Debating Andy Pettitte's Hall of Fame Candidacy After Win No. On Saturday Andy Pettitte beat the Seattle Mariners, becoming the 47th pitcher to win 250 games. For Andy Pettitte, the near constant in an ever-changing Yankees starting rotation, his chances of making the Hall of Fame someday are likely to come down to how much the voters value a victory and how much they continue to punish players for connections, however limited, to performance-enhancing drugs. On Saturday Pettitte beat the Seattle Mariners, becoming the 47th pitcher to win 250 games. He has 49 more victories than Tim Hudson and Roy Halladay, the pitchers who follow him on the active list, and his five World Series rings certainly build an intriguing résumé for enshrinement in Cooperstown. Many will tell you that victories do not matter as much anymore in assessing a pitcher's worth and that a pitcher is better judged by earned run average and strikeout and walk rates. While that is largely true, victories, for Hall of Fame voters at least, have traditionally mattered quite a lot. While 250 does not have the ring of 300, it has often been enough to earn a plaque. Of the 46 pitchers who previously won 250 or more games, only eight have reached eligibility for induction and not been elected to the Hall. Five of those were 19th-century hurlers whom the voters rightly excluded for having artificially inflated numbers because of the era in which they played. One, Roger Clemens, failed to gain election this year in his first time on the ballot because many voters concluded he used performance-enhancing drugs to bolster his career. That leaves just two others, Tommy John and Jim Kaat, to win 250 or more games and not make the Hall of Fame. Pettitte has statistical similarities with John and Kaat, which would suggest that his chances of getting into the Hall of Fame are uncertain, even if you put aside the issue of performance-enhancers. John and Kaat hold large advantages over Pettitte in terms of E.R.A. While much of that can be explained through the higher-scoring era in which Pettitte has played, Pettitte does not distance himself all that much even when the numbers are adjusted for eras and home ballparks. Over all, Pettitte has been 17 percent above league average in adjusted E.R.A. in his 18 seasons. John was 11 percent above average in his 18 seasons and Kaat was 8 percent above average in his 25 seasons - yes, 25. Pettitte holds advantages in terms of strikeout rate and strikeout-to-walk ratio, but that can be largely attributed to strikeouts having been on the rise throughout his career. When WAR is used as a measurement, Pettitte falls between John and Kaat. The one place Pettitte greatly distances himself from John and Kaat has been the postseason: he has started more games, won more games and pitched more innings than any other pitcher. Despite his gaudy postseason totals, however, Pettitte has rarely been a dominant postseason performer along the lines of Curt Schilling or John Smoltz, a pair of pitchers expected by many to ride their playoff heroics into Cooperstown. Pettitte's totals are largely a result of quantity rather than quality. But what may be ultimately more troublesome for Pettitte in winning Hall of Fame induction is his admitted connection to performance-enhancers. Unlike Clemens, Pettitte has not disputed that he used them. He publicly acknowledged using human growth hormone in several instances, saying he did so to help heal from injuries. Pettitte also had to testify at Clemens's 2012 perjury trial, and on the witness stand he seemed to retreat from a 2008 deposition he gave in which he stated that Clemens had told him of using H.G.H. Whether that apparent hedging, in court, might hurt him in the eyes of at least a few voters remains to be seen. Time, of course, will factor into all of this. Even if he were to retire after this season, Pettitte would have five more years before anyone had to decide on his candidacy, which leaves time for a shifting, and softening, of opinions on the steroids era on the part of those who vote. Pettitte's transgressions may ultimately be viewed as fairly minor. In the meantime, a more intriguing Cooperstown candidacy would seemingly be posed by Mike Mussina, a former Yankees teammate of Pettitte's who will be on the Hall of Fame ballot for the first time this year. Mussina, who retired on top as a 20-game winner in 2008, is tied for 24th on the career wins list with 270. More important, he was a better pitcher than Pettitte throughout much of his career, and he never had his name connected to performance-enhancing drugs. The lone knock on Mussina is his lack of World Series rings. In his first two years of Hall of Fame eligibility, Mussina may be overlooked. This year's ballot, after all, features Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, a pair of unsullied 300-game winners, and next year's features the 300-game winner Randy Johnson. But after that, Mussina should be an interesting test case of a pitcher who was unquestionably one of the best of his era but did not win a championship or reach the mythical benchmark of 300 wins. For Yankees fans, the thought of Mussina's being a Hall of Famer while Pettitte is on the outside looking in probably feels a little incongruous. But because performance-enhancers remain an unpredictable issue, it could end up being a reality,