Happy Friday, everyone.
Today, I'm going to answer 10 of the most commonly asked questions about Felix Hernandez as filled in by Google's auto-complete feature. (For those of you who are new to the Internet, Google is a magic box where you type in a question and receive an answer.) To do this, I simply entered the beginnings of a few phrases (e.g., "Is Felix Hernandez" or "What is Felix Hernandez's") and let auto-complete finish the questions for me. Here we go!
1. Is Felix Hernandez... married?
Yes. He is! He also has two kids. And at least one dog. If you want to get a better sense of Felix-the-family-man, I suggest that you consider following Felix (and his wife Sandra) on Instagram. Athletes using social media can be a little dicey sometimes, but Felix uses it almost exclusively to share pictures of his (adorable) family doing everyday family things. (He will also occasionally take to twitter to root for the Miami Heat, which ehhhhh.) You may have thought that your appreciation for Felix had reached a maximum; prepare yourself to love him a little bit more.
2. Is Felix Hernandez... a Hall of Famer?
Not yet! A player must be out of the league for five years before they're considered for election into baseball's HOF. However, we can look at baseball-reference's list of Felix's top ten most similar pitchers (through their 28-year-old seasons) to get a rough projection/prediction about how things might turn out. The career fWAR plots for these men are shown below:
Four of these players are in the Hall of Fame. Although Felix has accumulated the most WAR among these 11 gentlemen before his age-29 season, he still has a ways to go before he's put together a Hall of Fame career. That being said, Felix certainly appears to have Hall of Fame "stuff"... hopefully he's able to stay healthy and avoid a sharp decline so that we can continue having this conversation for the next 10-15 years.
3. Is Felix Hernandez... pitching tonight?
No. :-(
Although Felix is significantly better than either of the pitchers starting tonight's World Series matchup, he's currently on vacation because the Mariners decided to string together a sub .500 record over their last 20 games. Hopefully the answer to this question next October is different...
4. Who is Felix Hernandez...?
The King.
5. What is Felix Hernandez's... ERA?
- Last season? 2.14
- In outings where Felix throws a perfect game? 0.00
- In the month of July? 2.62
- In games where Felix hits a grand slam? 1.93
- In no decisions? 2.64
- In New Yankee Stadium? 1.37
- In games where Ron Kulpa is calling balls in strikes? 1.29
- In his career? 3.07
But you probably shouldn't rely heavily on just ERA. Check out FIP or xFIP, too.
6. What is Felix Hernandez's... record?
Felix holds many records. First and foremost, he is number one in our hearts. He also holds the (super arbitrary) record for the number of consecutive starts throwing 7+ innings while giving up two runs or fewer. And he holds the record for the highest WAR among pitchers in Mariners history (47.2!). Finally, his career win-loss record is 125-92.
7. What is Felix Hernandez's... neck tattoo?
Bad-ass? Alarming? Cool? None of your business? Proof that he's a for-real Mariner?
It's a tribal version of Felix's zodiac sign (Aries). Being born on April 8th makes Felix determined, fiery, a born leader, loyal, physical, driven, and ambitious (and they say that astrology is a bunch of nonsense). Also, apparently some of Felix's "lucky scents" are rose, jasmine, rosemary, and pine... just in case you wanted to get him some nice cologne or potpourri for his birthday.
8. What is Felix Hernandez's... contract?
His yearly contract is about 1/10 the nominal GDP of São Tomé and Príncipe (a nation of almost 200,000 people). Or enough to buy ~25,000 Deluxe burgers from Dick's Drive-In or ~17,500 grande vanilla lattes from Starbucks a day for the next five years. ($132.3 million over the next five seasons.)
9. When is Felix Hernandez's... next start?
Not soon enough. Pitcher's and catcher's report to spring training in mid-February, but games don't typically start until the very end of February/the beginning of March. If we're talkin' regular season games, I'd go out on a limb and wager that Felix will probably get the nod as the opening day starter (on April 6th!) for the M's in 2015...
10. Where is Felix Hernandez... from?
Felix was born in Valencia, Venezuela. This is the third largest city in Venzuela (almost 2 million people!) and serves as a major industrial/economic hub for the country. Fellow MLBers Francisco Cervelli, Henderson Alvarez, and Salvador Perez also hail from Valencia (not a bad group of players).
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So there you have it... a bunch of answers to questions you likely already knew/didn't really care about. This is a silly post, but I do appreciate looking at the questions that an "average" Mariners/baseball fan might come up with and type into Google. I think it's interesting to think about these questions because they're somewhat indicative of the relationship that fans have/want to have with Felix. Sure, they care about his stats. And they want to know when he's pitching so they can enjoy his dominant baseballing. But they also care about his past and his future and who he is as an individual. People seem to want to connect, at least a little bit, with Felix the person, as opposed to just Felix the ball player. As Mariners fans, we're lucky that the most talented person on our team is someone who doesn't appear to be a total jerk (imagine being a Brewers fan...); Felix seems like he makes a genuine effort to engage with Seattle's fan base in a positive manner. He knows that a lot of people view him as more than "just an athlete" and it seems like he acts that way.