NEWSLETTER
As of this morning, the Miami Marlins are well within striking distance of the St. Louis Cardinals for the Second Wild Card slot in the NL. More specifically, with their win last night, behind a strong performance from Jose Fernandez, they remain just 1.5 games back with 36 games left to play. And while there have been many contributors to the team’s relatively surprising success this season, none have been more critical than that of ace, Jose Fernandez.
While Fernandez, 24, has always had the potential to be the pitcher he is today, injuries have slowed his career down considerably (he hasn’t thrown more than 100 innings since his debut back in 2013). This season, however, Fernandez is healthy and strong and has already broken the Marlins’ single season strike out record … in August!
Check out the record breaking strikeout (his 6th of the evening and 210th on the season) against Alex Gordon in the top of the sixth inning:
Fernandez went on to strikeout a few more and his record now stands at 213 for the season … with roughly eight more starts to go. In other words, Fernandez, if he stays healthy, won’t just break the Marlins’ single season strikeout record, he’s going to obliterate it. After all, he does have the highest strikeout rate in baseball (35.4%) by a whopping six percentage points over the guy in second place (Noah Syndergaard).
Here are the rest of his strikeouts from last night, plus two hits of his own. Fernandez had himself quite a night yesterday. He’s one hell of a ballplayer.
Interestingly, although Fernandez’s age makes this seem especially notable, the previous leader, Ryan Dempster, set his single season record (209 Ks) for the Marlins at the age of 23.
