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November 8, 2009

Pettitte no Hall of Famer, but definitely durable

Edward Thoma

It’s time for the Monday print column to go into winter hibernation. But before abandoning this space, some scattered comments:

n Talk of Andy Pettitte as a Hall of Fame candidate is misplaced.

OK, he has 18 postseason victories. This is a “record” of recent relevance; just as almost all World Series career records are held by Yankees from the 1950s, career “postseason” records are now held by players from the newfangled three-tier system.

Pettitte has 229 lifetime (regular season) wins and a career ERA of 3.91. (His postseason ERA, by the way, is 3.90; no real difference.) That ERA is only rising — he hasn’t been below 4.00 since 2005 — and there is no Hall of Famer with an ERA that high.

There are Hall of Famers with win totals in the low 200s and a big reputation in the World Series. But Chief Bender and Catfish Hunter opened in the World Series. Pettitte has generally been a guy who pitches Game Three.

Get back to me if he gets to 280 wins or so.

n Give Pettitte credit for this: He has been incredibly durable.

The decline of Cole Hamels this season — 3.39 ERA in 2007, 3.09 in 2008, 4.32 in 2009 — is mirrored by the drop off in performance of almost the entire rotations of both the 2008 World Series teams.

Brett Myers, Philadelphia’s No. 2 starter in the 2008 postseason, went from 190 innings to 70. James Shields, Tampa Bay’s 2008 ace, saw his ERA rise 58 points; Andy Sonnanstine went from 193 innings, 4.38 to 100 innings, 6.77.

These are not isolated data points. Since baseball went to three layers of postseason — stretching the season out into November — almost every team reaching the World Series has encountered similar problems.

Somehow Pettitte has been essentially unaffected.

Cliff Lee worked 272 innings this year, combining regular season with postseason. It will be interesting to see how that workload affects him in 2010.

n Something to keep an eye on this winter is the nasty divorce between Frank and Jamie McCourt, the owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers. What has surfaced so far suggests that the McCourts are highly leveraged, and the Dodgers are their major asset.

This is one of baseball’s flagship franchises, and it’s increasingly likely that there will be a forced sale on a tight timeline. That would not be welcomed by the other owners, many of whom rely on the notion that franchise values keep rising.

And, of course, financial problems on the ownership level have a way of translating into problems on the field.

n The Twins have three main priorities this offseason:

Re-sign Joe Mauer; revamp the infield; solidify the starting rotation.

They made a very nice start on that second priority Friday by trading for J.J. Hardy, who’ll take over at shortstop.

A noteworthy twist on the third priority happened last week when Carl Pavano was named a Type B free agent.

That means that if the Twins offer him arbitration and he signs elsewhere, Minnesota will get a draft pick between the second and third rounds. Which might be preferable to keeping him.

It baffles me that a pitcher who barely played for three years and then racked up an ERA of 5.10 is a Type B, but the rating system has long been broken.

n The column shuts down now, but the Baseball Outsider blog lives on. I’ll monitor the offseason there and comment as the spirit moves.

Hey: The Twins pitchers and catchers report on Feb. 21. Only 103 days away.



Edward Thoma is a Free Press staff writer. He is at 344-6377 or at ethoma@mankatofreepress.com. He also has a baseball blog at www.mankatofreepress.com/ethomabaseball

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Ed Thoma