Is Felix Hernandez’s career-long reign in Seattle enough for the Hall of Fame?

Leading up to the announcement of the Baseball Hall of Fame class on January 21st, we will be reviewing the cases of notable candidates every Thursday. First up is a first-time candidate who has spent his entire career with the Seattle Mariners.

Félix Hernández was four months shy of his 19th birthday when he took the mound in a Major League Baseball game for the first time. It was August 4, 2005, and with his first pitch he became MLB’s youngest starting pitcher since 1978. No younger starter has made his debut since then.

The game itself was memorable – the Detroit Tigers beat the Seattle Mariners 3-1 in a battle of two sub-.500 teams – as were Hernández’s stats (two runs in five innings with four strikeouts). But it left an impression on everyone who saw it, laying the foundation for a career that would see a baby-faced teenager transform into royalty.

“Maybe in 10 or 15 years I’ll be sitting on my couch watching TV and I can tell my kids that I saw his first game,” Mariners catcher Wiki González said said after the game. “The first game of a possible future Hall of Famer.”

The road to finding out whether González’s prediction comes true begins this year, when Hernández takes part in the Baseball Hall of Fame voting. This year’s class of first-year players is particularly impressive, with Hernández’s longtime Mariners teammate Ichiro Suzuki leading the way along with his starting pitcher CC Sabathia. Add in the returning players who are close to being enshrined (Billy Wagner, Andruw Jones and Carlos Beltrán), and the road to Cooperstown seems steep for Hernández.

Fitting for a player for whom life in the big leagues was always an uphill climb.

During his 15-year career, Hernández never appeared in a playoff game. The Mariners never won 90 games with him on their roster and only hit over .500 five times. This despite the fact that the right-hander was one of the game’s dominant forces in the first decade of his career.

From his debut in 2005 to his age-29 season in 2015, no pitcher posted a higher fWAR than Hernández’s 52.4. The Venezuela native recorded the third-most starts (334) and innings pitched (2,262 ⅓) during that span, made six All-Star Game appearances and had six top-10 American League Cy Young Award finishes. He won the award in 10 and was runner-up in 2009 and 2014.

During this period of both consistent excellence and longevity, he was also incredibly unlucky. He suffered double-digit losses five times, including the 2010 season in which he had a league-leading 2.27 ERA with six complete games and still went 13-12. In four of those dozen losses, he allowed two earned runs or fewer over at least seven innings. He lasted seven or more frames in 25 of 34 starts.

During this stretch, Hernández appeared to be on a surefire path to the Hall. He made more than 30 starts per year with an ERA+ (128), matching the career marks of his contemporaries such as Max Scherzer (133), Roy Halladay (131), Justin Verlander (129), Cole Hamels (123) and Zack Greinke (121 ).

But a Hall of Fame career is as much about a gradual decline as it is about a sensational peak, and this is where we encounter the biggest gap in Hernández’s case. Playing the ball every fifth day from your teens to your 30s wears down even the rubberiest of arms, and for King Félix, the fall came quickly.

Hernández made 25 starts in 2016, ending a 10-year streak of making at least 30 starts. A 3.82 ERA was supported by a shaky 4.63 FIP, and it never got better. He managed just 16 starts in 2017 and had a 5.55 ERA in 2018. In three years, he went from 28-year-old Cy Young Award runner-up to relief pitcher. Two years later his career was over.

His determination to remain with the Mariners through his prime and beyond, coupled with his mounting shoulder injuries, robbed the baseball world of the chance to see him on the field in the postseason, adding a layer of tragedy to a stellar career. A late-career comeback attempt with the Atlanta Braves and Baltimore Orioles failed, sparing us the addition of Hernández to the extensive list of players who played in ill-fitting hats as the dying embers of their careers faded (who remembers the outfielder of the… Chicago White Sox?). Ken Griffey Jr. or Boston Red Sox pitcher John Smoltz?).

But for all that was lost by never playing for a good team, the fact that Hernández stayed with a franchise and struggled year after year while the Mariners failed to get over the hump makes King Félix happy a kind of folk hero. (It also made him the Mariners franchise’s WAR leader among pitchers, ahead of Randy Johnson.) That injuries shortened his baseball life only adds to the mystique. And all of this is fodder for his finest hour on August 15, 2012.

Does it matter that Safeco Field was half full to watch Hernández play the 23rd perfect game in MLB history? Does it matter that the Mariners were in last place that day and would stay there until the end of the season? Of course not. Hernández never got to play in the Fall Classic, but he deserved this moment, which is probably a better career highlight than any postseason game could have offered. The image of fans sitting in the King’s Court area and losing their collective minds as Hernández stuck his leg in the air to celebrate his career-defining performance made all of the team’s shortcomings throughout his career seem worthwhile, at least for a moment .

After his debut almost 20 years ago, the 19-year-old Hernández delivered a satisfied but subdued assessment of his performance. “I know I pitched well and I know I played a good game, but I can’t be too happy because the team lost,” he said.

It’s a feeling that he unfortunately has to get used to. The losses and injuries may have prevented Hernández from racking up the stats and October moments that define most Hall of Fame careers, but the resume points he accrued during his peak are on par with almost any pitcher who has anchored in Cooperstown.

If voters favor longevity and stat-makers, Hernández’s time on the ballot could be running out. However, few reached his peak, and for a player who hasn’t taken many breaks in his career, getting a little more playing time for a decent Hall of Fame rating would be a breath of fresh air.

The king’s reign must always come to an end. Long live the king.