First Baseball Post :D

[BarryBobPosthole]

Seems to be lots of no-nos this year.
BKB

[TheHunter000]

Part 2:

18. According to ESPN Stats & Info, the six no-hitters thrown this year places 2012 behind only 1884, 1990, and 1991 for most no-hitters in a single season in MLB history. There were seven thrown in 1990 and 1991 and eight thrown in 1884.

17. How bad was that strike zone? See all those light-red squares well outside the strike zone? That bad.

16. Felix's stuff was obscene. He generated 26 (26!!!) swings and misses out of the 113 pitches he threw. Ten of those came on 24 curveballs (people watching on TV even reported their knees buckling), five on his 18 sliders (which were breaking a foot or more, it seemed), and one on his 40 fastballs (Felix throws three kinds). But many hitters will tell you that Felix's nastiest pitch is his changeup. It's thrown with the same delivery as a fastball but with a similar grip to a split-fingered fastball, at 88-92 miles per hour, with incredible sink. As one Rays player told me afterward: "His split/change is like no other pitch in the game."

15. John Jaso helped. DRaysBay's Jason Collette has some great details on how the Mariners catcher called the game. Catchers can sometimes gain a bit of an exaggerated halo effect for their contributions to a game, when in fact it's the guy on the mound who has to throw 97 mph and hit targets perfectly from 60 feet, six inches away. But Collette notes that Jaso is an ex-Ray who worked to exploit Tampa Bay's traditional strategy of attacking Felix by swinging at fastballs early in the count. Instead they got a heavy dose of curves, sliders, and changeups, and looked helpless flailing at them. When it was all over, the Seattle Times' Steve Kelley asked Felix about his approach against the game's final hitter, Sean Rodriguez. His reply?

"I took a little walk, you know, to catch my breath," Hernandez said. "[Jaso] called a slider and I'd been following him all day. I threw a slider and [Rodriguez] swung and missed."

14. Very few Rays did anything to try to disrupt Felix's rhythm. Though his per-pitch pace wasn't extraordinarily fast according to FanGraphs numbers, it was clear from beginning to end that Felix was speeding up or slowing down his offerings at will, with little to no interference from Rays hitters. Carlos Pena, a sub-Mendoza hitter who still counted as one of Tampa Bay's top on-base threats as a lefty hitter with the eighth-best walk rate in baseball, did step out and take a few deep breaths during his at-bat in the 8th. That was about it for anyone lugging a bat to the plate.

13. Joe Maddon tried. After the latest of home plate umpire Rob Drake's charitable strike calls, Maddon stormed toward home plate in the seventh inning, spewing a series of F-bombs (hat-tip Gary Carter!), and taking his time leaving the field after he'd been tossed. Twitter exploded with indignation at Maddon's tirade, slamming him for delaying the game and potentially messing up Felix's timing and concentration. Which, of course, was precisely the point. The Rays trailed 1-0 at the time, and would go on to lose 1-0. They're in the thick of the wild-card hunt. One hit, or even one call, could've turned the outcome of the game. Some might have seen the move as bush league. Looked like good managing from here.

12. Maddon was asked afterward about the perfect game, and what it said about the Rays. "The last time we got perfect gamed, we went to the playoffs, so." In other words, this.

11. There were some concerns early in the season about diminished fastball velocity and thus a potential drop in effectiveness. Those concerns are now gone. Felix has gone from a strikingly predictable pitcher who threw a ton of first-pitch fastballs to a very unpredictable, eclectic pitcher who can still blow it by you at 93 when he wants to. This might not be the last time he's mobbed at home plate for doing something extraordinary.

10. Felix has emerged as a strong Cy Young contender. Again. He ranks among the league leaders in ERA (2.60), FIP (2.86), innings pitched (180), strikeouts (174), and Wins Above Replacement (5.0). Given voter tendencies and how they consider won-lost record, ERA, and strikeouts vs. advanced metrics, your top four Cy Young candidates in some order are probably Justin Verlander, David Price, Chris Sale, and Felix. It could be a dogfight, right down to the final day of the season.

9. Felix is the hottest starting pitcher in baseball. His past 12 starts are just obscene: 92 1/3 innings (meaning he's averaging close to eight innings per start), 90 strikeouts, 15 walks, two homers, and a 1.56 ERA, with opponents hitting .178/.221/.215 against him during that stretch.

8. Want GIFs and video of the perfect game? You got it.

7. Want to see all 27 outs in one clip? You got it.

6. Want to see Felix's brother Moises and his Jackson Generals (Double-A) teammates lose their minds after Felix gets the final out of the perfecto? You got it.

5. This might not have been the best game Felix ever pitched. In April 2007, he fired a one-hit shutout at Fenway Park against a stacked Red Sox team that went on to win the World Series. Just three days after his 21st birthday, Felix carved through Boston's lineup full of All-Stars, with only J.D. Drew's eighth-inning single preventing a no-hitter. This game also marked Daisuke Matsuzaka's home debut, making for an electric atmosphere. I was there. It was awesome.

4. Reader and Philadelphia Daily News intern Tim Gilbert passes along this gem on Twitter: "I'm really proud of myself because I noticed Felix's [Win Probability Added] was .666 and he therefore made a deal with the devil."

3. As Felix was slashing his way toward history, HBO started showing the 1999 movie For Love of the Game. Kevin Costner stars as Billy Chapel, a 40-year-old pitcher throwing the final game of his career. As the game progresses, Chapel thinks back on his career, his rocky relationship with Jane Aubrey (played by Kelly Preston), and other seminal life events. The game ends with Chapel throwing a perfect game, the only movie ever to use a perfect game as its pivotal moment. The movie's timing synched up almost perfectly with Felix's perfect game, with both pitchers delivering the final pitch mere minutes apart.

2. Talk to any Mariners fan and their Felix love becomes palpable, even on non-perfect day games. The King's Court section at Safeco features a bunch of dudes wearing yellow King Felix jerseys, holding up K signs, and generally having the time of their lives. Though their man is still only 26, he's been a Mariner for nearly a decade, with USS Mariner and FanGraphs writer Dave Cameron bestowing his King Felix nickname when the big right-hander was just a teenager. The signature image for Felix's career will now be him celebrating behind the mound, arms raised in triumph, about to be mobbed by delirious teammates. Before that, his defining image to Mariners fans who've rooted him on all these years might've been something like this.

1. Every year, Felix Hernandez dominates baseball and electrifies crowds league-wide. And every year, Seattle Mariners fans are subject to made-up trade rumors, rampant speculation that he's about to be traded, and blatant coveting by writers who make up implausible and one-sided trade scenarios.

That kind of talk would anger any fan base. But Mariners fans have had it especially tough. They waited 18 years before seeing their first playoff series. Endured a string of near-misses over the ensuing seven seasons, capped by a 116-win juggernaut that looked invincible in 2001 until Seattle got drilled by the Yankees in the ALCS in five games. It's been 11 years since that last playoff berth, with regime changes, disastrous signings, and what-were-they-thinking trades dealing one dispiriting blow after another. Ichiro's gone, Justin Smoak and Dustin Ackley have been wildly disappointing, and the team appears to be years away from contending again.

But the one thing Seattle still has is Felix. A message from excellent Mariners blog Lookout Landing on Felix's Baseball-Reference page nicely sums up the feelings of Mariners fans on this front: "Felix is ours," the message defiantly tells the world, "and you can't have him."