Let’s take a look at Andy Pettitte’s numbers in a few ways. I am doing this up because recently I whined about how not very good Andy has looked lately and the refutation was starts, innings, runs. So here we go.
First, results only. Because as we all know, results are what are most important.
| Date | Opp | W | L | IP | R | ER | FB | GB | LD | Results |
| 4/10 | @KCR | 1 | 0 | 7.0 | 1 | 1 | 9 | 6 | 3 | Quality |
| 4/15 | @TBR | 0 | 0 | 7.1 | 3 | 3 | 13 | 4 | 4 | Quality |
| 4/21 | OAK | 1 | 0 | 7.0 | 2 | 2 | 8 | 16 | 4 | Quality |
| 4/26 | @BOS | 0 | 1 | 6.0 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 7 | 5 | Not Bad |
| 5/1 | LAA | 0 | 0 | 5.2 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 11 | 7 | Not Good |
| 5/7 | TBR | 0 | 0 | 6.0 | 5 | 5 | 7 | 11 | 3 | Not Good |
| 5/13 | @TOR | 1 | 0 | 6.0 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 12 | 4 | Quality |
| 5/18 | MIN | 1 | 0 | 6.2 | 4 | 4 | 9 | 13 | 4 | Not Bad |
| 5/23 | PHI | 0 | 0 | 7.0 | 4 | 4 | 8 | 9 | 3 | Not Bad |
| 5/29 | @CLE | 1 | 0 | 5.0 | 1 | 1 | 8 | 8 | 3 | Good |
| 6/3 | TEX | 0 | 1 | 5.0 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 4 | Not Good |
| 6/8 | TBR | 1 | 0 | 6.0 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 10 | 2 | Quality |
| 6/13 | NYM | 0 | 1 | 5.0 | 5 | 5 | 7 | 11 | 4 | Bad |
Hey, that looks like there’s some pretty okay and valuable pitching going on. Yeah, there’s a few bad games in there but nothing completely awful that immediately takes the team out of it, right? So there should be nothing to worry about.
Just for laughs, let’s take a closer look and include something other than the raw results. MOB is the total baserunners over the course of the game, it doesn’t include homeruns hit because nobody is on base after one of those happens.
| Date | Opp | W | L | IP | H | HR | R | ER | SO | BB | IBB | FB | GB | LD | MOB | Notes |
| 4/10 | @KCR | 1 | 0 | 7.0 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 9 | 6 | 3 | 4 | |
| 4/15 | @TBR | 0 | 0 | 7.1 | 6 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 13 | 4 | 4 | 6 | |
| 4/21 | OAK | 1 | 0 | 7.0 | 9 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 16 | 4 | 9 | |
| 4/26 | @BOS | 0 | 1 | 6.0 | 6 | 0 | 4 | 3 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 7 | 5 | 10 | |
| 5/1 | LAA | 0 | 0 | 5.2 | 9 | 0 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 11 | 7 | 13 | |
| 5/7 | TBR | 0 | 0 | 6.0 | 9 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 11 | 3 | 6 | |
| 5/13 | @TOR | 1 | 0 | 6.0 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 5 | 12 | 4 | 9 | |
| 5/18 | MIN | 1 | 0 | 6.2 | 12 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 9 | 13 | 4 | 13 | 1HBP |
| 5/23 | PHI | 0 | 0 | 7.0 | 5 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 2 | 0 | 8 | 9 | 3 | 5 | |
| 5/29 | @CLE | 1 | 0 | 5.0 | 6 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 0 | 8 | 8 | 3 | 11 | |
| 6/3 | TEX | 0 | 1 | 5.0 | 7 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 0 | 4 | 6 | 4 | 13 | |
| 6/8 | TBR | 1 | 0 | 6.0 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 7 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 10 | 2 | 8 | 1HBP |
| 6/13 | NYM | 0 | 1 | 5.0 | 12 | 1 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 11 | 4 | 12 |
With that next context, things don’t look so great do they? Including the Cleveland start where he was yanked out with a back problem, Andy has allowed 44 baserunners in 21 innings. That’s terrible. It’s Sidney Ponson-esque, even. He had some real clunkers before then too (with 5/18 being the one where he got the luckiest) but he seemed to rebound against Philly–4 runs in 7 innings isn’t great but it’s okay–before descending into bad. If you put lots of men on base, your luck will run out and they will eventually come around to score (another thing we saw first hand during the Sidney Ponson adventure).
Now Andy has always allowed more men on base than people would normally be comfortable with, but in the past has made up for it by having a decent strikeout rate and not walking anyone and getting a lot of groundballs. He’s still getting those groundballs but his K/BB ratio has taken a nose dive from the 2+ you expect to 1.5 this year. His BB/9 is sitting at 3.73 and his K/9 at 5.67.
Only the foolish expected Pettitte’s 6.97K/9 from last year to hold up, but that 5.67 that he’s sporting now would be perfectly fine when you take his GB% into account if he weren’t walking almost twice as many batters. Thanks to that and an increased homerun rate (which is a bit flukey if you look at the gamelogs–four homeruns in one game will certainly bump that number up) , his FIP is 4.77 which is not what the Yankees really expected when they brought him back.
And on top of that, Andy’s just not putting in the innings you expect and laboring through games only to log in the minimum you want out of a starter (5 innings).
These things could all fix themselves, sure. Andy is known for having a good second half, and he did start out pretty well so the potential is there. However if something is wrong with him physically, as was hinted at when he was yanked out of the Cleveland game, the team has got to make him rest though. I don’t know if it’s the cause here, but we do know that they let him pitch through an “achy” shoulder with no rest last year and it did nobody any good. This year, Andy’s got an incentives based contract and there is no way he is going to willingly take a break so someone else (Girardi? Eiland? Cashman?) has to step in at some point. He’s pitching at his worst levels in years, and last year we saw that a Pettitte in decline was still useful.
Of course, this would be a lot easier to do if Chien-Ming Wang were pitching better and you could slip Phil Hughes in a few times. Still, I feel like if someone is looking winded (Andy’s fastball was pretty consistently touching 90 and his last start he hit that number just twice) you have to give them a break. Especially when that someone is almost 40. Stretch out Alfredo Aceves and have him fill in once or twice, maybe. Sure, that hurts the bullpen for a few weeks but it does give the team a better chance to win.
