Jonathan Hernández accepted an outright assignment to Triple-A Oklahoma City on July 5, two days after the Dodgers sent him there on waivers. The move ends his roughly six-week stay on the Dodgers roster and leaves him at a crossroads: stay in the organization or test free agency.
That is why his name is being searched now, and why Paul Blackburn stays in the conversation around the Dodgers' pitching staff. Hernández, 29, appeared in 12 games and worked 17 2/3 innings for Los Angeles before the club removed him from the roster on July 3. Because he is out of options and qualifies for free agency on two separate grounds, the assignment did not lock him in; it simply gave him a choice.
The numbers explain why the Dodgers moved on. Hernández allowed 8.15 earned runs per nine innings in his brief stint, with a 18.1% strikeout rate, a 14.5% walk rate and a 39.3% ground ball rate. His 6.40 FIP and 5.13 SIERA pointed in the same direction: the results were not an outlier, and the underlying work was not rescuing them. He also averaged around 97 miles per hour with both his four-seamer and sinker, which makes the slide harder to dismiss as a simple loss of stuff.
That is what makes the rest of his resume matter. Hernández missed 2021 while rehabbing Tommy John surgery, then put together much stronger work in 2020 and 2022, when he and the Rangers combined for 61 1/3 innings and a 2.93 ERA. In those two seasons together, he posted a 22.7% strikeout rate, a 9.8% walk rate and a 54.2% ground ball rate. After that came back-to-back 5.40 ERA seasons in 2023 and 2024, a minor league deal with the Rays for 2025 and most of that year spent on the injured list.
So the question is not whether Hernández has been effective before. It is whether July 5 marks the start of a reset with Triple-A Oklahoma City or the end of his Dodgers stay altogether. He has the right to elect free agency, but it was still not clear whether he would use it after reporting.
