Pitcher Profile: Felix Hernandez (Part One)
http://tinyurl.com/8d5bbx
Ah, the King. I remember drafting him into my minor league system back in
2004, then watching him put up stats like this. Check his AAA line - he
struck out 100 batters in 88 innings and allowed just 3 home runs. At age 19.
Notoriously aggressive with prospects, the Mariners didn't waste time
promoting him through as many levels as possible until just the big show
remained. Still, Felix was very young and they knew what a prodigy they had
on their hands - even though Bavasi was an idiot, he wasn't stupid. He knew
that Felix had a chance to be one of the best pitchers in the league and to
screw it up by overloading his arm would cause a major backlash by the fans.
Bavasi limited Felix's innings to 140 IP in 2005, but let him jump up to 190
IP the next year. He also limited the use of Felix's slider - restricting it
to just 3.3% of pitched balls in 2005 and 7.0% in 2006. Take a look how much
it jumped up in 2007 (Source: Fangraphs):
When they let him throw it, he went nuts - and for good reason; it's a hell
of a pitch. I find it interesting that he cut down on the use of the slider
in 2008 and threw his fastball significantly more - it's probably because he
fell in love with it in 2007 but decided to start mixing it up with his
plus-plus fastball and average changeup rather than relying on his plus
slider. Felix is still just 22 years old, which is extremely hard to believe
given how much service time he's put in and how effective he is. He shows a
real tenacity on the mound, refusing to come out of games even with a broken
leg, and his fastball velocity routinely tops the charts of the Fangraphs
average fastball velocity chart.
Readers will note a small drop in velocity in 2008 - I don't think there's
anything to it, at least injury-wise. His changeup velocity is higher, so
velocity is not down across the board. I would imagine that he's throwing his
two-seam fastball more often, which would correlate well with the total
increase of fastballs, and that he's playing around with changing the speed
of his slider (like Johan Santana does).
Read on to delve farther into King Felix's stats, his PITCHf/x player card
analysis, and a preview of Part Two, including a great clip of his
devastating two-seam fastball...
PITCHf/x Player Card
Here is the best evidence we have that Felix Hernandez throws a ridiculous
two-seam fastball:
Dan Fox also noted that Felix threw a lot of "splitters" using his algorithm,
and this was in April 2008. It is possible that Felix might have learned a
splitter along the way, but to think that he threw it 1026 times (more than
every other pitch combined) is quite silly. Therefore, it's very probable
that his "Fastball" is his four-seam fastball while his "Splitter" is his
two-seam fastball.
That's a big difference between his two fastballs. Look at the level of
horizontal movement in on a right-handed batter! Though it doesn't have much
sink, it runs like hell.
His slider is a typical one-plane out pitch - though it doesn't feature much
horizontal movement (break), it has a lot of sink (depth). As you can see, it
comes in lower than a theoretically-pitched spinless baseball while not
having much side-to-side movement. This should generate plenty of groundballs
when paired with his heavy two-seam fastball, and indeed we see this in his
batted ball data (source: Fangraphs):
Interestingly enough, we see that his GB/FB ratio has trended down in 2008.
He is generating more flyballs but giving up significantly less home runs on
them. HR/FB is not something that is standard for all pitchers (if I went out
there and threw my arsenal, my HR/FB would be sky-high), but large variations
do tend to regress to the mean. I'm not sure what it all means, but it might
have something to do with the lower amount of sliders being thrown or simply
adjusting because the Mariners infield defense was so terrible. Then again,
with friends like these in the outfield...
(Hat tip: Lookout Landing)
When you combine the terrible Mariners lineup, their horrible defense, and
Felix's dominating stuff, you end up with a year like this:
W-L G GS CG SHO SV BS IP H R ER HR BB K ERA WHIP
9-11 31 31 2 0 0 0 200.2 198 85 77 17 80 175 3.45 1.39
His FIP matches up well, but a disturbing trend in his bb/k ratios can be
seen below (source: Fangraphs):
Both Bill James and Marcel predict Felix to cut back on the walks and improve
his bb/k ratio, and I do too. Creeping up and past 3.5bb/9 is dangerous, even
if you generate a ton of groundballs and strikeouts.
In Part Two, I'll take a look at his pitching mechanics and how well I expect
him to hold up in the long run. As a preview, take a look at the following
video clip of his two-seam fastball and see if you can come up with anything
yourself:
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