A Look at Julian Fernandez

When he made his MLB debut September 5th, 2021, Rockies’ RHP Julian (say the ‘J’ with an ‘H’) Fernandez set a Statcast era record for the club when he threw a 102.4 mph pitch (Fernandez, in fact, owns the 5 fastest Rockies’ pitches of all time). After having not taken the mound for almost 4 years, Fernandez was a revelation in the Colorado system, starting the season at AA and finishing it with 6 MLB relief appearances, and was ranked the organization’s 20th top prospect by Baseball America after the season. He elected to become a minor league free agent at the end of the past season, and is reportedly set to sign a AAA deal with Toronto.

2022 was a different story for the 2012 International free agent. He fashioned a 1.51 WHIP, and was not able to repeat his 2021 success, finishing the season with a 6.63 ERA in 58 appearances, mostly in a 7th or 8th inning set up role for Colorado’s Albuquerque PCL affiliate. Evidence of his fastball, which hit 105 prior to Fernandez undergoing Tommy John in 2017, was there with 65 Ks over 57 innings, but 32 walks demonstrated an incomplete mastery of the strike zone, and when he did manage to find the zone, his 15 HRs allowed showed he wasn’t sneaking it by a lot of hitters. His command struggles tended to result in high pitch counts (he threw a career-high 4.3/AB last year). Albuquerque is something of a launching pad, but Fernandez gave up more long balls (9) on the road than he did at home.

At 6’7”, there are a lot of moving parts to Fernandez’ delivery. Pitching exclusively from the stretch, he has a high leg kick, and from the outings I watched, has trouble repeating his motion. He does get late life on his fastball, but his over-the-top release point and the relatively movement-free aspect of his pitches can give hitters plenty of time to see the ball and square him up. He relies tremendously on his fastball (which was in the mid to upper 90s in September), which has hampered the development of his secondary pitches, according to scouting reports. The only secondary he threw in 2021 was a change, a pitch that didn’t offer enough (99 vs 89 ave velos) separation from his fastball. At 2400 rpm, the fastball did show some promise as a relatively (87th percentile) high spin-rate pitch. Fernandez appeared in 20 games for Hartford of the Eastern League in 2021, so the Toronto organization has some familiarity with him.

Fernandez has travelled a long and winding road. Originally signed by Colorado in 2012, the Dominican was left exposed to the Rule 5 draft in 2017, and was signed by the Giants with the 2nd overall pitch. He went on the IL at the end of spring training, and was claimed on waivers by the Marlins at the end of the 2018 season. He didn’t pitch for the Marlins, either, and was re-acquired by Colorado following 2019. The pandemic robbed him of a 2020 season. If there’s one thing you can say about Fernandez, he must have quite a bit of grit to have survived that lengthy period of inactivity. But he really seems to have been a different pitcher in 2022 than he was the previous season.

While there was some excitement on Blue Jays Twitter about Fernandez being signed to a minor league deal by Toronto yesterday, some of that has to be attributable to the fact that we’re in the doldrums of the baseball season at the moment. Buffalo went by a rotation-by-committee last year - 28 of the 46 pitchers who donned the Bisons’ uniform started at least 1 game for the club. It would appear that while you will always roll the dice with a guy who can throw 100, Fernandez’ signing is for spring training and AAA depth as much as anything.

Yes, we’ve all seen Fernandez K Dansby Swanson on that 102+ mph pitch, and perhaps the Blue Jays pitching development staff will work on his mechanics, or help him better develop his secondary pitches at the minor league complex lab, but given his 2022 struggles, it’s best to view Fernandez as a project at best.