Andy Pettitte and Older Pitchers Coming Back After Missing a Year

I'm very excited about the comeback of Andy Pettitte. The potential for another valuable season is of course the most important reason. But I've always enjoyed just watching Pettitte pitch. The man is a pitching artist with a versatile set of weapons - he has an array of effective pitches, gets batters to ground into double plays, and has that nasty pickoff move.

And then Andy has a couple of quirks that I find fun to watch:

• His intense glare - sometimes he looks like he perceives nothing but the catcher's glove, and is completely unaware of the screaming fans and the pressure of a situation.
• The way he'll walk off the field at the end of an inning yelling at himself after getting out of a jam, because he was imperfect enough to get into the jam in the first place.

But how likely is it that he will make a valuable contribution to the 2012 Yankees? He starts with 2 strikes against him: the fact that he will be 40 is strike 1, and the fact that he missed a year is strike 2. So, can similar precedents in baseball history give us insight into the chances of success?

With that question in mind, I thought it would be interesting to look at is the history of older pitchers in a similar situation to Pettitte. To do this, I queried for all pitchers who pitched at least 100 innings in a year, did not pitch the year after, and then pitched 2 years after, filtering for only pitchers who were 34 or over in the "comeback" year. The following table shows the results:

Name	Year	Year Comeback	Age - Comeback	IP	IP Comeback	ERA	ERA Comeback
Hamlin, Luke	1942	1944	39	112.0	190.0	3.94	3.74
Mungo, Van	1943	1945	34	154.3	183.0	3.91	3.20
Galehouse, Denny	1944	1946	34	153.0	180.0	3.12	3.65
Lieber, Jon	2002	2004	34	141.0	176.7	3.70	4.33
Blyleven, Bert	1990	1992	41	134.0	133.0	5.24	4.74
Bell, Hi	1930	1932	34	115.3	120.0	3.90	3.68
Gumbert, Harry	1944	1946	36	216.7	119.0	3.07	3.25
Hernandez, Orlando	2002	2004	38	146.0	84.7	3.64	3.29
Falkenberg, Cy	1915	1917	36	220.0	80.7	2.86	3.35
Shoun, Clyde	1944	1946	34	202.7	79.0	3.02	4.10
Heusser, Ed	1946	1948	39	167.7	74.0	3.22	4.99
Smoltz, John	1999	2001	34	186.3	59.0	3.19	3.36
Helling, Rick	2003	2005	34	155.0	49.0	5.17	2.39
Hutchison, Bill	1895	1897	37	291.0	40.0	4.73	6.08
Lolich, Mickey	1976	1978	37	192.7	34.7	3.22	1.56
Locker, Bob	1973	1975	37	106.3	32.7	2.54	4.95
Johnson, Jason	2006	2008	34	115.0	29.3	6.10	5.22
Erickson, Scott	2002	2004	36	160.7	27.0	5.54	6.67
Schmit, Crazy	1899	1901	35	138.3	22.7	5.86	1.98
Reuschel, Rick	1981	1983	34	156.3	20.7	3.11	3.91
Cone, David	2001	2003	40	135.7	18.0	4.31	6.50
Benge, Ray	1936	1938	36	160.7	15.3	5.49	4.12
Saberhagen, Bret	1999	2001	37	119.0	15.0	2.95	6.00
Bridges, Tommy	1943	1945	38	191.7	11.0	2.39	3.27
Coombs, Jack	1918	1920	37	189.0	5.7	3.81	3.16
Pettit, Leon	1935	1937	35	109.0	4.0	4.95	11.25
Muncrief, Bob	1949	1951	35	110.7	3.0	5.12	9.00
Castillo, Frank	2002	2004	35	163.3	1.0	5.07	0.00
Flaherty, Patsy	1908	1910	34	244.0	0.3	3.25	0.00

Blyleven for example did improve in his comeback season at age 41; but sucking less in 1992 than he did in 1990 really shows he was toast by 1989 more than anything else. There are a few pitchers who were valuable in their comeback years, but they are clearly the exception.

However, I think the real takeaway here is that these are not applicable precedents to Pettitte's situation. The reason perhaps is obvious: most of these pitchers did not have a good season, retire for a year, and then come back out of retirement a la Andy Pettitte. Instead, most of these pitchers missed a year because of injury. In other words, this table reflects the aftereffects of serious injury on older pitchers; health is a variable that does not apply to Pettitte.


It makes sense that there are few precedents - most athletes have to have the uniforms ripped off of them, very few walk away after a productive season.

Since Pettitte's health is not a factor, the next post on the blog will look at this question from a different perspective, which is to just look at the records of starting pitchers age 39 and up, if nothing else that should show the upside.