For over a decade, Felix Hernandez has been the shining gem of the Seattle Mariners franchise. As “The King”  began his 12th season on the mound something has been off—his command.

Through just three starts, Hernandez has walked 13 batters, which is the second most walks surrendered in a three-game span. His record is 14 through three starts spanning from August 1 through 12 of 2009.

The Mariners’ ace is just four-walks shy of tying his career-high of 17 in a month with two-scheduled starts remaining in April.

Although his control has been suspect early this season, he has been able to limit the damage and is boasting in ERA of 1.00 in those starts.

The numbers are concerning because as Felix has gotten older, he has slowly lost his velocity and has relied more on command and pitch movement to get batters out. Hernandez didn’t walk his 13th batter until his ninth start of the season last year, which came on May 22.

Even more discouraging is that Hernandez struggled late last year with his command and had some of the worst outings of his career.

He walked 13 batters in September, the most walks he gave up in a month with five or less starts all season, and also gave up the most walks he has in a season since 2011.

That followed a five-start stretch where Hernandez gave up 27 runs in 28.2 innings between July 29 and Aug. 28, which ruined his chances for the first 20-win season of his career.

But maybe Hernandez isn’t falling off. Maybe he’s just been “effectively wild” as Hall of Famer Randy Johnson would say.

As Hernandez’s walk numbers increased in September, so did his strikeouts per inning totals. That coupled with his lowest ERA since May actually made September his best month of the latter-half of the 2015 season.

Three games is far too small of a sample size to say Hernandez has lost his control, and he has only surrendered nine hits in 20 innings pitched this year.

There have been multiple years now where baseball experts and fans have questioned Hernandez’s fastball-velocity early in the season, only to see him continue to dominate batters and watch his fastball gradually rise back to where it should be throughout the season.

Not many big leaguers work harder than Hernandez, and the results may be from a minor mechanical issue the former Cy Young Award winner could easily fix.

But one thing is for sure: this organization needs to keep a close eye on him. Hernandez turned 30 on April 8 and has logged more major league innings than most starters do by the time they are 35.

Not many pitchers make their major league debut at 19 and their first opening day start before turning 21.

Including this season, Hernandez has four years and over $100 million left on the seven-year contract he signed in 2013. The contract  holds a clause that would allow the team to exercise a $1 million club-option for the 2020 season if he misses 120-130 days with a right elbow injury.

This gives the organization about 101 million reasons to hope these control issues aren’t a sign of bigger things to come.But knowing the work ethic of Hernandez, this could easily be a forgotten conversation in a couple weeks.