Jorge (JJ) Fernandez - 2015

[ashbury]

Jorge Jhamil Fernandez

 

Born: March 30, 1994 (age 21 this season)

Birthplace: Yabucoa, Puerto Rico

Drafted 2012 in the 7th round (#220 overall) - $150K bonus

School: Colegio Hector Urdaneta

Height: 6' 3"

Weight: 188

Position: Catcher

Bats: Both

Throws: Right

Twitter handle: J.J. Dez, @jj_fernandez34

 

 

The sturdy and athletic switch hitter took a major stride forward in 2014 with a fine season at rookie-level Elizabethton. He batted .321 and flashed some power for a .440 slugging average. He didn't walk a real lot, leading to an OBP of .361, only a little higher than his BA. But the total OPS of .802 is a highly satisfactory number. His results were better against RHP than against lefties, but we are still in "small sample size" territory when splitting numbers in a short-season league.

 

On defense Fernandez gets good marks from scouts. His ability to throw out base stealers resulted in a 38% caught rate last year (5 out of 13).

 

Milb.com lists his school as Colegio Hector Urdaneta, while b-r.com lists it as International Baseball Academy (Ceiba, PR). I am assuming schools operate a little differently there than here, and his relevant baseball experience came entirely at the academy. Maybe the latter is more important as a guide to his baseball "pedigree", but I'll still list the former as his school, above.

 

He likes to be called JJ, apparently. So I'll go with that.

 

JJ moves up to Cedar Rapids for 2015. At age 21 he is one of the younger players there. It looks like he'll serve as the backup catcher to Brian Navarreto, but at single-A you usually can count on two catchers approximately splitting the playing time. He has some experience at 1B and RF in lower leagues, but Cedar Rapids is pretty well stacked at both those positions, so DH may be the only opportunity manager Jake Mauer will have to get him a little more time at the plate. Fortunately it looks like his bat will fit the DH role well.

 

It's foolish to extrapolate too much from one year of Appalachian League numbers, but I still have JJ marked as one of my 30 Twins prospects to watch in 2015. Major stats sites for him can be found at b-r.com, fangraphs, and milb.com.

[ashbury]

Fernandez has gotten off to a nice start in his first four games played for Cedar Rapids. At Kane County he got 3 hits with 1 double on April 10, and followed up the next night with 2 doubles. He has cooled off a little in his next two games, at home against Beloit, but his one single on April 14 led his manager to state, “Fernandez had a heck of an at-bat. It was two big runs there to give us a cushion. He was right on it.”

 

He has a four-game total at this writing of a .375 batting average and a .974 OPS. Two games he played behind the plate (no stolen base attempts), and two he DHed, out of 6 games played, so they're doing their best to work him into a talented lineup that currently has 6 wins without a loss.

[ashbury]

JJ has played in three games since the last write-up, and unfortunately has cooled off further at bat. He's only 1-for-8 plus a walk in this span, including a strikeout. In the April 15 game against Peoria, five stolen bases were attempted and none were caught; don't know how much share of the blame the two pitchers bear. He was also charged with his first error of the season on one of the throws, which allowed the runner going into third to score.

 

Even worse news, he was substituted after only one plate appearance in the April 19 game at Burlington. So far, my sleuthing skills are deficient because I have not located any information on why this occurred. I hope it's only something minor.

[ashbury]

JJ's injury is confirmed in this article:

 

http://www.milb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20150420&content_id=119382472&fext=.jsp&vkey=pr_t492&sid=t492

 

Concussion, 7-day DL after getting nicked by a batter's follow-through. Ugh, there's a lot of that going around - he and Pinto have something to commiserate about.

[nytwinsfan]

Yikes. This is a huge bummer, as Fernandez looked great early this season. Hopefully it is a short-term thing like Pinto's was.

[ashbury]

The Kernels have an active Facebook page and from it I learned that JJ, along with a few of his teammates, took an excursion last week to a local high school, to talk about life and other important matters, with the purpose of giving the students some practice with their Spanish.

 

 

That's him on the right, with teammate Felix Jorge. It was a couple of days before his concussion, in case anyone wonders.

 

https://www.facebook.com/CedarRapidsKernels/posts/10153144701715709

[Steven Buhr]

Kernels announced this morning that Fernandez has been reactivated off the DL

[ashbury]

JJ was in tonight's lineup at DH. He went 0-3 in the no-hit loss. Tough to guess if there's still rust/cobwebs to shake off, or if he was just part of a team facing pitchers who were totally on, or if it was simply an 0-3... such things do happen.

[Steven Buhr]

The bad news: the pitchers who no-hit the Kernels weren't all that great.

 

The good news: the two hardest hit balls all night, from the Kernels perspective, were off Fernandez's bat. He lined out to CF and launched a long, yet extremely foul, drive that may still may be orbiting somewhere.

[ashbury]

I dunno, if the Mariners wanted to offer us Daniel Missaki for, oh, say, Tim Stauffer, I'd do it. He is young and his brief minor league career doesn't, to my eye, rule out him having a fine career. Maybe he was just in the zone last night, and his career will be determined by how frequently that proves to be the case going forward. Just one of the possibilities explaining last night. In any event I appreciate the eyewitness report and I'm glad to know JJ made the Lumberkings work for their nono.

[ashbury]

Today JJ collected his first hit, and played catcher for the first time, since his stint on the DL.

[ashbury]

An update. Since returning from the DL May 1, it has not been easy for JJ. He is batting .182 in that span, counting today's game in Beloit (in which he played RF). He augments that average with 3 doubles, a triple, and 3 walks, to give him a somewhat presentable OPS just above .600. And in one game against the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers on May 5 he went 3-for-5 with 2 doubles. But 13 strikeouts is probably the best indication of how it's been going so far this month.

 

For the season his BA is now .228, and his OPS has slipped to .670.

 

Looks like the Mother Ship pays attention when things are going well:

 

(From the Kernels twitter feed)

[ashbury]

The past week, in whch JJ played in 4 games, continued his cooled-off trend at the plate. He batted .176 in 17 AB, plus one walk. One of his hits was a solo homer. But he struck out 8 times.

 

He DHed 3 times and played RF once. I do not know why he isn't seeing time behind the plate; with Navarreto out, the catching is being done by Brett Doe and Rainis Silva, neither of whom I believe to be so highly regarded as prospects as to relegate another catcher to only spot duty. I would guess lingering effects from the concussion, but it's only a guess.

[ashbury]

JJ has not appeared in a game since May 15. Unless someone pipes up to say I overlooked some news, I'll have to question the usual suspects for information.

[ashbury]

According to sources, it's a nagging wrist injury. Not so serious as to have DL'ed him, but it's been lingering.

[ashbury]

JJ returned to action on May 25 against Beloit, and with a bang: he homered in his first at bat. The three-run blast snapped a 1-1 tie. He later earned another RBI on a single, en route to a 12-3 laugher.

[ashbury]

Since last report, JJ has had so-so success at the plate, with a .238 BA and enough walks and extra-base hits to result in a tolerable .667 OPS.

 

Because the month of May is now in the books, it's a good time to look at the seasonal stats. He's got a .230 BA, .300 on-base percentage, .390 slugging average, and thus an OPS of .690. Considering his physical ailments, this is not a bad base upon which to build the rest of his seasonal stats.

 

The main concern is that since his concussion he has essentially not played behind the plate, mostly DH'ing and seeing sparing use in RF and 1B. I hope this is just a temporary precaution and he'll soon be allowed to continue to develop as a receiver.

[ashbury]

In June so far, JJ has slumped badly at the plate. His batting average is only .159 and he hasn't done enough else to raise his OPS better than .452. For the season, he's at .208 and .617 respectively. He's also not getting time at catcher, playing 1B/DH. All in all, this is starting to look like a lost season.

[ashbury]

At the plate, JJ has remained on approximately the same pace since last report. In 50 games, his season BA stands at .215 and his other contributions lead to an OPS of .611.

 

If I cherry-pick his last four to seven games, there is some glimmer of hope, but I'll just leave it at that for the time being and see where it may lead. The strikeouts remain high, about one per game on average.

 

He's continued to play most at first base (or DH). It may be that he's being held out of catching as a precaution, or maybe that part of his career is seen by his manager as being in his past. That's a severe blow to his overall chances, unless he starts to hit a whole lot better. I wish now that I had provided a link to whatever it was that led me to think he once had a good defensive reputation behind the plate - because maybe I was simply in error.

[ashbury]

Per Seth Stohs' transactions page at TD, JJ has been placed on the disabled list.

 

Update: Jeremy Nygaard quotes beat writer Jeff Johnson as saying Fernandez will miss the rest of the season after breaking his hand punching a wall.

 

Oops. Lost season for JJ already, this just puts the period at the end of the sentence.

[ashbury]

Season stats (which end at the game of July 12): in 56 games and 231 plate appearances, JJ had a BA of .215, 14 doubles and 2 triples and 3 homers, 13 walks, for a "bottom line" OPS of .610. A lost season, and if he's lucky he'll be invited back to Cedar Rapids in 2016 for another try.