4 years agoMiami Marlins starter Elieser Hernandez was in the midst of a breakout season before going down with a lateral strain in September. Hernandez posted a sparkling 3.16 ERA and a 6.8 K/BB rate in six starts before his season ended prematurely. Hernandez's weapon of choice was his knee-buckling slider, a pitch that opposing batters mustered a meager .114 BA against last season. Hernandez also generated a monster 21% swinging strike rate with the pitch. While Hernandez only tossed 25.1 innings in 2020, his 17.7% swinging strike rate with his slider in 2019 shows that this is a bona fide strikeout pitch. Outside of his killer slider, Hernandez is a rather flawed pitcher. He was practically a two-pitch pitcher in 2020, throwing either a four-seam fastball or slider 94% of the time. While challenged by his slider, batters had no problem with Hernandez's 91.4 MPH heater. Opponents hit .274 against Hernandez's fastball with a .210 ISO and an 81.3% contact rate. Perhaps most embarrassing for Hernandez is that batters had a 92.3 MPH average exit velocity against his fastball, meaning that on average hitters sent Hernandez's fastball back harder than he threw it. Hernandez's poor fastball has given him a case of chronic Gopheritis, as Hernandez allowed 1.75 HR/9 last season, and has a 1.87 HR/9 rate for his career. Hernandez has surrendered 36 home runs in his career, and 23 of them have come off his fastball. Hernandez might be able to get away with having bad fastball if he had another solid pitch, but his changeup is nothing more than a show-me pitch and he ditched a subpar sinker heading into 2020. Hernandez could be a good streaming option in 2021, especially at home where he owns a 3.53 ERA all time, but he's volatile and shouldn't be trusted to delivery quality innings in high volume.--Elliott Baas - RotoBaller