From Buster Olney, who is sometimes right and sometimes wrong:

As the New York Yankees began a round of scouting meetings this week to discuss the future of the team, they know that veteran left-hander Andy Pettitte intends to pitch in 2009, and his intention is to pitch for them.

Sources said on Wednesday that Pettitte’s agent, Randy Hendricks, has informed the Yankees of this recently.

No contract for 2009 has been negotiated between the pitcher and the team, but he has made it clear that he wants to play for the Yankees and the Yankees have made it clear that they want Pettitte, who went 14-14 with a 4.54 ERA for New York this season. Pettitte made $16 million last season.

I am not opposed to Andy returning for 2009 as his peripherals in 2008 were actually better than 2007 (except for HR/9), even with the crazy insane games like the Kansas City horror showcase taken into account. Don’t believe me? It’s okay, I didn’t either until I took a look at Fangraphs.

        K/9     BB/9    K/BB    HR/9
2007	5.89	2.88	2.04	0.67
2008	6.97	2.43	2.87	0.84

His defense independent pitching statistics are a big tick higher than his ERA as well, indicating that he suffered from some bad luck and bad defense. Compared to his 4.54ERA (which is still not bad and in fact what most people were expecting from him), his FIP was 3.74 for example.

If Andy is allowed to take a more backend role next year, he will continue to be valuable for the team. If the team is once again relying on him to be a solid front-end pitcher then that is bad.