Teoscar Hernández does not lack for emotion. He plays with joy, with exuberance, with delight.
The Dodgers know he can hit. We all do. If the emotion dissipates, so can the performance.
Hernández could have been the goat Saturday night, in what would have been the Dodgers’ first loss in this postseason. Instead, he hit the game-winning home run, nearly levitated around first base, and became an October hero yet again.
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In the Dodgers’ 16 postseason games last year, he hit three home runs and drove in 12 runs. In the Dodgers’ three postseason games so far this year, he has hit three home runs and driven in nine.
You might fret about his uneven defense. You might second guess a defensive play that put the Dodgers deeper into an early hole.
Read more: Dodgers show their resiliency again in NLDS Game 1 comeback win over Phillies
All’s well that ends well, as evidenced by his three-run home run that powered the Dodgers to a 5-3 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies in the National League division series opener.
“For me, anything that happened before a big moment like that, it’s in the past,” Hernández said.
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“I try to put it in the trash and just focus on the things that I need to do.”
In the second inning of what was then a scoreless tie, the Phillies put runners on first and second with none out. Catcher J.T. Realmuto pummeled a Shohei Ohtani fastball into right-center field, where Hernández approached the ball but did not appear to accelerate as the ball skipped past him.
If Hernández had cut the ball off, Realmuto would have had a single, and the Phillies would have scored two runs in the inning. Instead, Realmuto had a triple — matching his season total — and he later scored a third run in the inning.
“I would argue that he wasn’t not trying,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of Hernández. “But, yeah, that’s a ball that you don’t want Realmuto to have a triple.”
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On Twitter, former Dodgers pitcher Brett Anderson posted — and then deleted — this: “If I’m Shohei I’m going to need Teoscar Hernández to try a little harder.”
Hernández said he did not get a good angle toward the hard-hit ball. Roberts did credit Hernández with a defensive adjustment on a later ball, shading the line to keep Bryce Harper to a single rather than an extra-base hit that could have driven home a run for the Phillies.
Teoscar Hernández follows through on his three-run home run in the seventh inning of Game 1 against the Philadelphia Phillies. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The Dodgers minimized Hernández’s defensive exposure last year by playing him most often in left field, with Mookie Betts in right field. This year, with Betts at shortstop and the Dodgers declining to add a right fielder at the trade deadline, Hernández has played right field all season.
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The only major leaguer to play more innings in right field this season and finish lower in defensive runs saved: the Phillies’ Nick Castellanos, who got into Saturday’s game only after Harrison Bader suffered a groin injury.
Make no mistake, though: Hernández is here to hit. The Dodgers awarded Hernández a three-year, $66-million contract last winter, well aware that designated hitter would not be an option because of that Ohtani guy.
As Dodgers catcher Will Smith explained Saturday to a reporter wondering whether he might spend more time as a DH in the future: “We’ve got a pretty good DH. I think we’re pretty set on that.”
Hernández was neither hitting nor fielding well for much of the second half, causing Roberts to say at the start of September that he had urged his right fielder to “get in the fight.” In the last week of August, he even benched Hernández for one day.
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Said Roberts then: “I think we’ve lost a little bit of that edge over the last couple months. For me, I want to see that edge, that fight, that fire, and I’ll bet on any result.”
In September, Hernández put up a .769 OPS, his best for any month since the first one. In the Dodgers’ first postseason game, he hit home runs in consecutive at-bats.
Read more: Hernández: Dodgers save Shohei Ohtani, not the other way around, in monumental Game 1 NLDS win
On Saturday, in their third postseason game, he stepped to bat in the eighth inning with two on, two out, and the Dodgers trailing by one run — and the Phillies had scored one extra run when he could not run down that Realmuto triple.
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Hernández homered. He smiled. He skipped.
“It was a great moment,” Ohtani said.
In his face, we saw joy.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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