Felix Hernandez: Crackerjacks 2014 AL Cy Young Winner
September 3, 2014; Oakland, CA, USA; Seattle Mariners starting pitcher Felix Hernandez (34) delivers a pitch against the Oakland Athletics during the first inning at O.co Coliseum. The Mariners defeated the Athletics 2-1. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
Fantasy baseball players, baseball fans, and especially baseball players were all given a pretty nice reminder of something in 2014. Felix Hernandez is really good.
King Felix dominated the opposition again in 2014. We’ll have to wait and see if he ends up winning the official Cy Young Award. But the Crackerjacks have voted and it’s unanimous here — Hernandez wins our Cy Young Award. Really, that’s what’s important here.
Felix has won this award in the past, so it’s pretty natural to draw a comparison, especially given how noteworthy that particular award was. As great as that 2010 season was, this one was probably better.
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As is always the case with Felix, those stats really speak for themselves. They show us that King Felix is a guy that no hitter really looks forward to facing, as he can dominate a game in plenty of different ways.
The one regret here is that we as baseball fans didn’t quite get to see Felix in the playoffs. The Mariners did contend for the first time in a while, but fell just short, with Felix himself struggling some down the stretch.
Maybe we’ll get to see that in the near future. For now though, the season’s numbers were definitely good enough to earn him this award.
As was the case with a few other awards, an injury made the voting much easier. Chris Sale had numbers that were comparable to Felix in many areas and even better in some respects. If he hadn’t missed that stretch from mid-April to mid-May, we may well be looking at a much closer race, at least.
But ultimately, he missed too many innings and unlike the other league, his numbers weren’t so overwhelming compared to the rest of the competition.
Because of that, the pretty natural nod went to Felix Hernandez.