The King of Perfection | Second weekly issue of Baseball Magazine:

brianleif (48)in #writing • 7 years ago (edited)

On Sunday April 8th "The King" Félix Hernández celebrated his 32nd birthday. And I found it propitious this date to write about his successful career.

Felix has about a decade of career, and already owns most of the records of his team, The Seattle Mariners. In a franchise that in recent decades has had superstars like: Ichiro Suzuki, Robinson Canó, Adrián Belton, Alex Rodríguez, Freddy García, Edgar Martínez, Jay Buhner, Randy Johnson, Omar Vizquel, Ken Griffey and Ken Griffey Jr. It's not easy to stand out and be nicknamed the King of Seattle.

He is also "The King" among Venezuelan pitchers, displaying almost all the records for a born in the oil lands of South America. To emulate Johan Santana with two Cy Young prizes there would be no doubt in stating that he would be the best Venezuelan pitcher of all time.

This king looks like a bull.

"The Bull" Fernando Valenzuela , the great Mexican pitcher, icon of the decade of the 80 's, with the Fernandomanía, has some parallels with "The King of Seattle":

1 Cy Young Award (best pitcher) for each one. In 1981 he got "El Toro" and in 2010 "The King".

1 No Hit No Run for Fernando and a perfect game for Félix.

1 Lead in victories for each one.

6 All Star Games.

11 The games you need to win Felix to reach the 173 of Fernando. Most likely that will happen this year.

13 victories were enough to win the award for the best pitcher. Fernando in his rookie season, where there was a strike of 50 games and Felix in a season where he won 8 games less than his closest competitor, but where he dominated all other statistics that if they depended directly on their performance and not teamwork.

19 years old, the age with which they debuted. Fernando in his rookie year becomes the youngest pitcher in history to win the Cy Young.

34, is the number that they look in their uniforms.

Chronology.

Year after year has been reaping records and feats, so let's look at these events chronologically:

2005: With only 19 years old debuts, being the youngest player in The Major Leagues. He became the first teenager since 1984 to win a big league game.

2008: Felix achieved his second hit (out of a total of four so far in his career), a Grand Slam. What did not get any American League pitcher since the 71, and is the only one of the Seattle Mariners in all its history.

"The King" does nothing more and nothing less than the two-time winner of Cy Young, his compatriot Johan Santana. Felix commented: "I only know that I closed my eyes when I hit the ball."

Video published in the MLB Channel on Nov. 17. 2014.

2010: Félix wins the Cy Young Award, is just the 2nd time a pitcher of The Mariners gets the prize, the other with this distinction is Randy Johnson "The Great Unit" in 95. It is also the 2nd Venezuelan to achieve it after Johan Santana got it in 2004 and 2006.

Both belong to the Venezuelan League of Professional Baseball to "Los Navegantes del Magallanes", the same team of: José Altuve, Pablo Sandoval and Freddy García, among others...

2010: The best effectiveness for a Seattle pitcher with an ERA of 2.27, the previous record was Randy Johnson's in 1997 with an ERA of 2.28.

2012: The Rays of Tampa Bay are victims of the 23rd perfect game of history, the first launched by a pitcher of Seattle. The first also for a Venezuelan pitcher and the most recent to this day.

Since then he is also nicknamed the "Perfecto".

2013: Best-paid pitcher in baseball history, signing a 7-year contract and 175 million dollars.

2014: The best effectiveness for a Seattle pitcher with an ERA of 2.14, the previous record was of himself in 2010 with an ERA of 2.27.

2014: The best WHIP a Seattle pitcher and the first with less than 1 in this statistic with 0.92, the previous record was from the Japanese Hisashi Iwakuma the previous year with 1.01.

2015: He surpasses the 2,093 entries released by Jamie Moyer, to be the pitcher of Seattle with more episodes in action. For the today's day, it accumulates 2,517 innings.

2015: It surpasses the 145 games won by Jamie Moyer, to be the pitcher of Seattle with more wins. It currently accumulates more than 160.

2015: Hernández surpasses the 323 games started of Jamie Moyer, to be the pitcher of Seattle with more openings. For the present day, it accumulates 378 and projects exceeding 600. These numbers are also made by the Venezuelan with more games initiated in the majors.

2016: The all-time Strikeout leader in the history of Seattle. Surpassing the 2,160 accumulated in the decade of the 90 by Randy Johnson. It accumulates 2,350, more than any other South American.

2016: Changed in Venezuela from the "Los Cardenales de Lara" to "Los Navegantes del Magallanes".

2016: Venezuelan with more innings released.

2017: He surpasses the 156 victories of his idol Freddy Garcia, and thus becomes the Venezuelan pitcher with more games won. Freddy got 74 of his victories with Seattle, Felix, each and every one of them, about 162 so far. Felix uses the number 34 in honor of Freddy.

2018: He became the Latin with the most wins (7) in a game of beginning of season, after surpassing 6 of Dominican Juan Marichal.