9 Responses to “Podcast: Felix the Juggernaut”

1. the tourist on June 9th, 2014 11:47 am

   Love the Brandon McCarthy suggestion. There is another 1B on a team that’s well out of it that the Mariners could consider, depending on the price: Anthony Rizzo. Then again, he may be completely unavailable. But his name just seemed to stick out to me and I said it out loud when listening after you guys talked about Goldschmidt.

2. joser on June 9th, 2014 6:10 pm

   Thanks guys, always appreciate these. Three things that popped into mind while listening:

   First, I thought (and I could be wrong) that when groundball pitchers miss up in the zone, batters get under the pitch for a dinger; whereas when flyball pitchers miss up in the zone, batters get under them for a pop-up IFF? I thought I read something at THT about that, but maybe not.

   Second, if it’s true that Felix is willing to (essentially) tell McClendon when to pull him when he’s out of gas, and he actually knows himself well enough to gauge that accurately, I wonder how much that is helping his stats this year. I haven’t gone back through the logs and checked, but if it’s true that in the past Felix has given up more runs in the late innings when he’s gassed (either directly or through inherited runners scoring when a reliever takes over), then by refusing to go out once he’s at that point he’s helping the team (assuming whichever reliever comes in is better than a gassed Felix, which unfortunately isn’t always the case)… but he’s also helping his own numbers (and our perception of him). Obviously, that’s not why he’s doing it — and anybody capable of striking out 15 batters in 100 pitchers doesn’t need his line helped anyway — but you wonder how many other pitchers would improve if they were able to recognize when they were at that point and had a manager willing to go along with taking them out?

   And finally, Mike Zunino. You know, of all things that were said about him when he was drafted and coming up, I don’t remember anybody speculating that he might be the guy who would help Felix take that last step from Ace to absolutely transcendent Greatness. You kind of wonder where Felix would be if he’d felt free to use the bottom of the zone in past seasons the way he seems to be now. It’s like his previous catchers forced him to work with an artificially constrained strike zone, or artificially limited his pitch selection in certain circumstances, and now that he has the full zone canvas to paint in and his full repertoire to paint with he’s finally producing the masterpieces we always hoped he had in him.

3. JMB on June 9th, 2014 8:52 pm

   Rizzo is signed through 2019 with club options for 2020-21… kind of doubt the Cubs would be willing to move him after making that sort of commitment, but I guess you never know.

   Regardless, if they’re serious about this thing they’ve got to go get another hitting. You can’t keep running out middle infielders, backup catchers, and marginal corner outfielders at DH (in addition to Smoak, to say nothing of Chavez and Bloomquist!).

4. bookbook on June 10th, 2014 1:34 am

   But, but, Morrrison is coming.

5. Sportszilla on June 10th, 2014 8:17 am

   “I love Felix more than I love myself.” True words Jeff, true words.

6. Sportszilla on June 10th, 2014 8:30 am

   Also, I wonder if this is something that is shared in the larger fanbase: you guys forget about Iwakuma an awful lot. He’s not Felix, obviously, but he’s really damn good, and while obviously there have been some durability issues, I’d feel pretty solid handing him the ball in a one-game playoff too.

7. Westside guy on June 10th, 2014 1:38 pm

   Felix xFIP (2014): 2.42
   Iwakuma xFIP (2014): 2.89

   Felix IP (2014): 98
   Iwakuma IP (2014): 50.2

   I really love Kuma, and I do agree with Sportzilla’s point – but its also true that while Felix is absurdly amazing, he’s also proven to be just about bullet-proof!

   I do hope the team is working on an extension for Iwakuma though.

8. MrZDevotee on June 10th, 2014 5:17 pm

   (quietly holding my breath, after Westy called Felix bullet-proof… bringing out the voodoo dolls, killing a couple of chickens in Felix’s name, all my fingers crossed, sprinkling holy water on a packet of bandaids, etc…)

9. r0ry on June 12th, 2014 3:36 am

   I think we’re being a little too hard on Smoak.

   http://www.baseballheatmaps.com/graph/distanceleader.php

   I still think he’s fairly useless against lefties, but he was solid vs RHP last year, and only has a .217 BABIP vs them this year.

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