Daily Evergreen: Felix Hernandez Extension

Felix Hernandez Extension

By: Zack Menchel

Even with Spring Training and the 2013 Major League Baseball season right around the corner, the Seattle Mariners might not be done making national headlines this off-season.

The team is reportedly deep in talks with three-time All-Star Felix Hernandez on a lucrative and lengthy contract extension that would likely ensure the ace pitcher is a Mariner for life.

Initial reports indicating that Hernandez and the Mariners had reached an agreement on a seven-year, $175 million deal through 2019 or a five-year, $135.5 million contract extension starting in 2015 have been confirmed as premature.

Hernandez originally signed with the Mariners as a gangly 16-year old kid out of Venezuela after catching the eye of the team’s scouts. He signed his first professional contract with the team following graduation from high school.

Hernandez debuted in Seattle during the 2005 season as a flame-throwing, baby-faced 19-year old with an abundance of curly hair bursting out of his trademark crooked ball cap.

Since then, the man affectionately known by fans and media alike as “King Felix” has become the face of the Mariners and is the namesake for the “King’s Court”, a special cheering section at Safeco Field on days where Hernandez takes the mound.

At 26, Hernandez is coming off his fifth straight season in 2012 with at least 200 innings pitched.

Hernandez threw the first perfect game in Mariners’ history against the Tampa Bay Rays in August, striking out 12.

He went 13-9 and finished fourth in American League Cy Young voting with a 3.06 ERA and 223 strikeouts.

Hernandez was the recipient of the 2010 A.L. Cy Young Award after posting 13 wins, a 2.27 ERA, and a career-high 232 strikeouts and 249.2 innings pitched.

On his career, Hernandez is 98-76 with a 3.22 ERA, 1487 strikeouts, and 1.22 WHIP in eight productive seasons in Seattle.

Although the price will be steep, locking up Hernandez’s services for the immediate future would be a monumental move for a Mariners franchise that has been notoriously bad at holding onto its star players and is struggling to keep butts in the seats of a beautiful ballpark.

The Mariners would be wise to not allow Hernandez to join the ranks of Randy Johnson, Alex Rodriguez, and Ken Griffey Jr. as home-grown talent and future hall of famers that left Seattle due to failures to reach terms on contract extensions.

Without a contract extension, Hernandez would be free to test free agent waters following the 2014 MLB campaign.

He would without a doubt be the hottest commodity on the market and it would be difficult for the Mariners to retain him in such a scenario.

Hernandez has been an endearing figure to baseball fans in the Emerald City from day one with his passionate displays of emotion and dominating presence on the mound.

The fact that he has openly expressed his desire to stay put despite playing for one of baseball’s very worst teams over the course of the last decade also speaks volumes to his character.

“I like Seattle and I want to help the Seattle Mariners win a World Series,” Hernandez said at a news conference before the All-Star Game last year.

“I believe in the organization. I believe we’re going in the right direction. We’ll be better.”

Much like Griffey, Mariners fans have taken pride in witnessing a young teenager emerge from the depth of the team’s minor league ranks and develop into a budding star.

From supremely talented young teenager to one of the game’s elite players, it’s easy to speak for all Mariners fans in the sense that it has been a tremendous pleasure to have watched Hernandez take the mound at the Safe for the past eight years.

Here’s to hoping the Mariners do everything in their power to keep Hernandez in blue and teal and out of the reach of the vulturous free-agent market.

After all, the Mariners are a franchise that hasn’t participated in post-season baseball for over a decade.

They owe it to their fan base to lock-up a fan favorite that just so happens to double as one of the game’s premier players.

SportsPress NW Article: Pac-12 commish: Get used to the late starts | Sportspress Northwest

Pac-12 commish: Get used to the late starts | Sportspress Northwest

PAC-12 COMMISH: GET USED TO THE LATE STARTS

Larry Scott said in Pullman Thursday that late starts are here to stay as part of the huge TV deal that also includes the chance to make non-revenue sports attractive to recruits.

Zack Menchel, Murrow News Service

PULLMAN –If TV watchers and ticket-buyers are increasingly irritated with the late starts for Pac-12 Conference football games . . . well, too bad.

“They’re a fundamental part of our new TV agreement and of high value to our broadcast partners,” Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott told WSU students, faculty and alumni in the CUB Auditorium Thursday night before the Cougars game against Arizona State. Scott’s campus session touched on a number of sports topics:

Pac-12 Networka not just football

Scott spoke with pride regarding his role in the development of the Pac-12 Networks and its importance in expanding the conference’s reach. Recently, the late start times have drawn the ire of University of Washington athletics director Scott Woodward and a growing number of fans.

Per John Blanchette of The Spokesman-Review, in 2013, 33 Pac-12 games kicked-off at 6 p.m. or later compared to 25 with start times between 3 and 5.

With the creation of the Pac-12 Networks, Scott said one of the main goals was to garner more exposure for the Olympic sports — not just high-revenue sports of football and men’s basketball.

“Part of the DNA of our conference has been broad-based excellence in athletics because in addition to the academic prestige of our universities, we have won more NCAA titles than any other conference,” said Scott. “We’re really prolific when it comes to the Olympic sports and we wanted this to be seen.“

Scott said 750 live sports events are slated for broadcast this year, 250 more than the launch in 2011. While football and basketball still comprise the lion’s share of the telecasts, there is an increasing desire to continue to find air time for Olympic sports more evenly.

“These sports and the student-athletes are traditionally well known in the country for what they do, but haven’t been able to get the same coverage that other sports have gotten,” he said.

“What I think this does for the future is help position the conference extraordinarily well in terms of our ability to recruit top student-athletes for a multitude of reasons, which now include knowing their family and friends will have a chance to see them on TV.”

Scott said he and his team realized that the Pac-12 needed to be more competitive nationally and give alumni and fans a chance to follow teams and players in a new way.

“The benefits of the media agreement are really multi-faceted,” he said. “The money that comes in gets the most media attention, but as I travel to our campuses every week and witness the support for all these athletic programs as well as the student athletes who have arrived thanks to the influx of money, it’s very gratifying.”

Equal revenue sharing

Scott cited revenue sharing as the most critical factor to the success of the Pac-12.

“I came to the conference with a belief that all successful leagues must have healthy, competitive teams from top to bottom,” he said. “That is the hallmark of a successful conference.”

Before his arrival, the money generated from football and basketball would not be shared evenly among the schools, but split between the participating schools.

“The programs from the larger markets such as our two Los Angeles schools were teams that would get significantly more money than smaller media markets who were televised less,” he said. “This created significant disparity with unequal revenue and it wasn’t helped by the conference not selling all the TV rates.”

That circumstance helped give rise in 2011 to the 12-year, $3.4 billion television contract with ESPN and Fox, distributed evenly across the conference.

“Our revenue streams increased dramatically, and knowing that revenue would be shared equally created an uplift for the smaller schools to grow on the same level,” he said. “It’s really hard to overstate the impact. I get excited to see where we’ll be five years in the future now that the national media has noticed our depth.”

Head trauma

Scott was asked to detail the Pac-12’s plan to mitigate the issues of head trauma and concussions, specifically in football.

He said that the board of directors was tasked to decide if the issue was best left to the institutions or if there was reason for the conference to help.

The conference is now engaged.

“We are in the business of building brains, not just in terms of intelligence but also the health and well-being of all students,” said Scott. “When student athletes are facing risk factors and physical threats to that well-being, we as a conference decided that we had to get engaged.”

Scott is creating a head-trauma task force and steering committee aimed to coordinate research initiatives. The conference is committing $3.5 million next year to the project.

“We will work to identify and track head trauma more efficiently,” said Scott. “We want to figure out if there are necessary rule changes or further protective measures in order to create a safer intercollegiate athletic environment.”