CC Sabathia: New York Yankees legend Andy Pettitte ‘deserves’ to be in Hall of Fame

CC Sabathia was recently inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on the first ballot, and now the left-hander feels that his former New York Yankees teammate and fellow southpaw, Andy Pettitte, should follow him in.

“For me, Andy is a Hall of Famer,” Sabathia said in an interview with MLB.com. “Getting a chance to pitch alongside him, getting a chance to still talk to him pretty much all the time, I believe he’s a Hall of Famer. … [with] my getting in, hopefully people will reconsider his candidacy and put him in.

“I mean, anybody that wins 19 games in the playoffs, I think deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.”

Pettitte, a three-time All-Star, won five World Series with the Yankees in his three stints with the franchise (1995-2003, 2007-10 and 2012-13); he pitched for the Houston Astros from 2004-06, posting a combined 3.38 ERA over 84 appearances/83 starts and a career-best 2.39 ERA in 2005.

In his career, Pettitte had a 3.85 ERA, 1.35 WHIP and 2,448 combined strikeouts across 531 appearances/521 starts. He also sported a 256-153 career regular-season record.

Pettitte is first in Yankees history with 2,020 career strikeouts, is tied for first with 438 games started and is third with 219 wins, 2,796.1 innings pitched and a 51.3 WAR among pitchers.

A potential hindrance to Pettitte’s Hall of Fame case has been him admitting in 2007 that he took HGH to recover from an elbow injury in 2002. This year, Pettitte received 27.9% support to get into the Hall, up from 13.5% from 2023; a player needs 75% to get in.

On the hill, the left-hander is best remembered for being one of the premier postseason pitchers in MLB history. Making 44 postseason starts, Pettitte posted a combined 3.81 ERA and went 19-11. Pettitte’s 19 postseason wins stand as the most by a pitcher in MLB history.

As for some of his more epic outings, Pettitte pitched 8.1 scoreless innings against the Atlanta Braves in Game 5 of the 1996 World Series in a 1-0 Yankees win. Two years later, he tossed 7.1 scoreless innings against the San Diego Padres in Game 4 of the 1998 World Series. And then, two years after that, Pettitte gave up two runs, neither of which was earned, in the Yankees’ Game 5 series-clinching win over the New York Mets in the 2000 World Series.

Moreover, in the last two seasons that he played in the postseason (2010 and 2012, when he was 38 and 40, respectively), Pettitte pitched through at least 6.2 innings and surrendered no more than three runs in each of the four starts.

Sabathia and Pettitte were teammates on the Yankees from 2009-10 and 2012-13. The former joined the Yankees in 2009, serving as their ace for the bulk of his 11 years in the Bronx and helping them win the World Series in his first season (2009). The pair of left-handers (Sabathia and Pettitte) and fellow free agent signee A.J. Burnett formed a three-man starting rotation in the 2009 postseason for the Yankees.

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