Men dressed as moose, Legos and Batman dance atop outdoor room of pajama men
Men dressed as moose, Legos, and Batman dance atop outdoor room of pajama men, as captured by my extremely high-quality camera. Spike Friedman

I attended two Mariners games this weekend. The first one, on Friday, saw the Mariners score two runs. The second game, on Sunday, saw the Mariners score two runs. The former felt like an easy win after Nelson Cruz walloped a solo shot in the second inning. It was so great. The latter was a heartbreaking loss that saw the Mariners get shut down by some guy with the great baseball name Kyle Gibson. Even though there was a post-game screening of the Lego Movie, Sunday's game was terrible. All I could think on Sunday was, “If only the offense could have done more!” Except the offense managed the same type of performance in both starts. The difference was our starting pitcher.

Which isn’t to malign Sunday’s starter, Roenis Elias, who pitched fine in place of the injured Hisashi Iwakuma. Elias gave up two runs in 5 2/3 innings, and got better as the game went on. That’s good. It’s just Felix Hernandez, who started Friday’s game and threw a complete game shutout, is so much better than good.

And duh, of course Felix Hernandez is amazing. He’s Felix Hernandez. He defines amazing.

When he was 18 people were like, “He’s the king, let’s call him the king,” and everyone was like, “Yeah, cool, that makes sense.” And to this point his career has been better than any of us expected it to be! To say Felix Hernandez is better than good is to function in a realm adjacent to tautology. Felix’s goodness is both enough to make an otherwise bad run of baseball games tolerable, and also a reminder of everyone else’s failings.

I’m not all doom and gloom with this team yet; you simply can’t judge a baseball team before Memorial Day. The Mariners had the same record through 18 games last year as they do this year, and that team wound up one game out of the playoffs. Still, it would be silly not to acknowledge the darkness creeping in around the edges of this squad. Zunino isn’t hitting, the kids aren’t pitching, the defense isn’t defending. The Mariners, whom I certainly pegged as a potential playoff team in the preseason, just failed to post a winning record in a homestand against the Rangers, Astros, and Twins. Things are getting a touch dark.

But Felix Hernandez is the purest of pure lights. How pure?

There is a Baseball Reference tool called “similarity score.” It spits out lists of people that baseball players are most similar to at their current age and for their career as a whole. While it’s maligned by some for being a bit rudimentary, it gives a decent measure of what type of guys have done what a given player has done. And when you go looking for someone who has done what Felix has done you find GREG FUCKING MADDUX.

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Let’s do a little thought exercise to wrap our heads around how ludicrously great that comparison is. First, think about your job. Then ask yourself, “Who is the most calmly efficient genius to ever do [that job]?” Then look in a mirror and ask yourself, “Am I the equivalent of [that genius’ name] at [your current age]?” Then shake your head at yourself. Because you aren’t the Greg Maddux of what you do at your age; I know this because if you were you wouldn’t be reading blog posts about the Mariners on the internet. That’s okay. Almost no one is the Greg Maddux of what they do. But Felix is! And the thing he does happens to be the same thing that Greg Maddux did! That’s bonkers!

In fact, I’m going to court some Seattle sports controversy here. You guys ready for some controversial courting? Get ready. Prepare yourself. Here comes courtship:

Felix Hernandez is the best athlete currently plying his or her trade in Seattle.

Yes, numbers 2-10 on that list are some combination of eight Seahawks and Robinson Cano (with apologies to Clint Dempsey despite his beautiful ongoing habit of breaking Oregonian hearts). But number one belongs to the king.

Hell, I’ll make the list. Let’s go:

1. Felix Hernandez
2. Richard Sherman
3. Earl Thomas
4. Marshawn Lynch
5. Russell Wilson
6. Robinson Cano
7. Kam Chancellor
8. Bobby Wagner
9. Michael Bennett
10-tie. Nelson Cruz this week?
10-tie. Steven Hauschka always and forever?
10-tie. Okay, maybe Clint Dempsey? His goal against Portland this Sunday was stupid and fun. Or Pete Carroll? Oh wait, duh, Jimmy Graham is the actual answer.

Anyways, this is a stupid exercise. The point is that Felix is great, and so are a lot of athletes in Seattle right now. It’s all great. Let’s all not get weird and gloomy just because the Mariners are 7-11, k?