Felix may have new go-to pitch this season

PEORIA, Ariz. -- It was an offhand comment made by a veteran after a Spring Training game on the final day of February.

In a couple of weeks, few will remember the details of the Mariners’ 8-3 win against the White Sox on Thursday. It will be all but forgotten in a month.

But if Felix Hernandez hopes to bounce back from the worst season of his career on the final year of his contract with the Mariners, what he said about the steady use of his curveball in a mostly uneventful outing at the Peoria Sports Complex could prove to be prophetic.

“Supposedly, with the numbers, that’s my best pitch,” Hernandez, 32, said.

Last season, Hernandez’s curve generated a .199 opposing batting average and a .348 slugging percentage. Opponents hit .320 and slugged .558 against his two-seam fastball, the pitch he threw more than any other pitch (32.4 percent) last year.

It’s also worth noting that 48 of Hernandez’s 125 strikeouts last season were on his curveball, and he has gone to the pitch more as his career has progressed. And while the strikeout rate on the pitch was only 26.7 percent and ranked him among the lower end of pitchers who regularly throw the curve, it remains an effective pitch.

“Felix is now open to it,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said. “We had a meeting and we talked a little bit about it. We didn’t go into how to shape his curveball or the mechanics of it, it was more, ‘Why don’t we use this a little more. It’s one of your better weapons, and that’s what the numbers spit out to us.’ We’ve talked about it in the past and now we put the numbers to it.”

Last season, the hard-hit rate against Hernandez’s curveball was 32.5 percent, and his changeup had a hard-hit rate of 32.1 percent. It’s a stark contrast to hard-hit rates against his four-seam fastball (39.6 percent), two-seam fastball (42.4 percent) and slider (55 percent).

The swing-and-miss rates on his curveball (24.5 percent) and changeup (26.2 percent) are also significantly higher than his other pitches.

The drop in velocity in Hernandez’s fastballs during the last five years could be part of the reason he will keep mixing his pitches in 2019. His four-seamer averaged 93.2 mph in 2014 and was 89.6 mph last season. His two-seamer dropped in velocity from 93 mph to 89.2 during the same span. It’s no surprise he threw a fastball only 43.3 percent of the time last season, the fifth-lowest mark among Major League pitchers.

“You talk about numbers and analytics and it’s only as good as your ability to put it in play on the field,” Servais said. “Who puts it in play on the field? The players. So, you could have the coolest algorithms and formulas that spit out the coolest numbers, and all these nicknames attached to the numbers, but it doesn’t matter unless the players understand them enough to put them in on the field. Some of the guys are more open to it than others."

Hernandez has started the last 10 Opening Days for the Mariners -- the longest active streak in MLB -- but it’s uncertain if that trend will continue. What’s certain is that he is now paying attention to all numbers more than ever.