Is Felix Hernandez a Hall-of-Famer?

Is Felix Hernandez a Hall-of-Famer?

Up next is Felix Hernandez’s 7-year contract worth $175 million with the Seattle Mariners. And this one requires a much more in-depth discussion. We obviously know about the greatness of King Felix at this point. He debuted at 19 years old and took the league by storm. After finishing runnerup for Sai Young in 2009 and then winning the award in 2010, the Mariners actually bought out his arbitration years and gave him a 5-year $78 million extension, which turned out to be a fantastic contract. That’s just not the contract we’re talking about in this instance, though. In 2012, after a bit of a hiccup the year prior, Felix returned to Sai Young form. He threw a perfect game, had a five war season and an ERA just around three, and this earned him the subsequent extension that we’ll be talking about today, the 7-year deal worth 175 million. It’s interesting because the first year of this contract was one of the best of Felix’s entire career. He led the American League in ERA, game started, whip, and hit per nine rate, and was a controversial second place finisher to Cory Clubber that year. But after 2015, Felix would deal with injuries for the rest of his career. And by 2018, he was fully a negative asset to the Mariners team. Felix Hernandez is basically the entire reason I created the complicated legacies tier at number three because Felix absolutely deserved the money. He took lesser money to stay with the Seattle Mariners and two of those years were among the best in the league. It’s just the old age hit Felix a lot harder than anybody probably expected and it complicates the legacy of his contract as a whole because it did hamper the Mariners in the late 2010s. I have no doubt that the Mariners would sign him again given the circumstances, but it’s hard to sell it anything higher than the third tier for