Simmons on King Felix
In the new ESPN Magazine, Bill Simmons writes about our very own King Felix Hernandez. He makes the Dwight Gooden comparison and reminisces about those thrilling summers in the mid-1980s when Gooden was Doctor K. If you haven’t, check it out.
Spiezio on the PI pages
Jim Moore writes a column not on anything related to sports but instead drools over Spiezio’s tattoo of his girlfriend, who, from reading the article, Moore finds quite attractive.
When I asked Spiezio what he liked about Jenn, he said: “What first attracted me to her was her looks. I thought she was going to be stuck up, but she was opposite of what I thought. We have a lot of things in common.”
Yeah, like neither of you can hit major league pitching.
Which brings us to my bit in the PI this week, where I write about how Spiezio isn’t just awful, he is all-time historically awful and has a chance to set some crazy records. Check it out.
Jamie Moyer, circa 2006
From April 30th to May 18th, Jamie Moyer had four starts that were, to be kind, awful:
4/30: 4 2/3 IP, 10 H, 5 ER, 2 BB, 1 K
5/6: 3 2/3 IP, 7 H, 6 ER, 3 BB, 2 K
5/11: 2 1/3 IP, 10 H, 5 ER, 1 BB, 2 K
5/18: 5 IP, 8 H, 6 ER, 3 BB, 2 K
For those four starts, his ERA was 12.63 and people were calling for his release. Since May 18th, he’s pitched 102 1/3 innings and posted an ERA of 3.34.
For the season, Moyer’s ERA is 4.20. His Fielding Independant ERA of 4.26 is better than C.C. Sabathia, Brad Radke, Barry Zito, and Jarrod Washburn, among others.
At this point, there should be no doubt that Jamie Moyer should be part of the Mariners 2006 rotation. The man continues to defy age, and his skills are perfectly suited for pitching in Safeco Field. While the team rightfully acknowledges that the rotation needs serious upgrades, the new acquisitions should be replacing Ryan Franklin, Gil Meche, and Joel Pineiro. Jamie Moyer should be back in 2006.
Game 119, Royals at Mariners
Jamie Moyer takes the hill in an afternoon game as the M’s try to sweep the Royals and hand them their 18th consecutive loss. Good God, they’re terrible.
Address
People’ve asked me if we’re going to have some giant letter or card of support that everyone can sign and send to Snelling. I have no plans to do so, or any idea how we’d manage that. If you want to do this on your own, though, please, go right ahead:
Chris Snelling
c/o Seattle Mariners
P.O. Box 4100
Seattle, WA 98194
Doyle’s knee torn, future uncertain
In a grim, honest assessment of his baseball health, Snelling acknowledged that there is “definitely a tear” in his left knee, which he reinjured one week ago at Safeco Field.
…
“Right now, I’m thinking very irrationally,” he said. “I just thought, ‘You know what? I’m tired of this.’ I did everything they told me to do. I was smart about it. I worked hard.”
If you’ve been around reading USSM for a while, you know there’s probably not a bigger booster of his than me. This season I winced early, got so paranoid about injuries that I started to call him by his middle name in public for entirely irrational reasons. And then things started to happen, and I got more and more excited as he hit everything the Pacific Coast League could throw at him, seemingly finally healthy and given the chance, showing that his talent could overcome. When he got the first call, I was overjoyed.
And now even a day after I watched a dominant Felix Hernandez start, I feel some fraction of the disappointment — the despair — that Chris must face. It’s like I’ve been punched in the gut and don’t know what to do. I have, through long and what must look like irrational fandom, become too familiar with these trials, and become more emotionally vested in his career than pure talent or performance or risk analysis would justify.
Much of this comes from my appreciation of his unearthly dedication. Many prospects don’t achieve their projected greatness because they don’t care enough to listen to their coaches, or follow a conditioning program, many of them at the same time cultivating a kind of strange arrogance that sours teams on them. Some of them disappoint us with their off-field conduct.
That’s not Chris, though. Setback after setback, he’s come back the same humble, kinda-weird-in-a-cool way guy. He has a personality, and it comes through that he’s a nice guy, he’s humble but driven, he’s scrappy and tenacious, and maybe he’s even a little weird (or dorky, or whatever you want to call it) and that comes along with his sense of humor.
But this isn’t funny, and I don’t envy him the choice ahead. It’s easy for us to say that he’s going to get over it and get back on the comeback trail, but that’s got nothing to do with it. Just as I dismiss people who mock Rick Ankiel, say, as a head case, having no more idea what kind of immense pressure he’s labored under than they know what went wrong, no one but Chris knows how hard all of this has been on him. The breaks, the tears, what must seem like endless, painful physical therapy, all the time away from his family, the brief stretches of success brought to a close by Fate noticing and coming back around to put him back in rehab again (“Okay, now lift that… does that hurt?” “Yes!” “Good. Do that nine more times.”) and now he faces the same decision he’s made over and over again.
Each time it must be harder to make that same choice to go back to baseball. What’s the point, after all, if the body can’t take it? If his obvious gifts for baseball are paired with a fragility that prevents him from ever fufilling that talent? He’s young, certainly, but he must worry about whether another couple years of this will reduce his ability to live normally the rest of his years, and that’s a decision not to be made lightly either.
I haven’t ever been more depressed about anything in Mariner history, and I’ve talked to other fans who aren’t as huge Cult of Doyle members as I am and they’ve agreed this was a huge blow. These last two seasons it’s been hard to be a fan and carry the torch. The promotion and promise of Doyle and King Felix were more than interesting transactions, or even the ascension of future contributors. It was first light in the morning. If Chris Snelling could come back from everything he’d faced and overcome to make it back to the major leagues after three years of fighting his way back, if Felix Hernandez could stay healthy and step over the corpses of all the pitching prospects who’d fallen before him, then things had to be turning around. I wonder how the universe can apportions karma so unjustly, what kind of a God torments a good dude like that, whether this is some Greek epic where it’s going to take a ten-year journey to get back and stay in the majors, and the next time he heads back to Australia to visit his family his plane’ll be diverted by Sirens.
As a Mariner fan and a Doyle cultist, I hope after the knee surgery he decides to come back and he’s able to become the player I have always had faith he could be.
As a Snelling fan, I’ll understand whatever decision he makes, and I wish him good health and all the best in whatever he chooses to go on and do from this point.
Game 118, Royals at Mariners
RHP Zach Greinke (gr-EI-nke, commenters) v RHP Joel Pineiro (pin-EI-ro, commenters).
The Royals have lost 16 games in a row. Joel Pineiro, with the new hands-up motion (quick, how many times does that get mentioned in the broadcast), has had a couple decent starts in a row, leading to an encore presentation of “is he back?” arguments.
Bloomquist bats second, Morse goes to DH, and the insane-fielding Betancourt plays short again. The Royals counter with… bleaacchhhh. If Pineiro’s looking to rack up a decent start without Felix’s stuff, this is a good time to do it. You cleared waivers! Make daddy proud so he can find you a new home.
2005 Mariner Playoff Odds tracking
Clay Davenport over at Baseball Prospectus does this odds thing where the computer does a huge number of simulations about who needs to beat who and when to get into the playoffs, and fortunately for us, there’s historical information so we can see the team’s chances decline over time. It’s pretty depressing.
For extra depressingness, check out our divisional rivals: here’s the same odds against the A’s.
Yup.
Holding Court with King Felix
David Schoenfield (Kentridge graduate) writes about Hernandez on ESPN’s Page 2.
I had to watch because I’m a Mariners fan and it’s been a stinking lousy two years. I had to watch because he’ll be a phenom with an unlimited future for only a breath of time. I had to watch because if he were pitching for the Red Sox or Yankees, the stadiums would have melted from the red-hot hype.
But he’s not with Boston or New York. He’s with the Mariners. And I had to watch Monday night because maybe — just maybe — he really is the King who can save my baseball team.
We can hope.
Statistical Breakdown of the King
Lately, there has been an outbreak of “rationalism” in regards to our talk of Felix Hernandez. The responses go something like “sure, he’s good, but it was the Tigers, Twins, and Royals, all of the games in extremely pitcher friendly parks”, which is all true. But there is a thin line between rationalism and skepticism, and at this point, there’s no reason to be skeptical of King Felix. Below are his numbers through his 3 starts and where they would rank in the American League if he qualified for the ERA title:
ERA: 0.86 (1st)
Fielding Independant ERA: 1.66 (1st)
Line Drive Percentage: 9.6 % (1st)
G/F rate: 4.11 (1st)
Infield Fly Rate: 22 % (1st)
K/G: 10.6 (1st)
BB/G: 1.5 (5th)
HR/G: 0.0 (1st)
K/BB: 7.00 (2nd)
WHIP: 0.67 (1st)
Opponents BA: .153 (1st)
Opponents OBP: .191 (1st)
Opponnents SLG: .153 (1st)
The average hitter Felix has faced so far has a season line of .269/.327/.406. Against Felix, they are hitting .153/.191/.153. He has cut the opponents hitters OPS by 53 percent over what they are against the rest of the league. For comparison, Roger Clemens average opponent has a season line of .256/.325/.405, and are hitting .188/.245/.255. Clemens has cut opponents OPS lines by 32 percent. Even adjusting for opponents, Felix has been dominant on a level that no other pitcher in baseball, even Roger Clemens, has matched.
Other random ridiculous Felix notes:
He has yet to allow an extra base hit. I have yet to see a ball hit that I even think had a chance to go for more than a single.
He’s thrown 8 innings in less than 100 pitches in back-to-back starts.
Through the first five innings of each start, his groundball/flyball mark stands at 27 to 3.
Yes, its 3 starts. It is only 21 innings. It’s a small sample size. He can’t pitch like this all year. Let’s see what he does on the road against a good offense. Yada yada yada.
For three starts, Felix has been the best pitcher in baseball. His next start comes Saturday night in Minnesota. Make a date to watch brilliance in action once again.