PHOENIX -- With two outs in the eighth inning, the Diamondbacks had the tying run on third and the go-ahead run on second, and Tigers manager A.J. Hinch had seen enough from reliever Will Vest. So he went to the mound and called in his closer.
As Kenley Jansen jogged in from the bullpen, Jose Fernandez went back to the Diamondbacks’ dugout to get a scouting report on the 38-year-old, who has pitched on the biggest stages in baseball over his 17-year career.
Veterans James McCann and Carlos Santana approached the 22-year-old Fernandez to try to prepare him for what he was about to see.
Jansen's money pitch, the one he has leaned heavily on to save 477 games – the most of any active pitcher – is a cut fastball. But it doesn't behave like a normal cutter, McCann explained to Fernandez. You have to treat it more like a four-seam fastball because it has more ride up in the zone.
"First off, Kenley's one of the greatest closers of all time, right?" McCann said. "Two, he has a very unique cutter. So really it was just Carlos and [me] trying to give him as much information as possible so that he wasn't surprised the first time he saw it, and I guess he wasn't. He did a pretty good job."
He sure did.
Fernandez took a cutter for strike one to give himself a look at the movement the pitch had, and another for a ball.
Jansen then threw a third straight cutter, this one up in the zone, just like McCann and Santana talked about. Fernandez crushed it 409 feet into the bleachers in left-center to cap the six-run inning and give Arizona a 7-5 win.
"Give credit to him, man," Jansen said. "He put the ball in play and ultimately the ball went out. That's not the result that I want, but you have to move forward."
It was a night that Fernandez will no doubt remember for the rest of his life.
Fernandez was added to the 40-man roster in the offseason and impressed the Diamondbacks with his performance in big league camp as well as their Spring Breakout game. He was called up from Triple-A Reno on Monday after Pavin Smith went on the injured list, and watched the home opener from the bench. With Arizona manager Torey Lovullo looking to give third baseman Nolan Arenado a day off Tuesday before Wednesday's day game, he inserted Fernandez into the lineup at the hot corner.
In his first big league at-bat in the second inning, Fernandez, who is the Diamondbacks' No. 27 prospect per MLB Pipeline, beat out an infield grounder to third. In his second at-bat, he hit a solo homer off Casey Mize.
If his night had ended right there, it would have been plenty memorable, but by homering again later, he became the eighth player in MLB history to hit a pair of homers in his first regular-season game. The most recent to do so was Cleveland's Chase DeLauter, who accomplished the feat on Opening Day.
"Stay calm, keep the emotions in check," Fernandez said via interpreter Alex Arpiza about his thoughts walking to the plate in the eighth. "I knew something like that could happen, and just looked for a pitch."
Fernandez's debut happened too quickly for his parents to be in attendance from Venezuela, but he did have some friends at the ballpark.
"I returned to my days as a kid," Fernandez said of his thoughts circling the bases. "It transports you back to being a kid."
Fernandez may be young, but he's no kid, and he carries himself with a maturity that impressed his veteran teammates during the spring as much as his performance did.
"I remember watching him play in Spring Training this year and I knew he was special from the jump," Diamondbacks starter Brandon Pfaadt said. "And what a special debut for him. That was fun to watch. We knew that he was a ballplayer ever since the first day in Spring Training when he showed up, and I'm looking forward to playing with him and seeing how he keeps it going.”
Fernandez was not scheduled to play Wednesday, but you can bet Lovullo will have him back in the lineup once again, as this time he'll face two-time AL Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal.