Hall of Fame vote proves Mariners legend Félix Hernández is still rewriting rules

Félix Hernández is not yet a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, but the latest voting results only make it clearer that his time is coming. And when it does, the definition of what makes a pitcher worthy of Cooperstown will be changed forever.

After Hernández debuted with 20.6 percent of the vote in 2025, it was apparent early on in the 2026 voting cycle that more voters were rallying to his cause. And in the end, he gained 115 votes to finish with a 46.1 percent share, putting him significantly closer to the 75 percent he needs to get in.

Though only Carlos Beltrán and Andruw Jones were actually voted in this year, Hernández's 25.5 percent jump from 2025 was the largest of any returning member on the 2026 ballot. With helium like that, he should be able to get to 75 percent before his time on the ballot expires in 2034.

Nobody will be surprised to hear that the official position of SoDo Mojo is that "King Felix" belongs in the Hall of Fame. He may not have the standard trappings of a Hall of Fame pitcher, but breaking barriers is kind of his whole thing.

Félix Hernández is still rewriting the rules as he gains traction toward Cooperstown

Remember the American League Cy Young Award vote in 2010? Of course you do. It was a long time ago, but it still represents a paradigm shift in how people perceive the value of starting pitchers.

Hernández had no business winning the award based on his 13-12 record for that year's Seattle Mariners squad. Until that point, no pitcher had captured the Cy Young Award after a full season in which he won fewer than 15 games. Hernández fell two wins short of that mark and barely salvaged a winning record.

Yet because of his AL-leading marks for innings and ERA, his quality as a pitcher could not be denied. Equally undeniable was how little run support he had. The Mariners scored a league-low 3.2 runs per game, and didn't even manage more than two runs in 15 of his 34 starts. He went 2-10 in those… but with a 2.84 ERA that would have been a top-five mark among AL starters on its own.

Now, history could have proven Hernández's Cy Young win in 2010 to be a one-off. But what it has actually proven to be is an early sign of the times. Even not counting 2020, there have been six instances of a pitcher winning the Cy Young with 13 or fewer victories — including last year, when Tarik Skubal (13) and Paul Skenes (10) combined for only 23.

As such, you can already trace a new line of thinking about what makes pitchers great on a year-to-year basis back to Hernández. And if his rising Hall of Fame support is any indication, he's already at the center of a new line of thinking about the greatness of modern starters as a whole.

With only 169 career wins, Hernández would become the first Hall of Famer (minimum 400 starts) with fewer than 200 wins. Even some newfangled metrics don't rate him that highly, with the Jaffe WAR Score System barely rating him as a top-100 starter.

However, there are those making the case (including MLB.com's Mike Petriello) that a new standard should be applied to modern starters. With the expectations of the job having shifted toward less intense workloads, the fair thing is to measure them not against their historical peers, but against their contemporaries. Not as all-time pitchers, but as generational pitchers.

Record be damned, Hernández is very obviously one of the best pitchers of his generation. He averaged a 3.13 ERA and 218 innings for a decade between 2006 and 2015, a span in which he led all starters in fWAR and all AL starters in rWAR. In addition to the AL Cy Young in 2010, he also collected six All-Star nods and two ERA titles in that span. He also pitched a perfect game in 2012.

Maybe he doesn't compare to the Randy Johnsons or Greg Madduxes from baseball history, but Hernández was the envy of his peers for a decade. And the question is not how good he is compared to those who came before, but how many of those who come after will be as good as him.

It's a short list that isn't threatening to get longer any time soon. And while Clayton Kershaw, Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer will inevitably join him, Hernández deserves to be the first Hall of Famer for this new generation of aces.