People point to Jacob Degrom's 10-9 season as some kind of trend for the future. But this kinda thing was happening 25 years ago. One example: Sid Fehr-nandez, as Thom brenamen used to pronounce it.

For his career, he allowed only 6.85 hits per 9 innings. Thats FOURTH BEST in MLB History.

Yet in 15 years, he only had 114 wins.

How could that be? Thats only 7.5 victories per year.

He was a reliable starter with the Mets for a long time. Seemed like a solid 3rd starter that would win 12-13 games a year.

So how did he end up with only 114 career victories?

His other numbers rank up there with the best in the game: 3.36 ERA, 8.4 K/9, 6.85 hits/9, .209 batting average against.

By the way, does anyone know how fat he is these days? He probably got Coomer-fat in retirement.

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He only pitched 200 innings 3x

16
14
14
Wins on those years.

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he was a solid pitcher, but wasnt he very prone to the long ball? i remember him being a big-time fly-ball pitcher.

Exactly. He left too many games in the hands of other pitchers. Still, a decent winning percentage.

This would be my argument about judging a modern starter. I don't expect even the elite to win 20 games. And I certainly don't expect a 300 game winner. But percentages should be higher than ever. If you're truly elite and only expected to go 5 or 6 innings, you should leave with the lead the VAST majority of the time. You have no possibility to lose in the 8th or 9th like Gibson or Ford did.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Kash, and Don

I thought he had arm problems that kept his starts and IP down.

Can't win a game from the training table

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

El Sid was a master of deception. He had a short quick arm action where it made it very difficult for hitters to pick up the ball coming out of his hand. They said it looked like the ball was coming out of his shirt sleeve. He led the National League in strikeouts per 9 innings pitched (9.511) in 1985 despite not being able to break a pane of glass with his fastball. The dude knew how to pitch.

He had nasty stuff and threw a shit ton of pitches and couldn’t get out of the sixth. 200 IP twice. 0-2 in post season. Take it easy

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

I'll have to check Baseball Ref, but I always felt like whenever he played against the Cubs, he dominated.

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Yeah, there are some good YouTube clips of Fernandez pitching. That arm action was just something else, literally whip-like. I don’t know anything about pitching biomechanics, but how he threw couldn’t be healthy for a human arm.

Also, kudos to whatever Mets scout recommended trading for him. The Dodgers got Bob Bailor and Carlos Diaz (not a made up generic name) for a 21 year old Fernandez with a grand total of 6 MLB IP under his belt.

The Dodgers sure were cranking out good SPs back then: Bob Welch, Hershiser, Sutcliffe, Valenzuela, an underrated Tim Belcher.