Game Face, 3
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Felix Hernandez? Like the scout says, pitchers aren't baseball players. The principle must not apply to pitchers. He looks great when he lets the ball go, however...
Funny thing, it happens for him when his hair is longer, though. And I ain't a long-hair kinda guy.
I'm sure that the picture above is one reason that I've never bought into Felix Hernandez as the spiritual Mariners descendant of Randy Johnson. Unfortunately, I can't rewire the primal part of my brain.
Here is the one serious paragraph, lost in the barren wasteland of this 3-part series: the best things we could do about the "Baseball Face" bias is to (1) be aware of it, and (2) work hard to overcome it. Jason Vargas is a good pitcher and Felix Hernandez is a great one.
This is one of the things that keeps Fangraphs in business against tools scouts who know more baseball than they do: Fangraphs is completely impervious to the Baseball Face trap. Considering MLB players as nothing more than lines of alphanumeric characters, they are mercifully free of biases which SOMETIMES go awry.
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James Paxton, like Jered Weaver, has an absolutely perfect Kentucky pitcher's face - if he weren't pitching, he'd be out plinking squirrels off tree branches at 50 yards.
Danny Hultzen has the great silver-spoon Ivy League pitcher's face. Mark all of the M's pheenom hurlers way up for their baseball faces.
Sudden thought. Do you think Zduriencik passed on Bauer and Rendon because of their 8x10 glossies?
Taijuan Walker has a sports face; you'd have to ask the Moneyball scouts whether he has a good girlfriend...
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Brandon League, you don't see many Sk8rBoi closers in the bigs, but am gonna have to say he pulls it off nicely. Once you've faced death in the Pacific Ocean multiple times, as all surfers have, what is a Travis Hafner home run going to do to you? YES, I'm serious.
The greatest thing about League is his pitch-count chart, 100% fastballs when behind and 100% splitters when ahead, and that comes from not caring whether you win or lose. As Kruk said, nothing matters more than life. Perfect closer's face and perfect closer's mentality.
Casper Wells, half of his features are baseball and half are no way. Overall am going to have to go with "minus" baseball face.
Jeff Clarke, that dude avoids putting his picture up here for a good reason. Think Joe Sheehan photo-morphed with David Ortiz.
Ichiro, the man is so blinkin' cool that he has only one name, that's how cool he is. And there are 140 different countries you can go to and get the name attached to a photograph. No surprise that he had the confidence to not only break the NPB hitting barrier, but win an MVP in his first year. We'll see if the face allows him to spit at age 37 or whether all baseball faces drift quietly into that good night.
Mike Carp, his homies call him "the Rat" and is that a baseball face? Hmmmmmm....
There comes a point in sports at which you look not dorky, but sort of ferocious. If you get nicknamed for your face, you've got to call that a baseball face.
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Tom Wilhelmsen's face is way past "wired" on to "a suspect in four states." Have you ever seen this guy live on camera?! ::chills::
Which is one of the reasons that I can't imagine the 2012 Seattle Mariners without him. He gets a captain's C on his shirt from me.
Cheers,
Dr D