How Much Did Felix Hernandez Solve?

Wednesday was a pretty good day for starting-pitcher redemption. Most visibly, Justin Verlander came a few outs from no-hitting the Angels, calling attention to the fact that it looks like he’s back on track. In Chicago, Rick Porcello returned to the Red Sox and spun seven shutout innings, after entering with an ERA near 6. And Felix Hernandez turned in an effective outing at home against the A’s, following a stretch of particular and peculiar hittability. None of these pitchers stand to mean very much down the stretch, their teams basically out of contention, but fans want to know who can be relied on, and the three of them provided arguments for why they can still be good, for a while to come.

With Felix’s outing came an explanation. Felix was aware of how badly things had gone for him, so he took the uncharacteristic step of watching some video of himself and working out in the bullpen. According to Felix, he saw that he was rushing through his delivery, and that was costing him both location and movement. So he worked on knocking that off, and then not only were Wednesday’s results good, but Felix felt like he had his command. He thought his pitches were much better. It seems like that should be everything. There was a problem, the pitcher claimed to identify the problem, the pitcher worked on the problem, then the next performance was good. It ought to be comforting, everything wrapped up so neatly.

Yet I still can’t help but wonder. Just how much did Felix actually solve? A pitcher knows himself better than anyone, but even a pitcher can end up biased by results. Wednesday, the numbers were there. Dig deeper, and it’s a stranger case.

When Felix has struggled this season, he’s typically offered the same story — couldn’t keep the ball down. Missed up in the zone. He only very infrequently intends to throw a high fastball, preferring to keep everything at or below the knees. Everything he throws moves like crazy, and when pitches are up, Felix thinks they get flat. He wants to keep the knees occupied. He wants pitches to end up just above the dirt.

Since the All-Star break, according to our pitch values, Felix Hernandez has thrown one of baseball’s very worst fastballs. It hasn’t been real good all season long, but more recently it’s been only worse. The changeup, too, has been ineffective, which is extra troubling since the changeup is supposed to be Felix’s signature pitch. Perhaps not coincidentally, the changeup and the fastball are thrown with the same motion. Something hasn’t quite been right. Anyway, maybe it’s better to just speed along to the data.

Felix Hernandez, last year, was terrific. Nearly won the Cy Young. In this season’s first half, he was also quite good, if a little bit worse. From the break through the start before last, Felix had problems. Wednesday was Wednesday. Let’s identify these as four different time periods. Now we can enlist the help of Brooks Baseball.

There, I looked for Felix’s average fastball pitch height. The site makes it easy to filter, and the results are given relative to the vertical middle of the strike zone. So, a negative number means a lower average, and a positive number means a higher average. Here’s the information for Felix’s fastballs:

• 2014 season: -4.2 inches
• Early 2015: -3.5
• 2015, post-ASB: -1.1
• Wednesday: +2.5

This is precisely what tripped me up. Felix would say he was struggling because he couldn’t keep his fastball down. Wednesday, he didn’t keep his fastball down. In fact, compared to the first half of this season, Felix’s average fastball was a full six inches higher. Nearly seven inches higher than last year. His average fastball was higher than it was during the post-break slump. If Felix wants to keep the ball down, then, what’s the story?

Here’s a comparison, showing fastballs of the various types. On the left, Felix’s 2015 first half. On the right, Wednesday.

The spread is similar, but clearly higher on the right. You don’t see nearly as much activity in or below the zone’s lower third. And, hell, though I’ve focused on fastballs, I might as well include a similar image, for changeups. Because this one’s also weird.

With the changeup, Felix had more success staying down, but Wednesday he was pushing a lot of them, instead of keeping them down, over the plate. Relative to what he’s done when he’s gone well, the other day Felix was throwing higher fastballs, and more glove-side changeups. That’s curious, since it’s not like Felix needed to change what he used to do.

There’s an obvious issue here: numbers can show us results, but they don’t show intent. Maybe Felix wanted his fastballs to do that. Maybe he wanted his changeups to do that. Again, he said after the game that he felt good about his location, and that can’t be dismissed. But here are some shots from the video highlights. These are shots of pitches that got strikeouts. So, really good results. You see the catcher’s glove, and the red dot approximates where the actual pitch wound up.

Didn’t miss horribly, and got the edge, but did miss up. This pitch was slightly elevated.

Missed up, at the thigh.

Was supposed to head toward the dirt. Stayed up and dove over the plate.

Thigh or belt (you decide!).

Thigh. For the most part, you see Felix hitting the right edge, but not quite burying the pitches. These horizontal locations are okay, but the vertical locations suggest problems finishing. And this was selective for pitches that generated strikeouts. I didn’t include, say, the very first pitch of the afternoon, which was an elevated fastball that Billy Burns of all people knocked out of the yard. Felix did better from there, but it’s fair to wonder how much better. The information, if nothing else, is weird.

To sum it all up: Felix, who was struggling, thought he identified a mechanical problem causing him to leave pitches up and lose command. Then he turned in a strong eight-inning start, which everyone was happy to see, but even in that start, the fastballs were up, even more than they had been before. Felix doesn’t often want to throw fastballs up. We don’t know much about intent, and you really want to take Felix at his word when he says he felt a lot better, but this seems like one of those things to keep watching. I’m not convinced that everything’s solved. Maybe Felix just got better results against a lineup that’s been among baseball’s worst in the second half.

A somewhat popular theory suggests that Felix hasn’t been quite right since hurting his ankle early in the season. Maybe that’s the problem, similar to what the problem was with Stephen Strasburg. Strasburg, since coming back from the DL, has been outstanding. So nothing here has to be irreparable. I just don’t know that it’s already repaired.