Felix Hernandez
The first month has seen King Felix knocked off his throne a bit, as he has a 4.73 ERA and is currently on the DL with a shoulder injury. Combine this with a 2016 in which he had a career-high ERA and career-low strikeout rate and folks are starting to wonder if all those early-career innings are finally catching up with one of the best pitchers of his generation. He was even dropped in a ten-team league in which I play, and while he was scooped up quickly, that’s telling about where owners are in regards to Felix right now – there’s just not much trust.
With Felix, there are some positive signs, but there are also plenty of negative signs. Let’s look at the positive first.
In his limited sample of 2017 (26.2 innings), Hernandez has been pounding the strike zone. His 51.6 zone percentage is the highest it has been since 2007, and the result has been a career-low walk rate (1.01 BB/9); he has walked just three batters this entire season. Hernandez has also been victimized by a high home run rate, as more than one in four fly balls he has allowed have left the yard, a seemingly unsustainable rate that should come back to earth, bringing his ERA down a bit with it. Due to that high home run rate, his xFIP sits at just 3.30, his lowest since 2014 when he sported a 2.14 ERA for the season.
However, we can’t simply be sure that his HR/FB rate will regress as far as we would like to see. Hernandez has been sitting below 92 mph with his fastball for over a season now, a far cry from his 95 mph heat in his prime. There’s also the aforementioned pounding of the strike zone, which is good for a low walk rate, but the more a pitcher lives in the zone, the more that pitcher has a chance of being punished for it, especially when that pitcher’s fastball has lost plenty of zip from its prime.
Overall, Hernandez has gotten pretty unlucky in 2017. His .388 opponent BABIP added to the bad home run luck means he likely won’t end the season with an ERA over 4.00. However, Felix simply doesn’t have great swing-and-miss stuff anymore. We also don’t know how this latest injury will affect Hernandez, and he’s a pitcher I wasn’t even that high on before the season. It’s a mixed bag with Felix right now.
Judge Dread level: You have a 15-page term paper due in a week – you haven’t even started doing the research yet. But, hey, you’ve got a week to go. 6/10.