Colorado Rockies prospects: No. 7, Yanquiel Fernandez

Fernandez has high offensive upside, but his speed limits him to corner outfield positions

7. Yanquiel Fernandez (659 points, 28 ballots)

The ball just sounds different coming off Fernandez’s bat. The 22-year-old lefty outfielder (who signed for $295k in 2019 out of Cuba) is lauded for his plus power projection and good feel for hitting, though his below-average speed limits him to the corner outfield positions.

The 6’2” slugger was assigned to High-A Spokane in mid-April 2023 as a 20-year-old and responded well to the challenge. In 268 PA with Spokane, Fernandez hit .319/.355/.605 with 17 homers among his 34 extra-base hits (147 wRC+). That was enough for the Rockies to promote him to Double-A Hartford in late June, where Fernandez was 3.7 years younger than league average. Fernandez homered in his first game with Hartford and he went yard in four of his first eight games. Fernandez was selected to the prestigious MLB Futures Game a couple weeks later. In the game, Fernandez hit a single and was clocked at over 103 MPH on an in-game throw to third base:

The league caught up with Fernandez after his hot Double-A start, as he hit just three long balls in the season’s last two months and struggled majorly to make contact. Still, though Fernandez’s .206/.262/.362 line (69 wRC+) in Hartford wasn’t elite, the fact that he did it as a 20-year-old in Double-A very much was. Fernandez struck out in 33% of PA in Hartford (6% walks), but he continued to show almost no platoon splits with his OPS even as he faced upper-level pitching. Fernandez appeared only in right field (or as a DH), where he had four errors and 11 outfield assists in 101 games.

In 2024 (after being added to the 40-man roster by the Rockies), Fernandez headed back to Hartford, where he was still 2.6 years younger than league average. Fernandez clearly was focused on sacrificing some power in exchange for contact, as he significantly cut his Double-A strikeout rate from 33% of PA to 19% while walking in 7.5% of PA. In 346 plate appearances with Hartford, Fernandez hit .283/.339/.440 with ten homers among his 28 extra-base-hits, which equates to a 120 wRC+ against upper-minors pitching as a 21-year-old.

The Rockies promoted Fernandez to Triple-A Albuquerque in early August — where, true to 2023’s pattern, he struggled to acclimate to more advanced pitching. In 138 PA with Albuquerque, Fernandez is scuffling to a .211/.268/.313 line with two homers and seven doubles, which in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League equated to a 44 wRC+. Again, the context matters here — in his age-21 season, Fernandez faced a pitcher older than him in over 98% of his plate appearances. He also had reverse platoon splits, an .857 OPS against lefties and a .690 OPS against righties. In 109 games defensively (all in right field), Fernandez committed seven errors but also made seven outfield assists.

As he did after the 2023 season, Fernandez finished the year in the Puerto Rican Winter League and again looked out of his element against older pitching, hitting just .177/.283/.294 in 120 PA there.

Here is a video of Fernandez’s 2024 highlights, showing off his pole to pole power, his ability to make good contact on pitches out of the zone, and an awesome throw at the 8:20 mark:

John Trupin of Baseball Prospectus ranked Fernandez 8th in their recent system ranking with a 50 OFP:

The authors of this list would’ve preferred a more resounding answer in our preparatory discussions than a shared shrug and grimace to the question of whether Fernandez can hit. Hitting is, after all, the primary characteristic that will define the young Cuban’s future, as he’s already playing right field exclusively, and has since day one. The divisive 22-year-old made a concerted effort to address the primary flaw in his breakout 2023 campaign, in which he mashed 25 taters in 521 plate appearances across three levels, primarily High-A and Double-A. That flaw was a hyper-aggressive, strikeout-laden style that spiked to just shy of a third of his plate appearances ending in punchouts with Hartford a year ago.

This year, those rates were shaved dramatically, with Fernandez sacrificing power for contact in a significant way, but struggling to synergize the best of both worlds. When the powerful lefty gets into a ball, it evaporates, but that is ultimately still mostly tied to dipping and ripping. The most visible adjustment for Fernandez year over year seems to be some added bend and flex in his swing, responding to where the ball is pitched in lieu of the more rigid, technical swing he displayed in 2023. The result is a loss in power, as Fernandez is swinging from a slightly less prepared position, but allows for far better plate coverage in terms of making contact at all. Impressively, despite cutting his strikeout rate nearly six percentage points, Fernandez walked barely one percent more. The strong-armed outfielder will live or die with his bat off his shoulder.

In two years, Fernandez has been two different types of fairly interesting lefty corner outfield bat. A happy medium of the two would push Fernandez back towards the back-end Top 101 designation he earned a year ago, but this variation of huge raw power that plays down in games sparks far less from an evaluative standpoint, and his brutal performance at Triple-A Albuquerque didn’t set an encouraging tone.

Keith Law of the Athletic ranked Fernandez 5th in the system earlier this month:

Fernandez was on the top 100 a year ago but had a mediocre performance in Double-A Hartford, the only fairly neutral park in the Rockies’ system and thus an important indicator of how much of a hitter’s performance is “real.” The Cuban-born outfielder has two plus tools, 60 raw power and at least a 70 arm, and depending on how you see it you might argue for an average hit tool because he does make a ton of contact, striking out just 19.1 percent of the time in Double A before a late-season bump to Triple-A Albuquerque, which might as well be the surface of the moon for how the ball flies there. Anyway, Fernandez’s swing decisions still leave a lot to be desired, so he doesn’t square the ball up nearly as often as he should. He hit .283/.339/.439 for Hartford, with a ridiculous number of pop-ups and weak flyballs. He should be better than this, but in the most honest test we’re likely to get of his hitting skills, he got a C or a C-. There’s no physical projection, either, so it’s all going to be skills development from here if he’s going to get back on track to be a regular.

Eric Longenhagen of Fangraphs graded Fernandez as a 45 FV prospect last month, fifth in the system with a 70 future raw power grade to go along with a 55 future game power and 60 arm grade:

Fernandez’s prodigious left-handed power and very exciting long-term frame projection made him a need-to-know prospect while he was still in rookie ball. But as he has accrued more and more pro reps and generated more data, a crack has emerged in his profile: a lack of plate discipline. Even as Fernandez has enjoyed sensational surface-level performance (148 wRC+ and 17 homers in the first half of 2023, 120 wRC+ as a 21-year-old at Double-A Hartford in 2024), he has some concerning underlying indicators in his chase rates (38% chase, 57% chase with two strikes) and a visible issue with high-and-away fastballs that could become more problematic against big league stuff. Fernandez’s swing generates some epic homers, but he’s vulnerable to both whiffs and weak contact when pitchers execute to the outer third of the zone against him. Because Fernandez is a heavy-footed corner guy, he needs to rake to be an impact player, but each of these issues is potentially a real problem for his future offensive output. Jesús Sánchez (who has been okay, more talented than productive) and Oscar Colás (who has really struggled) illustrate the effects of these issues.

After struggling down the stretch at Triple-A toward the end of 2024, Fernandez went to the Puerto Rican Winter League and continued to flounder. He is still just 22 and has rare left-handed power; he’s a good prospect but an incredibly risky one despite his precocious mid-minors success. He should get to enough power versus righties to be a good platoon guy.

MLB.com ranked Fernandez fourth in the system and 72nd in MLB as a 55 FV player during the 2024 season (though he’s not on the pre-season 2025 top 100), highlighted by plus power and throwing grades:

There are still plenty of reasons to be bullish about Fernandez, starting with his easily plus raw power from the left side of the plate. Even with his struggles in Double-A, the Futures Gamer hit 25 homers in 2023, and he has the ability to drive the ball to all fields with ease. The jump in his strikeout rate to nearly 33 percent with Hartford is a cause for concern, as his miss and chase rates — especially against breaking stuff — skyrocketed. He’s always going to be a very aggressive hitter, but there’s confidence the 21-year-old will make adjustments because he did just that when initially fed a steady diet of soft stuff during his full-season debut in 2022.

A below-average runner, Fernandez has a plus arm that fits the right field profile well, though he’ll be an average defender at best. His run-production potential fits that profile, too, if he can refine his approach again and make better swing decisions while recognizing spin. If all goes his way, he has the chance to be a true middle-of-the-order threat in Colorado.

A player like Fernandez with 40+ home run potential at Coors Field is clearly worth being patient with and he’s shown the ability to adjust to pitching through the Double-A level. The next task is to do the same at Triple-A (where he’ll start 2025), then eventually the big leagues (likely sometime mid-season this year if he can emerge from the glut of high minors outfielders the Rockies have developed).

Fernandez clearly a bat-first prospect both plus power and decent bat-to-ball ability (with some glaring plate discipline issues). He has a cannon for an arm but he’ll need to be able to show he can stick in right field as he moves up the ladder to maintain his limited defensive utility. Fernandez’s impact offensive profile stands out even in a deeper Rockies system and is why I ranked him fifth on my list as a 45+ FV player.