Kiké Hernández delivers again as Dodgers advance: ‘He’s not afraid of the moment’

LOS ANGELES — With the Los Angeles Dodgers on the brink and their season at risk of yet another early postseason exit, it was Kiké Hernández who spoke. As a young role player for a perennial contenders years ago, Hernández was known as a promising goofball whose game flashed as much as his jokes. He was the type of “glue guy” who helped the Dodgers of the late 2010s form into a juggernaut.

Hernández left and tried making his way as an everyday player before returning last July to a familiar place. Free agency this winter issued a harsh judgment on him, with Hernández not signing with Los Angeles until weeks into spring training. His $4 million contract was a drop in the bucket during the Dodgers’ billion-dollar offseason. For months, Hernández’s production floundered and his role evolved.

Yet, the October version of Hernández always transforms. Twice, Hernández has clinched this franchise a pennant with one swing of the bat. When the Dodgers brought him back again, it was with that version of Hernández they had in mind.

Through the first three games in this National League Division Series, Hernández didn’t start once. He didn’t play at all in Game 3, when the Dodgers fell into a 2-1 deficit against the San Diego Padres and put another promising season in jeopardy of an early ending.

Hernández gathered a group of MVPs, All-Stars and top prospects and let them have it.

“This is our one opportunity,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts recalled Hernández saying. “He was just basically putting everybody on blast and seeing what they’re made of.”

The key, Mookie Betts said, “was to just keep fighting.” The Padres had orchestrated a stress test against a Dodgers club beleaguered by injury. San Diego had irritated these Dodgers and pushed them to their edge. Now was their time to remember what got them to the best record in baseball.

The message boiled down simply.

F—  ’em all.

Three nights later, a shirtless Hernández imbibed on Korbel and Budweiser in a madhouse of his creation.

October Kiké had emerged again, putting the Dodgers ahead with one swing and a lead they wouldn’t surrender. A 2-0 Dodgers victory in Game 5 only furthered the legacy of one of this franchise’s greatest postseason protagonists. A comeback from a 2-1 deficit was complete. A best-of-seven bout against the upstart New York Mets awaits in the National League Championship Series.

Consecutive October debacles had haunted the Dodgers. Another threatened the very foundation of what this expensive, talented assemblage of players would be remembered for. They committed $1.4 billion just to win fewer games than they had last season. A 2-1 deficit seemed destined for a familiar ending.

They survived.

“This team,” Hernández said in a television interview, “doesn’t give a f—.”

“He may be the team captain of that team,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said.

A ballclub that embodied his mantra is now eight wins away from a championship.

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Ahead of the greatest night of his baseball life, seven years ago, Hernández visualized. Previous October failures had gnawed at him. Old at-bats lingered in his mind. With the 2017 Dodgers within a game of clinching a berth into the World Series, Hernández focused on positive thoughts. What he was going to see. What he was going to say when he came through.

He slugged three home runs that night.

“I haven’t looked back since then,” Hernández said. The routine stuck. He visualized before Game 4 on Wednesday, when he earned his first start of the series and logged a pair of hits. Thursday night, ahead of a winner-take-all fifth game, 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 to make a run with this team because I really want to have a parade.”

He echoed the bravado when speaking to Friedman on the field before the game, telling the club’s architect, “I’m going to win you this game.”

And as the club’s hitting coaches started a meeting to break down the club’s plan of attack against Yu Darvish, Hernández spoke again. Darvish’s array of pitches can be mesmerizing. “Crafty,” Shohei Ohtani said this week. “He’s got like 20 different pitches, 10 different pitching styles,” Max Muncy said. The Dodgers had sought to sit and be mindful of Darvish’s countless off-speed offerings, waiting for a mistake and knowing that an opportunity with traffic on the bases could emerge.

The scenario had played out in the second inning of Game 2 when the Dodgers loaded the bases with no one out. They got just one run in the inning, as Darvish completed seven frames in a blowout victory.

To counter in Game 5, Hernández suggested he wanted to look for a fastball. There were too many off-speed pitches to account for.

“They were pretty strong with their feelings about disagreeing with me,” Hernández said.

He wouldn’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 may have been his most predictable.

“He’s not afraid of the moment,” hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc said. “He’s here. He prepares. He’s got confidence through his preparation and he trusts it.”

“Kiké hitting a homer and making big plays is probably the least surprising thing of the night,” Gavin Lux said.

“It’s special,” Anthony Banda said. “He’s built for October.”

“Some guys are built for the moment,” Muncy said. “I don’t know what it is, but he’s got it.”

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The second-half surge that saved Hernández’s season started with a recommendation. Martín Maldonado, the longtime big-league catcher and Hernández’s teammate with team Puerto Rico in past World Baseball Classics, mentioned during a summer conversation that he and several teammates required glasses for vision issues not picked up in a typical annual physical exam in spring training. He pressed Hernández to get checked out, too.

It proved worthwhile: Hernández was diagnosed with astigmatism in his right eye, and fitted for glasses he’s worn ever since.

“I didn’t really realize that I was seeing the shape of the pitch instead of the spin, rotation of the pitch,” Hernández said last month. “I don’t really know how long it’s been like that. … It was such a little thing that you don’t really notice in your everyday life. It was hard to tell.”

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 lens on what was amounting to another frustrating season. Before the All-Star break and his decision to wear glasses full-time on the field, Hernández hit just .191, floundering against breaking balls in particular. After, he hit .274, recapturing his finest form with an .821 OPS in September as he reinserted himself into the Dodgers’ plans.

Little did they realize how much that would matter.

“That’s why you sort of get through the regular season with Kiké,” Roberts said. “And then when you get through that, you know you’re going to get the best player.”

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A defiant chorus echoed amidst the bubbly and cigar smoke. As his teammates chanted his name and Hernández sprayed, a playlist played Kendrick Lamar’s diss track once, then twice.

“They not like us.”

The failures of past Octobers have stuck to these Dodgers, particularly when pressed against a familiar, talented division foe in the star-filled Padres. Perhaps it is the wounds that have bonded them.

Freddie Freeman took 14 at-bats during this series despite a badly sprained ankle that would’ve otherwise landed him on the injured list. Miguel Rojas didn’t play the final two games of this series because he aggravated a torn adductor he’s played with for months. Their pitching has been decimated by injuries. A division race hardened them.

“We have a lot of ‘F U’ 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 how it looks.”

Facing elimination paled in comparison. Jokes filtered through the visiting clubhouse at Petco Park before Wednesday’s Game 4. The contested conversations ahead of 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, no doubt about it.”

Actually doing so, Muncy admitted, brought relief. Teoscar Hernández added a home run of his own to Kiké’s in the seventh. Behind Yoshinobu Yamamoto and a parade of Dodgers relievers, they shut out the Padres for the second consecutive game, wrapping up the series with 24 consecutive scoreless innings.

As he savored the celebration, Muncy took Hernández’s message a step further.

“We know who we are,” Muncy said. “We’re the f—ing best team in baseball and we’re out there to prove it.”

(Photo of Kiké Hernández: Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)