Hall of Fame Moments - the MACHINE
...........
=== Well, Consider What Was at Stake For Him, Dept. ===
Pitching for the 58-and-82 Seattle Mariners, Felix Hernandez came out to the mound in the 7th inning with a slim 2-1 lead. The M's are done for the year, but the Angels are not. The Angels wanted this game approximately as much as they'd want Game One of a playoff series.
With a loooonnnnng 9 outs (and about one hour) to go, Felix tore into the Angels like a rottweiler finding a stranger in his living room at 4:00 a.m.....
***
Peter Bourjos up, Felix reared back and fired .... an 82 mph curve ball. A little high. 1-and-0.
Bourjos is maybe the fastest player in the major leagues, and you don't want a leadoff walk here, amigo. But neither do you want to take him for granted; he's got 10 homers already. Compare Dustin Ackley's 6.
...
Felix came at Bourjos with ... a curve thrown even harder. Back-to-back overhand curves! 1-and-1.
...
I figured, okay, fastball letter high, baby. Felix chose ... another curve!! This one crackled louder than the first two, with a ginormous 13" vertical break. 1-and-2. Bourjos stepped out, sucked in a breath, wow. You're not supposed to throw any offspeed pitch even twice in a row.
...
Felix went for the throat with his best pitch, maybe the best pitch in baseball, his 89 mph power changeup with the spitball action at the end. (Find out how often Felix uses this now with two strikes.) Bourjos manages to foul it off.
...
Still 1-2, Felix drives a 94 fastball, but it misses on him. 2-2.
...
2-2, Felix comes back with the spitball. Bourjos, impossibly, makes contact, but it's an easy 6-3 out.
Felix got Kendrick on a groundout, and after a 7-pitch battle with tough-to-fan Maicer Izturis, dropped a yellow hammer on the LH Izturis for called strike three.
.
=== "No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect" ===
Used to be the catchphrase at Baseball Prospectus, and they used it a lot with respect to the minor-league Felix specifically. ... since Felix' arrival in the big leagues, this phrase seems to have fallen into disuse....
Why Felix would even care about this game is beyond my perception. But I wouldn't be able to tell you the difference between this performance, and the ones that he'll have in the playoffs.
...
All pitchers are health risks, I guess, but Felix' historical comps Roger Clemens and Tom Seaver each threw close to 5,000 innings in the big leagues. Hernandez has never had any injury that I know of, except the slight forearm strain in Y2 from snapping off his two-seamer too hard.
Felix has got to be the best bet for healthy, happy Cy Young collecting that I've seen. Watching that delivery, watching his tempo, watching the 94 fastball time after time after time, it's impossible to imagine him injured.
...
We were musing, during the game, about how consistent Felix' fastball velocity is. He steps back, steps through, drives the FB through easily, and it's 94. And 94 again. And 94. And 93. And 94. And 93. Randy Johnson used to do this, throw his fastball exactly the same speed all the time.
Most pitchers, such as Erik Bedard, you watch them in the 1st inning to see how they're throwing that day. Felix, you don't. Felix' results differ only because batted balls land in random places.
Felix, Randy Johnson, and Pedro Martinez are the only three "automatic" pitchers I've seen in the AL. Not automatic for a month, but automatic for ten years.
...
Zduriencik ever gets this thing on track, he's certainly got the monster Game One starter to take advantage of it.
.
BABVA,
Dr D