Quote:
Originally Posted by dawgfan
Felix is going to be an interesting case. A huge amount depends on whether he can turn himself into an effective 'crafty' pitcher now that his fastball is pedestrian. The early reviews are not good on that front, but he's made adjustments throughout his career and I'm not yet ready to write-off the possibility he'll find a late-career rebirth.
With Felix you have a pitcher that got to the majors early to start the counting stats but struggled to harness his stuff (2005-2008), then hit a peak period of very high-level pitching (2009-2014) but has rapidly descended to being just barely above replacement-level.
If you'd asked me five years ago, I would have expected Felix would end up a lock for the Hall of Fame. Now...boy, I dunno. If he can't turn things around to being at least a decent starter for 3-5 more years, I don't think he gets in.
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Yeah, I'd agree with this. And I was actually surprised when looking at his stats that he's not closer and a lock already. He's 3/4 of the way there by almost every metric but if he doesn't turn it around from the last few years he's not going to make it. Which really was a shocker for me.
His #2 and #3 comparables through age 31 are Smoltz and Doc Gooden, which I thought was interesting. He probably doesn't need the entire career that Smoltz did after this point, but he definitely needs the 3-4 years of being at least in the top 10 pitcher in his league conversation.