There’s a type of pitcher the San Diego Padres seem to collect every year — the arm with one genuinely nasty stuff, a track record of missing bats in the minors, and just enough big-league scar tissue to make the next opportunity feel like the one that finally sticks. Nick Hernandez fits that profile pretty neatly, and now he’ll try to turn that “almost” into something real after signing a minor league deal with The Athletics for the 2026 season.
Padres fans might remember Hernandez as one of those blink-and-you-missed-it bullpen cameos, but the quick cameo doesn’t mean the stuff wasn’t intriguing.