Kingdom

Case by case, I am willing to consider a player who has been caught cheating to be a Hall of Famer. I almost certainly consider one who's only been suspected but never definitively proven to be guilty to be so. In my perfect world, Alex Rodriguez will one day be there. He will be joined by Chipper Jones, John Smoltz, Pedro Martinez, Ichiro, Mike Piazza, and hold on while I vomit profusely.. Barry Bonds.

But someone that has recently gained more and more attention for being on that Hall of Fame boundary is Andy Pettitte. The top two arguments against him are simply "steroids" and "he's more Hall of Good than Hall of Fame". Fair enough. If he ends his career after 2010, he ends with 240 wins + another 19 from the postseason. He's logged over 3,000 innings + another 250 and counting in the postseason. His career and playoff ERA are both under 4.00, but not by a lot. He's logged only 25 career complete games (by comparison, Roy Halladay has 27 in the past three seasons alone). He's never won a Cy Young, he's won 20 or more only twice, and has been named an all-star 3 times.

What all of this tells me, are his most significant claims are the statistics in the postseason. He has the most wins in playoff history. He has 5 rings. He's pitching the world series 8 different times. Is that enough? The regular season wins do not stand out enough. The ERA, strikeouts, and complete game totals don't overwhelm. So how much do you value his accomplishments in his career in the most meaningful games? I would not keep Andy Pettitte out due to the performance enhancing clouds. But I could keep him out of the Hall of Fame, and stick him in the Hall of Good.