King Felix receives the coronation while Hernandez is inducted into the Seattle Mariners Hall of Fame
SEATTLE (AP) — Felix Hernandez will be standing in the middle of the T-Mobile park Saturday in front of a sell-out crowd, and the only thing for sure about this trip to the hill is that there will be tears.
“Maybe when I walk to the field,” Hernandez said of when he started crying.
Hernandez will become the eleventh member of the Seattle Mariners Hall of Fame when he is inducted on Saturday Night. He may not talk for a long time, but he will be emotional. This would be appropriate since this is how Hernandez has performed on the same field throughout his career.
For a long time, Hernandez has been the most dominant right-hander in the game, evolving from a chubby 19-year-old who debuted in 2005 into a powerful ace aptly nicknamed King Felix who has been responsible for some of the biggest kicks. moments in franchise history.
“I don’t watch my highlights all the time. And I was very good,” Hernandez said Friday.
Hernandez pitched 15 seasons for the Mariners, often as the biggest star on a mostly underachieving team. He went 169-136 in 418 career starts with a 3.42 ERA. He struck out 2,524 batters, and a better team around Hernandez could have made those numbers even more impressive.
He is one of five pitchers in baseball history to throw more than 2,500 innings and have more than 2,500 strikeouts with a single franchise, joining Walter Johnson, Bob Feller, Bob Gibson, and Clayton Kershaw. The first three on that list are in Cooperstown and the fourth seems like a safe bet to be dedicated to in the future.
Hernandez’s condition is more murky in part because he played on some awful teams that kept his win streak down, and his performance waned late in his career. Hernandez owns the Cy Young Award and is a two-time runner-up. He has been an All Star six times up german sunday Earlier this season, Hernandez was the last major league player to pitch a perfect game in 2012 against Tampa Bay.
But its importance to sailors has always transcended awards and achievements. His relationship with Seattle and its fans runs deep, shaped by a combination of performance on the field and loyalty off the field. For the majority of his career in Seattle, Hernandez would watch dates for Mariners fans. In many of those seasons, he was one of the few reasons he was interested in the team.
Off the field, Hernandez never left. When it might have been a smarter move to make money as a free agent and move to a better team with a chance of stepping up on a bigger platform, Hernandez remained stationed in the Pacific Northwest.
The connection was important to Hernandez and punctuated last October when he threw the first pitch before Seattle’s only home game against Houston in front of a rowdy crowd — a pitch he had never hit during his career.
Hernandez said, “It was fun to watch every five days when Felix was jumping.” “(The fans) gave me a lot of excitement, too.”
Hernandez’s race finish in Seattle at the close of the 2019 season was a little tricky. Hernandez wanted to keep playing. The sailors were ready to go forward. He made attempts to catch Atlanta and Baltimore, but did not rejoin the majors after September 26, 2019.
His career logbook lists 15 seasons, all with the Mariners.
which feels right.
“It looks better like that,” said Hernandez.
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