Darell Hernaiz 2022

[Just Regular]

Are Low-A fields still super bad generally?   Jeter famously made 56 errors his Age-19 Sally season; this is Age-20 for Hernaiz.   

Once again Hernaiz is fielding the two-thirds here, one-thirds there mix.

Delmarva Age 20 Hernaiz 2022 - 1014 OPS in 86 PA

Delmarva Age 20* Gunnar 2021 - 944 OPS in 157 PA

Gunnar 6.29.2001 and Hernaiz 8.3.2001 a month apart in real life, though B-Ref's age accounting practice gives results a year different.    Gunnar was 19 his entire Shorebird time last spring.

[RZNJ]

Your post is confusing.  Hernaiz is 20 turning 21 in August.  Henderson was a full year younger, 19 going on 20.  

Hernaiz is producing numbers and power with much better overall contact than Henderson showed last year.  Only negatives so far are fairly low walks and high errors.

 

[Just Regular]

2 minutes ago, RZNJ said:

Your post is confusing.  Hernaiz is 20 turning 21 in August.  Henderson was a full year younger, 19 going on 20.  

Hernaiz is producing numbers and power with much better overall contact than Henderson showed last year.  Only negatives so far are fairly low walks and high errors.

 

It just uses the baseball convention of assigning a player's seasonal age based on their exact age on June 30 or July 1.   The convention can result in tools like B-Ref counting Gunnar Henderson's 2021 Delmarva performance at real-life 19 as part of his "Age 20 season".

[RZNJ]

10 minutes ago, Just Regular said:

It just uses the baseball convention of assigning a player's seasonal age based on their exact age on June 30 or July 1.   The convention can result in tools like B-Ref counting Gunnar Henderson's 2021 Delmarva performance at real-life 19 as part of his "Age 20 season".

It's misleading to suggest they were the same age when they played at Delmarva.  Again, they are virtually the same age and Henderson was at Delmarva one year earlier. 

[Just Regular]

I was just comparing good Delmarva months, and in the asterisked part of the first post tried to be explicit about the B-Ref accounting bit of it.   Anyhow, not trying to say Hernaiz as good a prospect as Henderson, but enjoying the heck out of Hernaiz providing the same kind of batting results, even a year behind Henderson's more unusual schedule.

B-Ref is going to count them a different age their entire careers though they will always be the 1.1 months apart.

Hernaiz also seems to be a ball-in-play monster as this morning among 89 qualified Sally bats he has the 2nd lowest strikeout rate and the 13th lowest walk rate.    Just like Gunnar last April, he seems obviously too good for the level.

[MurphDogg]

Keith Law mentioned him in a scouting post today.

The best hitting prospect on the Shorebirds is Darell Hernaiz, their fifth-round pick in 2019 out of Puerto Rico; he’s repeating Low A, but he’s still just 20 and already has almost as many homers this year (5) as he did in 410 plate appearances last year (6), with some evident wrist strength for average power. He’s got a chance to be a utility infielder. 

No new information, hopefully the defense is good enough to be at least a backup shortstop. Disheartened by what Tony had to say about his defense, needs to do more with the bat if he can't play shortstop at all.

[Hazmat]

Looks like he was promoted to Aberdeen.  Doubled in his first at bat.

[Just Regular]

Played 2B and hit at bottom of order while SS Burns had another good game up top.

Are Burns and Hernaiz like Henderson and Westburg's Mini-Me?

[Just Regular]

https://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/34031585/who-best-prospect-not-mlb-right-now-here-8-top-candidates

He got a call out from ESPN Longenhagen as a spring riser way down the fine print of this article.

I wonder how much bile Longenhagen need to choke back to talk it through to the necessary conclusion for the New York metro area that Anthony Volpe remains one of the top two prospects in all the minors.

[Just Regular]

3-for-4 with a double, a walk and a SB in I believe probably his first Aberdeen game back in the plum #2 spot in the batting order after the big Bowie batch of promotions.

The role in team switch has flipped again...year began with him in A-Rod mode overqualified at Delmarva, then he hit near last for awhile as a new Ironbird, now he's graduated to their top of lineup.

Hernaiz is a year behind Gunnar.   Before this year's supernova, Henderson was "only" 231/343/432 in 289 Aberdeen PA last summer before the Bowie sip of coffee.    Hernaiz so far 291/400/418 in 63 PA, and now we see if he can get back to Star of Team mode.    If Henderson-Westburg can do 3B/SS, I tend to think of Prieto-Norby as Tier1 for the 2B job pre-draft, but Hernaiz could play in that mix too.

[Paul in Virginia]

Law: The Phillies’ next wave of arms, plus Nationals, Orioles and White Sox prospects - The Athletic

Keith Law:

I mentioned Orioles infielder Darell Hernaiz in a scouting post in mid-May, saying he was the best-hitting prospect on Low-A Delmarva at the time. He’s since been promoted to High A, and I caught his first three-hit game at the level, with three hard-hit balls, showing plus speed underway on the bases as well. He’s a natural shortstop, but has played second and third as well this year, doing so in about equal measure for Aberdeen; at second base, he looked like someone who hadn’t played the position much before, with poor reads on groundballs consistent with inexperience (or just poor instincts). I said in May that I thought he had a chance to be a utility infielder and I still see that.

 

 

[RZNJ]

Obviously, I'm hoping more than utility IF but at least he's on Law's radar.    Hernaiz just keeps putting up numbers.    His OPS is up over .800 at Aberdeen.   He's stealing bases and just hit his first homer yesterday but also hitting extra bases.    His defense seems to have tightened up a bit at Aberdeen as he only has one error between about 22 games a 2B/SS/3B.    He is still 20 years old.    Seems like he's still under the radar to me.   In the old days, he'd be in our top ten!      

[Three Run Homer]

We're spoiled right now by Gunnar and Jordan Westburg, but in a typical year we'd be jumping out of our chairs over a 20 year old middle infielder at high-A with Hernaiz' numbers.  

[Tony-OH]

On 6/29/2022 at 4:52 AM, Just Regular said:

3-for-4 with a double, a walk and a SB in I believe probably his first Aberdeen game back in the plum #2 spot in the batting order after the big Bowie batch of promotions.

The role in team switch has flipped again...year began with him in A-Rod mode overqualified at Delmarva, then he hit near last for awhile as a new Ironbird, now he's graduated to their top of lineup.

Hernaiz is a year behind Gunnar.   Before this year's supernova, Henderson was "only" 231/343/432 in 289 Aberdeen PA last summer before the Bowie sip of coffee.    Hernaiz so far 291/400/418 in 63 PA, and now we see if he can get back to Star of Team mode.    If Henderson-Westburg can do 3B/SS, I tend to think of Prieto-Norby as Tier1 for the 2B job pre-draft, but Hernaiz could play in that mix too.

While Hernaiz plays at "20 years old" this season and Henderson plays at "21 years old" due to the cut off being July 1st for playing age for the season, Henderson (June 29th) is only a month and few days older than Hernaiz (August 3) and they were drafted the same year.

Saying that, Hernaiz is having himself a nice little year and is starting to show the promise that the Orioles saw when he was drafted in the the 5th round.

I'm still not sold on him defensively in the infield though with a below average arm for shortstop and like Law says, he doesn't look comfortable at 2nd base for some reason.

 

[Frobby]

1 hour ago, Tony-OH said:

While Hernaiz plays at "20 years old" this season and Henderson plays at "21 years old" due to the cut off being July 1st for playing age for the season, Henderson (June 29th) is only a month and few days older than Hernaiz (August 3) and they were drafted the same year.

Saying that, Hernaiz is having himself a nice little year and is starting to show the promise that the Orioles saw when he was drafted in the the 5th round.

I'm still not sold on him defensively in the infield though with a below average arm for shortstop and like Law says, he doesn't look comfortable at 2nd base for some reason.

 

Obviously there’s no comparison between Henderson and Harnaiz.  They were in the same draft class and I consider them to be the same age. 

Still, the fact that Henderson has raced all the way to AAA shouldn’t obscure the fact that Hernaiz is still young for Hi A and is holding his own there.  About 86% of his PA (189 of 221) have come against pitchers older than he is, and it’s probably higher than that after his promotion to Hi A.  So, for him to be putting up .301/.386/.452 at Aberdeen is impressive.  Compared to last year, he’s really improved in all three categories - BA, walk rate and isolated power.  He’s definitely worth keeping an eye on. 

I listened to an interview with Shorebirds announcer Sam Jelinek, who really praised Hernaiz’s attitude and leadership skills too.