RIP José Fernández (1992–2016)

Marlins star pitcher José Fernández is gone way too soon: he died in a boating accident this morning.

I found this out through a Facebook post by Baseball-reference.com. As you can see from Fernández's stats, he was somebody with Hall-of-Fame potential. What I learned from the post (aside from the tragedy), was that among pitchers with at least 400 innings pitched, Fernández has the best FIP (fielding-independent pitching, which is a quantity like earned run average that is adjusted to incorporate the fielders behind pitchers) in the live-ball era at 2.43. Clayton Kershaw is next at 2.54, and he is followed by Sandy Koufax at 2.69. From another Facebook by Baseball-reference.com, I see that Fernández has the highest strikeout-per-inning rate of any Major League pitcher ever whose has pitched at least 400 innings (although strikeout rates are much higher than they were before, so take this with grains of salt). I was looking forward to following his career for many years.

Update: Jayson Stark has a nice article about "what might have been". Also take a look at Jerry Crasnick's article.

Update: Here is a post from FiveThirtyEight.com that discusses Fernández's pitching dominance and just how good he's been.