Aura, Pinstripes and Pettitte

Andy Pettitte.  “Mr. Game 2” (isn’t that a dumb name?).  A man that has “the aura”.  It’s so powerful that “ Perceived or not, his teammates believe in it, like they once believed in the likes of Clemens and Cone.”  First off, if you don’t believe you have a damn good shot at winning when Clemens was on the mound for most of his career, you’re an idiot.  Second, there’s nothing to this “aura” crap.  Why is it that every guy that puts on those pinstripes and does well has an “aura”?  Did Pettitte not have said aura in Houston, where he pitched pretty well?  Third, he’s having a decent year and helping stabilize a shaky New York rotation that really has just CC Sabathia and average at best junk after.  But, let's not get ahead of ourselves. 

For the year, Andy has a K-rate of 8.1, BB-rate of 1.8, a WHIP of 1.009 and all are better than his career numbers by a decent margin (6.6 and 2.8 and 1.353 respectively).  It’s possible that at age (almost) 40 he’s learned to be a better pitcher.  But, like every other pitcher that seems to be doing well for a short amount of time or poorly for a short amount of time and sports writers need to acknowledge it, his BABIP is unbelievably low.  Career he has a BABIP of 312.  This year?  Try 253.  That’s a very very large gap.  And, that will probably come up quite a bit which will make that shiny WHIP go back to his usual and he’ll be the regular ol’ 117 ERA+ Andy Pettite that we all know and have some affection for.  And if he doesn’t, it’ll be the luckiest thing this year.  More so than Baltimore being in the lead of the AL East in June.  And that’s just weird!