Hernandez gets his long-awaited homecoming with Astros

This story was excerpted from Brian McTaggart’s Astros Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The memories are fuzzy, but the names aren’t. As a young child, Astros pitcher Nick Hernandez remembers watching Billy Wagner, Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell play in person in the Astrodome. When he was 10 years old, he lived and died with the 2005 Astros, who won the National League pennant and made the team’s first World Series appearance.

“That team was stacked,” he said. “The ‘Killer B’s.’ I grew up watching Brad Lidge. I really liked Brad Lidge’s slider growing up and how he’d throw it and how he’d get on top of it.”

Hernandez, with the help of a nasty slider, eventually became a standout player himself and was drafted by the Astros in 2016 out of the University of Houston, beginning a career he hoped would culminate with him stepping on the mound at Minute Maid Park in an Astros uniform. The dream was within reach, but the business of baseball had other ideas.

Hernandez became a Minor League free agent after the 2022 season, which he spent mostly at Triple-A Sugar Land, and eventually signed with the Padres. He made his Major League debut last September for San Diego, pitching in two games. He was pitching with Triple-A El Paso on June 4, when he got a phone call that the dream was back on.

Hernandez had been dealt back to his hometown Astros for cash considerations and was being added to the big league roster.

With his friends and family in the stands, Hernandez threw a 1-2-3 ninth inning in relief at Minute Maid Park on June 5 against the Cardinals, a full-circle moment.

“It was one of the best-case scenarios, just being home,” he said. “My first big league game ever that I watched was at the Astrodome, so pitching at Minute Maid was a dream. I just grew up there, you know?”

Before the Astros moved to the American League and changed their uniforms after the 2012 season, Hernandez would buy some cheap tickets and sit behind the dugout. From there, he visualized pitching at Minute Maid Park and the walk from the bullpen to the mound.

“Just the feeling of what it would be like,” he said. “I didn’t think it would happen in this scenario -- going over to the Padres and coming back and getting traded. The trade really surprised me. I knew the Astros were interested, especially in the offseason, but I wasn’t aware that they were trying to get me like that.”

Hernandez’s first time on the Minute Maid Park mound came when he was in college at Houston, during the annual College Classic in 2016. Still, that wasn’t the same as pitching for the Astros in a big league game.

“I was familiar with that setting,” he said. “But in an Astros uniform, that’s huge. It was just exciting. It’s just crazy the scenario in which it worked out, going over to the Padres and back here. I wouldn’t have drawn it up like that.”

Hernandez, 29 years old, grew up in Missouri City, Texas, which is about 15 miles southwest of Minute Maid Park, and still lives there. He even attended Astros playoff games the last few years and wondered if the dream was dead.

“I’d always show up to Minute Maid and say, ‘Dang, dude, I never made it here,’” he said. “But here we are.”