King Felix gets off to princely start

SEATTLE – No longer The King or even The Boy King, Felix Hernandez has been demoted to something along the lines of prince regent.

It’s a suspect distinction. More accurately, Hernandez is now 1B to Erik Bedard’s 1A in the Seattle Mariners’ starting rotation. This does not make him the Drysdale to Bedard’s Koufax no matter how giddy the anticipation gets around Safeco Field, but it’s the best quinella the M’s have had in the Young Flamethrower Handicap.

Asked for his assessment of Hernandez’s role in this new hurled order, M’s manager John McLaren didn’t have to think long.

“I kind of like him going against a No. 2,” he said.

Well, yes, that does seem to tilt in Seattle’s favor, especially when the other team’s No. 2 is coming off a 6-10 season with an ERA pushing 6.

And yet Texas starter Vincente Padilla is a 14-game winner three times over in his big league career and for all his scuffling Tuesday night actually spent less time in mortal danger than did Prince Felix. Some of that, of course, had to do with the Mariners’ offense, which during this sliver of the season has been short on sock and long on the same word with a different vowel. Would you believe 15 runners left on base?

As a result, when he left the premises after seven innings and 97 pitches, Hernandez was – like Bedard on Opening Day – neither winner nor loser, but had merely “given us a chance to win,” a phrase McLaren should probably copyright.

To this point, it appears M’s starters are taking their chances with their hitters, a reversal from 2007.

But what is baseball if not a game of chance? Or multiple chances?

On Tuesday, the M’s bullpen – specifically left-hander Eric O’Flaherty – turned that chance into what looked to be a quick and painful loss. Then the Rangers’ bullpen and their ham-fisted fielders turned it back. And then Josh Hamilton turned it into theatre of the absurd by blasting a two-run homer off M’s closer J.J. Putz in the ninth inning for a 5-4 Texas victory.

None of it had much in the way of overarching significance, being Game 2 of 162 and all. But it did do its part to reinforce the feeling that while general manager Bill Bavasi was able to pave over the one crater standing between the M’s and the playoffs – shoddy starting pitching – the two potholes of offensive pop and bullpen reliability remain.

So extensive was the late-game nonsense that an alternately splendid and curious first start by Hernandez was all but forgotten.

It was not “vintage Felix,” implying as that does the crazy overpowering Felix of his first few major league starts. That Felix lasted four innings this night, victimized only by his wild throw on a sacrifice bunt. After that it was scratch, claw and survive Felix, not a bad development in itself for a soon-to-be 22-year-old whose concentration and maturity has been questioned on occasion.

“Felix really showed a lot of grit out there,” McLaren said. “He battled his way out of some tough jams. He got double-play balls, some big tough outs and he worked hard.”

Bizarrely hard. Hernandez actually had more assists (five) than strikeouts (three) and on more than half those assists, he didn’t catch the ball on the first stab, resorting to some scrambling instead. He threw out Milton Bradley at first while falling down. He nailed Hank Blalock at the plate after a hot comebacker, teetering back on his right leg to throw a strike to Kenji Johjima. He foiled a sacrifice bunt by Ian Kinsler with a throw to second that beat Ben Broussard, and turned a line shot by Michael Young into a double play.

“They say, ‘Catch the ball – catch it or let it go,’ ” Hernandez said. “That was (Jose) Lopez and Yuni (Betancourt) telling me. I said, ‘I’m trying.’ “

The theory through spring training and into the start of the 2008 season is that the off-season acquisition of Bedard will most benefit Hernandez by simply easing the pressure on him. This is not precisely true, as Hernandez himself has pointed out.

“The bullpen will be better because we can throw more innings,” he said before the opener. “Last year, we had to use (the bullpen) too much. Every day we use them, and early in games. This year, we have Bedard and Carlos (Silva) and they won’t be so tired.”

Well, that theory took a hit Tuesday – both O’Flaherty and Putz, pitching on back-to-back days, struggled.

But Hernandez, without necessarily his best stuff other than perhaps his two-seam fastball, showed a tough-mindedness that might in part be attributable to his new station.

“It takes a little pressure off him,” McLaren said of Bedard’s arrival, “but it also pushes him a little bit. It’s a two-fold thing. He might look at it differently than me, but that’s how I look at it.”

Because it’s good to be king. But sometimes it’s better when you don’t have to be.