Jesus

61% strikes
6% swinging strikes
42% groundballs
1 swinging strike out of 31 offspeed pitches

When Felix gets outpitched by Ryan Feierabend...look I just don't want to talk about it.

Maybe all of our previous suggestions were too complicated. If that's the case, then listen up: do better. Do better at pitching. It's all we want.

We're all familiar with the potential. We all know what Felix is capable of, and we all understand the true significance of Felix Days, even - or perhaps especially - in the midst of a team-wide collapse. Morrow's debut aside, Felix is the shiniest beacon of hope in the entire organization. He is the Big Unit to the Mariners' Mac Suzuki. The Paris to the Mariners' Hartford. The Duvel to the Mariners' can of Pabst rolling around in the glove compartment of a stock VW sedan participating in the Baja 1000. He is the player dubbed The King, and the player upon whom we have heaped extraordinary expectations only because we think he deserves them.

That's one side. The obvious side. The fun side. The other side looks at Felix up and down, takes a step back, looks at him again, and comes away a little annoyed, because the other side is the acknowledgment that, as good as Felix is, he ought to be so much better.

The fact of the matter is that, while Felix possesses an incredible assortment of weapons, he still isn't all that good at using them. He does have a mediocre fastball. He does throw it too often. He does frequently struggle with command. He does miss the breaking balls he used to throw in '05. He is still a little immature. These are all issues of his, and where we figured many of them would gradually go away with the passing of time, they still feel every bit as prevalent as ever. Let's face it: while we all envisioned Felix posting ERAs around or below his current 3.41, he hasn't earned it. His 110 tRA+ is the same as it was last year and the same as it was the year before. He's been a good pitcher, but only infrequently a great one, and as often as I remind myself that he's still young and gifted, I'll be perfectly honest - every so often I just get sick of waiting. Sick of waiting for him to take The Leap. Because sometimes I can't shake the feeling that, if he were going to Leap, he'd have done it by now.

I know it's a little irrational. Felix is plenty young and the least of this team's problems. If we had five of him - or eleven of him, or twenty-five of him provided we only face Johan Santana - we'd be sitting prettier than anyone else in the league. But I see games like tonight, where he can't hit a spot to save his life and still manages to get 87% groundballs, and I see the upside, and I wonder to myself why he can't just put everything together already and turn into the overpowering lawnmower he's supposed to be. And then I wonder to myself how I'll respond down the road if this is as good as Felix is ever going to get. And then I shiver, because my what a horrible thought.

But it's a thought we have to consider now. A thought we didn't think we'd have to consider a few years ago when Felix first came up, but a thought from which at the moment there's no easy escape. Why are you doing this to me, Felix? I've tried my hardest to keep the faith while many around me have examined you with wary eyebrows, but while I still love you more than waffles and freedom, you have undeniably introduced a shred or two of doubt where there was no doubt before. I don't want you to let me think that this could be it. Not even for a second. But what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to interpret and relay your disappointing lack of significant progress? At some point you have to take the initiative and step up your game. Even the hardiest, most steadfast of supporters will eventually need a little proof if you want them to stick around.

I still believe in you, Felix. But with every passing start like this, I believe in you a little less than I did the week before. Which can only mean one thing. The ball's in your court.

Do better.

(Source: 2007-2008 PITCHf/x)

Felix, fastball

96mph
6% swinging strike
21% in play
.352 BA on contact
.571 SLG on contact

Brandon Morrow, fastball

96mph
14% swinging strike
12% in play
.285 BA on contact
.500 SLG on contact

Velocity isn't everything, Felix. Your fastball isn't very good. Establish the change.

-----

By the way, I answered a few questions about Brandon Morrow over at the SBN Berkeley blog, so check those out in case you've nothing better to do. Bear in mind that the questions were answered prior to his start. Rest assured that, were I to do it again, my answers now would extend to Morrow several more offers of a sexual nature.

Note: what follows below is pretty much simple speculation at its heart. Do not take me at my word.

We all remember the Royal Curve. It was a hammer curve, a curve with sharp significant break that Felix used to soil the britches of both lefties and righties whenever he felt like mixing things up. It was a dominant pitch, one of Felix's four that fell somewhere between a 70 and an 80 on the traditional scouting scale. It was beauty. As a man who's madly in love with a good changeup and deeply terrified of hanging curves, it takes a lot for a breaking ball to get on my good side, but for me, the Royal Curve could do no wrong. It was as if the pitch were made up of Bubble Tape and gummy bears.

Then, last April, Felix got injured. And upon his return, he made a few adjustments, one of them affecting his curve.

Mariners pitching coach Rafael Chaves recalled in a phone conversation Saturday how he sat down and spoke with Hernandez on a team flight about how the young right-hander needed to be able to throw a breaking ball. They decided to change the grip of his curveball. "Once we did that," Chaves recalled, "he has felt better and better."

In terms of keeping him healthy, the new grip has worked great. It took a little while for Felix to get comfortable transitioning from a knuckle-curve to something more conventional, but before too long he got familiar with it, and thinks that it's helped reduce the strain on his elbow. I'm not going to argue with him. Nobody knows a pitcher better than the pitcher.

But in terms of pitch effectiveness, I can't help but feel like Felix's curve has taken a step back. Obviously we don't have any PITCHf/x data for when Felix first came up, but the curveball he flashed on Opening Day '07 looks different from the curveball he's flashed in '08, according to both the numbers and appearance. Check it out for yourselves:

On the left is Opening Day 2007. On the right is Felix a few weeks ago. One pitch doesn't tell the story, but I don't recall seeing Felix consistently throw curves like the one on the left in a long time, quite possibly since before he got hurt. The one he throws now often feels like it's missing something - some kind of snap there at the end to take it from decent to devastating. It just doesn't look like the same pitch to which I so happily grew accustomed. And I don't like that.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just seeing things, and his curve hasn't changed as much as I feel like it has. And I probably shouldn't be upset about anything that a pitcher feels is in his best interests when it comes to staying healthy. But when I see Felix throw his curve now, I'm just not wowed the way I used to be. It's like that with a few of his pitches - off the top of my head I feel like only his changeup has made progress since his debut - but with the curve it seems the most apparent. It's troubling, but this is our reality. The good news is that Felix is still blessed with one of the best repertoires on the planet, but one can only hope that the little changes he has made to his arsenal for the sake of better health do not too dramatically alter his ceiling, because that is a world in which I'd rather not exist.

Stop throwing it so damn much.

114 pitches
65 strikes (57%)
17 swinging strikes
9 groundballs
3 fly balls
2 line drives

If you were to enter Felix's career into an Excel spreadsheet, sort in ascending order by "Command", grab the first third, and then sort those in descending order by "Success", you'd get today's game. Felix wasn't really sure of where the ball was going to go tonight, as he was routinely missing both his spots and the zone altogether, but given that necessary precondition, I'm inclined to say that, all things considered, he had pretty much the best start possible.

Just look at the results he generated. Not only did he keep the ball on the ground against a pretty good lineup, but he also racked up an obscene amount of swinging strikes. His rate today was positively Hardenesque, and perhaps more impressively, eight of those 17 came against lefties. For a right-handed pitcher, being able to miss left-handed bats is a key component of being a legitimate #1, so it's nice to see that, even when his location is failing him, Felix is still able to keep that on lock.

The pitch that makes this all possible is the changeup. A good changeup is almost mandatory if a guy's going to have success against opposite-handed hitters, and Felix's change may just be the best weapon in his arsenal. There was a time not too long ago when it was popular to say that Felix throws four A-grade pitches. I don't think this is true. His fastball isn't very good despite a crapload of oomph, and his curve seems to have taken a marked step back ever since his injury last April. But his slider's still good, and his changeup, I believe, is great. The changeup is the pitch he can throw to find the zone, miss bats, and keep the ball on the ground. It's the one pitch of his that does all three of the things that make a pitcher successful.

All that's left is for him to start throwing it more. Hitters will always respect Felix's fastball. He's tied with Ubaldo Jimenez for the fastest average fastball in the league, and hitters know it. They're always going to go up there looking fastball first, whether he throws it 40% of the time or 80% of the time. So with that in mind, he really ought to try mixing things up. Bumping his change percentage up from 15% to 20-25% isn't likely to jeopardize the integrity or success of the pitch, because the purpose of a changeup is to get the hitter off-balance when he's looking fastball, and hitters are always going to be looking fastball when you have a guy throwing 96. So in theory more changeups should really be able to help him get better results.

Many a time I have pleaded for Felix to throw more stuff that bends. Tonight I plead for him to throw more stuff straight and soft. You've been blessed with an excellent changeup, Felix. Take advantage of it.

A bunch of good stuff from PITCHf/x with maximum presentation and minimal interpretation. Unfortunately not split by batter handedness.

Table 1: Outcome by Pitch

Table 2: Pitch by Outcome

Table 3:PITCHf/x Data by Outcome, Split by Pitch

pfxX = horizontal movement, pfxZ = vertical movement, Loc_X = horizontal location (negative = inside to righties, zero = center of plate), Loc_Z = vertical location

Figure 1: Felix Changeup, Aerial View

Figure 2: Felix Changeup, Side View

Figure 3: Felix Curveball, Aerial View

Figure 4: Felix Curveball, Side View

Figure 5: Felix Fastball, Aerial View

Figure 6: Felix Fastball, Side View

Figure 7: Felix Slider, Aerial View

Figure 8: Felix Slider, Side View

The game took place while I was at work, so I didn't really get to watch much of anything, but from what I can tell, this was far from being one of his better starts. The numbers:

75 fastballs (69%)
17 changeups (16%)
10 curveballs (9%)
6 sliders (6%)

13 swinging strikes (12%)
23 foul (3 foul tips) (21%)
17 called strikes (16%)
17 in play (16%)
38 balls (35%)

6 grounders (35%)
4 outfield fly balls (24%)
2 pop ups (12%)
5 line drives (29%)

The pitch pattern's about what I'd expect against a lineup that was 6/9ths left-handed, and his changeup was fairly effective, going for a strike 11 times and generating three groundballs against one base hit. The problem, as I see it, is that he had only spotty command of his fastball, which you might recognize as being the same problem he has in all of his mediocre starts. And being a guy who works primarily off of his fastball, Felix isn't going to be that comfortable throwing offspeed stuff in hitter's counts, which means on days like this he actually winds up throwing more fastballs than usual, turning his trouble with the strike zone into a sort of self-perpetuating snowball. The sort of snowball that leads to him walking five guys in six innings against a lineup missing both Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz.

Not a great game. Not bad, mind you, but not real good either, and a definite step back from his recent string of extraordinary success. And with Texas up next, it's not about to get any easier.

My kingdom for a guy with Felix's stuff and Silva's command.

Jeff mentioned originally doing a Felix PITCH f/x and then got sidetracked by rationalizing our continued interest in failure. Well, far be it from me to deny all of you some pretty pictures to look at and Jeff seems like he needs some cheering up and PITCH f/x is like baseball nerd porn.

Let's begin with how Felix starts batters off. Here are plots of Felix's first pitch in each at bat, separated by batter handedness and nothing else. These are heat plots so the brighter the color the more often Felix hits that spot. RHB first, LHB next to it.

The color of the spot is determined by the percentage of pitches landing in that area and since there's significantly less first pitches to RHB (107) compared to against LHB (161), that is why there's nothing as cold as green in the RHB plot.

You'll notice how Felix has a distinguishable pattern to his approach stating off against LHB, that to stay away from them. This is a wise strategy and for the most part he's very successful. Contrast that to the RHB plot where Felix is much more inconsistent and the groupings that do appear are troubling. Notably, that giant blob dead center and elevated. That's a bad place to pitch. That's an incredibly bad place to pitch when batters are sitting first pitch fastball. This also helps to explain why Felix's groundball ratio is heavily down so far this year. These are not the plots of a groundball pitcher, there's far too much elevation.

Now, let's move on from the 0-0 counts to all pitches Felix has thrown in 2008 and while keeping the breakdown by batter handedness, lets add a breakdown by pitch type according to MLBAM. First, fastballs to RHB and LHB.

Roughly the same pattern against RHB where Felix either isn't aiming for, or isn't able to hit the corners of the zone and is all over the place with the biggest groupings in the center of the zone between the thighs and the belt a.k.a. the meatball zone. That's a deadly place to toss fastballs.

We still see that pattern against LHB to stay away from hitters, but again, what we don't see is Felix hitting that low *and away* corner. Rather, it's much closer to high and away which ties back to those missing groundballs. Furthermore, the reason pitchers try to pitch away is to make it more difficult for hitters to pull the ball. We often hear about good hitters taking what the pitcher gives them and shoving those away pitchers to the opposite field. Well, guess what the opposite field is for left-handed batters? Leftfield. Remember who mans leftfield when Felix pitches?

Moving on from fastballs, lets look at Felix's offspeed stuff. And now we'll get rid of the heat map style plot and this time the colors denote pitch type. Blue dots are changeups, green dots are sliders and yellow dots are curveballs.

Good thing Felix gets a lot of called strikes on the curveballs because they're landing dead center in the zone to righties. As expected the sliders are going low and away and there are very few changeups since those will tend to tail back into the batter, which is usually not a very good proposition. On the whole, this is a good map for Felix's breaking stuff. The curves are getting him called strikes and the sliders are off the plate and, importantly, low.

We see a lot more changeups to the left handed batters and a corresponding drop in sliders. It's been noted before that Felix has been upping his use of the change and reducing his use of the slider and this illustrates that it might be an effect of Felix facing a slightly higher proportion of lefthanded batters so far in 2008. A very good sign is looking at where the biggest cluster of changes land, that spot on the outside black at the 1/3 line of the zone. Going back up, you'll notice that the brightest spot for fastballs to land to LHB is the outside black at the 2/3 line of the zone. This means that Felix is throwing the changes roughly at the same place he throws his fastballs, but the changes drop more due to the decreased velocity, which helps with deceivingly the batter.

The curves and sliders form a sort of continuous line from high and away to low and in with Felix using only curves up and away and burying sliders down and in. I'm not sure if that's meaningful or not.

Also noticeably missing from all six of these plots is a consistent hitting of the lower left hand corner (down and in to RHB, down and away to LHB) or the upper right hand corner (up and away to RHB, up and in to LHB). You'll notice that those are the corners perpendicular to Felix's arm slot and the ability to hit those corners are one the best measures of a pitcher's command because it's the more difficult areas to hit. Again, this might not be bad command, this might be a plan, we cannot know, but it's worth watching since low and away is one of the best pitch locations there is and and up and in is a tough place to get around on fastballs. Other than that, get the ball down Felix. Get the ball down.