Of course Olney goes on to speculate how soon the King will be playing for the Yankees or Sox .. Typical ESPN stuff.
Rob Johnson got the assignment to catch Felix Hernandez's last start, and during the course of the game Saturday night in Los Angeles, Johnson and umpire Chuck Meriwether marveled together about the movement on Hernandez's stuff, the two chortling from pitch to pitch, as King Felix's fastball cut and sank, as his curveball broke over the plate. "Both of us were like, 'This is nasty,'" Johnson said.The frightening thing for hitters is that Hernandez himself is just beginning to understand how good his stuff is and how to use it. "The conviction in his pitches has gotten better," Johnson said. "He really believes in what he's throwing. He's getting ahead in the count, and he can get ahead with all four pitches." Johnson thinks it's not a coincidence that this elevation of performance took place during interleague play. Hernandez has had to hit, and from the vantage point of the batter's box, he's been able to see how difficult it is to hit a decent fastball -- "And these are guys who don't throw as hard [as Hernandez] and don't have as much movement as he does," Johnson said.
Hernandez held the Dodgers to four hits and a run in eight innings Saturday, and in five starts in June, he surrendered a total of four earned runs, using all of his pitches in every part of the ball-strike count. During an at-bat by Juan Pierre on Saturday, Hernandez threw a curveball for a strike, a changeup, a sinker down and away, and a slider inside. Pierre grounded out. As the game went along, Johnson said, the Dodgers' hitters had little sense of what Hernandez was going to throw.
