Felix el Rey!

After writing about Luke French, how does one go about writing about Felix Hernandez, one of the best starting pitchers in baseball and the 2009 Cy Young runner up?  Ugh.

It had been a frustrating ride for Seattle Mariners fans.  There had been moments of greatness, like the one-hitter against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park that overshadowed the big league debut of Diasuke Matsuzaka, but three years following Felix’s stunning 2005 debut were chalk full of wasted potential thanks to some combination of inexperience, poor conditioning, flukey injuries, bad command and an idiotic fastball-heavy approach.

2009 rolled around and we got to see Felix pitch in the World Baseball Classic for Venezuela, and he showed some glimpses of what was to come.  But the season didn’t get off to a great start, and through his first 9 starts he found himself with a disappointing 4-3 record and 4.14 ERA.  This included an embarrassing loss to the rival LA Angels, after which Don Wakamatsu called him out both privately and publicly.

And the rest is history.

In his next start he pitched 8 innings, giving up just one run on a solo homer while striking out 10 San Francisco Giants.  After that start against the Angels, he went 15-2 with a 1.98 ERA, was selected to the All Star Game in St. Louis and placed second in the Cy Young to Zack Greinke.

He was focused, he was mixing his pitches,  he added some Erik Bedard flare to his motion, his changeup took on a life of its own.  After three years of being good, Felix took the jump into greatness.

It’s hard to believe that he’ll be turning just 24 this season.  He can still get better.  He can still tighten up his command and figure out how to get lefties out a little better.  He can try to figure out how to get his groundball percentage back up to previous levels.  But of course we’d all be content seeing him hold his current level and stay healthy.

We’re going to have a lot of fun watching Felix and Cliff Lee at the top of the rotation.  And the team is going to depend on them.  The current plan seems to be to win those two games and then hold on to dear life until their turns come back around.  It will be good to have another great pitcher around Felix as well, to go along with Bedard.  Hopefully Felix will be able to pick up a few tricks from Lee.  Maybe a cutter to help neutralize those lefties?

Felix signed a big extension that will keep in in Seattle through the 2014 season.  Here’s hoping we have a lot of fun over the next five seasons.

All hail King Felix!