Jose Fernandez. That is it. That’s the recap. Give the guy his flowers.
From a pitching standpoint, Brandon Pfaadt had a very Brandon Pfaadt outing. He rolled through 5 innings, but was so bad in the 3rd the announcers on the broadcast thought he was tipping his pitches. Pfaadt was atleast able to give the team 6 innings, but his innings were so stark. He is either dominating with elite efficiency or he is giving up loud contact at an unimaginable rate. Really a confusing situation that has seemed
to plague Pfaadt his whole career and the team clearly hasn’t found an answer for it over the offseason. In the postgame show, Mark Grace was speculating that it may have had something to do when Pfaadt was pitching out of the stretch. Something to continue to monitor.
From an offensive standpoint, this is going to be known as the Jose Fernandez game for a long time. Fernandez was able to get his first career hit out of the way in the bottom of the second inning with a hustle single on a slow roller to the 3rd baseman. It is worth noting that Fernandez’s sprint speed was clocked at 30.2 feet per second when he was busting up the line. That is elite speed! Fernadez came up next in the bottom of the 4th and smashed a hanging slider 408 feet for his first career home run to put the Dbacks on the board. However, it was the bottom of the 8th that really cemented the Jose Fernandez lore. Fernandez came to the plate with the Dbacks down 5-4 thanks to a couple of walks, a clutch double by Corbin Carroll, and some balls in play that moved the runners. The Tigers countered by bringing in their closer Kenley Jansen, and Fernandez took the 3rd pitch 409 feet for a 3 run home run putting the Dbacks up 7-5. What a storybook ending to a rookie game.
It will be very interesting to see what Jose Fernandez’s role looks like moving forward especially considering he was playing for the veteran Nolan Arenado tonight, but you have to continue to give this guy regular playing time in my opinion. Torey Lovullo is notorious for sitting guys the day following big performances, but I would be shocked if Fernandez didn’t earn himself another start tomorrow. So often do we see these guys come up and only get to play sporadically which can make it so hard to get any momentum going. What do you guys think? Did you see enough from Fernandez tonight for an extended look?
