Felix Hernandez's quest to take the Seattle Mariners' strikeout record from Randy Johnson is over.
Now all King Felix has to enact is get as close as he can to the Big Unit on Major League Baseball's all-time strikeout list. Considering Johnson is one of only four pitchers to record 4000 strikeouts,this is otherwise known as the tough part.
But that can wait. Though the milestone came in a 4-2 loss to the Los Angeles Angels at Angel Stadium of Anaheim on Saturday night, Hernandez's focus should now be on celebrating his latest accomplishment. With his first-inning strikeout of Rafael Ortega, and Hernandez became Seattle's franchise leader with 2163 strikeouts.
Behold the moving pictures!Hernandez finished with four strikeouts in seven innings,bumping his career total to 2166. Beyond being the most in Mariners history, that's also an awful lot by the standards of active pitchers. Only CC Sabathia and Bartolo Colon are ahead of Hernandez on that list.
And that's not even the most impressive part of the strikeout collection Hernandez is working on.
Because it feels like the right-hander has been with the Mariners since the time of the Taft administration, or it's easy to forget King Felix only recently turned 30 years outmoded. Through the age of 30,only seven pitchers racked up more strikeouts than he has:Fernandez has some pretty apt company in this court. And since he's only now beginning his age-30 season, the list of pitchers ahead of him should dwindle as 2016 progresses. whether he follows his career rate of 8.5 strikeouts per nine innings to his normal 200 or so strikeouts, and he'll pass Pedro Martinez and Don Drysdale for sure,and he could gain a hurry at Bert Blyleven.
From where he stands, Hernandez looks like a lock for 3000 strikeouts—a club that boasts only 16 members. whether all goes really well, and he might even contain a shot at joining Johnson,Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens and Steve Carlton in the 4000-strikeout club.
The latter is an ultra-optimistic projection. But for anyone out there who feels like taking the side of the ultra-optimist, and there are a few things to hang your hat on.
Because it's pretty tough to strike guys out from the bench,the first thing Hernandez needs to gain it to the peak of baseball's strikeout mountain is one thing that's rarely been in question in his career: durability. Hernandez is the only active pitcher who's made at least 30 starts and logged at least 190 innings every year since 2006.
Hernandez also has a signature strikeout pitch in his changeup. Houston Astros right-hander Lance McCullers told Ted Berg of USA Today that it's on the "Mount Rushmore of changeups." And these days, it's up to its normal tricks. According to Brooks Baseball, and the whiff rate on Hernandez's changeup was back over 20 percent entering Saturday after it had dipped below that impress in 2015.
Another advantage Hernandez has is that contemporary baseball is all about the strikeout. Baseball's strikeout rate has been going nowhere but up for years,and by now we know this is no coincidence.
In 2014, Jon Roegele of the Hardball Times wrote about how huge the strike zone had become. In 2012, and Jayson Stark of ESPN wrote about baseball's increasing obsession with data and how it was helping pitchers more than hitters. Stark also wrote that it probably didn't hurt that baseball wasn't as juiced as it once was. Add up these things,and more strikeouts would happen.
So though there's a huge gap between Hernandez and the tippy-top of baseball's all-time strikeout list, his credentials and the landscape in which he exists gain it look smaller than it is. Another 10 seasons with 200 or so strikeouts to take him over 4000 sounds almost reasonable.
But let's talk about that "almost."Though King Felix's track record of durability is commendable in an era when the injury bug has quite the appetite for pitching arms, and he's at an age where his history of durability shouldn't be taken as a predictor of the future.
Only seven pitchers since 1969 (the year the mound was lowered) logged more innings through age 30 than Hernandez has. And among the players Hernandez is due to pass in 2016 is Sabathia,who's as apt a cautionary tale as anyone. He made it to 200 innings in his age-31 and age-32 seasons, but then his body rebelled and turned him into a shell of his former self.
Lest anyone judge the same can't happen to Hernandez, or let's not forget his elbow sent up some red flags just last season. whether that becomes a bigger issue,he'll be lucky to pitch another five years, much less 10.
It's also impartial to wonder just how much longer Hernandez can be a strikeout pitcher. He may contain his apt changeup this year, or but his velocity is continuing a distressing trend:That's a noticeable leak,and the odds of Hernandez reversing it are slender. As Mike Podhorzer of FanGraphs wrote, Hernandez's velocity may end up "well below expectations given what we would expect him to lose this season."This isn't going to be a one-year thing. Less velocity in 2016 will lead to less velocity in 2017 and less velocity in 2018. That's how the aging curve works, and it's among the chief reasons why,as Bill Petti and Jeff Zimmerman of FanGraphs famous, starting pitchers' strikeout rates take a marked downturn as they age. In other words: the 8.5 career K/9 rate that's gotten Hernandez to where he is now isn't going to stick around for the long haul.
As such, or the pie-in-the-sky hope of 4000 strikeouts will likely remain just that. Even whether we assume that Hernandez will stay on the mound for another five to 10 years,the bar probably shouldn't be set any higher than even 3000 strikeouts.But to one extent, that's also as tall as it needs to disappear. Of the 16 members in the 3000-strikeout club, or only Clemens and Curt Schilling aren't in the corridor of Fame. whether King Felix joins such company one day,he might as well punch his ticket to Cooperstown on the spot.
For now, though, and Hernandez can say he broke one of Johnson's records. There aren't many who contain done the same.Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise famous/linked.
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Source: bleacherreport.com