The Yankees’ Core Four has been down to three for a couple of years now, but just Derek Jeter will be left standing — if that — when this season ends.
As Mariano Rivera wraps up his farewell tour around Major League Baseball, Andy Pettitte announced Friday that these final games will also be his last.
Pettitte retired after the 2010 season but returned last year, saying he still had a love for the game. After that season was abbreviated by a broken ankle, he came back for 2013, and he has labored through the year, mixing poor performances and flashes of his former ability.
Pettitte, 41, is a Hall of Fame candidate with a 255-152 career record and a 3.86 ERA. He has 2,437 career strikeouts and a 1.354 WHIP and leads active pitchers in several categories. The most notable part of his resume, however, is the five World Series he won with the Yankees, for whom he played his entire career except a three-year gap when he pitched for the Astros.
The “Core Four” — Pettitte, Rivera, Jeter and Jorge Posada — had all played together for the Yankees for most of their careers, including the stretch of four World Series in five years from 1996-2000. With Posada retiring in 2011 and Rivera and Pettitte hanging it up this year, the final player from that quartet is Jeter, whose career is very much in question after the shortstop broke his ankle in last year’s playoffs and continues to struggle to get back to form.
