Re: Pettitte signs with the Yankees!!!
Buster Olney (ESPN's Top MLB Expert) on it:<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Now the Yankees have signed
Andy Pettitte and he is about as close to a sure thing as the Yankees could ever hope to find on the market. He comes relatively cheaply for New York:
Gil Meche has 125 fewer career victories than Pettitte and yet he cost $39 million more in guaranteed dollars than Pettitte, who will make $16 million in '07 and has a $16 million player option for '08.Pettitte didn't have a great year in '06, finishing 14-13, but <u>he had an exceptional second half, going 7-4 with a 2.80 ERA, allowing just a .249 batting average to opposing hitters.</u>And above all, Pettitte knows New York and is comfortable pitching for the Yankees, mostly because he is uniquely uncomplicated in a complicated world. He has always managed to simplify his work. Pettitte lowers the bill of his cap to block out the crowd and focus only on the catcher's glove. He has never been overly concerned with scouting reports, preferring that his catchers do the heavy mental lifting: He'd much rather rubber-stamp the signs put down by his batterymate. Fastball? Sure thing. Curve? OK, whatever you say. Cutter inside? No problem. He had this relationship with
Jorge Posada.Stuff like discontented crowds has never really bothered him. What sticks with him, instead, are personal matters. I remember, when I covered the Yankees, how Pettitte once had a terrible game on a getaway day in Toronto, and said flatly afterward that he was homesick and missed his kids and had let himself get distracted by this -- an extraordinarily rare admission for any player.Another time, in the midst of his slump, his wife had questioned his toughness, and asked him what was wrong with him -- and when he relayed this story, the beat writers all looked around at each other as if to say: Is he kidding? Pettitte was just being honest, and wasn't worried about whether his conversation with his wife would wind up on a tabloid headline.Andy struggled horribly in the first half of the 1999 season, and at the behest of owner
George Steinbrenner, the Yankees quietly told other teams, including the Phillies, to make their best offers for the lefty. A couple of sources told me about this, and the day before the story was to be published, I went to Pettitte to ask a couple of questions for the piece -- and to give him a heads-up.Pettitte was being paid $5.95 million that year, and I explained to him that Steinbrenner was concerned about Pettitte's salary climbing dramatically, through arbitration (the Yankees had just lost two arbitration cases that spring). They're worried you might make $7 million or $8 million next year, I told him.His ERA was over 5.00, he was getting knocked all over the place, and Andy looked at me and asked, earnestly: "If I'm having a bad year, why would I get a raise in arbitration?"It was the question owners had been asking for years. But Pettitte didn't really worry about that, didn't fret over the nonessentials, and that's the best way you can be in New York. <u>He remains a perfect fit for the Yankees rotation.</u></div>Continue Sucking on it.
