Can Felix Beat Pedro?

Originally posted on August 6, 2014

Since the Designated Hitter Era began in 1973, there have been 3,375 qualified starting pitcher-seasons. Of those, only 13 have ended with an Earned Run Average (ERA) superior to Felix Hernandez’s current 1.97 mark. Of those 13 pitcher-seasons, only three came from American League pitchers, meaning, the other 10 came from players who faced lineups where pitchers were batters. All else equal, that makes it significantly easy to have low ERA's in the National League. (Hey, we should have the DH in the National League.)

Anyways, all of this means that 2014 Felix Hernandez has the 4th-best ERA all-time amongst pitchers who had to throw against the designated hitter. In this regard, King Felix is in percentile 0.24. The other 99.76% of American League qualified starters have had inferior ERAs.

Here are the three AL pitcher-seasons with lower ERAs since 1973:

·       2000 Pedro Martinez, 1.74 ERA (42 ER in 217.0 IP)

·       1978 Ron Guidry, 1.74 ERA (53 ER in 273.2 IP)

·       1990 Roger Clemens, 1.93 ERA (49 ER in 228.1 IP)

In this list, Pedro’s 1.74 ERA beats Ron’s 1.74 ERA because of rounding. So, Pedro is numero uno. Can Felix be number one? Can he surpass Pedro?

Felix to date has allowed 38 ER in 173.1 IP. There are 50 games left in the Mariners 2014 regular season. Felix started yesterday. So he should receive 10 more starts. Let’s assume Felix averages 7 IP per start. Then he will finish the regular season with 243.1 IP. With that total, Felix can allow a maximum of 47 total ER to beat Pedro. Felix would come in at 1.738, versus Pedro’s 1.742.

9 ER or less over the next 70 IP. (Or something proportionally equivalent, over more or fewer innings.) That’s what Felix needs, to break the record.

This would be cool. But, I’m not saying that having the lowest AL ERA since 1973 means that Felix’s 2014 would be the “best pitching season” since that time. That’s a different statement to defend, because ERA isn’t a very good metric, honestly. ERA is not park- or defense-adjusted (except for the fact that it backs out errors). ERA doesn’t care whether a pitcher threw in the “steroids era,” or not. Plus, I ignored the entire National League in this analysis.

Maybe Fielding-Independent Pitching (FIP) would be a better metric than ERA. Well, Felix’s 2.04 FIP in 2014 is already #2 in the DH Era (AL-only). Although, 1999 Pedro Martinez’s 1.33 FIP at #1 is totally untouchable.

There are other metrics to evaluate as well, of course. But any reasonable way you look at it, 2014 Felix will be near the very, very top of the list. He is having an historic season.