Reggie Jackson will always be “Mr. October” in the minds of baseball fans, but around these parts, that moniker could be attached to a lesser-known and little heralded Dodgers utility man who seems to do his best work on baseball’s biggest stage.
Kiké Hernández delivered his latest in a long line of autumnal blasts on Friday night, sending a 95-mph fastball from Yu Darvish deep into into the left-field pavilion for a solo home run in the second inning of a 2-0 National League Division Series-clinching Game 5 victory over the San Diego Padres.
And, just for good measure, Hernández moved from center field to third base in the ninth inning and made two nice plays on Donovan Solano and Fernando Tatis Jr. grounders, the latter ending a tense winner-take-all game and igniting wild celebrations of players on the mound and fans amid the sellout crowd of 53,183 in Chavez Ravine.
Read more: Plaschke: Playoff demons be gone! Dodgers outlast Padres to advance to NLCS
Not that his teammates expected anything less.
“Kiké hitting a home run and making big plays is probably the least surprising thing of the night,” Dodgers second baseman Gavin Lux said amid pulsating hip-hop music, Champagne and beer showers and a haze of cigar smoke in a victorious clubhouse.
“In the bigger games, he’s always gonna show up. He’s got that look in his eyes that he’s gonna do something big, and this team feeds off of that.”
Hernández, who was acquired at the trade deadline in 2023 and returned to the Dodgers. on a one-year, $4-million deal last winter, is a career .238 hitter with a .713 on-base-plus-slugging percentage in 11 big-league seasons. But in 75 postseason games, he’s batting .277 with an .899 OPS and 14 home runs, nine for the Dodgers.
“We’re in Los Angeles with some of the greatest athletes of all time, and those great ones aren’t afraid to fail,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “Everyone knows Kiké loves the spotlight. Some people love it. Some people run from it.
“When you’re talking about this market, the postseason, people in [his native] Puerto Rico watching him all over the country, that’s when he’s at his best. This guy always rises to the occasion. The reason we got him this year was to win 11 games in October.”
Hernández didn’t always wear a cape in October. Way back in his first postseason for the Dodgers, in a 3-2 loss to the New York Mets in the decisive Game 5 of the division series, Hernández struck out in the first inning with runners on first and third and grounded into a double play with runners on first and third to end the third.
In 2016, Hernández went hitless in eight at-bats in an NL Championship Series loss to the Chicago Cubs.
“My first postseason, we lost [Game 5] by one run, and you go through scenarios of how the game could have gone differently — if I came through for my team, the game would have been different, and maybe we would have advanced,” Hernández said. “I went with that same mentality in 2016, and it didn’t go well for me.
“But in 2017, I had a completely different mindset. We had a great team, we were rolling, and the night before Game 5 of the NLCS, I switched gears for the first time and said, ‘I’m tired of feeling what if, what if.’ I went to bed thinking about how I’m going to answer questions because I had a great day to put the team in the World Series.”
The next night in Wrigley Field, Hernández hit three home runs and drove in seven runs in an 11-1 victory over the Cubs that sent the Dodgers into the World Series against the Houston Astros, “and I haven’t looked back since,” he said.
As much pregame work as Hernández puts in to prepare himself for the outfield and four infield positions and to keep his swing in shape, some of his most important work takes place between his ears, often the night before big games.
“You have to understand there’s only two ways it can go — you can either have success or you can fail — but you can’t be afraid of failure,” Hernández said. “You’ve got to want the moment, want the at-bat. But it’s very easy to see yourself failing in the postseason, and the anxiety, the self-doubt, all these things start creeping into your mind.
“That’s why I am such a strong believer in the power of visualizing the night before the game. Whenever those doubts come in, I visualize myself having success over and over again. You get to the field the next day, and you’ve already seen the day happen. So nothing overwhelms you. No moment gets too big.”
Hernández, who moved into the starting lineup after shortstop Miguel Rojas aggravated his left-adductor injury in Game 3 and singled twice in an 8-0 Game 4 victory, doesn’t hog those visualization techniques for himself.
“Kiké told me before the game that me and him are gonna be the first players with the same last name go yard in a playoff game, and we did it,” said outfielder Teoscar Hernández, whose solo shot in the seventh gave the Dodgers a huge insurance run. “I believe in him. He believes in me. I believe in myself, and we enjoyed today.”
A pregame decision to follow his gut — and not necessarily the team’s scouting report — contributed to Kiké Hernández’s home run.
Read more: Dodgers vanquish recent postseason frustrations in NLDS Game 5 win over Padres
“I was talking to the hitting guys and I was like, ‘I think we gotta be on the fastball against Yu — he’s got way too many pitches to cover, and if you’re sitting off-speed, he’s got like five off-speed pitches,’ ” Hernández said. “They were pretty strongly disagreeing with me. I’m glad I proved them wrong.”
Hernández jumped on Darvish’s first-pitch fastball on the inner-half and sent a 109.2-mph drive 428 feet into the left-field seats. Always the prankster, Hernández grabbed the groin of third-base coach Dino Ebel on his trot. After the game, he was so excited he dropped an expletive during an on-field Fox Sports television interview.
“I kept telling myself, ‘They brought you here for a reason, they brought you here to play in October,’ and I wanted to come back to make a run with this team, because I really want to have a parade,” Hernández said. “I knew that whether it was on defense or at the plate, I was gonna find a way to win this game for us.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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