Why isn't King Felix walking anyone?

Maybe Felix was getting bored at Tacoma and needed a challenge so he just loaded up the bases for AAA hitters, still their attempts were futile... the King is amazing.

@detroit
minnesota
kansas city
@minnesota

kansas city and detroit are 29th and 30th in the majors in walks, and minnesota's entire offense has been AWOL for about two months.

its because in the major leagues, right now, teams are chasing some pitches they wouldnt normally. They have never seen the kid.

Wait until the league adjusts to him, scouting reports get out, etc. It will be different.

BTW--look at the teams he has faced. They arent exactly the Red Sox on offense.....

David

His stuff is so good that AAA hitter take/miss pitches that major leaguers hit, but hit poorly.

This doesn't really do that much to explain anything, but maybe it's made a slight difference. From what I've heard, minor league hitters generally never swang at his curveballs, especially this year, since they didn't feel they had much chance.  Now a combination of two things is probably happening: major league hitters have more confidence and are swinging at his curve, and Felix has learned that he needs to throw his breaking ball for strikes, thanks to minor leaguers testing him with their patience.  

I mean, he has risen through the minors very fast and it wouldn't be surprising if his high walk rate this year in AAA was due to him having to adjust how many pitches he threw in the strike zone.  In the lower minors, I'm sure he could throw high fastballs, and low off speed stuff and get a lot of swings and misses, which doesn't happen higher up.  Judging from his time with the M's so far, though, I don't see him approaching 4.9 walks a game again; his control is too good.

I know he's faced poor hitting teams, and will likely get flustered against great offenses and throw more balls, but watching the games you see he's been dead on with most of his pitches.  It's not like he's getting by on luck, or hitter's chasing bad pitches.  In fact, in the last game, the strike zone was rather small and he still only walked one.  So, basically, I think it's a combination of him learning how to pitch more effectively to better hitters and the quality of lineups faced, in general, not being very good.

People have questioned the seven wonders of the world. Nobody has the answer. King Felix is the 8th wonder. Don't try so hard to figure him out....just enjoy watching him reign.

We are looking at a very small sample size against some of the worst hitting teams in the AL.  Not to say he hasn't been dominant, but any major league pitcher can go on a 4 game run like this.  

He will walk people, and he will have some rough outings.  This is a great start, though.

The reason why Felix has done better against major league hitters than his AAA numbers suggest is because he has improved.  I think that it is really that simple.  

Felix has flown through the minors.  His learning curve has been very very steep, and he has improved a great deal every year.  It is important to remember that he is still only 19.  

I think that Felix is a lot better pitcher than he was earlier this year (when he was in AAA).  

He is using his change a lot more effectively, he is starting to use his slider a bit, and he is pitching to contact more.  He has become an extreme ground ball pitcher.  Now, the majority of Felix's outcomes are Ks or groundballs.

He isn't walking as many guys because he is not getting deep into counts as much.  This is really evident in his pitch counts.  Even in the last start agains Minn, he got though 8 innings only throwing 115.  The start before that, he also got through 8 innings with a pretty low number of pitches.  

What you are seeing is an extremely talented kid who is improving.  His control has improved over the course of this year, and he just isn't walking many people.   Plus, he is getting a lot of ground ball outs, which help him get outs without going deep into counts.  

You guys who are downplaying his talent level are really mistaken.  Felix is one of the best starters in baseball right now, at age 19.  He is going to have a really great career.  

Actually, I don't think that is true.  I've been intrigued by the notion of signature games and short stretches since Roger Clemens announed his arrival with a 20k 0 walk game.  Could anyone really do that or did Roger Clemens manage to make a statement that he was a special pitcher in just one start.  Or to restate the question of the day, what does Felix's first four starts say about him.  The answer seems to be quite a bit.  Generally, when we say a pitcher had a dominant start, we mean that he had in some combination, pitched a reasonable length of game, didn't allow that many hits, walked few, struck out many, and kept the ball in the park.  Baseball Hq developed a stat known as pure quality starts that looks at those five factors assigns one point to each, and calls meeting at least 4 of the criteia a dominant start.  By that measure Felix rated a "4" out of five on his first start because he went less than 6 innings, and a five out of five on all his other starts.  There are, as it turns out, 23 other AL pitchers that had four dominant starts in a row by this measure.  All of the most impressive four or more game streaks and a representative sample of the rest are listed below, a list of the others meeting the criteria is immediately below:

              ip   h   w   k  hr
Bedard      30   19  5   30  0
Blanton     28.7 20  7   20  1
Bonderman   39   31  10  30  4
Byrd        31   16   3  18  3  
Contreras   28   18   9  23  2
Halladay    63   46   5  55  2  (8 games)
Haren       44.7 30   5  31  2  (6 games)
Hernandez   31   16   4  30  0
Kazmir      26   21   14 30  1
R Johnson   51.3 41   11 50  7
Maroth      25.7 19   9  20  4    
J Santanna  56   45   6  67  5   (8 games)
Silva       29   28   1  13  3
Young       32.3 22   4  32  3
Wells       40   43   1  27  2  (6 games)    
Zito        28   14   10 23  2  

also: Buehrle, Chen, Colon (twice), Kazmir (again), Lackey, Radke, Robertson, Santanna (again), Towers, Zito (again).  

I think it goes without saying that even in this elite company, Hernandez's four games hold up very well among the most impressive streaks on this list.  In fact the only streak that really looks uncannily similar (very high k's, very low hits and walks, no hrs allowed) is that of Eric Bedard earlier this season, and still with a nifty 3.12 season era.

Now, remembering that the above stats don't necessarily say anything about earned runs allowed during the streak let alone for the season, following is a complete list of the season eras for the pitchers on the list of having 4 or more dominant starts in a row:

1.24, 2.41, 3.07, 3.l2, 3.35, 3.37, 3.46, 3.60 3.66, 3.75, 3.78, 3.88, 3.92, 3.94, 3.95, 4.00, 4.00, 4.02, 4.08, 4.12, 4.34, 4.62, 4.64, 4.70.

Median is 3.88, mean is 3.52.  

The outliers on the high side are also revealing.  Randy Johnson at 4.34, Chris Young at 4.62, Mike Maroth at 4.64 and David Wells at 4.70.  Johnson and Wells are pitchers with enormous base skills who have had very difficult years.  Chris Young has had a Jekyll and Hyde season where he pitched very well for a while and then fell off a cliff.  Recently he has shown some signs of a comeback.  We'll see.  As for Maroth, he probably is the worst pitcher on the list and is a case of just barely fitting into the criteria, 4 hrs allowed in 25 2/3 innings and a barely 2/1 k/bb rate even during the streak.  Not really comparable to Felix's run.

Also interesting is a list of pitchers who have pitched at least as much as Felix with at least a 6.00 k/9 (Felix is over 9), at least a 2.00 k/bb (Felix is at 7.50), and at least a 2.00 g/f ratio (Felix is at 3.57)

Hernandez, M. Miller, Halladay, Shields.  Miller is the only name that might be less familiar, but he's certainly no slouch, having put up very nice numbers last year and this until going on the dl. The others are two of the best pitchers in the game, and Felix.

The conclusion is that even if we knew nothing about Felix other than these four starts, we would already be able to conclude, with reasonable certainty that he is one of the better pitchers in the AL.  I guess we knew that already.

Small. Sample. Size.