ’11 when Pettitte’s gone and Hughes/Joba are both limitless in terms of IP.
I hope Andy can keep it up. I didn’t think he had it in him this year to pitch as well as he has. I’m pleasantly mistaken so far. Right now, he’s been an important part of the rotation. I’m happy for him.
Obviously this is a bit above a Lackey, but I’m just curious who do you think the Yankees next big acquisition may be, someone on the fan mentioned the impending conclusion of Verlander’s contract…you think the Yanks would take a look?
I don’t think they’ll do anything huge until the possibility of Joe Mauer presents itself.
Verlander’s not a free agent until after the 2011 season. Certainly a possibility, but, too far out to guess now. Don’t forget the Tigers are willing to spend big, you’d have to think they’d try hard to keep him.
So wait, Verlander and Felix are both free agents in the same year?
Yeah. Coming into this season, Felix has 3 years, 60 days service time. Verlander has 3 years, 2 days. I suppose Detroit could try to be sneaky and demote Verlander to delay his free agency, but the time to do that would’ve been last year when he was sucking.
Don’t mean to nitpick, but it was David, not Daniel, Murphy who hit the HR last night.