Guilfoil Brothers Sports

Andy Pettitte will officially announce his retirement tomorrow.

Pettitte will walk away after 16 excellent years in the major leagues. He accumulated 240 regular season wins with a 3.88 era during that time. However, what many Yankee fans will remember most are his 19 postseason victories, including all three clinching games of the 2009 playoffs, helping the Yankees bring the title back to where it belongs.

Pettitte may have never been the dominant ace, but he was a big game pitcher who came through when it mattered most. Pettitte won five World Series titles and pitched in eight World Series combined, including one with the Astros back in 2005.

Yankee fans like myself will miss Andy. He along with Jeter, Posada, and Rivera have formed the Core 4 since 1996. Being a 25 year old Yankee fan, it is getting hard to see guys like Andy walk away from the game. (I try at all costs to avoid thinking about what it will be like not to see Derek at shortstop, and Rivera walk in to Enter Sandman to close out the game.) Unfortunately this is part of baseball.

Pettitte is walking away after one if his best seasons, which leads me to my next point how will his innings be replaced.

I was not unhappy with Lee spurning the Yankees to go off to Philly — by the way I hate all Philly sports.

But with the loss of Pettitte I am not quite sure how the rotation will set up. Sabathia is a true ace, Phil Hughes is a rising star, but after that there are now more question marks then I had thought. I can only hope Burnett returns to form — now more then ever he is needed. If Burnett can pitch like an $18 million player, then the top three is set. That leaves two huge holes to fill. This is not the National League; this is the American League East — the much improved American League East, where a team needs more then three starters to win.

Freddy Garcia was signed, as was Bartolo Colon, two veterans with a lot of injury concerns. I actually like the Garcia move. If healthy, he should do an alright job, but it would have looked a lot better if he was the five starter.

Garcia once was a top pitcher, but that was a long time ago. There are also some other internal options such as Andrew Brackman, and Ivan Nova. I can see either of them becoming pretty good starters down the line, but time will tell if either is ready for the bright lights of New York. There is also talk of Kevin Millwood, but we saw what the AL East did to him last year when he was with Baltimore. If the Yankees can catch a few -onth hot streak from any of these guys, combined with a return to form from Burnett, they will be fine. The Yankees need to get to the All Star break when it will be much easier to acquire a top flight starter. Stay tuned.