King For Many a Day

It’s Hall of Fame consideration season.  For the rest of the calendar year, Connections will be looking at some of the names on the 2025 ballot.  

Félix Hernández is one of 256 pitchers within Baseball Reference’s database who tallied at least 2,500 innings in a career.  He’s one of 43 among that large assembly to have initiated his career in an age-19 or younger season.  Inside that much smaller collection, Hernández is one of a half-dozen to have plied his trade for one – and only one – franchise.  Hall of Famers Walter Johnson, Bob Feller, Don Drysdale and Jim Palmer dominate the teeny club, but have room for Mel Harder and the right-hander who pitched exclusively for Seattle – King Félix’s realm for 15 seasons and a whole lot of triumphs. 

Superficially, this appears like a bit of trivia, a morsel of information culled from adding one qualifier atop another.  Through another lens, it feels crucial, an essential portion of the narrative that maintains resonance and relevance almost a decade after Hernández last represented the Mariners in an All-Star Game.  For it’s this connection to a city and a franchise that fences in his rise to, placement on, and fall from a throne – a story that gives his gravitational force more weight than might otherwise be calculated.  

By the time Hernández made his debut as a 19-year-old in 2005, almost all of the stars that had pulled eyes toward the Pacific Northwest over the previous 10 years – Ken Griffey, Jr., Randy Johnson, Álex Rodríguez, Edgar Martínez, Jay Buhner, Bret Boone, John Olerud – were gone.  Ichiro Suzuki – still compiling 200-hit seasons and still rifling throws to frighten baserunners – was still in town, but not much else was drawing eyes to a Mariners contest.  And then Félix Hernández started his career.  By the end of the 2005 season, he had become the first teenage pitcher to make 10+ starts since Dwight Gooden in 1984.  In his second appearance, he went the first eight in a 1-0 win over the Twins and pocketed his first career victory.  His next time on the mound brought forth 11 strikeouts.  By the time he was done in that first go-round, Hernández owned a sub-one WHIP and a 2.67 ERA in 12 starts, an introduction more than worthy of some fanfare.

Standing on the mound, being tasked with initiating the action and controlling the flow throughout – it’s an assignment that might be considered a flirty invitation to a master like Greg Maddux in the mid 1990s or Pedro Martínez during his apex; for a 19-year-old, it’s something altogether different.  And when someone shy of their 20th birthday accepts the gig and then posits a response like Hernández’s in 2005, there is an extra bit of charge in the air, molecules bouncing in all directions that ultimately bang together and then join as if to giddily say, “Stick around!  Come back!  This might be something!”

It was, although it did take a while.  In his next three seasons for an up and down Seattle club, Hernández was more workhorse than ace, posting a 35-32 record in 92 starts with a 3.96 ERA (110 ERA+) and more hits allowed than innings pitched.   There were moments of brilliance (a no-hit bid lost in the eighth, resulting in a one-hit shutout against the Red Sox in 2007, for example) amid the okay-ness, but the aggregate didn’t compel the masses to pilgrimage their way to the stands or TV sets every time the Venezuelan took the hill.  There were no All-Star Games, no Cy Young votes, no arguments about his standing among the game’s elite.  Maybe the molecules got ahead of themselves.  It can happen with teenagers.

The next seven years  – 2009 through 2015 – Hernández came into his own, kind of growing up before the very eyes of his supporters. 

2009 saw him lead the AL in wins, post the second lowest ERA in the league and finish fourth in strikeouts – all enough to garner the righty his first All-Star selection and a second place finish in Cy Young voting.  The encore perfectly meshed the ace and workhorse designations, merging league-leading starts and innings numbers with a league-best 2.27 ERA to thrust him into the top spot for Cy Young allocation – Seattle’s second honoree after Johnson in 1995. 

Another ERA title in 2014 gave the Mariner his second runner-up placement in voting for the AL’s best pitcher and also accompanied an All-Star start (the first Mariner hurler to get the starting nod since Johnson in 1997).  

Across those seven campaigns from 2009-2015, Hernández was second in the Majors in both bWAR and strikeouts (behind Clayton Kershaw), first in innings pitched, and among those who amassed at least 1,000 innings, third in ERA+ (and third in ERA), third in WHIP and third in hits per nine.  And oh yeah, he authored a perfect game.  King Félix had arrived and settled in, a must-see appointment centered in Seattle.  

The rest of his time in the Emerald City was not so flattering, four seasons with the above/below poles reversed from his heyday: a winning percentage south of .500, an ERA far north of 4.00.  But still, Hernández was royalty in his adopted and adoptive hometown.  He began Seattle’s seasons in 2016, 2017 and 2018 , giving him a franchise record 11 Opening Day starts (Johnson is second, with six).  In those 11 celebrated beginnings, he was 7-2 with an exquisite 1.53 ERA.  Among the 16 pitchers in the liveball era with at least 10 Opening Day starts, that mark is the lowest, submarining Juan Marichal’s 1.73.  

The 11 Opening Day starts plus 407 others plus one relief appearance all add up to the sum of Hernández’s career:  a 3.42 ERA, 169 wins, 2,524 strikeouts.  All three marks are the best for the Mariners’ franchise, giving its King, appropriately, a Triple Crown.  He’s one of five hurlers to  currently hold such status for a franchise.   Hernández’s associate in the original list from this piece – Walter Johnson – makes this claim for the Senators/Twins franchise.  Randy Johnson commands the top spot for the Diamondbacks.  Christy Mathewson is royalty for the Giants and Dave Stieb for the Blue Jays.  

For the first time this year, Seattle’s pitching star is on the Hall of Fame ballot – one of 14 (along with his former teammate, Ichiro) to be making their debut.   It’ll be interesting to see how he fares:  how meaningful his connection to a single franchise will appear; how the arc and apex of his career will be assessed; how the excitement he once fostered will be recalled and integrated into an evaluation.  From teenage what if? and could he be? to a name on the Hall of Fame ballot – it’s been quite the reign for King Félix.

Thanks to Baseball Reference and its extraordinary research database, Stathead, for help in assembling this piece.