It is now time to fall in love with the King, Felix Hernandez

oh man as if the local bloggers didn't have big enough heads already:

An excited-sounding Felix Hernandez credited some unusual scouting help for his return to dominance.

Hernandez was back to his old self Saturday, two-hitting the Oakland Athletics over eight innings of a 4-0 Mariners win that has pushed the division rivals to the brink of falling out of contention. In the clubhouse afterward, explaining the possible reasons for a revived mound form not seen since April, the 21-year-old threw out a tribute to a Web site run by Mariners fans.

On June 27, the "U.S.S. Mariner" site had published an open letter to Seattle pitching coach Rafael Chaves, imploring him to get Hernandez to throw fewer fastballs early on. Chaves was handed a printout of the Internet posting, which contained detailed analysis of Hernandez's pitch sequences, by someone in the stands and later showed it to the pitcher.

link to article pls.

weird how they switch over to AP for old game reports. well, this one has a mention of it:

http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/mariners/2007/07/hernandez_keys_40_win.html

and the original post

http://ussmariner.com/2007/06/27/an-open-letter-to-rafael-chaves/

Bryan (Hyattsville): Thoughts on King Felix for this year?

Joe Sheehan: Love him. He's probably going to take a step forward in his command this season, lop off 20 walks or so. Throw in some regression in BABIP, and you've got a Cy Young contender.

I was kinda O_o that Yovani Gallardo (6 weeks older than King Felix) has a higher VORP projection for 2008.

Both have Jeremy Bonderman as #1 comparables.

THE KING!

WOW

His grand salami off Santana was the first homer ever by a Mariner pitcher.

OW

That sucks.

WITH HIS SECOND-INNING GRAND SLAM, SEATTLE'S FELIX HERNANDEZ BECAME THE FIRST AMERICAN LEAGUE PITCHER TO HIT A GRAND SLAM SINCE CLEVELAND'S STEVE DUNNING ON MAY 11, 1971.

SEATTLE'S FELIX HERNANDEZ LEFT THE GAME IN THE FIFTH INNING DUE TO A LOWER LEFT LEG INJURY.

what an apocalyptically strange double twist that was.

http://www.bensakoguchi.com/pics/oc-sakoguchi-87-sadaharu-oh-henry-aaron-hank-baseball.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d08gfZpnDA4

hi dere

someone tipped me off about this and jsut said "are you still at work? tune in to sea-tb now"

caught the last inning

best birthday ever

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

god damn i love this man

Bryan Armen Graham‏@BryanAGraham

Two perfect games in the same ballpark in the same season for the first time in the 143-year history of Major League Baseball.

"I've been working so hard to throw one and there it is -- for you guys."

Dave Sims' scorecard, a thing of beauty:

http://twitter.com/TheDaveSimsShow/status/235908401199206400/photo/1/large

Off-the-wall theory from Posnanski about the proliferation of perfect games: that the "proliferation of sports and sports highlights on television" incentivizes/inspires people to do things like throw perfect games.

http://joeposnanski.blogspot.ca/2012/08/following-hornby.html#more

(Skip to part III.)

Felix vs. other young workhorses (2000 IP by age 28):

http://www.highheatstats.com/2014/06/king-felix-long-may-he-reign/#more-21847

Sutton/Blyleven/Roberts at the best-case end of the spectrum, the likes of Joe Coleman and Larry Dierker at the other.

He'll be pitching for a record next time: 14th consecutive start of 7+ innings and two or fewer runs. (Just tied Seaver.) Felix/Sale/Kershaw/Wainwright had a pretty decent weekend: 31 IP, 18 H, 6 BB, 32 K, 1 ER, 0.29 ERA.

He seems well on his way. 4.0 IP and no runs (and no hits, and no walks and jesus christ)

He got it, but boy it was close.

I guess it's fitting that he'd do it in a game that he loses. (Obviously, not a knock on Felix.)

Even with the record, and being second in the league in IP, he still doesn't have a CG this season (or last season, FWIW).

the streak continues!

maybe trout'll lose the MVP one more time

maybe he'll deserve to

whilst moving i found the newspaper clipping from when he threw his perfect game!

SweetSpot linked to this piece this morning:

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/felix-hernandez-and-the-al-mvp/

"Trying to find a common thread of logic and reason in how the BBWAA has treated starting pitchers in the MVP voting is basically futile."

I'm sure if Trout continues at something close to his present pace, he'll win this year.

7+ innings and two or fewer runs

cherrypicked nonsense

if their numbers stay about the same, Trout shd be MVP and Felix Cy -- any other result is trolling, esp assuming Angels make the postseason

I agree it's a bar that puts Felix in the best possible light--No Time basically made the same point above--but it wasn't cherry-picked for him; Cueto's streak was a story earlier in the year. I definitely disagree with nonsense. I'd like to see the winning percentage for teams where the starter goes at least seven and gives up two or fewer runs--extremely high, would be my guess. (.750 at least? I don't know.) If nothing else, it's a better definition of quality start than the current 6+/3-.

it does. and while i told a friend of mine that this streak is one of those things baseball fans/writers conjure up to have something to talk about – it doesn't make it any less impressive. what he's doing is not easy and it's certainly no fluke.

Extremely small sample, but I checked the Indians for this year. I picked them as being a perfectly average team: 60-60, close to the league average in both runs scored and runs allowed. Here are their pitchers when meeting the 7+/2- threshold (I don't think Felix's streak differentiates between earned and unearned runs, so I simply stuck to runs allowed):

Kluber -- 9-4
Bauer -- 1-0
Masterson -- 5-0
Tomlin -- 1-0
McAllister -- 1-0
Salazar -- 0-1
------------------
Overall -- 17-5 (.773)

Conceding it's such a small sample, I wouldn't want to read too much into it. But it is close to what my guess was, and it jibes with what seems like common sense to me: taking your team into the 8th inning and only giving up either 0, 1, or 2 runs is extremely valuable--in terms of winning, and in terms of not wearing out your bullpen.

If the rest that such a starter gives the bullpen is so valuable, it might be interesting to throw out all such starts and compare team winning percentages in all their other games.

Yeah, I'm probably making a conventional-wisdom assumption there. I wouldn't look at the team's winning pct. in other games--if it's .773 in the well-pitched starts, it'll be worse than normal in the rest of their games--but rather just the bullpen ERA or WHIP or something. The difference may in fact be minimal, or not exist at all.

Whatever you want to measure is fine by me, but it'd be interesting to see if there's a measurable secondary benefit to having a Felix in non-Felix starts.

better wording: a measurable secondary benefit in non-Felix starts on teams that have a Felix.

I'll see how ambitious I am...I might just look at the Mariners during Felix's streak: maybe their performance in non-Felix games during the streak vs. their performance the rest of the year. It might at least indicate whether the conventional wisdom applies in this one case.

kind of like how they measured the "dicky effect" on how hitters were worse the day after facing him? (i realize tho the cause and effect is different in this case)

xp -- I wasn't asking you specifically to do the work! Just saying that that would be interesting data, whether the Felix's name happens to be Felix or Halladay or whatever.

As opposed to the "dick effect," which measures the behaviour of people after listening to Rush Limbaugh all afternoon.

xp -- kinda, yeah.

What seems obvious is that the benefit of bullpen rest isn't best measured on days they're resting, but on days they're working.

Nah, I like doing this stuff for my own curiosity. The main thing is, you've got to look into it. I said Felix helps his bullpen, when if fact I have no idea if that's true or not.

I like thinking about advanced metrics but am terrible at writing about them, just for the record.

Another thing that seems self-evident to me is that if there is a benefit to having strong 7+/2- starters, it's going to show up in the long relief and setup guys. When Superstarter goes 7+, the closer is at least as likely, if not more likely, to make an appearance, so he's not getting any of that rest.