The baseball-performance case for Félix Hernández is pretty simple. If you’re looking for the best pitcher from 2005-2015, you’re talking about Félix, Justin Verlander, Clayton Kershaw, and maybe Zack Grienke or CC Sabathia. Over the course of a decade–a decade–he was one of the five best pitchers on the planet. The caliber of what Félix did during that time isn’t being questioned in the debate over his candidacy, so I won’t present the case here. The debate is instead about whether it’s enough considering that he didn’t do much outside that decade. It is.
Let me put it this way: Pitching is basically half the game, and I have little doubt that if someone was one of the five best position players over a decade, the voters would see their way to electing him.