A quick case for the King with the caveat that none of us should care about this
The baseball-performance case for Félix Hernández is pretty simple. If you’re looking for the best pitcher from 2005-2015, you’re talking about Félix, Justin Verlander, Clayton Kershaw, and maybe Zack Grienke or CC Sabathia. Over the course of a decade–a decade–he was one of the five best pitchers on the planet. The caliber of what Félix did during that time isn’t being questioned in the debate over his candidacy, so I won’t present the case here. The debate is instead about whether it’s enough considering that he didn’t do much outside that decade. It is.
Let me put it this way: Pitching is basically half the game, and I have little doubt that if someone was one of the five best position players over a decade, the voters would see their way to electing him. Take Jim Rice, for instance, who was elected based on what he did between 1977 and 1986, without much to show for what he did outside those years. We’re ironically raising the standards for starting pitchers relative to other players right at the same time that we’re relaxing it for relievers too much. (I’m a hard no on Billy Wagner, who’s basically Craig Kimbrel with better hair.)
His lack of longevity is why Félix’s S-JAWS score (Jay Jaffe’s metric for where players stack up against each other vis-a-vis their Hall of Fame cases by balancing peak and career numbers) comes up about 20% short of the average Hall of Fame starting pitcher. But that’s just the average. I’m happy to acknowledge that Félix’s career doesn’t stack up to Randy Johnson or Nolan Ryan. I just think there’s space for him too. Five additional years of Mike Leake-level performance shouldn’t move the needle. Eleven years is hardly a flash in the pan. That decade of dominance should be enough when you consider the whole package.
I believe in the players elected to the Hall of Fame being a way to tell the story of the game, and Félix is an important character in that story. I don’t need to tell anyone at Lookout Landing what he means to the Seattle Mariners. For anyone who stumbled their way here, the King’s Court should tell you all you need to know. Despite Todd Helton’s middling statistical case, his successful HOF campaign was boosted by his having been the best Colorado Rockie. What makes this so different? Is it homerism to boost Félix for what he means to the Mariners? Sure. But you know the Red Sox people will be doing this for Dustin Pedroia, and if we don’t, then we’re just conceding that the Mariners, as a franchise, don’t matter.
Félix matters in other ways too. The baseball internet largely grew up with Félix as the main character. There’s a reason every discussion of him includes the fact that the King Félix moniker was coined at USS Mariner. And he changed the broad perception of the game. His successful Cy Young candidacy was a watershed moment in the mainstream acceptance of advanced statistics. We didn’t get wRC+ on every broadcast, but the non-fantasy baseball world more-or-less moved on from pitcher wins the day Félix won his Cy.
Certainly I accept that Félix is unlikely to be elected. And even though I think it’s wrong, that outcome ultimately suits me because in the end, it seems that Félix will not be enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, but will be a flagship member of the Mariners Hall of Fame, and hopefully with a retired number hanging at T-Mobile Park. So we can then forever say what we have always said: Félix is ours and you can’t have him.
