The greatness that is King Felix

The term "underrated" is often used to define unheralded, under-the-radar type players who rarely get the publicity their fans feel is merited. The word can be found pasted through message boards and bellowed from stands by fans of mid-major universities who feel like the death star coughESPNcough doesn't give their guy/team/conference enough credit. It is sometimes used as a way to give praise to role players who do "the little things" to help their team win. This is not one of those posts, and this situation is entirely different.

Felix Hernandez is not flying under anybody's radar. He has sections of Safeco Field dedicated to him as The King's Court. He has a Cy Young Award under his belt (one less than he deserves, stupid Corey Kluber). He is not a role player, he is the unquestioned ace of the Seattle Mariners and has been for a decade. He has been lusted after by the New York Evil Empire since he signed as a 16 year old. Some have called him the best right handed pitcher alive. Yet despite all of this, I still feel that Felix Hernandez is underrated, under-appreciated, and not heralded enough. Am I biased? Absolutely. Does that affect my argument's credibility? Maybe a little bit, but not a lot because I'm about to throw some stats at you and people seem to be accepting of numbers ever since Brad Pitt and Moneyball made everyone feel like they are a statistician. To the bullets!

• Among qualified starting pitchers from 1900-present with a minimum of 2000 innings pitched, here are Felix's all-time rankings:
• 5th in K-BB% (the percent of batters he strikes out minus the percent of batters he walks) at 16.5% 
• 7th in K% at 23.2%. Yes, he strikes out almost 1/4 of the batters he faces
• 8th in K/9 IP at 8.94

• Not only does Felix strike folks out, and not walk them, when hitters actually make contact, it is very frequently weak. Since batted ball data has been a thing (2002-present). Here are his rankings among qualified pitchers:
• 2nd lowest line-drive percentage 18.1%
• 3rd highest ground-ball percentage 54.4%

• Felix does everything humanly possible to help his team win. At the age of 29, he ALREADY rankes 17th all-time in Win Probability Added. For reference, Nolan Ryan is 21st, Jim Palmer 22nd, and Tom Seaver is 25th.

• He recently became the 4th youngest pitcher to reach 2000 strikeouts, ahead of Nolan Ryan and Sandy Koufax

• Just last year Felix set a major league record with SIXTEEN consecutive starts of 7+IP allowing 2 or less earned runs. The previous record was 13 by Tom Seaver in 1971 when the league averaged 3.89 runs per game vs. 4.07 runs per game in 2014. 

• Speaking of starts with 7+ IP, Felix  has 113 of them where he allowed ONE earned run or fewer, Koufax had 112.

• He is one of 23 pitchers in the history of the game to throw a perfect game

• His swag and neck tattoo game are both unparalleled 

Did I mention he is only 29 years old? We are in the midst of watching a legend do work, and like a fine wine, he is only getting better with time (currently 6-0 with a shiny 2.71 xFIP). Here's to a greater appreciation for the King. Let's hop on the bandwagon to Felix being the best pitcher to ever live. If he keeps up this pace, he may become just that.



Roar on, fair king, roar on.

-Rhett