Clutch Andy Pettitte (…?)

If you want to give Any Pettitte a pass for using PEDs, that’s cool.  If you’ve read my stuff before then you already know I care very little about who used PEDs and who didn’t.  It doesn’t have a meaningful impact on how I grade them as players either way.  Although I do find it odd that Andy Pettitte generally speaking, gets a pass on this front, but his friends and teammates do not.  But whatever, that’s for each fan to decide.

If you want to give Pettitte a pass for leaving his original team that he was with from day one of his career for greener pastures elsewhere through free agency, that’s cool.  (And by greener pastures, I mean “more money”.)  I give him and all other players a pass there too.  I never understood why a fanatic would expect someone to not do what’s best for him and his family because it might upset that fanatic.  But again – I’m curious why Pettitte gets that pass when very few other players do?

Quite often I’ve wondered why Andy Pettitte gets special treatment on those fronts that other players almost never do.  Does he have a killer PR firm?  Does he have the same elicit photos of Steinbrenner family members that Didi had?

I don’t know, and again, I don’t really care.

But here’s where I draw the line:  If you tell me you’re a fan of Andy Pettitte because he was “clutch”, then you are wrong.  And that is a hill on which I’ll die.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way:  There’s no such thing as “clutch”.  But I know many disagree with me so I’ll play along.  There are only so many times we can talk about the Astros, Mookie Betts, and the Mets’ shit show before games start, so I’ll play along for discussion’s sake.

Below are the statistics we’ll use for comparative purposes.  Take a look:

Those are Pettitte’s career totals in the postseason and in the regular season.  I don’t need to tell you which is which because they are virtually identical.  He was almost exactly the same pitcher in the postseason that he was in the regular season.  Which all together now, is not “clutch”.

And if you want to try to pick fly shit out of pepper and say “Well, the #s in the 1^st column are a tick better than in the 2^nd column – is that the postseason numbers?”

Yes, the first column is postseason.  And I’ll say two things in response:

1. A tick better isn’t really better. The difference is so small you wouldn’t notice or be able to differentiate between the two if you watched every inning of every game.
2. More importantly – small sample size. I’d bet a very large sum of money that if Pettitte threw 3,040 more postseason innings the numbers between the two would be even closer than the already indiscernible gap.

If you want to give Pettitte special treatment that isn’t afforded to other players who did the same things, that’s cool.  I don’t get it, but whatever.

But by the power of Joe Torre’s giant watch, I command you to stop saying how clutch he was because he wasn’t.

Did I miss something?  Let me know.