Félix Hernández will be a Hall of Famer

Not this year—but soon.

King Félix will have a statue outside of T-Mobile Park. You already know the post, the idyllic “K”-shaped split second captured initially on digital film will one day be frozen in bronze or iron or copper whatever they make these things out of.

The number thirty-four will also hang out in center with HERNÁNDEZ arched above it.

It’ll hang alongside twenty-four and eleven and fifty-one and soon another fifty-one, all of them perching above the patrons in The ‘Pen like stained-glass windows in church on a bright summer morning.

This was no certainty. There’s a time when it was but it hadn’t been in a long time. And now it’s close to a certainty again even if it isn’t all the way there.

By now, you’ve probably seen the following chart or some version of it. It’s in an in-depth breakdown of all the 2026 candidates from Jay Jaffe at FanGraphs.

With a bit of a shallow ballot, there was reason to be optimistic about Félix’s chances of closing real ground between himself and the Hall—but this is different. This isn’t just good, it almost seals it.

Jayson Stark has a report that’s equally illuminating and bullish on Félix as Jaffe’s. Here’s how the former wrapped his up:

In the last 40 elections, two other pitchers jumped to a vote percentage between 45 and 60 in their second year on the ballot: Don Sutton (in 1995) and Phil Niekro (in 1994). Both got elected by the writers exactly three years later.

So how does a Miguel Cabrera/Joey Votto/Zack Greinke/Félix Hernández Induction Weekend sound in 2029? I’d be happy to show up for that one!

This is all very meta. It is, in effect, analyzing the analysis. Most of the time, you aren’t even talking about performance on the field but instead reaction to performance on the field.

So gauche.

Even so, it’s data that looks good for Félix. It also does not hurt, or perhaps is only humorous, he’s already once been the canary in the Kinsellas’ corn field for marking a new era for starting pitcher recognition.

Stark continued,

Fifty years ago, Bob Gibson would have laughed out loud if you’d told him a starting pitcher could have a won-lost record of 13-12 and win a Cy Young Award … but Hernández actually did just that in 2010. Cy Young voters have pretty much ignored the win column ever since.

So is the King now about to similarly alter the Hall of Fame voting scene? Sure looks like it.

I suppose this is just how time works, the same groups of folks following the same groups of ball players, moving in infinite parallels across generations of the game.

The line of thinking—and sometimes even the people—that helped Félix win that Cy Young in 2010 will be the very same that carries him into the Hall.

MLB.com’s Mike Petriello, who’s been at this a long time, has in recent years honed in on measuring starting pitchers against their peers over rolling seven- and ten-year spans.

It goes back, he said in a 2024 piece, to a quote from Justin Verlander.

“I like the [best player in a] decade thing,” Verlander told Yahoo in 2020. “If you’re the best player or one of the best of your time, you should be in.”

Petriello goes on in the piece to use those seven-year spans, as is common to measure peaks, often by the aforementioned Jay Jaffe. Félix does quite well in those but the following is a list for Verlander.

Here are the best pitchers in baseball over the decade beginning with Félix’s first full season in the Majors—2006 through 2015.

1. Felix Hernández - 50.1 fWAR

2. Justin Verlander - 49.4 fWAR

3. Clayton Kershaw - 47.1 fWAR

4. CC Sabathia - 43.4 fWAR

5. Cliff Lee - 42.5 fWAR

Best Pitcher of the Decade, Félix Hernández

That 2015 bookend is weird, though. It was the first year of the contract extension that was, when signed, the largest deal for a pitcher in Major League history.

It was also the first year he wasn’t himself—that he wasn’t the King.

I joined the M’s in 2016 and posted my fair share of #HappyFélixDay content but the bounceback never came.

When Félix walked off the mound in Game 162 of 2014, there was so much still around the bend—for him and the M’s. At the time, it read to me like a step into the sunlight, the return of competitive baseball to Seattle.

And in a way it was.

But it was also the last time Félix was ever a good pitcher on a good team.

Hell, it was probably the only time.

He was robbed of a second Cy Young weeks later. Then there was 2015 and, soon, the decline was over when it’d only barely started.

It didn’t look like there would be a big 34 hanging out in center field—not without, by the Mariners own rules, at least coming close to Hall of Fame induction. And without that, surely no statue.

Guys wash off the ballot all the time if they’re not near the traditional 65 fWAR threshold.

Hell, Jim Edmonds and his 64.9 fWAR got 2.6 percent of the vote in his first year on the ballot and he was gone immediately. Félix finished 10 fWAR below that.

But hey, as we’ve mentioned, it’s a different time.

What’s funny with Félix and with time is that while it’s a new era for starting pitchers and the Hall of Fame, just as it was in 2010 for him and the Cy Young, Félix is and was a throwback.

He was the last of a dying breed, the generational fireballer that’s among the game’s true aces, with the workload to match, before his prefrontal cortex had even fully developed—because who needs that when you have a mid-90s fastball, El Cambio and the Royal Curve.

Félix Hernández posted his career high in innings at just 24 years of age—notching 249.2 IP in a 6.7 fWAR season.

The only other players to match those totals before their age-25 season, since 1980, are Dwight Gooden and Roger Clemens.

Nobody’s done it since Félix—and nobody probably will ever again.

Félix’s career will stand, in part, as a reason for why it won’t. He gave everything he had for teams that, mostly, didn’t deserve it.

As bad as things got, it was still Sunshine and Lollipops every fifth day. At least until the inevitable 1-0, 2-1 and 3-1 Finals.

King Félix never started a Postseason game, something he’d earned but was denied by a combination of thriftiness and mismanagement.

I’m sure it’s something that still haunts him and likely will forever.

But he deserves this, too—and now a trip to Cooperstown is inevitable.

Whether it comes in the summer of 2028 or 2029 or whenever, it’s happening.

It’ll be a #HappyFélixDay, indeed.