It’s hard to dredge up a ton of sympathy for an athlete who earned $216 million in his career.
But, if there’s one pro athlete in the Pacific Northwest who had a near-tragic career, it was the Mariners’ Felix Hernandez.
Don’t’ bury him yet. I fully expect King Felix to pop up at another team’s spring training site next year. Whether he makes another team’s roster, or whether he remains on a roster at the 2020 All-Star Break is another question.
Who knows, he might not be done yet. But he’s clearly done with the Mariners.
The tragedy about Felix Hernandez is he had Hall of Fame talent in his early years. And honestly, I’d be shocked if he actually makes the Hall of Fame.
Hernandez had the misfortune of playing on some of the most god awful offensive teams in the past 50 years.
Look at some of these stats:
Seven-year dominance
From 2008 to 2014 (A seven-season span), Hernandez had an average ERA of 2.82 and struck out an average of 219 batters a year. His ERA+ during that span was 141, which put simply means his ERA was 41 percent better than the American League average adjusted ERA.
Trust me, there are a slew of pitchers in the Hall of Fame who never had a seven-year stretch that dominant. Hernandez even added a couple of other decent seasons before and after that seven-year stretch.
And for all of those fantastic Hall-worthy stats, Hernandez won 95 games and lost 77 in those seven years. He averaged fewer than 14 wins a year and had a won-loss percentage of just .552.
He should’ve had at least 120 wins in those seven years putting up those kind of numbers.
But here’s what the King was up against during that era.
The Mariners were 14th out of 15 teams in the American League in runs scored in four of those years. They were 12th in runs scored one year and 11th in another. They were dreadful.
I remember the 2010 Mariners, one of the worst offensive teams in the history of baseball. They were painfully bad. They scored 513 runs the whole season, an average of 3.2 runs a game. You know how bad that is? There’s been some seasons that the Red Sox have scored that many runs by the All-Star Break.
As a team, they hit .236 and they had Ichiro on the team, who hit .315. You take him out of the lineup and they hit .224 as a team. Ichiro that year got on base as the leadoff hitter 259 times, stole 42 bases, hit 30 doubles and six triples and scored … 74 times. That statistic doesn’t even seem possible.
That year, Hernandez did win the Cy Young with an ERA of 2.27. But, he only won 13 games.
Right now, Hernandez has 169 wins, which even in this day and age of advance analytics probably falls far short of the Hall of Fame. There’s a ton of guys way ahead of him in wins who aren’t in the Hall of Fame, including Tommy John, who has 119 more wins at 288.
At the end of 2016, Hernandez’s numbers were actually better than Justin Verlander’s — and I guarantee Verlander will be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Hernandez had a career ERA of 3.16 while Verlander’s ERA was 3.47. Hernandez had 2,264 strikeouts to Verlander’s 2,197.
Since then, Verlander has gone 52-23 with 809 strikeouts and an ERA of 2.81, putting him at 225 wins and over 3,000 strikeouts with a career ERA of 3.33. He also helped Houston win its first-ever World Series. His Hall of Fame ticket is already punched if he retired tomorrow.
Since 2016, Hernandez has been beset by arm problems, largely caused by overuse during his 20s I believe. He has gone 15-27 with an ERA of 5.42. His career ERA has ballooned to 3.52.
What a difference three years makes. Verlander has found a second wind to his career while Hernandez has struggled with injuries and ineffectiveness.
Verlander has pitched in dozens of postseason games. Hernandez not even one. Seattle’s never even got close to the postseason for him.
Hernandez could have demanded a trade during all those awful years, a lot of guys do. But, he stuck it out. Gave the Mariners everything he had until he wrecked his arm. He may never pitch in the majors again after his rough 2019 season.
It was painful to watch him pitch this year, sad to see him walk off the mound for the last time this weekend. We all should wish him the best and hope he finds a landing spot on a major league roster next year. The Hall of Fame has likely eluded him, but maybe one last chance for the postseason awaits him.
