Yankees pitching great Andy Pettitte may have gotten Roger Clemens out of a jail sentence with his misremembering the other day in court. But Pettitte’s contradictory testimony cost himself a chance of at least one Hall of Fame vote—mine.
...There are people who are going to say Pettitte isn’t a Hall of Famer anyway, that he didn’t win enough games, strike out enough batters or make enough All-Star teams. But Pettitte is the only pitcher to begin his career with 16 seasons without a single losing season (Tom Seaver and Grover Alexander started with 15), his 19 career postseason victories is the most in history (and makes it 259 total victories), and he’s one of 26 pitchers who are at least 100 games over .500, with 18 of those pitchers in the Hall of Fame and six more not yet eligible (according to YESNetwork.com).
Some from the stat set may scoff at individual victories making a Cooperstown case. But there’s more. Five times Pettitte finished in the top six in Cy Young voting. The most similar pitcher to him is Mike Mussina, a clear Hall-of-Fame candidate by most accounts, according to Baseball-Reference.com. So Pettitte is at least a serious Cooperstown candidate based on on-field merit.
...Now, though, his own sympathetic HGH story comes into serious question. If he’s willing to suddenly misremember under oath for a good buddy, it’s easy to think now Pettitte only admitted to what he had to admit to. Maybe Pettitte isn’t quite the truthteller we gave him credit for, and maybe there is some other explanation for how his fastball velocity increased to 93/94 mph somewhere in the middle of his career.
I’d say the chances are 50-50 (at best) that Pettitte misremembered his own supposedly very limited usage.
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1. Jacob Posted: May 07, 2012 at 12:59 PM (#4125397)Nah, really?
I have yet to see one MSM reporter/columnist admit/acknowledge that hey, they were wrong about Petitte having fingered Clemens in his earlier testimony, that his testimony was always wishy washy
nope, instead they are circling the wagons - despite the fact that I'm sure it's been pointed out to each of them many time over the weekend that any contradiction isn't in Petitte's testimony, it's between Petitte's earlier testimony and the reporting of such testimony.
Anyway, at least there is some level of anti_pedder consistency being applied now, the "pass" many were seemingly willing to give Petite has now evaporated. Of course, Andy's best HOF argument was always, "I'm better than Jack Morris," which while true was not a great argument.
Of course, his new critics are so obtuse that they don't realize his "new" story is exactly the same as his previous one... and so his battleship gets sunk.
This is the nonsensical logic being applied by the torch bearers of the newfound Character Clause. Though it's hardly surprising; excusing amps users while excoriating steroids users was always bizarrely irrational at best, dishonest at worst.
EDIT: cross posted.
1 Calcaterra is part of the MSM? I guess so
2. He wasn't one of the ones who misreported Petitte's earlier testimony- my point was
A: Many reporter's misreported Petitte's earlier testimony
B: The same reporters are now comparing Petitte's current testimony to his prior testimony AS IT WAS MISREPORTED, not his prior testimony as it actually was
C: The fact that it was Petitte's earlier testimony that was misreported, not that his new testimony contradicts his old, has been pointed out to these morons many many times
D: Their response is not to correct themselves, hedge a bit or to simply drop the issue, no their response is to double down on their own misreporting
I'm going to make an off the wall comparison here- Dan Rather continues to insist that his GWB, Air Guard story was accurate... specifically he refuses to acknowledge that the primary documents he relied upon were forgeries. Why? I think he believed the STORY itself. Personally I think there was no small kernel of truth to the story, but that the documents used to "prove" it were false. I also think that some people have a preferred version of events and they WANT to stick with it, no matter what- and they will grasp at anything they think supports that version. With regard to GWB, Rather believed "X," he was then given documents which on their face proved "X," - confirmation bias immediately kicks in, I doubt he even seriously gave any consideration to the possibility that they were forgeries- why would he? People only initially think things have been falsified when they contradict what we already believe to be true- not when something confirms what we already believe to be true. I'm sure that if those docs had been given to Sean Hannity rather than Rather, Sean's immediate reaction would have been "These are fake"- not because Hannity is better at ferreting out falsehoods- but because that's going to be Hannity's reaction to ANYTHING that contradicts his worldview (i'e;, conservatives are good honest and noble, liberals are not)
What we have here is a bunch of reporters who had STORY in their heads, that they wanted to see unfold, perhaps truly believed would unfold- Petitte's wholly predictable waffling on the stand has upset that STORY- and now they are angry at Petitte.
HE ####### LIED ABOUT HIS OWN HGH USE FROM THE VERY START!!!!
He misremembered.
At least one positive is coming out of this whole mess - less of a chance of Andy Pettitte getting voted into the HoF
Luckily, a few bold individuals have discovered the deception and are unafraid to expose the lies of the Clemens/Pettitte conspiracy.
As a White Sox fan watching these past few years...sometimes it seems that way.
Both are kayfabe.
That's a good summary, and I think it's the precise-sounding nature of "50-50" that's caused people** to think that Pettitte had changed his tune. "May have misunderstood" doesn't have the same ring as "50-50", even though they're not logically inconsistent with each other. Perhaps if Pettitte's earlier inquisitors had tried to pin him down to a percentage, there wouldn't have been any confusion today.
**including me, before the reality of what the 2005 comment actually implied had sunk in
No, Pettitte's undoing was saving Roger Clemens' ass.
Pettitte's candidacy is a longshot, to be sure, and it depends on at least two factors.
One, a voter probably has to weigh career impact over career statistics (assuming he doesn't stick around for a few more years and dramatically boost those numbers). And two, a voter probably has to take Pettitte at his word that he only used HGH twice, and only then to recover from injuries.
So, the standard Heyman is at least somewhat endorsing is "no more than twice, and only to recover from injuries" might be ok? Umm...that feels beyond silly to me.
Among all the other stupidity in this article, it seems that this has been missed. First, Mussina was a significantly better pitcher than Pettitte, it isn't even close. Second, Heyman apparently doesn't know how to read a list, as David Wells is Pettitte's most similar pitcher(Mussina is 4th). Mussina is Pettitte's most similar by age at ages 35-38. Third, the fact that they have high similarity scores doesn't mean they produced actually similar value, but I will give Heyman a break there as many people mistake similarity scores for something actually useful.
This is quite likely. In my younger days, when I thought that emailing Heyman a well-constructed argument regarding his HoF choices would do something, I discovered he used the similarity scores, but not in a manner associated with the Hindu-Arabic, base-10, system.
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