Felix Hernandez Listens to Bloggers

In case you missed it on Saturday afternoon, King Felix ruined the return of Rich Harden for the Athletics by making Harden's presence an afterthought. Felix was treating the Athletics the same way a bear plays with a fish before eating it.

Hernandez lasted eight innings, giving up only two hits and no runs in Seattle's 4-0 victory.

The key is where Hernandez got his strategy. Unlike Sports Illustrated, when Felix Hernandez takes something from a blog, he gives them credit.

"Chaves gave me a report,'' Hernandez said. "On the internet, they say when I throw a lot of fastballs in the first inning, they score a lot of runs. I tried to mix all my pitches in the first inning.''

Chaves is Mariners pitching coach Rafael Chavez, who was given a letter by an unknown fan whom he'd never met before. The letter that fan gave him was a printout from this post, "Open Letter to Rafael Chaves", by the guys at USS Mariner.

"It was nothing but reinforcement of the talks we've had in the past,'' Chaves said. "I just wanted to make Felix aware that 'It's not a top secret around baseball that you have a tendency to get into patterns. We all get scouted and...unless you make your own adjustments it's going to be easy to predict what you're going to be doing out there to begin with.''

As a blogger, I think this is one of the coolest things ever. Of course, while the fellas over at USS Mariner are happy to help, they feel that Felix and Rafael deserve most of the credit.

Now, correlation is not causation. Maybe the A's hitters just aren't very good, and maybe Felix is just bound to dominate line-ups like this because his stuff is off the charts.

But you know, I love seeing Felix trying something new. Its extremely encouraging that he took some information made available to him and made adjustments to improve his approach.

That Chaves was able to use the the open letter from the blog to help drive home a point he'd already been making, well, that's just the cherry on top. But Felix deserves all the credit in the world for this. He and Chaves did the work, and they're the ones who tossed a shutout at the A's today. We just get to enjoy the fruits of Good Felix.

Long Live King Felix.

And long live the power of the blog!