WHY PETTITTE PROVIDES STABILITY & EXPERIENCE

“How about that?” – Mel Allen

Andy Pettitte comes in as icing on the cake. Sure it was a huge surprise yesterday that Andy Pettitte accepted his minor league deal worth $2.5 million for the Yanks. No one saw that coming, except of course our Bleeding Yankee Blue writer Christy Lee who had a dream about it happening (Read: PETTITTE: A YANKEE WOMAN’S FANTASY.) It’s funny how things work, dreams do come true.

Andy Pettitte will do what he always does...condition, work hard and provide results because in the end, if you can’t provide results, you ain’t winning anything. Pettitte knows that and had provided it 5 times with the New York Yankees before. Believe me, adding Pettitte to the already decent rotation will just make them better.

Sure there are question marks. Many need to think about how the Yankees handle youth and in this case, I mean Michael Pineda and Ivan Nova. It’s all over Twitter… how will the Yankees deal with these guys and will it get in their heads if Pettitte comes in and Pineda or Nova are sent down? You have George King III who recently discussed the possibility of Michael Pineda being send down to the minors because of “options”, read about it HERE. He basically read into Girardi’s statement here and made that conclusion:

"Some of the guys have options if that's what we need to do. But if it makes us a better team putting them in the bullpen we might do it.''

It was genius actually because now with Andy Pettitte coming over, it almost makes more sense to me.

What will they do with Ivan Nova or Phil Hughes now? How about Freddy Garcia? There’s been plenty of talk about Garcia wanting the bullpen and he’d “be fine with it.” Again, now it almost seems like Girardi's statement makes more sense now that Andy's in town. Sure, Andy has a minor league deal in in my mind, I’m thinking we need to make sure this guy's arm and legs are capable of still playing on the Yankees level. It is very very possible Andy Pettitte can’t do it again and that’s why the minor league deal is in place. We’d just have to see and logically, if he needs to build up strength, he’ll be down until he’s ready, which could be June for all we know. Basically, like I’ve been saying for everyone this spring, I also need to say it for Andy…baby steps.

There’s a lot of question marks now, maybe even more than before Andy showed up. Look, at the end of the day there are 2 things I love about this situation; I love Andy Pettitte back in pinstripes and I love the idea of a clean competition. CC Sabathia, Hiroki Kuroda, Andy Pettitte, Ivan Nova and Michael Pineda or Phil Hughes… I smell a championship with that rotation…don’t you? Comment and tell me how you feel about the announcement of Pettitte coming back to the New York Yankees…we want to hear from you.

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