The 2008 season is still new, but taking a peek at Felix’s statistics over at FanGraphs you can see that his groundball rate is down a good bit so far this year, as his his strikeout rate. Conversely, his walk rate is up. Is this small sample size noise, or is this something to keep an eye on?

GB% by year:
2005 (84.1 innings) – 67.1
2006 (191 innings) – 57.7
2007 (190.1 innings) – 60.8
2008 (37.2 innings) – 49.1

K/9 by year:
2005 – 8.22
2006 – 8.29
2007 – 7.80
2008 – 7.41

BB/9 by year:
2005 – 2.45
2006 – 2.83
2007 – 2.51
2008 – 2.87

Normally, I wouldn’t be so concerned about the strikeout rate as long as the groundball rate was increasing, but it’s taken a pretty significant hit so far this year. Couple that with the fact that the walks are on the rise as well, and I’m starting to get a little bit concerned. Also, glancing at his pitch velocity, you can see that they’re down pretty much across the board except for this changeup. Now, the weather is still cold so I’m less concerned about this, but I would think that with decreased velocity comes improved control. The rise in walk rate seems to discount this.

I’m probably overreacting to all of this…I just get concerned when the King is involved.