Game 124, Mariners at Athletics
Aaron Harang vs. Jarrod Parker, 7:05pm
I’m back, so those of you who yearn for lengthy, turgid, meta-analysis in the guise of a game thread, uh, high five. Unfortunately, my absence coincided with Dave’s, so we didn’t have a great plan for the game threads, and I really want to thank Mike for putting them up.
Our fearless leader was at the Saber Seminar in Boston, having a Fangraphs meet-up and participating in one of the best baseball conferences around. I was not, however, so unfortunately I’ve nothing new to report from the future of sabermetrics and baseball analysis. I’ve been camping with my family, leisurely making my way south to Oakland. Dave’s hobnobbed with some of the smartest baseball minds around. My beard was shaggy and unkempt enough that Bob Melvin mistakenly penciled me in to yesterday’s line-up against the Indians because I just sort of looked the part.* I’ve missed quite a bit of the games, but the M’s have helped me out by going 3-3 on their recent road trip and 5-5 in their last ten games. The team’s decided to just sort of stand still while Dave and I were out of town, and for that I thank them.
The M’s open a three-game set in Oakland with the A’s, a team that continues to confuse fans and analysts alike. Many (including myself, unfortunately) picked them last in the AL West last year, and they looked due for some regression this season after what looked like career years from young pitchers and waiver claims. Instead, they’ve improved (they were ten games over .500 at this point last year). Intuitively, you’d assume that their success is the product of superior scouting – that they saw diamonds in the rough from Yoenis Cespedes to Brandon Moss – and that they simply gave these previously-overlooked guys a chance. But the more you look, so many of their batting heroes in 2012 are looking a lot more like the AAAA-types they were in 2011. Brandon Moss has been pretty good, but not the star he was in 2012. Seth Smith’s power is missing. To top it off, their breakout stars of 2012, Cespedes and Josh Reddick, have been shadows of their former selves. Cespedes has an OBP under .300, and Josh Reddick just got to 10 HRs with a 5-in-2-days barrage against the Blue Jays. Both have been below-average hitters this season.
The A’s were busy this offseason, bringing in Japanese middle infielder Hiroyuki Nakajima, and trading for OF Chris Young from Arizona. Both of these moves fizzled, with Nakajima a so-so player in AAA and Young playing himself into 4-th OF-status with a .279 OBP. To be fair, these weren’t the only moves they made. They picked up an on-base machine of a lefty-hitting catcher, and they got Jed Lowrie for 1B Chris Carter. It’s not that they haven’t made any good moves, it’s that their record is so, well, *mixed*, and here they are again, on the cusp of a second consecutive playoff appearance. Eric Sogard is the starting 2B on a good A’s team, and Jemile Weeks, Hiroyuki Nakajima, Grant Green and Scott Sizemore aren’t. Eric Sogard’s slugging percentage is .001 higher than Josh Reddick’s. Dustin Ackley is an OF. I have no idea why anyone tries to analyze this game.
The A’s starters have taken a step back, just the way we thought they might. It’s not just that Brandon McCarthy’s pitching for Arizona now, it’s that they had so many very young starters who seemed to outpitch their peripherals and scouting reports last year. The most heralded of that group is tonight’s starter, Jarrod Parker. A former #1 prospect of the D-Backs, he had velocity and a true weapon in his change-up. His change got whiffs on about 1/2 of all swings last year, and despite throwing it often, no one hit a HR off the pitch. Despite giving up lots of fly-balls/air-balls, he had a very low HR rate and got the most out of an 18% K-rate. More than the rest of the A’s rotation, Parker seemed the most talented – the “truest” of an odd assortment of players (an over-40 Bartolo Colon who throws 89-90mph fastballs over the plate 100 times per outing, a diminutive lefty throwing 87mph, a 13th round draft pick throwing 88-89mph up in the zone, etc.). Instead, Parker looked like a shell of his former self in early 2013. His ERA was over 7 in April, and while he was slightly better thereafter, by May 22nd he’d already given up as many HRs (11) as he had in the entire 2012 campaign.
For every warning sign, there was also an encouraging one. His velocity was down, but only slightly. His walk rate remains exactly the same. His K-rate is down, but his whiff-rate and contact-rate improved. His HR-rate was obviously much worse, but he was getting ahead of more batters and pitching from behind less than he did in 2012. It all adds up to a somewhat odd picture: his “traditional” stats look fairly similar to last year’s, while his FIP and advanced stats look much worse. It’s clear that his HR-barrage in April/early May can skew his FIP, but it’s also not clear that Parker has any sort of true talent at limiting HR/FBs. He’s still a solid pitcher, and he’s been excellent for a few months now, but he’s still not an ace. In true Athletics fashion, that title falls to Bartolo Colon, a portly 40 year old who MAKES ZERO LOGICAL SENSE.**
Line-up:
1: Brad Miller, SS
2: Nick Franklin, 2B
3: Kyle Seager, 3B
4: Kendrys Morales, DH
5: Raul Ibanez, LF
6: Justin Smoak, 1B
7: Michael Saunders, RF
8: Dustin Ackley, CF
9: Humberto Quintero, C
SP: Aaron Harang’s still here? Huh. How about that.
Through 123 games last season, the M’s were 59-64. This year, they’re 57-66. But hey, no Chone Figgins, amirite?
Eddie Campbell headlines the M’s affiliates’ starting pitchers today, with Hector Noesi, Jimmy Gilheeney, Rigoberto Garcia and Tommy Burns also toeing the rubber today.
* “I seriously thought John Jaso, John Jaha and Josh Reddick’s beard had some weird hybrid test-tube kid. I don’t think any manager in my position would’ve done anything differently. Billy Beane’s been very aggressive on the free agent wire, and…I mean, just look at him.”
** I would love a Moneyball follow-up book. There is *no pattern* to this team. None. That’s not the same as saying it’s all luck; it’s not that at all. It’s just that there’s no obvious thing to point to when describing HOW the A’s became a very good team. They just are.
A Mariner And The League’s Most Unhittable Pitch
I guess I should acknowledge up front that we’ve been through this before — when the Mariners traded Brandon Morrow for Brandon League, we expressed some delight over the fact that, the year prior, League had thrown baseball’s most unhittable pitch, as no other pitch generated a lower contact rate allowed than his splitter. The splitter didn’t work that way when League was a Mariner, though, and he often lost his feel for it, and the end result was that pretty much nobody really missed Brandon League when he became an ex-M. His potential was always so obvious to the eye that his inability to reach it was beyond aggravating.
So these things are fleeting. An unhittable pitch one day might become a liability the next. Everything’s subject to sample-size fluctuation, and not every pitch is thrown with the intent of generating a swing and miss, and pitches all work together so even bothering to isolate one is kind of a fool’s errand. Think long enough and any brand of baseball analysis has too many holes to take too seriously. But we’re here and dag barnit, I have more neat things to say about Danny Farquhar, who just picked up another save. This is probably a classic case of “baseball writer falls in love with pitcher who gets strikeouts,” but then, what’s not to fall in love with? “Man falls in love with smart, attractive woman with edgy sense of humor.” It’s like, yeah, that’s going to happen.
Farquhar, as you understand, throws a fastball, a cut fastball, and a curve. The fastball hangs around the mid-90s, the cutter around the low-90s, and the curve around the high-70s. From a Ryan Divish blog post when Farquhar was first promoted to Seattle:
Farquhar was ignoring the curve ball early on. And he needed that pitch to provide a change in velocity and eye level.
“It’s a put away pitch,” [Daren] Brown said. “Hitters don’t see it, and they’re just not ready for it.”
Farquhar understands its importance now.
“It’s a big offspeed pitch that I need to continue to throw for strikes, continue to mix in there because I have the fastball and cutter which are too hard pitches,” he said. “Even if it’s just showing it to hitters. It’s changing the speed, changing the plane and the eye level. The curve ball is a big difference maker.”
In Farquhar’s first four Tacoma appearances, he allowed five runs in four innings, with two walks and six strikeouts. In his subsequent and last 11 Tacoma appearances, he allowed one run in 16 innings, with two walks and 24 strikeouts. Farquhar got better in Tacoma as he implemented his curve. And, in Tacoma, he put up the kinds of numbers that support his numbers so far with the Mariners. These strikeouts aren’t coming out of nowhere. I’m starting to go off the rails so let’s pull this back.
During his time with the Mariners, Farquhar has listened to coaches and catchers remind him to use the curve more often. In July he talked about Henry Blanco suggesting he throw more inside, but he also talked about throwing more curves. And, through July 6, Farquhar threw 13% curveballs. Since then, he’s thrown 29% curveballs. He’s trimmed his ERA, he’s thrown more strikes, and he’s missed more bats. How good of a pitch has that curveball been? This good of a pitch, referring to the following information.
I looked at all starters and relievers in baseball, and then I looked at the 1,279 individual pitches of theirs that have been offered at at least 50 times. So, all the pitches that’ve been swung at 50 times or more, from Felix Hernandez’s changeup to Boone Logan’s slider. When I had all those pitches, I sorted them by contact rate allowed, just to see what’s what as of Monday, August 19. Danny Farquhar’s curveball has a contact rate allowed of 33.3%. It has been, to date, baseball’s most unhittable pitch.
By more than five percentage points. The sample, naturally, is small, but hitters have swung at Farquhar’s curve 51 times, and 34 times, they’ve missed. Against the curve, hitters have two singles, a double, and 27 outs, and that’s been important given their success against his straighter stuff. The whole idea is to use the curve to give hitters a different look and mess with their timing. The pitch, then, has been invaluable, because it’s been almost impossible to square up and because it’s made the other pitches better.
You know who else the Mariners have used as a closer who throws a fastball and a curveball? Put that way, Farquhar has some things in common with Tom Wilhelmsen, but their curves are different, and Farquhar has two fastballs instead of Wilhelmsen’s one. And over his fastballs Farquhar has superior command, so it’s less likely he’ll hit a stretch where he just looks lost. Wilhelmsen, last year, was quite good, and Farquhar is far from unbeatable, but just objectively, Farquhar seems like a better bet, because he has a better idea of where the ball’s going and because he has a more complete repertoire. Wilhelmsen has thrown good changeups, but he doesn’t presently have a good changeup. That’s one of the things he’s working on. Farquhar was working on throwing more curves, but he’s doing that now, and he’s been outstanding.
The danger, if you want to call it that, is that Farquhar is still new. Whatever reports people had on him before 2013 don’t mean much anymore, so new reports are being written, and maybe he slips into exploitable patterns. Maybe there’s going to be an adjustment, and maybe people are going to either look for that curve or lay off of it. Or maybe Farquhar will just get worse. Maybe there’s some kind of tell, and maybe Farquhar’s curve won’t be baseball’s most unhittable pitch for long. We’ve already seen how quickly these labels can be shed. Baseball isn’t static and all the numbers change until they’re no longer being generated. But here’s something we know about Danny Farquhar: he isn’t just a reliever with heat and a cutter. He also has a curve that people haven’t been able to hit yet. Perhaps the league will come around, but we can only worry about what’s happened so far, and what’s happened so far is most promising.
Middle Infield Adjustment Watch
Obviously, right now, Brad Miller and Nick Franklin are kind of growing together. They’re not literally growing together, but they’re *developing together* as Mariners middle infielders. When they’re going well, they look like foundation pieces for the next good Mariners team. When they’re not going well, it’s no biggie, they’re rookies, they’re supposed to slump, they’ll build character and be better for it in the long run. Not a whole lot of downside with rooting for young players. It’s all either good news or no news, until you have a quality player or a player who’s too old to still be young and learning. Then it’s on the player for being an annoying bust, like Jeremy Reed. Jeremy Reed is 32 years old. Jacoby Ellsbury is 29.
Anyway, what the Mariners are doing is trying to figure out whether Miller and Franklin will make up next year’s middle infield. Clearly, the potential is there; clearly, there’s some work to be done, on Franklin’s offense and Miller’s defense. Given their somewhat similar backgrounds you could call them the Double Play Twins if that nickname didn’t carry an Indian curse. Instead you can just call them Brad Miller and Nick Franklin, and in order to proceed, I’ll note that Miller debuted almost exactly a month after Franklin did.
From his debut through June 28, Franklin batted 117 times in 29 games and 27 starts. From his debut through July 30, Miller batted 116 times in 27 games and 25 starts. We’ll refer to these as Phase One. All their games and plate appearances since? We’ll refer to those as Phase Two. Let’s dig just a little bit into adjustment periods and whatnot.
PHASE ONE
For his first stretch, Franklin saw about 69% of what Brooks Baseball classifies as “hard” pitches. So, fastballs, basically. He batted .302/.368/.500, with 15% strikeouts. He had 13 extra-base hits, and nine of them came off hard pitches.
For his first stretch, Miller saw about 68% hard pitches. He batted .240/.319/.394, with 17% strikeouts. Of his ten extra-base hits, five came off hard pitches.
PHASE TWO
For his second stretch, Franklin has seen about 61% hard pitches. He’s batted .193/.263/.366, with 34% strikeouts. Five of his six homers have come off hard stuff, and he’s hardly been able to touch the rest.
For his second stretch, Miller has seen about 57% hard pitches. He’s batted .266/.319/.484, with 16% strikeouts. He has three extra-base hits against hard stuff, and four extra-base hits against breaking stuff.
—–
The short of it: Miller and Franklin have seen somewhat similar reductions in fastballs seen. Of course, there’s a lot more that goes into league adjustments, and Franklin has an extra month of data, so the numbers mean only so much, but what we’re seeing is that Franklin is having a lot of trouble hitting against guys throwing him more bendy stuff, while Miller is handling it just fine. Franklin’s strikeout rate has doubled. Miller’s strikeout rate has stayed the same, and he hasn’t had to sit on heaters. Just based on this, pitchers have no reason yet to change the way they’re working against Franklin, but Miller has passed his tests.
If you want some Franklin optimism, Yasiel Puig went through a little ugly stretch where he couldn’t hit any sliders, then he figured it out overnight and went back to being absolutely incredible. On the other hand, Nick Franklin isn’t Yasiel Puig. If you want some Miller realism, we’re looking at small samples and the league might still be learning him. It’s not like Miller is a known entity, and maybe they’ll discover a hole or two. Maybe he’ll hit a slump like Franklin’s current slump, and maybe he’ll get out of it and maybe he won’t. The future! Can’t tell it. Only know who’s done best recently, which is the best I can do.
Franklin’s been striking out for a while. He saw 64% hard stuff in July, and he’s seen 56% hard stuff in August. He struck out 36% of the time in July, and he’s struck out 29% of the time in August, which might be progress although the rest of his numbers really suck. If Miller had a strikeout phase, it came early — he struck out a quarter of the time through his first couple weeks. Since then he’s been something of a contact machine, tonight excepted, where an awesome lefty was on the mound. And Neal Cotts is also an awesome lefty.
Right now, Miller’s stock is higher. Right now, Miller looks like a legitimate starting shortstop for 2014. Used to be Franklin looked like a lot more of a sure thing, but they know what the problem is and they’re working on it. That should fix his troubles, unless it doesn’t, because not all troubles can just be fixed and smoothed out at the highest level. You don’t need me to tell you it’s going to be a critical last month and a half, for both these guys. From Miller, I’d like to see fewer errors and maintained decent production. From Franklin, I’d like to see way fewer strikeouts. And from Dustin Ackley I’d like to see a home run and from the Mariners I’d like to see 41 consecutive wins. Don’t really care if it’s all because of Raul Ibanez. Grant a dying man’s wish, God*.
* we’re all dying, even you
Game 121, Mariners at Rangers
Iwakuma vs. Holland, 5:05 pm.
I’m not sure who will be around over the weekend or if there will be new game threads going up – if not, feel free to keep using this one. The lineup:
Miller SS-L
Franklin 2B-B
Seager 3B-L
Morales DH-B
Morse RF-R
Ibanez LF-L
Smoak 1B-B
Ackley CF-L
Quintero C-R
Game 120, Mariners at Rays
Saunders vs. Cobb, 4:10 pm.
Today I miss John Jaso. Not for the prosaic reason that the Michael Morse trade was a mistake, or even the hindsight justification involving the total immolation of the team’s catching corps this year. No, it’s a much more whimsical basis, in that we’re deprived of that rare opportunity for another all-lefthanded lineup. (Oddly enough, the previous one last year was also in Tampa.)
Miller SS-L
Franklin 2B-B
Seager 3B-L
Morales DH-B
Ibanez LF-L
Smoak 1B-B
Saunders RF-L
Ackley CF-L
Blanco C-R
Brad Miller vs. Jesus Montero
Jesus Montero
- one career triple
- estimated 13.0 seconds from contact to third base
- no throw
Brad Miller
- five career triples
- estimated average 11.1 seconds from contact to third base
- 10.9-second fastest
- 11.4-second slowest
- four of five with no throw
Estimated difference
- 1.9 seconds
Significance of 1.9 seconds
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I’m going to stop short of openly praising Brad Miller right now, only because right after I wrote in praise of Nick Franklin he started to suck and I’ve done gone and spooked myself. Miller’s doing well and I’m just going to go ahead and leave it at that for the time being. We’ll see about adjustments and we’ll see about the smoothing-out process with his defense. One thing I will say is that, with Miller’s triple on Wednesday, he now officially has more triples in a Mariners uniform than Chone Figgins. Brad Miller’s all right, and I’m too afraid to go into any more detail. There’s value in them crazy legs.
Game 119, Mariners at Rays
Stepping in to get a game thread up, after we missed yesterday. Brad Miller was the big story, but it’s also worth taking a look at what Erasmo Ramirez is doing. Seriously, the guy is 4-0 with a 7.06 ERA – yes, in analytical terms those are numbers we don’t want to focus on, but it’s still a bizarre combination. Normally, you would think that kind of record belongs to a bad reliever who vultures wins by coming in with leads, giving up some runs, and then getting bailed out by his offense. But Ramirez has done this as a starter.
Similar to what Dave and Jeff have been talking about with respect to Farquhar, there’s also some divergence between results and performance here. Ramirez’s FIP is 5.25, and his xFIP is a practically respectable 4.03. Understanding how those are derived, you won’t be surprised to know that the differences are mostly due to home runs. Ramirez is giving up more flyballs than last year, and then they are going out of the park at insane rates. We’ll see if that normalizes over the rest of the year. Anyway, today’s game features:
Miller SS-L
Franklin 2B-B
Seager 3B-L
Morales DH-B
Morse RF-R
Smoak 1B-B
Saunders LF-L
Ackley CF-L
Quintero C-R
The pitching matchup of Harang versus Price is not one we necessarily want to dwell on, other than the tidbit that this is the first time Price has pitched against the Mariners in his career. Also, the right-left imbalance of the current roster is showing.
Danny Farquhar’s Place In History
There’s been a growing emphasis on strikeouts around baseball. It’s interesting when you examine the reasons why — teams are less concerned with hitters striking out, but more concerned with pitchers striking hitters out. Strikeouts are simply more important for pitchers, because it’s a lot harder for a guy to reach base on a strikeout than it is for him to reach base on a non-strikeout, provided Miguel Olivo isn’t catching, and if you let hitters put the ball in play, you have only so much control over the results. Pitchers who don’t get strikeouts allow more baserunners. Pitchers who allow more baserunners allow more runs. Pitchers who allow more runs become high school pitching coaches and real estate agents.
Of course strikeouts aren’t everything, and maybe analysts today give them a little too much weight. There are other ways that a pitcher can succeed, and perhaps we can all be a little too dismissive. But you just can’t do anything better than strike a hitter out. So much of the time, we’re trying to figure out how players are going to perform in the future. There’s no better single indicator of future success for a pitcher than strikeout ability. Hits might have something to do with a pitcher’s talent. Home runs might have something to do with a pitcher’s talent. Strikeouts have a lot to do with a pitcher’s talent, so it’s easier to overlook a guy having allowed too many hits than a guy having recorded too few whiffs. Most of the time, you want to follow the strikeouts. The guys with the strikeouts will be where the magic happens.
Danny Farquhar used to be kind of annoying. Danny Farquhar used to be a nobody, then he used to be kind of annoying, when he was piling up the strikeouts and running an ERA in the 7s. Farquhar hasn’t allowed a run since July 19, but through that point, he’d allowed a .298 average and 22 runs in 17 games. Whenever you see that kind of outlier performance, people are hasty to suggest that maybe “the rules just don’t apply to this guy.” There are most certainly guys to whom the rules don’t quite apply, but we can’t identify them after two dozen innings. Farquhar had strikeouts and little success. Now he has strikeouts and great success, having taken over for Tom Wilhelmsen, and he’s beginning to look like he really is one of baseball’s better relievers.
Yeah, I know relievers burn quick and burn bright. For example, Tom Wilhelmsen the year before he got replaced by Danny Farquhar. But I want to show you a table. Here are the top individual single-season strikeout rates for pitchers in Mariners franchise history:
| Player | Year | K% |
|---|---|---|
| Danny Farquhar | 2013 | 37.4% |
| J.J. Putz | 2006 | 34.6% |
| Randy Johnson | 1997 | 34.5% |
| Randy Johnson | 1995 | 34.1% |
| Norm Charlton | 1993 | 34.0% |
| Rafael Soriano | 2003 | 34.0% |
| Oliver Perez | 2013 | 33.7% |
| Randy Johnson | 1996 | 33.3% |
| Charlie Furbush | 2013 | 33.0% |
| Jeff Nelson | 2001 | 32.6% |
The difference between first place and second place is about 2.9 percentage points. The difference between second place and 17th place is about 2.9 percentage points. It’s Farquhar, then it’s everyone else, and we remember 2006 JJ Putz as having been one of the Mariners’ most dominant relievers ever. Putz had the heat and the splitter. Farquhar has the cutter and the curve. He doesn’t have the same music or the same intensity, but he’s been even better at making batters just turn right around.
As noted before, strikeout rates have been on the rise. When Randy did what he did in 1995, the league-average strikeout rate was just over 15%. Right now, the league-average strikeout rate is creeping up on 20%. Farquhar’s pitching at a time when strikeouts are easier to come by, and of course there’s also a difference between relieving and starting. One notes that the same table includes this year’s Oliver Perez and this year’s Charlie Furbush. If I wanted to make an adjustment for the sake of fairness, Farquhar would slip from the top position, but we don’t need to adjust everything, and we can just be happy that there’s a way in which Danny Farquhar compares to Randy Johnson. We’re allowed to be content knowing simply that Danny Farquhar currently has the Mariners’ highest single-season strikeout rate ever.
And he’s 26, and he’s cheap and under team control forever, and he’s good against both lefties and righties, and he was a pick-up no one thought of at the time. I wasn’t alone when I figured the Mariners just dumped Ichiro on the Yankees for nothing, basically to give him an opportunity to win. I didn’t think about D.J. Mitchell or Danny Farquhar until…I don’t even know. Spring training? And I thought of Mitchell first. But Jack Zduriencik noted that Farquhar had picked up a cutter. Zduriencik thought he might be getting some value back, and now a year later Farquhar is closing, effectively, after the Mariners’ intended closer decided to be non-confrontational with the strike zone. This helps cancel out the Yankees turning Shawn Kelley into a strikeout machine (lookit). The Mariners did squeeze something out of the Ichiro trade, and though you never want to bet on any reliever for long, maybe Farquhar closes for a few years. Maybe he settles in as a recognizable part of the team. Maybe he gets a role in a commercial. Jack Zduriencik turned Steve Delabar into Eric Thames. He also turned contract-year Ichiro into Danny Farquhar. You have to acknowledge the wins, if you’re going to complain about the losses.
Yesterday in Tampa Bay, Evan Longoria almost tied the game with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. For Farquhar, that would’ve been a rather unpleasant blown save. On the other hand, Longoria was behind 0-and-2, and Farquhar hit his spot, and there were two outs because the first two batters went down on strikes. Maybe Farquhar got a little bit lucky. He deserves it. And if he keeps pitching like this, there won’t be that much room for luck to begin with.
Mariners Player As A Volcano
Player
Dustin Ackley
Volcano
South Sister
The South Sister rises prominently within a crowded volcanic field, and it’s known to be relatively young. A few years ago, there were signs of unrest, as geoscientists detected uplift just west of the peak. It was unknown whether the area might be on the verge of a destructive eruption. However, the rate of uplift has since slowed down, such that now it’s hardly noticeable. Though the area is closely monitored, there exists no present threat of activity.
Felix Hernandez: Man Who Gets It
On April 19, 2012, the Mariners played a game against the Indians I wish I didn’t remember, and that I hope I never forget. The Mariners were, I don’t know, whatever record they were, and it was too early to think they’d be any good and it was too early to think they would suck. It was, in other words, a typical Mariners April, and in this game they turned to Felix Hernandez on the mound. In classic Mariners form, Felix’s teammates didn’t provide him with much in the way of support, but they did give him a run. In classic Felix form, the King let it hold up. Over eight shutout innings, Felix whiffed a dozen batters, and pitching with one out and the bases loaded in the top of the eighth, Felix escaped by striking out consecutive Indians on eight pitches. First, he made Jason Kipnis go away. Then he made Shin-Soo Choo go away, just like Bill Bavasi did. Felix was approaching 130 pitches, so in the ninth he’d turn the ball over to the bullpen, but he left the mound in the eighth with a roar. Choo’s swing and miss wrapped up one of the most utterly dominant outings of Felix’s big-league career. It was, somehow, an outing that stood out from most of the others.
Then in the top of the ninth, that stupid son of a bitch Brandon League coughed it up. Two walks and a single loaded the bases, and another single un-loaded them, and the Mariners lost 2-1. In the bigger picture, League’s meltdown was independent of Felix’s dominance, but that night, because of League, we couldn’t feel the same about Felix. We didn’t get that last taste of sweet closure, and to this day I can’t think of the first eight innings without thinking of the ninth. On too many occasions, Felix has been let down by his offense. On too many other occasions, Felix has been let down by his bullpen. Too much of Felix’s ability has been wasted, and Felix is a guy who really likes to win. Everybody likes to win, but Felix can usually do more on his own to that end.
Now keep all of that in mind as you read this. You might’ve missed it, but yesterday, Felix was amazing! Against a lineup that isn’t good, but against a lineup that’d scored 20 runs in two games. The Mariners’ offense, meanwhile, was not amazing, but it did provide Felix with two runs to protect, which he did. The top of the eighth ended with Felix striking out Martin Maldonado, and the score then was 2-0 Mariners with Felix at 108 pitches. His last pitch had been a fastball at 94.
For Robby Thompson, there’d be options. He could stick with Felix, or he could give the ball to new closer Danny Farquhar. As all managers would, Thompson asked Felix how he felt. Ryan Divish notes the response.
[Felix] admitted to Thompson in between innings that he was done for day.
“He was pretty much at the end of his rope,” Thompson said. “He’d basically had enough. He was honest with me.”
Normally Hernandez puts up a contentious fight about coming out of games. This time he didn’t. Of course, he could have and would have pitched if they needed him to.
“I was a little tired,” Hernandez said. “They asked me if I wanted to go back in. I said I’m alright, but I’ve had enough. I was just being honest. I want to go out there, but if I’m tired, I don’t want to blow the game.”
For Felix, this would’ve been a perfectly understandable thought process:
- I’m tired
- but if I come out someone else comes in
- the score is close because this offense is the Mariners’ offense
- whoever comes in could blow it
- lots of leads have been blown and the closer has an ERA near 5
- if they blow it I don’t win and the team doesn’t win
- I should probably do this by myself
- “I’m good to go”
But this seems to have been the actual thought process:
- I’m tired
- fatigue leads to reduced effectiveness
- probably better, then, to use a fresh reliever
- another guy could provide a better chance to win than I could
- “I’m tired”
A little while ago, I wrote about a Kyle Seager bunt against the shift, and I noted how weird it is that we think of obvious baseball as smart baseball. Felix, on Sunday, made what’s probably a pretty obvious decision, and I’m praising him for being smart. But there’s smart smart and baseball smart, and baseball is a game of egos and over-confidence. Smartness is relative, and many pitchers probably would’ve preferred to stay in the game. Rarely do you observe this blend of competitiveness and honesty, and Felix should be celebrated for being different from the others. He should be celebrated for being different from how he used to be. Based on his own testosterone and memory, Felix had every reason to deny his own fatigue, but in that moment he understood what would be best for all parties involved. He understood his own level, he understood the level of the fresh bullpen, and he forgave prior letdowns. In that moment, there was no hubris, there were no grudges.
Say what you will about Erik Bedard, but at least he doesn’t try to over-push it. Bedard knows that pitching tired means under-performance and increased injury risk. Felix gets that. Felix didn’t used to get that, but Felix gets that now, and it’s maybe more important than ever with Felix occupying a leadership role in the clubhouse. Younger pitchers are going to be learning from the Felix example, and the reason things are the way they are is because that’s how it’s always been. Pitchers have forever been too stubborn, and following the Felix example, Mariners pitchers might not be afraid to be honest. Felix isn’t, despite all the times he’s been burned.
Felix has the talent. Felix has the loyalty. Felix has the emotional maturity and brains. Felix has it all. Felix Hernandez has everything, and we have Felix Hernandez.