Seattle Mariners Felix Hernandez and other pitching greats at 29
When Felix Hernandez puts his pants on in the morning, he does so one leg at a time just like everyone else. Throwing a baseball though — well that’s a thing of grand beauty, and he does it differently than pretty much everyone else. The Seattle Mariners‘ ace turned 29 today. Where does he stack up against some of the all-time pitching greats at the same stages of their respective careers? Towards the top in most categories, it would appear.
King Felix has been making hitters whiff at a very quick rate throughout his career. Sam McDowell, Walter Johnson and Bert Blyleven; those are the only three pitchers with more career strikeouts after their 28th birthdays. McDowell sputtered some in his 30s and did not quantify into a Hall of Fame hurler. ‘Big Train’ Johnson was a first ballot inductee and the ‘Frying Dutchmen’ Blyleven eventually got in too.
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Bear in mind, Hernandez is only one game into his age 29 season. But if we filter the results to include that extra year of work, his name remains inside the top 10 as the only active player attaining such rank for strikeouts. 34-year-old C.C. Sabathia comes in 14th on the list as the only other active player inside the top 20. This puts Hernandez ahead of the like of Roger Clemens, Pedro Martinez and Fernando Valenzuela.
After a 10 strikeout performance on Opening Day versus the Angels, Hernandez is a safe bet to reach 200 strikeouts for his seventh consecutive season in 2015. If he accomplishes the feat, he will leap frog Christy Mathewson, Bob Feller, Sandy Koufax, Nolan Ryan and Don Drysdale to claim sole possession of fourth place on this studious list of knee-buckling fireballers. He currently sits at 1961 career punch outs. The 2000 milestone should be reached sometime in early May and Drysdale should be bested by sometime in July.
At the end of the 2015 season, Hernandez will have logged more innings than only Koufax and Ryan from the list of names above at this stage in all their careers. For all pitchers qualifying with 2000-plus IP through their age 29 seasons since 1900, Hernandez’s K/9 of 8.54 ranks third behind only Koufax and McDowell.
His current strikeout pace suggests it would not be overly ambitious to assume Hernandez has punched his ticket to the Hall of Fame. But it’s no sure thing. Like any other sport, being available is the most important feature. Second to that, comes winning. Hernandez hasn’t had the best offenses supporting him with runs in past years and the defense has not been all that great, either. His career .295 BAbip ranks him second worst on a list of 57 qualifiers. But the BBWAA will still look at the win column with resolve.
Of the 33 pitchers with between 200 and 299 career wins in the Hall of Fame, Martinez was the latest to get elected. Worth noting as well is that it took Blyleven 14 ballots to get in and he has the highest mark of any HOF pitcher without 300 wins to get in at 287. He was inducted as recently as 2011.
Martinez sits well south of 250 with only 219. But ‘Petey’ has other accolades that currently give him bragging rights over Hernandez. His career WPCT of .687 is far better than Hernandez’s .578. Martinez also has a pitching Triple Crown from 1999 to go along with his three Cy Young’s. He won a World Series too, and his sub-3.00 lifetime ERA of 2.93 looks better than Felix’s current mark of 3.07. As well, Martinez led the AL in strikeouts on three separate occasions. After 1990, he along with Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling are the only three pitchers to record 300-plus strikeouts in a single season.
While the 300 win mark is almost certainly out of reach, if Hernandez averages the 12 wins he has so far throughout his career through his age 34 season, he should eclipse 200 sometime in the year 2020. Assuming his health and mechanics don’t falter him as they did McDowell, it would not hurt for Hernandez to reach the 3000 strikeout milestone to all but stamp his ticket to Cooperstown.
Seattle Mariners
Martinez averaged 197 strikeouts per year from his aged 29-34 seasons. Accounting for a reasonable degree of regression, Sabathia has averaged 169 strikeouts from age 29-33. If Hernandez can toe the line somewhere between those two, he should surpass 3000 strikeouts while still under contract with the Mariners. If his pace declines more rapidly or injury grabs hold of him, he may need to ink one more contract to get himself there. Martinez pitched until he was 37 and Sabathia is signed through his age 35 season in 2016 with an option the following year in 2017.
For where Hernandez is at in his career and still being on the right side of 30 is a real testament to his craft and his approach to life in general. He understands what is at stake here. Seattle as an organization is aware too. After the ‘Big Unit’ is to be inducted as a Diamondback into the HOF, the M’s are still starved of a representative. Ken Griffey Jr. will almost assuredly be their first and Edgar Martinez has an outside chance, but King Felix has it within his realm of influence to be the first M’s pitcher wearing the ‘S’ logo on his cap that adorns a hypothetical Cooperstown plaque.
The road to baseball immortality is long and arduous — at times even controversial many would point out — so Felix Hernandez will continue to focus on one outing at a time. The Mariners have potential to be a very good ball club this year. The franchise has never won a World Series in its 38 year history. Hernandez would probably love to get one of those before his hair turns gray from stressing about personal accolades and his legacy as an individual.