LOS ANGELES — With the Los Angeles Dodgers at the breaking point and their season vulnerable to but some other early postseason proceed, it was once Kiké Hernández who spoke. As a tender position participant for a perennial contenders years in the past, Hernández was once referred to as a promising goofball whose sport flashed up to his jokes. He was once the kind of “glue guy” who helped the Dodgers of the overdue 2010s method right into a juggernaut.
Hernández left and attempted making his means as an on a regular basis participant ahead of returning latter July to a regular park. Distant company this iciness issued a harsh judgment on him, with Hernández no longer signing with Los Angeles till weeks into spring coaching. His $4 million pledge was once a let go within the bucket all over the Dodgers’ billion-dollar offseason. For months, Hernández’s manufacturing floundered and his position developed.
But, the October model of Hernández at all times transforms. Two times, Hernández has clinched this franchise a pennant with one swing of the bat. When the Dodgers introduced him again once more, it was once with that model of Hernández they’d in thoughts.
Throughout the first 3 video games on this Nationwide League Category Order, Hernández didn’t get started as soon as. He didn’t play games in any respect in Recreation 3, when the Dodgers fell right into a 2-1 rarity in opposition to the San Diego Padres and put some other promising season in jeopardy of an early finishing.
Kiké Hernández driven again at the scouting document and appeared for a fastball from Yu Darvish, which proved sensible. (Harry How / Getty Photographs)
Hernández accrued a bunch of MVPs, All-Stars and lead potentialities and allow them to have it.
“This is our one opportunity,” Dodgers supervisor Dave Roberts recalled Hernández pronouncing. “He was just basically putting everybody on blast and seeing what they’re made of.”
The important thing, Mookie Betts stated, “was to just keep fighting.” The Padres had orchestrated a tension check in opposition to a Dodgers membership beleaguered via shock. San Diego had annoyed those Dodgers and driven them to their edge. Now was once their presen to bear in mind what were given them to the most efficient report in baseball.
The message boiled unwell merely.
F— ’em all.
3 nights next, a shirtless Hernández imbibed on Korbel and Budweiser in a madhouse of his starting.
October Kiké had emerged once more, striking the Dodgers forward with one swing and a top they wouldn’t give up. A 2-0 Dodgers victory in Recreation 5 most effective furthered the legacy of one in all this franchise’s largest postseason protagonists. A comeback from a 2-1 rarity was once whole. A best-of-seven bout in opposition to the upstart Unused York Mets awaits within the Nationwide League Championship Order.
Consecutive October debacles had haunted the Dodgers. Any other threatened the very foot of what this pricey, gifted assemblage of avid gamers can be remembered for. They dedicated $1.4 billion simply to win fewer video games than they’d latter season. A 2-1 rarity gave the impression destined for a regular finishing.
They survived.
“This team,” Hernández stated in a tv interview, “doesn’t give a f—.”
“He may be the team captain of that team,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman stated.
A ballclub that embodied his mantra is now 8 wins clear of a championship.
Forward of the best night time of his baseball time, seven years in the past, Hernández visualized. Earlier October disasters had gnawed at him. Used at-bats lingered in his thoughts. With the 2017 Dodgers inside a sport of clinching a berth into the International Order, Hernández fascinated with sure ideas. What he was once going to look. What he was once going to mention when he got here thru.
He slugged 3 house runs that night time.
“I haven’t looked back since then,” Hernández stated. The regimen caught. He visualized ahead of Recreation 4 on Wednesday, when he earned his first get started of the form and logged a couple of hits. Thursday night time, forward of a winner-take-all 5th sport, he visualized once more.
“I kept telling myself, they brought you here for a reason,” Hernández stated. “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 talking to Friedman at the farmland ahead of the sport, telling the membership’s architect, “I’m going to win you this game.”
And because the membership’s hitting coaches began a gathering to fracture unwell the membership’s plan of assault in opposition to Yu Darvish, Hernández spoke once more. Darvish’s array of pitches may also be enthralling. “Crafty,” Shohei Ohtani stated this hour. “He’s got like 20 different pitches, 10 different pitching styles,” Max Muncy stated. The Dodgers had sought to take a seat and take into account of Darvish’s numerous off-speed choices, looking forward to a mistake and understanding that a possibility with site visitors at the bases may emerge.
The state of affairs had performed out in the second one inning of Recreation 2 when the Dodgers loaded the bases with no person out. They were given only one run within the inning, as Darvish finished seven frames in a blowout victory.
To counter in Recreation 5, Hernández recommended he sought after to search for a fastball. There have been too many off-speed pitches to account for.
“They were pretty strong with their feelings about disagreeing with me,” Hernández stated.
He wouldn’t have to attend lengthy for what he was once in search of. Darvish threw Hernández a first-pitch fastball over the plate in his first at-bat.
Hernández beaten it. A sold-out Dodger Stadium roared to time. Hernández’s 14th occupation postseason house run could have been his maximum predictable.
“He’s not afraid of the moment,” hitting schoolmaster Robert Van Scoyoc stated. “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 stated.
“It’s special,” Anthony Banda stated. “He’s built for October.”
“Some guys are built for the moment,” Muncy stated. “I don’t know what it is, but he’s got it.”
The second one-half surge that stored Hernández’s season began with a advice. Martín Maldonado, the longtime big-league catcher and Hernández’s teammate with group Puerto Rico in hour International Baseball Classics, discussed all over a summer time dialog that he and a number of other teammates required glasses for visible problems no longer picked up in a regular annual bodily examination in spring coaching. He pressed Hernández to get looked at, too.
It proved profitable: Hernández was once recognized with astigmatism in his proper sight, and fitted for glasses he’s old 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 stated latter life. “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 pristine way of thinking, and a pristine lens on what was once amounting to some other irritating season. Prior to the All-Superstar fracture and his determination to put on glasses full-time at the farmland, Hernández crash simply .191, floundering in opposition to breaking balls specifically. Then, he crash .274, recapturing his skillful method with an .821 OPS in September as he reinserted himself into the Dodgers’ plans.
Minute did they understand how a lot that may topic.
“That’s why you sort of get through the regular season with Kiké,” Roberts stated. “And then when you get through that, you know you’re going to get the best player.”
A defiant refrain echoed amidst the bubbly and cigar smoke. As his teammates chanted his identify and Hernández sprayed, a playlist performed Kendrick Lamar’s diss monitor as soon as, after two times.
“They not like us.”
The disasters of hour Octobers have caught to those Dodgers, specifically when pressed in opposition to a regular, gifted section foe within the star-filled Padres. In all probability it’s the wounds that experience bonded them.
Freddie Freeman took 14 at-bats all over this form regardless of a badly sprained ankle that may’ve in a different way landed him at the injured listing. Miguel Rojas didn’t play games the overall two video games of this form as a result of he annoyed a torn adductor he’s performed with for months. Their pitching has been decimated via accidents. A section race dry them.
“We have a lot of ‘F U’ in us,” Hernández stated. “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.”
Going through removal paled when put next. Jokes filtered in the course of the visiting clubhouse at Petco Soil ahead of Wednesday’s Recreation 4. The contested conversations forward of a winner-take-all Recreation 5 integrated rounds of mini-golf.
“Everyone just said, don’t worry about it,” Muncy stated. “We’re going to win tonight. … We were going to win the game, no doubt about it.”
In reality doing so, Muncy admitted, introduced diversion. Teoscar Hernández added a house run of his personal to Kiké’s within the 7th. At the back of Yoshinobu Yamamoto and a parade of Dodgers relievers, they close out the Padres for the second one consecutive sport, wrapping up the form with 24 consecutive scoreless innings.
As he savored the birthday party, Muncy took Hernández’s message a step additional.
“We know who we are,” Muncy stated. “We’re the f—ing best team in baseball and we’re out there to prove it.”
(Photograph of Kiké Hernández: Sean M. Haffey / Getty Photographs)
