With the July 31 MLB trade deadline approaching, the Seattle Mariners appear to be actively working the phones as they push for a wild-card spot.
The team acquired Marlins middle reliever David Phelps on Thursday, with baseball insider Jon Morosi tweeting a few days before that Seattle also would like more starting pitching. It’s a bold but savvy gambit. Though 48-49 and distantly trailing the Houston Astros in the AL West, the Mariners are just 2.5 games out in the wild-card race.
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Felix Hernandez could be forgiven for celebrating his front office’s decision to not throw in the towel.
The 31-year-old Mariners ace is starting to look like a future Hall of Famer. He won his 150th game last year and might have the best shot of any current pitcher in the majors to get to 300 wins. His case is strong for both peak and longevity. Hernandez is also starting to look Cooperstown-bound by more sophisticated measures.
Hernandez’s Hall of Fame chances will take a hit if Seattle ever launches into the rebuild that fans and writers have expected in recent years. It’s an understandable temptation, with the Astros emerging as the potential next great American League powerhouse while high-profile acquisitions like Robinson Cano and Nelson Cruz have failed to take the Mariners to the next level.
But if a rebuild ever happens and Hernandez remains with the Mariners, it might cost him the Hall of Fame. He already appears to have better-than-average Hall of Fame odds, though it’s likely going to be close.
Cooperstown chances: 65 percent
Why: For better or worse, much of a starting pitcher’s Hall of Fame case hinges on his career win-loss totals. And pitching for the Mariners has probably already cost Hernandez some wins.
This is evident in a few respects. There’s Seattle’s cumulative 952-1089 record since 2005, the year Hernandez debuted. That’s an average record of 76-86, a perpetual fourth-place team for one of the best pitchers of his generation.
To some extent, Hernandez is a victim of timing. Imagine him debuting five years before. He’d have a shot at 25 wins on the Mariners’ 116-win team in 2001. Imagine what Hernandez would do with Ken Griffey Jr., Alex Rodriguez and Edgar Martinez on ‘90s-era Mariners juggernauts.
The Kingdome might boost Hernandez’s ERA a little from what it’s been in pitcher-friendly Safeco Field, but Hernandez would have likely still thrived. After all, other strikeout pitchers like Randy Johnson did fine in that pinball machine of a dome.
Instead, Hernandez has had to make due with less run support than many, if not most, other top hurlers would appear to receive. Take one telling statistic from Baseball-Reference.com, that Hernandez has received 0-2 runs of support in 35.7 percent of his games for his career thus far. This seems unusually low for any pitcher outside of the Deadball Era or 1960s. It differs sharply from at least three pitchers with decent Hall of Fame chances:
- Cole Hamels with 0-2 runs of support in 28.4 percent of his games;
- Justin Verlander with 0-2 runs of support in 25.8 percent of his games;
- CC Sabathia with 0-2 runs of support in 22.9 percent of his games.
A pitcher’s winning percentage is dramatically better if he receives at least three runs of support. Even some of the best pitchers in baseball history have struggled with this level of support. Pedro Martinez was 24-69 with a 2.87 ERA when his teams scored two or fewer runs. Greg Maddux was 42-141 with a 3.01 ERA in such games, while Johnson was 37-106 with a 2.99 ERA.
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Hernandez has gone 25-74 in games where the Mariners have given him two or fewer runs of support and 134-39 in all other appearances. The sheer number of low-scoring games he’s pitched in has almost certainly cost him wins.
Give Hernandez at least three runs in 77.1 percent of his games instead of 64.3 percent and quick calculations based on his winning percentage say he’d be at 177 wins right now instead of 159. Even with Hamels or Verlander-esque support, he’d probably have at least another 10 wins for his career at this point.
Of course, a pitcher can’t do much to change what’s already happened. For Hernandez, his quickest ticket to the Hall of Fame can come with how many more wins he piles up. Getting another 41 wins to reach 200, essentially the minimum for Cooperstown, should be no problem. The more wins beyond 200, the better his odds to reach Cooperstown.
With Hernandez likely to be around 165 wins after this season, he’d need to average 15 wins a year through his age-40 season. Barring a trade, that’s likely pushing it. Hernandez has averaged 15 wins for every 162 games through his career, but pitchers decline and can become more susceptible to injury as they age.
More likely, Hernandez falls somewhere around 250 wins for his career, which could still be sufficient for the Hall of Fame, but a lot less certain. In this situation, he would likely need other factors to help his case.
He would maybe need to finish somewhere close to 80 WAR, which he seems on track to do. He also might need to get within striking distance of 4,000 strikeouts, also reasonably possible. Basically, Hernandez would be another Bert Blyleven, who needed 14 years on the Hall of Fame ballot for stat-savvy voters and writers to push his case.
Granted, award voters have been good about contextualizing for Hernandez’s career so far, (rightly) giving him the AL Cy Young award when he went 13-12 in 2010. Maybe a Blyleven-like push for Hernandez won’t be necessary 15 years from now.