Kiké Hernández delivers again as Dodgers advance: ‘He is not afraid of the moment’
LOS ANGELES – With the Los Angeles Dodgers on the brink and their season at risk of another early postseason shutdown, it was Kiké Hernández who spoke. As a young role player for a perennial contender years ago, Hernández was known as a promising goofball whose play was as flashy as his jokes. He was the type of “glue guy” who helped the Dodgers grow into a juggernaut in the late 2010s.
Hernández left and tried to make his way as a regular player before returning to a familiar place last July. Free agency passed judgment on him this winter, with Hernández signing with Los Angeles just weeks after spring training. His $4 million contract was a drop in the bucket during the Dodgers’ billion-dollar season. For months, Hernández’s production failed and his role evolved.
Yet Hernández’s October version always transforms. Twice, Hernández has won this franchise a pennant in one fell swoop. When the Dodgers brought him back, they had that version of Hernández in mind.
During the first three games in this National League Division Series, Hernández did not start once. He didn’t play at all in Game 3, as the Dodgers fell behind 2-1 to the San Diego Padres and once again put a promising season in jeopardy for an untimely end.
Kiké Hernández moved back on the scouting report and looked for a fastball from Yu Darvish, which turned out to be wise. (Harry Hoe/Getty Images)
Hernández gathered a group of MVPs, All-Stars and top prospects and let them have it.
“This is our only chance,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts recalled Hernández saying. “He basically confused everyone and saw what they are made of.”
The key, Mookie Betts said, “was just keep fighting.” The Padres had set up a stress test against an injury-plagued Dodgers club. San Diego had irritated these Dodgers and pushed them to their limits. Now it was time to consider what led them to the best record in baseball.
The message simply came down.
F- them all.
Three nights later, a shirtless Hernández enjoyed his creation in an insane asylum with Korbel and Budweiser.
October Kiké had emerged again to put the Dodgers ahead by one strike and a lead they would not relinquish. A 2-0 Dodgers victory in Game 5 only furthered the legacy of one of this franchise’s greatest protagonists. A comeback from a 2-1 deficit was complete. A best-of-seven battle awaits against the upstart New York Mets in the National League Championship Series.
Back-to-back debacles in October had haunted the Dodgers. Another threatened the very foundation for which this expensive, talented collection of players would be remembered. They have committed $1.4 billion to win fewer games than last season. A 2-1 deficit seemed destined for a familiar ending.
They survived.
“This team,” Hernández said in a television interview, “doesn’t care about….”
“He may be the team captain of that team,” said Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman.
A baseball club that embodied his mantra is now eight wins away from a championship.
Before the biggest night of his baseball life seven years ago, Hernández visualized. The failures of last October had gnawed at him. Old at bats stuck in his mind. With the 2017 Dodgers on the cusp of a World Series berth, Hernández focused on positive thoughts. What he was going to see. What he was going to say when he passed by.
He hit three home runs that night.
“I haven’t looked back since,” Hernández said. The routine stuck. He visualized Wednesday before Game 4, when he earned his first start of the series and recorded a pair of hits. Thursday night, ahead of a fifth winner-takes-all match, he visualized again.
“I kept telling myself, they brought you here for a reason,” Hernández said. “They brought you here to play in October. I wanted to come back and make a run with this team because I really want to have a parade.”
He repeated the bravado when he spoke to Friedman on the pitch before the match, telling the club’s architect: “I’m going to win this match for you.”
And when the club’s coaches began a meeting to break down the club’s plan of attack against Yu Darvish, Hernández spoke again. Darvish’s series of pitches could be fascinating. “Sly,” Shohei Ohtani said this week. “He has 20 different pitches, 10 different pitching styles,” Max Muncy said. The Dodgers had tried to sit and take Darvish’s numerous off-speed offers into account, waiting for an error and knowing that an opportunity with traffic on the bases might arise.
The scenario played out in the second inning of Game 2 when the Dodgers loaded the bases with no one out. They scored just one run in the inning as Darvish completed seven frames in a blowout victory.
To counter in Game 5, Hernández suggested he look for a fastball. There were too many off-speed pitches to take into account.
“They were pretty strong in their feelings about disagreeing with me,” Hernández said.
He didn’t have to wait long for what he was looking for. Darvish threw Hernández a first-pitch fastball over the plate in his first at-bat.
Hernández crushed it. A sold-out Dodger Stadium roared to life. Hernández’s 14th career postseason home run was perhaps his most predictable.
“He’s not scared right now,” hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc said. ‘He’s here. He prepares. He has gained confidence through his preparation and he trusts it.”
“Kiké hitting a home run and making big plays is probably the least surprising thing of the night,” Gavin Lux said.
“It’s special,” Anthony Banda said. “It was built for October.”
“Some guys are built for this moment,” Muncy said. “I don’t know what it is, but he has it.”
The second-half surge that saved Hernández’s season started with a recommendation. Martín Maldonado, the longtime Major League catcher and Hernández’s teammate on team Puerto Rico in the past World Baseball Classics, said during a summer interview that he and several teammates needed glasses because of vision problems that went undetected in a typical annual physical exam during the spring training. He urged Hernández to be checked out as well.
It turned out to be worth it: Hernández was diagnosed with astigmatism in his right eye and was given glasses that he has worn ever since.
“I didn’t really realize that I was seeing the shape of the field instead of the rotation of the field,” Hernández said last month. “I don’t actually know how long it’s been like that. … It was such a small thing that you don’t really notice in your daily life. It was hard to say.”
Kiké Hernández: “We didn’t come here to win the NL West. We came here to win the World Series.”
— Fabian Ardaya (@FabianArdaya) October 11, 2024
They’ve given him a new frame of mind and a fresh perspective on what would be another frustrating season. Before the All-Star break and his decision to wear glasses full-time on the field, Hernández was hitting just .191, struggling especially with breaking balls. He then hit .274 and recaptured his best form with an .821 OPS in September when he reinserted himself into the Dodgers’ plans.
They didn’t realize how much that would matter.
“That’s why you can get through the regular season with Kiké,” Roberts said. And if you get through that, you know you’re getting the best player.”
A defiant chorus echoed amid the bubble and cigar smoke. As his teammates chanted his name and Hernández gushed, a playlist played Kendrick Lamar’s diss track once and then twice.
“They don’t like us.”
The failures of last October have stuck with these Dodgers, especially when they face a familiar, talented division foe in the star-studded Padres. Maybe it’s the wounds that bound them together.
Freddie Freeman took 14 at-bats during this series, despite a badly sprained ankle that would have otherwise landed him on the injured list. Miguel Rojas did not play the final two games of this series as he aggravated a torn adductor that he had been playing with for months. Their pitching has been decimated by injuries. A divisional race hardened them.
“We have a lot of ‘FU’ in us,” Hernández said. “We have a lot of people, a bunch of grown men, that they want to win at all costs, no matter how it comes, no matter what it looks like.”
Facing elimination paled in comparison. Jokes filtered through the visiting clubhouse at Petco Park before Wednesday’s Game 4. The disputed conversations leading up to a winner-take-all Game 5 included rounds of mini-golf.
“Everyone just said don’t worry about it,” Muncy said. ‘We’re going to win tonight. … We were going to win the game, there was no doubt about it.”
Actually doing that, Muncy admitted, brought relief. Teoscar Hernández added his own homerun to Kiké’s in the seventh. Behind Yoshinobu Yamamoto and a parade of Dodgers relievers, they eliminated the Padres for the second consecutive game, ending the series with 24 consecutive scoreless innings.
While enjoying the celebration, Muncy took Hernández’s message one step further.
“We know who we are,” Muncy said. “We are the best team in baseball and we are here to prove it.”
(Photo by Kiké Hernández: Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)
