Tigers claim RHP Carlos Hernandez off waivers from the Phillies

The 28-year-old right-hander still throws hard but his command needs major improvement.

The Detroit Tigers made a small move on Monday afternoon to start building up their bullpen depth. Cody Stavenhagen of the Athletic was first to report that the club has claimed 28-year-old RHP Carlos Hernandez off waivers from the Philadelphia Phillies. The former Royals reliever still averages 98 mph and can touch triple digits with excellent extension on his fourseam fastball, but his secondary stuff and his command have never come together consistency at the major league level.

The Tigers had an open 40-man roster spot after designating John Brebbia for assignment over the weekend, so it makes sense to use it on a claim. Hernandez isn’t likely to develop into the backend reliever of Tigers’ fans dreams, but he does have plenty of stuff to work with and hasn’t really been with a great pitching org. The Phillies are good, but he’s only been with them for a few months. Meanwhile he spent his first five seasons as at least a part-time major leaguer with the Kansas City Royals when they were still a pretty antiquated organization in pitching development.

So yes I’m saying there’s a chance, but it would be easier to have some hope if the Tigers could work with him for a while before calling him up. Still, Hernandez has the stuff and the experience, and the Tigers certainly have room for a problem child reliever with power stuff.

Our Phillies site at SB Nation has thoughts…

As things stand, Hernandez is going to get plugged in immediately, presumably in place of Will Vest, although there’s been no update on his condition and availability. There should be an update on Vest prior to the series opener against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Comerica Park on Tuesday.

Hernandez averages 17.7 inches of induced vertical break on his fourseamer. One goal of the Tigers will be to help him get a little more hop on the heater. He throws 58 percent fastballs, and has three secondary pitches that are all pretty mediocre, so he’s got to improve the fastball movement as well as his command to really do anything of real value for the Tigers. Still, adding a veteran hard-thrower and seeing if the Tigers can find a few tweaks in his delivery to improve matters is a worthy project.

With other relievers they’ve experimented with moving them from side to side on the pitching rubber to optimize their angle to the plate. That can improve both the movement on a pitch, but sometimes also helps with their sightline to the target and improves command. The Tigers are also pretty good at improving pitchers’ lower half mechanics, particularly since Robin Lund joined the coaching staff. Hernandez has an upright delivery and gets down the mound very well, but he also shows a decided tendency to over-rotate out of his delivery, leading him to yank pitches glove side or miss up in the zone. That seems like an issue that is in the Tigers’ development wheelhouse as well.

The slider is Hernandez’s most used secondary pitch and it’s a quality breaking ball but not a really dominant one. Again his effectiveness has always been impeded by the tendency to fall behind in counts and sometimes hang a slider a little bit too often in swing counts. He has a knuckle curve and a splitter as well, but only the splitter really looks like it has a lot of potential. Hernandez still doesn’t use it that much indicating a lack of comfort in spotting it with tossing a hanger up there.

The Tigers have had plenty of success tuning up castaway relievers, but even for the best pitching development teams the hit rate on projects like this is pretty low. Hernandez gets a really high volume of fly balls, so moving him to Comerica Park, with a good outfield behind him, may help to a degree, but something is going to have to change in terms of his command as well. That’s hard to believe in six years into his career.

If they can get Hernandez attacking the strike zone and getting ahead of hitters, they may have something here. To be useful, he’s got to pitch ahead in counts more often, and give hitters fewer free hacks at his breaking stuff. For now, he’s still just a fairly raw hard thrower with a history of high walk rates and bouts of home run problems.

Expect the Tigers to beg him to forget about outcomes and just throw strikes. There will probably be some fireworks as long as the experiment lasts.

This is a reasonable claim by the Tigers, but even if things work out it’s likely going to take some time. Hernandez doesn’t have any options remaining, so we’ll see how much leash he even has here to try and turn his career back around. I wouldn’t get too attached to the idea.