Decorated career overshadowed
The results of the 2023 Baseball Writers’ Association of America balloting will be announced Jan. 24. USA TODAY Sports Weekly looks at some of the candidates:
One of the most consistent performers on five World Series championship teams, left-hander Andy Pettitte enters his fifth year on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot, presenting an interesting case as a New York Yankees legend – and admitted user of performance-enhancing drugs.
Pettitte holds the all-time records with 19 playoff wins and 44 starts, helping the Yankees win it all in 1996, ’98, ’99, 2000 and ’09 – his final ring coming after a stint with the Houston Astros.
Certainly not a slam-dunk candidate with a 3.89 career ERA, Pettitte hasn’t even gotten the time of day due to his use of human growth hormone, exposed in the 2007 Mitchell report along with Roger Clemens.
Still, you can’t tell the story of those Yankee teams without a chapter on Pettitte, whose arrival in 1995 coincided with the team snapping a 14-year postseason drought.
Pettitte won 256 games in his 18-year career, averaging 30 starts and a 15-9 record from 1996 to 2010.
Pettitte was beloved in the Bronx even after the Mitchell Report as part of the “Core Four” with Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada who won their fifth ring together in 2009. The club retired Pettitte’s No. 46 in 2015, which is a big deal for an admitted PED user.
With all that in mind, USA TODAY Sports takes a look at Pettitte’s complicated Hall of Fame case:
Why Pettitte belongs in the Hall
The winningest pitcher in postseason history, Pettitte’s playoff counting stats obviously got a boost with the introduction
of a wild-card team and division series his rookie year, but it wasn’t just quantity.
With the 1996 World Series tied at two games apiece, Pettitte took a shutout into the ninth inning of Game 5 against the Atlanta Braves, a 1-0 Yankees win that set the table for the franchise’s first title since 1978. He went on to start three World Series clinchers (1998, 2000, ’09), giving up just three earned runs in 20 innings.
Where he doesn’t stack up
Pettitte won 21 games twice in his career but had an ERA over 4.00 in nine of his 18 seasons. That’s not the be-all and end-all, especially for a pitcher during the Steroid Era – but that brings us to his protracted PED saga.
Days after the release of the Mitchell Report, Pettitte copped to using HGH but claimed that it was only “two days” in 2002 and it was in an effort to recover from injury.
“This is it – two days out of my life; two days out of my entire career, when I was injured and on the disabled list,” Pettitte
said in a December 2007 statement. “I wasn’t looking for an edge. I was looking to heal.”
Less than two months later, Pettitte admitted that was a lie. In a deposition with congressional investigators and an affidavit that got him out of attending a hearing, Pettitte suddenly recalled another time he used HGH.
“In 2004, when I tore the flexor tendon in my pitching arm, I again used HGH two times in one day out of frustration and in a futile attempt to recover,” Pettitte said in his affidavit, claiming that he got the 2004 drugs from his father.
Pettitte would advise Alex Rodriguez years later to just “get everything out” because “otherwise it seems like something’s always chasing you around.”
Voting trends
Pettitte hasn’t made much progress in four years, but he may have been a victim of the 10-player voting limit with Barry Bonds, Clemens, et al. clogging up the ballot.
Through 144 public ballots in Ryan Thibodeaux’s Hall of Fame
tracker, Pettitte has picked up 12 new votes.
While he’s still under 20% (18.5), that level of support would be a new high-water mark and could provide some momentum heading into the second half of his stay on the ballot.
Still, Pettitte is an admitted PED user, and if Manny Ramirez can’t even top 30%, it’s hard to imagine the pitcher getting beyond a similar ceiling: 2019 – 9.9% 2020 – 11.3% 2021 – 13.7% 2022 – 10.7%
Will Pettitte ultimately get in?
He won’t be getting in through BBWAA voting. Pettitte has received far more favorable treatment than most other PED guys, but it’s too steep a hill for him to climb in the next six years.
Down the road, though, induction through a veterans committee full of friendly faces isn’t beyond the realm of possibility.