Lakeland, Fla. — By the end of this week, there will be some 165 players crammed into the minor league clubhouse at Tiger Town, filling up the five fields behind Joker Marchant Stadium.
The 62-player minicamp will bloat into the Tigers’ full minor league spring training. Already on Monday the invasion of gray-shirted young hopefuls had begun, with a large group of Latin-born players going through orientation.
Hard to imagine, but it was just last winter that Chavez Fernander was one of those gray shirts reporting to minor league camp, uncertain whether he’d be starting with the rookie-ball guys or the A-ball guys.
The thing is, Fernander, a 24-year-old, Bahama-born right-handed pitcher drafted in the 35th round in 2018, came to camp with a new wrinkle, one that would greatly accelerate his trajectory.
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He spent part of the pandemic-canceled 2020 season at Driveline Baseball in Kent, Wash., developing a split-fingered pitch. With that in his arsenal, he skipped Low-A, started last season at High-A West Michigan, and ended up not only making 33 appearances at Double-A Erie. but Fernander also got an invitation to pitch in the Arizona Fall League.
“That was a surprise to me,” Fernander said Monday. “The Double-A manager (Arnie Beyeler) called me into is office out of nowhere and I’m like, ‘Am I in trouble?’ But he called me in and said, ‘Congratulations.’ I said, for what? And he said, ‘You’re going to the fall league.’
“I really didn’t know exactly what the fall league was. But I starting looking it up and I was like, ‘Oh.’”
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Hard to fault him for not immediately grasping the significance of an invitation to the Arizona Fall League. He’s never been on the elite travel ball, showcase games circuit, never been on anyone’s prospect list.
Fernander grew up in Freeport, Bahamas and left his family when he was 15 to attend Faith Baptist Christian Academy, a boarding school located between Lakeland and Tampa.
“That’s when my baseball journey began,” he said.
The Tigers drafted him out of Polk State College in Winter Haven, Fla. They liked his size (6-3, 210 pounds) and the relative freshness of his arm. He featured a four-seam fastball that clocked in the low-to-mid 90s and a sweeping slider.
Still, he only pitched 75 pro innings before the COVID-19 shutdown, Gulf Coast League rookie ball and short-season Connecticut, allowing just 16 earned runs with a 0.98 WHIP.
And now he’s got the split, which has generated a lot of buzz at this minicamp. He showcased it in a scoreless inning in the scrimmage on Saturday, throwing it off a four-seamer that can now hit 96 mph and sits between 93-95.
“I really have a good feel on it,” he said. “It’s become a nice lethal weapon for me…It has late drop. It peels off against lefties and fades in and down to righties.”
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The issue, as always for split-fingered pitchers, is command. He averaged 4 walks per nine innings in the regular season, but the more advanced hitters in Arizona were more patient. Fernander struck out seven but walked six in his eight innings of work last fall.
Most likely, Fernander will begin the season at Erie, presumably working out of the bullpen, but he’s not putting any limitations on where he might end up.
“The goal is always to make it to the majors,” he said. “I’m trying to pitch every step of the way, wherever they put me. Just compete and do my best to reach the end goal, reach the majors and help Detroit win.”
Around the horn
Fernander isn’t the only right-handed pitcher who came to camp with a splitter. Gerson Moreno showcased his split in the scrimmage on Friday, though it seems more of a work-in-progress than Fernander’s. Moreno’s fastball, three years removed from Tommy John surgery, stayed firm at 95 mph.
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…In the minor league Rule 5 draft back in December, the Tigers used the seventh overall pick to take a 23-year-old converted outfielder from the Dominican Republic named Elvis Alvarado, who was toiling in the Mariners’ system at Low-A Modesto. It didn’t take long to see what the Tigers’ liked about him. In the scrimmage on Friday, the 6-4, 183-pounder was slinging bullets, hitting 97 and 98 mph consistently with his fastball. He’s got a long way to go, though. He struck out 33 in 45 innings in A-ball last year, but he also walked 32 and gave up 33 earned runs.
…The Tigers are excited about 21-year-old right-hander Keider Montero, who made 15 starts at High-A West Michigan last season. The spin on his breaking ball is over 3,000 rpm and, in the scrimmage on Friday, his fastball hit 95.
chris.mccosky@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @cmccosky