Does Andy Pettitte Belong in the Hall of Fame?

Today, Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte retired. And, like when any well known player retires, the discussion began over whether or not Pettitte belongs in the Hall of Fame.

Andy Pettitte was a good pitcher. No, Andy Pettitte was a very good pitcher. One of the top 20 over his 15 year career.

But he is not a Hall of Famer. Or he shouldn't be.

There are two questions that get asked- "Should the player make the Hall of Fame?" and "Will the player make the Hall of Fame?" Let's focus on them in that order.

Personally, I don't think use of HGH or steroids should be a reason to not include someone in the Hall. It was part of the period, the same way the spit ball was part of an earlier period. And we don't know everyone who used- if we find out after a player has been inducted that they used, are they going to be withdrawn? To me, you can include a sentence on the plaque, but you shouldn't exclude a player for using HGH or steroids. So the fact that Pettitte admitted to using HGH should not affect his credentials.

No, Pettitte is not a Hall of Famer on purely statistical grounds.

I compared him to some of the pitchers from his era. To be precise, 14 pitchers on four different tiers, who pitched during roughly the same time frame as Pettitte. This means nobody who has a significant portion of their career ahead of them (Cliff Lee, CC Sabbathia, Roy Halladay, etc) were included.

There is the elite tier. The four pitchers you think of for this era, lock Hall of Famers considered amongst the greatest pitchers of all time: Greg Maddux, Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson, and Pedro Martinez.

The second tier is four pitchers who were consistently stars, aces that other teams feared facing, and constant threats to win the Cy Young Award. That tier includes Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Curt Schilling, and Mike Mussina.

The third tier includes Pettitte, and three other pitchers I viewed as roughly his equivalent- Kevin Brown, David Cone, and David Wells.

The fourth tier has three pitchers I considered inferior to Pettitte, but still solid SPs who lasted a while- Tim Wakefield, Al Leiter, and Brad Radke.

Are there other pitchers I could have included? Sure. But this was a pretty strong sample to see where Pettitte fit in his era.

I compared the pitchers on 5 statistical measures- Wins, Winning Percentage, ERA, Strikeout-to-Walk Ratio, and WHIP. I also compared them on Rings*, All Star Games, and Cy Young wins. This gave a basis on if they were "winning players," and what their fellow major leaguers and managers and baseball writers thought of them.**

*Rings is based on if they pitched in a World Series that their team won. It's not perfect, but it was the easiest way to measure.

**Major Leaguers and managers select the pitchers who make the All Star teams, and writers vote for Cy Young awards.

Then I ranked them in each category. The pitcher with the most wins got 15 points, second most got 14, and all the way down to the least getting 1 point. I did that for all 8 categories. Points were averaged for ties. Then I added up the points, and ranked them from top to bottom. The results?

Pitcher	Wins	W%	ERA	K:BB	WHIP	Rings	CY	ASG	Pts	Rk
R Clemens	354	0.658	3.12	2.96	1.173	2	7	11	101.0	1
P Martinez	219	0.687	2.93	4.15	1.054	1	3	8	96.0	2
G Maddux	355	0.610	3.16	3.37	1.143	1	4	8	93.0	3
R Johnson	303	0.646	3.29	3.26	1.171	1	5	10	91.5	4
C Schilling	216	0.597	3.46	4.38	1.137	3	0	6	76.5	5
J Smoltz	213	0.579	3.33	3.05	1.176	1	1	8	64.5	6
D Cone	194	0.606	3.46	2.35	1.256	5	1	5	64.0	7
T Glavine	305	0.600	3.54	1.74	1.314	1	2	10	63.5	8
M Mussina	270	0.638	3.68	3.58	1.192	0	0	5	63.5	8
K Brown	211	0.594	3.28	2.66	1.222	1	0	6	55.0	10
A Pettitte	240	0.635	3.88	2.34	1.357	5	0	3	54.5	11
D Wells	239	0.604	4.13	3.06	1.266	2	0	3	54.0	12
A Leiter	162	0.551	3.80	1.70	1.386	2	0	2	30.5	13
B Radke	148	0.516	4.22	3.30	1.260	0	0	1	28.5	14
TWakefield	193	0.529	4.38	1.78	1.350	1	0	1	24.0	15

Pettitte ranks 11. There were 10 pitchers that were generally better than him, and all but Brown were better by quite a bit.

So what does that mean for the Hall of Fame? Well of the pitchers ahead of him, only Cone and Brown have come up for Hall of Fame votes so far. How did they do? Cone made his first appearance in 2009, received 21 votes for 4%, and was eliminated from the ballot. That's it. Unless he makes it from the Veteran's Committee 19 years from now or later, he's done. Brown made his first appearance in 2010, received 12 votes for 2.1%, and was eliminated from the ballot.

So Pettitte shouldn't a Hall of Famer. And because writers seem to care about the steroids (see McGwire, Palmeiro), it's unlikely he does make it.

Congratulation on your retirement, Andy. You had an excellent career. Just not a Hall of Fame one.