Leave it to Jose Fernandez, whose fastball is barely contained by the fabric of reality, to get somewhere really fast.
But while that’s all well and good, just how far can he go?
Before we get to that, let’s break from cryptic speaking for the news. Fernandez is the man of the hour, because he made history Monday night. He was long gone by the time Martin Prado slugged a game-winning home run in the 11th inning of Miami’s 3-2 win over the Philadelphia Phillies at Citizens Bank Park, but he got the Marlins started off right by striking out 14 in 6.1 innings.
The 10th of those was the 500th strikeout of Fernandez’s career, making him the fastest pitcher in history to get there. He also had a highlight that makes him look good and Cody Asche look like a dolt:
Fernandez isn’t the fastest pitcher to 500 strikeouts by every measure. As noted by the Elias Sports Bureau (via ESPN), he needed more starts (65) than Yu Darvish (62) and Dwight Gooden (61).
But that’s not the best way to measure it. Per Evan Webeck of MLB.com, Fernandez’s 400 innings are the fewest any starting pitcher has ever needed to get to 500 strikeouts. Furthermore, Ryan M. Spaeder reveals Fernandez faced fewer batters than Darvish and Gooden:
It’s only fitting that Fernandez would make strikeout history in 2016. After striking out 10.5 batters per nine innings in his first three seasons, he now has a rate of 13.3 strikeouts per nine innings that places him far ahead of the rest of the field. To boot, the only qualified pitcher to ever do better in a single season was Randy Johnson at 13.4 per nine innings in 2001.
So, what we’re seeing is a case of a great strikeout pitcher getting even better. And since Fernandez is still only 23, you can’t help but wonder how many strikeouts he’ll put in the book in the end.
It could be a lot. Even if Fernandez never has a season as prolific as this one ever again, his career strikeout rate is still 11.3 per nine innings. That’s the highest ever for a pitcher through his age-23 season. Average that out, and he could join the coveted 4,000-strikeout club (only four members!) in just 3,200 innings.
Could…but won’t.
Look beneath Fernandez’s name on that list of the highest strikeout rates through the age of 23, and you’ll see the names Kerry Wood and Mark Prior. That comes off like a warning, and one that’s relevant in Fernandez’s case.
The two ingredients needed to climb MLB’s all-time strikeout list are talent and durability. Fernandez definitely has talent, but he’s still working on durability. He’s already had Tommy John surgery, and that’s never guaranteed to be a permanent fix.
“I can’t make them bulletproof,” Dr. Neal ElAttrache, who performed Fernandez’s surgery in 2014, told Jonah Keri for Grantland last year. “As hard as they throw, [after surgery] you’re going to be on the edge with every pitch.”
If Fernandez’s elbow doesn’t get him again, something else could. Efficient mechanics are arguably the best thing for warding off injuries, and there’s skepticism about Fernandez’s. Mechanics expert Chris O’Leary, for example, wrote at his website that Fernandez’s mechanics are “the embodiment of everything that’s wrong with the current state of pitching mechanics instruction and the modern power pitcher.”
It’s not fun to think about, but it’s thus not hard to picture Fernandez walking the same kind of career path as Prior and Wood: great at the beginning, but ultimately tragically short or injury-interrupted.
Even if Fernandez does stay healthy, he’s not going to rock an 11.3 K/9 for his entire career. Not even the Big Unit could do that, and he and Pedro Martinez are the only pitchers with more than 2,000 innings to strike out more than 10 batters per nine innings for their whole careers.
Injuries can take a chisel to a pitcher’s strikeout rate, but so can the usual aging curves. Per research by Bill Petti at FanGraphs, starting pitchers start leaking velocity in their mid-20s, and their strikeout rates begin to drop just a few years later.
If the same aging curves ultimately apply to Fernandez, he’s not going to get to 4,000 strikeouts in 3,200 innings. With a career K/9 in the neighborhood of 10, it would take more like 3,600 innings. That’s not an impossible total, but it’s a lot to ask of a guy without a track record of durability who exists at a time of pitch counts and innings limits.
As such, it’s best if nobody expects the quickest starter ever to 500 strikeouts to make it all the way to 4,000. Further injury trouble could derail things entirely. And even if Fernandez avoids that fate, he’ll probably still finish well short.
However, it’s not as hard to imagine Fernandez in the less rarefied, but still impressive air of the 3,000-strikeout club.
The trick will be making the most of his prime, which should have six or seven good years left in it if he stays healthy. With his current stuff, there’s a good chance he’ll get to 1,000 strikeouts by his age-25 season in 2018. At that rate, he could hit 2,000 in his age-29 season.
That would put Fernandez on roughly the same trajectory as Martinez, who was knocking on the door of 2,000 strikeouts as he entered his 30s. He no longer had his best stuff by then, but he got by on command and smarts long enough to cross the threshold of 3,000.
Fernandez could get there the same way. In the first couple years of his career, his M.O. was to simply challenge hitters with his mid-to-high 90s fastball and then finish them off with his cartoon curveball. But as we discussed recently, Fernandez’s fastball-curveball combination has turned into a fastball-curveball combination that’s bolstered by beautiful location patterns. He could always throw. Now he can pitch.
If Fernandez can’t stay healthy, all of this is obviously academic. But if he does stay healthy, it won’t be at all surprising to watch him continue making strikeout history.
Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.
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