Félix Hernández inducted into Seattle Mariners Hall of Fame
I was among the many fans who packed T-Mobile Park to watch the Seattle Mariners Hall of Fame Induction ceremony for Félix Hernández on Saturday. Even though my favorite team is the Pittsburgh Pirates, I’ve lived in the Seattle area since I was young and have been attending Mariners games since the 1980s, back when you could go to the Kingdome in the dog days of August and watch the Mariners with a crowd of about 5,000 people in a 59,000-seat stadium. It didn’t matter how empty the place was. It was baseball and that’s all that mattered to the young version of me.
The Mariners left the Kingdome for Safeco Field (now T-Mobile Park) in the summer of 1999. Six years later, Félix Hernàndez arrived on the scene. He pitched 15 years for the Mariners, made six American League All-Star teams and won the AL Cy Young Award in 2010. Along the way, he became an all-time favorite of Mariners fans. His induction into the team’s Hall of Fame is well-deserved.
At last night’s ceremony, Félix joined these previous Mariners Hall of Famers:
- Alvin Davis, inducted in 1997
- Dave Niehaus, inducted in 2000 (represented at the ceremony by his wife, Marilyn)
- Jay Buhner, inducted in 2004
- Edgar Martinez, inducted in 2007
- Randy Johnson, inducted in 2012
- Dan Wilson, inducted in 2012
- Ken Griffey, Jr., inducted in 2013
- Lou Piniella, inducted in 2014
- Jamie Moyer, inducted in 2015
- Ichiro, inducted in 2022
Longtime Mariners announcer Rick Rizzs was the Master of Ceremonies. While he did a fine job overall, he did flub the intro to Alvin Davis, calling him the “1989 AL Rookie of the Year,” which was off by five years. Davis won the award in 1984 when he “Wally Pipped” the great Ken Phelps early in the season. Davis was expected to spend most of the 1984 season in AAA. Phelps was the Mariners’ starting first baseman on Opening Day and he went 5-for-10, with 2 homers in the first three games of the season before being hit by an errant pitch and suffering a fractured finger.
With Phelps injured, the Mariners promoted Alvin Davis from AAA and the rest is history. Although, it should be noted that Phelps ultimately out-hit Davis that year, with a 143 wRC+ to Davis’ 140, albeit in 318 fewer plate appearances. In fact, Ken Phelps has the third-highest wRC+ among Mariners with 1500 or more career plate appearances, behind only Edgar Martinez and Nelson Cruz (NOTE: I’m a big Ken Phelps fan; he would have been much more appreciated if he played 20 years later than he did).
On hand for the ceremony yesterday were Alvin Davis, Marilyn Niehaus, Ken Griffey, Jr., Edgar Martinez, Ichiro!, Dan Wilson, Jamie Moyer, and a surprise special guest, Adrian Beltre, a longtime friend and foe to Félix. They were fun to watch as teammates on the Mariners during Beltre’s four years in Seattle and as opponents for many years after.
When they played a congratulatory video message from Lou Piniella, it sounded like the stadium erupted in boos, but knowledgeable Seattle Mariners fans realized immediately fans were cheering “Looooouuuuuu.”
There were a few actual boos when John Stanton, majority owner of the Mariners, took the podium to talk about Félix. He mistakenly said Félix struck out 77 of the 84 batters he faced as a rookie, which would be truly historic. Félix actually struck out 77 batters in 84 innings. It may not have been historic, but his strikeout rate as a rookie was ninth in baseball for pitchers with 80 or more innings.
Stanton summarized the career of Félix, from his debut as a rookie at 19 years old to his six All-Star seasons, his Cy Young season in 2010, his perfect game in 2012, his league-leading 2.14 ERA in 2014, and his 2524 strikeouts in 2729 2/3 career innings pitched. Félix is the all-time leader among Mariners pitchers in wins, innings pitched, strikeouts, and Wins Above Replacement. In one of those quirks of history, the Mariners have four pitchers tied atop their ERA leaderboard at 3.42: Félix Hernández, Randy Johnson, James Paxton, and Hisashi Iwakuma (minimum 500 innings pitched).
But it wasn’t the statistics that defined Félix Hernández. It was the man himself. Mariner fans saw this kid, signed out of Venezuela at 16, pitching for the Everett Aquasox and Wisconsin Timber Rattlers at 17, the Inland Empire 66ers and San Antonio Missions at 18, and the Tacoma Rainiers and Seattle Mariners at 19. We saw him grow up right before our eyes, from that 19-year-old rookie to the maturing young pitcher in his early 20s, to a legitimate ace for a half-dozen seasons from 2009 to 2014 when he was the equal of Clayton Kershaw and Justin Verlander.
At the induction ceremony, we heard how Félix became a part of the city of Seattle, how he worked with local charities and gave back to the community. Members of the clubhouse staff told us about Félix inviting them to his house for a backyard barbecue. We were reminded of King’s Court, the section of the ballpark down the third base line where the most die-hard Félix fans sat during his home starts. And, of course, the perfect game pitched by Félix eleven years ago, one of just 24 perfectos in MLB history.
While Félix was making All-Star games and getting Cy Young votes, the Mariners struggled. This was not new. They played their inaugural game in 1977, but didn’t make the playoffs for the first time until 1995. From 1995 to 2001, they made the playoffs four times in seven seasons. This was their peak as a franchise. Félix arrived in 2005, when they were in the fourth of what would stretch to 20 consecutive seasons without a playoff appearance, encompassing the entirety of Félix’ career. Félix pitched his heart out for those teams, but all too often didn’t get the run support needed to earn a victory.
The downside came too quickly. His last great year was 2015, when he was 29 years old and had a 3.53 ERA and 191 strikeouts in 201 2/3 innings. It was the tenth straight year in which he pitched more than 190 innings. During this stretch, from age 20 to 29, he threw more innings than any other pitcher in baseball, an average of 218 innings per year, with a 3.13 ERA and 1.18 WHIP.
Perhaps all those innings took their toll because over the remaining four years of his career, he averaged 117 innings per year with a 4.89 ERA and 1.38 WHIP. A fastball that once averaged 96 mph when he was full of hope and dreams at the tender age of 20 had dropped to 90 mph as he entered his 30s.
Even worse, as his ability to throw it past hitters dwindled, the up-and-coming arms just got better and better. When Félix was throwing 95 early in his career, the average fastball velocity in MLB was around 91 mph. When he was throwing 90 mph at the end of this career, the average fastball velocity was up to 93.5. He went from averaging four miles per hour faster than league average to 3.5 miles per hour slower than league average and he didn’t have the pinpoint command of a Greg Maddux to compensate. For Mariners fans, it was genuinely sad to see the once-great pitcher struggle to get through starts with diminished stuff during the too-early end of his career.
Félix’ final season was particularly rough. In his first eight starts, he lasted less than five innings per start and had a 6.52 ERA. The he went on the IL for three-and-a-half months. A silver lining of his IL time were his minor league appearances, which included two with the Everett Aquasox in front of some of the same fans who had seen him pitch there as a 17-year-old in 2003. He also made an appearance with the AAA Tacoma Rainiers, where he had pitched as a 19-year-old in 2005. In those appearances, fans and players alike were in awe of him. He was incredibly gracious with his time spent with the young minor leaguers and the many fans who packed the ballpark just to see him one last time.
Félix re-joined the Mariners in August of 2019 with one of his better games—5 2/3 innings and two runs allowed against the Chicago Cubs. He had his last great start on September 14 against the Chicago White Sox (7 IP, 1 ER), but didn’t get enough run support in a 2-1 loss.
The final start of his career came in front of the hometown fans in Seattle. I was there with a longtime friend and fellow Mariners fan in the back row of King’s Court. Félix allowed a run in the first and two runs in the second. He was grinding, doing whatever he could to get another out, but it wasn’t easy. It looked bad in the top of the fifth, with the A’s already leading 3-0. Matt Chapman flew out deep to center to start the inning, but Matt Olson then reached on an error and Ramon Laureano followed with a single to center. Félix was on the ropes. He gutted through a strikeout of Seth Brown, but walked Jurickson Profar to load the bases. Nobody wanted to see him pulled from the game, but we also didn’t want to see him get battered around for more runs. When Chad Pinder lined the first pitch he saw into left field, we all held our breath . . . until Dylan Moore made a great catch to end the threat.
The Mariners scored a run in the bottom of the fifth to make it 3-1, Oakland. Despite having thrown 101 pitches through five innings, Félix came out for the sixth. On a 2-2 count, Robbie Grossman sent one deep to right-center, but Mallex Smith tracked it down. And that was it. Mariners manager Scott Servais came out to get Félix and the fans showered him with love as he walked off the field after his final game.
On Saturday, fans once again packed T-Mobile Park to see Félix earn his rightful spot in the Seattle Mariners Hall of Fame. His culminating speech was emotional, ending with many hugs and passionate tears. Then, fittingly, the Mariners went out and lost 1-0 in ten innings as George Kirby did his best Félix Hernández impression by pitching nine scoreless innings in a losing cause.
