{"id":449733,"date":"2026-01-31T14:59:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T14:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/449733\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T14:59:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T14:59:07","slug":"diamondbacks-sign-junior-fernandez-to-minor-league-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/449733\/","title":{"rendered":"Diamondbacks Sign Junior Fernandez To Minor League Contract"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Diamondbacks released their list of Spring Training invites, and right-hander Junior Fernandez<\/a> is one of the names attending Arizona\u2019s big league camp.\u00a0 Fernandez inked his minor league deal with the D\u2019Backs back in November, as per the righty\u2019s MLB.com profile page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It has been over three years since Fernandez last pitched in a Major League game.\u00a0 He had a brief stint with the Chiba Lotte Marines in 2024 but his time in Japan was mostly spent recovering from injury.\u00a0 Beyond that cup of coffee in NPB, Fernandez pitched at the Triple-A level with the Blue Jays and Nationals in 2023, and with the Royals\u2019 and Mets\u2019 top affiliates last season.\u00a0 Over 43 combined Triple-A innings in 2025, Fernandez posted a 4.40 ERA and a very impressive 29.5% strikeout rate, but also an inflated 14% walk rate.<\/p>\n

This has essentially been the story of Fernandez\u2019s career, as his control problems have kept him from maximizing his upper-90\u2019s velocity.\u00a0 At the MLB level, Fernandez has continued to issue walks but hasn\u2019t been able to miss many bats \u2014 he has a 5.17 ERA, 18.7% strikeout rate, and 13.9% walk rate over 54 big league innings with the Cardinals and Pirates from 2019-2022.<\/p>\n

Fernandez turns 29 in March, and it remains to be seen if he still has any late-bloomer potential.\u00a0 Since his type of velocity isn\u2019t easy to find, it\u2019s easy to see why the D\u2019Backs and other teams keep Fernandez chances, and there\u2019s no risk for Arizona in bringing him to camp and seeing if a fix can finally be found for the right-hander\u2019s command issues.\u00a0 A non-roster deal for Fernandez obviously won\u2019t address Arizona\u2019s stated need for bullpen help<\/a>, but finding a hidden gem would be a huge boost to the team\u2019s relief corps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Diamondbacks released their list of Spring Training invites, and right-hander Junior Fernandez is one of the names…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,232632,591,85],"class_list":["post-449733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-junior-fernandez","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}