All-Andy/Andrew MLB Team
This fact doesn’t have much to do with astrology as such, but 2013 was the last year in the fine career of left handed starting pitcher Andy Pettitte. In Pettitte’s 18 seasons, he made the starting rotation of the Gemini Twins 13 times, leading the staff in fantasy points three times (2005, 1997, and his sophomore season 1996). In those 13 seasons, he totaled 20,616 fantasy points, for an average of 1,585.8 per season. In more traditional metrics, he amassed 60.6 career Wins Above Replacement according to Baseball Reference. That bWAR total is the highest in MLB history by a player named Andy. Perhaps that’s why his name comes up first when you type “Andy” into the Baseball-Reference.com search bar. Or maybe it’s based on popularity, or personal search history, I don’t know for sure. But as someone named Andy myself, I have paid special attention to this fact.
The close of Pettitte’s career in 2013 got me thinking about who else would be on the MLB All-Time All-Andy team. Through an exhaustive research method (i.e. going through each page on Baseball Reference’s player index and searching for “Andy” on the page), I determined that 83 players named Andy played at least one game in the majors. What I found especially interesting is that only four Andy’s have appeared in the bigs since Pettitte’s retirement, and they’ve totaled negative-1.8 bWAR between them. (Although shout out to outfielder Andy Dirks, whose last season was also 2013, and who totaled 3.8 bWAR in his career.)
Below is a list of the top 20 Andy’s in MLB history, according to bWAR:
After Pettitte, the top MLB Andy is Van Slyke (41.3 bWAR), who coincidentally played in his last season during Pettitte’s rookie year of 1995. The cuspy Sagittarian (born just one day before the shift to Capricorn) spent the majority of his career with the Pirates after coming over in a 1986 trade from the Cardinals. During his time in Pittsburgh, the outfielder known as “Slick” made three All-Star teams and won five consecutive Gold Gloves, which were bookended by two Silver Sluggers. His son Scott Van Slyke, a Leo, had a six-year career for the Dodgers in the 2010’s.
Van Slyke was the lone bright spot on a lackluster 1988 Sagittarius offensive.
Speaking of Leos on the Dodgers, Andy Messersmith (37.5) pitched for Los Angeles in four non-consecutive seasons: 1973-75 and then again in 1979. He made two All-Star squads in that time, including a 20-win 1974 where he finished second in Cy Young Award voting, and a 40-start, 321-inning 1975 that earned him a fifth place CYA finish. He had two more All-Star nods in his career: once in 1971 with the then-California Angels, where he pitched the first five years of his career, and then with Atlanta in 1976, the year after he left the Dodgers. What’s curious about Messersmith’s placement on this list is that his given name is John Alexander Messersmith, but “Andy” appears on all his Topps baseball cards.
3,000-point seasons for pitchers were more common in the 1970’s but Messersmith’s ‘75 season was still impressive.
I haven’t gotten far enough back in my trip through baseball history to learn a lot about the career of Andy Pafko (36.7), who played mostly for the Cubs and the then-Milwaukee Braves from 1943 to 1959. The Pisces outfielder (born just one year after the cutoff of helloastrology.com’s zodiac calculator) made four consecutive All-Star teams between 1947 and 1950, and he has the honor of being on card #1 of the famed 1952 Topps set. I’m going out of order here, since the top Andy catcher, Andy Seminick (23.0), had almost an exactly concurrent career as Pafko: 1943 to 1957. The Virgo from West Virginia had a mostly unremarkable career, with just one All-Star appearance: a 24-homer 1949 season with the Phillies.
The next two members of a hypothetical All-Andy rotation also had nearly concurrent careers: Andy Benes (31.2) pitched from 1989 to 2002, while Andy Ashby (21.5) was in the majors from 1991 to 2004. Yet another Leo, Benes made the Lions rotation seven times between 1990 and 1998. Ashby, a member of my home sign Cancer, shored up their rotation for six consecutive seasons (1994-1999) and then again in 2002. What’s interesting about the Andy’s Benes and Ashby is that they each share a last name with a major leaguer named Alan: Alan Benes, an Aquarius pitcher, is Andy’s younger brother, while Alan Ashby is an unrelated Cancer catcher who played in the 70’s and 80’s.
The stats from 1998 formed the basis for my first true obsession with a video game: All-Star Baseball 2000.
Rather than go down the rest of the list of Andy’s, I want to shift over to the more formal side of that name. According to my list, there have been more major leaguers named Andy than Andrew, by a margin of 52. But it’s interesting that the vast majority of Andrew’s (about 25 out of 31, by my count) played in the last decade. In fact, the first Andrew on my list is Andrew Lorraine, who debuted in 1994 (and put up negative -1.2 bWAR in his seven year career). Contrast that to the earliest Andy – Andy Leonard, who got his start in 1871, more than 120 years earlier. I don’t know how many of these recent Andrew’s go by Andy unofficially (as I did for many years), but it’s a fascinating quirk of naming conventions over the years.
The most accomplished Andrew in MLB history is Andrew McCutchen, who has put up 44.4 bWAR over 12 years in a career that’s still going strong. The slugging Libra center fielder took home the NL MVP award in 2013, and he’s known as one of the most upstanding people in the game. The next Andrew on the list would slot in at the back end of the rotation: Andrew Cashner, with a career total of 11.8 bWAR through 2019. Cash didn’t pitch in 2020, but the 34-year-old hasn’t officially hung up his spikes. Then in the bullpen, we have lights-out lefty Andrew Miller (7.8 bWAR and counting) and former A’s closer Andrew Bailey (5.9 bWAR and he’s now a pitching coach).
Cutch actually scored more fantasy points in 2012 than in his MVP-winning 2013 campaign.
I guess it’s also worth mentioning André Rodgers, since his listed nickname is Andy, which causes him to show up in a baseball-reference search of that name. The Sagittarius infielder from the Bahamas put up 6.3 bWAR over his 11 years in the majors (from 1957 to 1967), making him the top Andy shortstop on this list, if we’re willing to bend the naming conventions. But that’s a slippery slope: does that mean we can include other Andre’s, such as Cancer Hall of Famer Andre Dawson (whose 64.8 bWAR would put him ahead of Pettitte)? Can we expand the list to include Andrés, giving us access to powerful Gemini first baseman Andrés Galarraga (31.7 bWAR)? And what about different spellings like Andruw, the most famous example being ten-time Gold Glove winning Taurus center fielder Andruw Jones (62.7 bWAR, which would launch him into second place)? As someone with a vested interest in this frivolous exercise, I see no reason why we can’t err on the side of inclusivity.
The 1997 Gemini team features contributions from both Pettitte and Galarraga… if we’re willing to bend the rules.
In the next post, we’ll continue our journey backwards into 2012, the first year of MLB’s new expanded playoffs with two Wild Card teams per league.