ATLANTA –– Seemingly every October, the same question arises.
Over the years, Kiké Hernández has supplied a wide range of answers.
Sometimes, it’s a simple joke: “I like Halloween,” he quipped two years ago.
Others, it’s a more introspective –– albeit, self-deprecating –– response: “My brain’s all over the place, man,” he said before Game 7 of last year’s World Series. “I got really bad ADHD.”
Usually, however, the explanation boils down to one simple factor, having to do with focus and fearlessness in the highest-pressure of situations.
Why is he, as a relatively mediocre regular-season hitter over his 13-year career, such a consistent force in the playoffs?
“It’s almost like when you’re in school and you have a project for two months, and then you leave it for the last day,” he said this time a year ago. “That’s kind of a similar way [it works in the playoffs]. I’m able to stay in the moment and, like, stay really, really focused.”
In Game 3 of the National League Division Series on Tuesday night, that mentality paid off with more postseason heroics yet again.
As usual, the Dodgers deployed Hernández like an ace up their sleeve, inserting him into the starting lineup to face star Braves pitcher Chris Sale with the best-of-five series knotted at one game apiece.
And, as usual, Hernández delivered, producing the decisive swing on a two-run homer in the fourth inning of the Dodgers’ 3-1 win at Truist Park.
“It’s something I take a lot of pride in, but don’t really think about it too much,” Hernández said. “It’s something that, once I’m done playing, I’m going to look back on and be really proud of, because the way my career has gone, in terms of finding myself each and every year in October.”
Indeed, Hernández has a way of looking –– and getting –– lost in the regular season, especially in recent years while being relegated to a part-time spot on the Dodgers’ bench.
This season, the 35-year-old appeared in just 41 regular season games, getting less than 100 total plate appearances because of elbow and oblique injuries, but also a loaded Dodgers roster that leaves at-bats at a premium for fringe players like him.
It didn’t help that he hit only .222, lowering his career regular-season average to .235 to go along with a .706 OPS (a shade under league-average production when measured by OPS+).
Entering this October, he had no clear pathway to regular playing time, either, with the Dodgers boasting entrenched regulars at all nine positions.
No matter.
Since rejoining the Dodgers as a trade deadline acquisition in 2023, the utilityman has come to accept that “my role is not to necessarily be in there all year or every day.” He knew that, at some point, he would be summoned to provide a boost for the two-time defending champions.
“It would have been nice to get a little bit of a warm-up before [having to face] Chris Sale,” he joked. “But I’m just glad I’m here talking about something positive and not something negative.”
Rare is it, of course, that Hernández doesn’t make a positive impact when called upon.
At this point, he has turned majestic playoff performances into an almost annual tradition.
There was his three-homer outburst in the Dodgers’ pennant-clinching victory in Game 5 of the 2017 NL Championship Series. His game-tying, pinch-hit blast in Game 7 of the 2020 NLCS. His go-ahead shot early in a winner-take-all Game 5 triumph over the Padres in the 2024 NLDS. His season-saving double-play in left field in Game 6 of last year’s Fall Classic.
And that doesn’t even include what he did for the Boston Red Sox during their run to the ALCS in 2021, when he batted .408 with five home runs during his one postseason campaign away from Los Angeles.
“He’s a big-time player,” manager Dave Roberts said. “He’s always prepared. He loves moments like this. He has a way to lock in.”
Thus, in the run-up to a pivotal Game 3 on Tuesday night, and in the face of a daunting task against the Braves’ left-handed ace in Sale, Roberts turned to Hernández to give the offense some “added intensity, urgency,” starting him at third base in place of the left-handed-hitting Max Muncy.
“We needed a little bit of that Kiké dust,” Roberts said.
And, surprise, surprise — he came through once again.
After the Dodgers squandered several early chances against Sale, Hernández stepped up with one on and one out in the fourth inning, hoping to simply “grind out the at-bat” and keep stressing Sale’s climbing pitch count.
But when the former Cy Young Award winner tried to sneak back-to-back changeups by him, Hernández was ready for it.
“He doubled up on the changeup,” Hernández said. “My eyes recognized it.”
With a vicious swing that sent the ball screaming off his bat at 106.8 mph, Hernández launched a 406-foot drive deep into the left-field seats, breaking open what had been a scoreless pitchers’ duel previously.
The scene that followed was triumphantly familiar, with Hernández pounding his chest and screaming his lungs out as his Dodgers teammates erupted in the dugout down the third-base line.
The 2-0 lead would last, as well, thanks to seven dominant innings from Yoshinobu Yamamoto –– who, while facing a jam in the fifth, also got a quick pep talk from Hernández instilling him with confidence and featuring a “dirty word,” the pitcher joked –– that propelled the Dodgers to a two-games-to-one series lead.
“He converts himself into this kind of monster when it comes to the playoffs, and when it matters the most,” said teammate Miguel Rojas, another veteran role player who has drawn so much inspiration from Hernández’s repeated heroics that he texted him last week to tell him “how much I appreciate what he taught me without even telling me how to do it.”
“He wants the situation. He wants the moment. He wants to be the guy,” Rojas added. “His value is way higher than what people think that he can be. He’s a great asset for us.”
The home run marked the 17th of Hernández’s postseason career, tied for 18th-most all-time along with the likes of Aaron Judge, David Ortiz and Jim Thome. In the playoffs, he now has a .272 average and .831 OPS in 105 career games (93 of which have come with the Dodgers, most in the franchise’s illustrious history).
“I wish there was a recipe for that so we can all take it from him,” first baseman Freddie Freeman, who went deep himself later in Tuesday’s fourth inning, joked afterward. “It’s incredible … He’s ready to go at all times.”
Hernández himself, yet again, still lacked a definitive answer for why his play in the postseason seems to inevitably elevate, outside of ample October experience and a slow heartbeat in such moments.
The only thing he did know for sure: “I was going to be ready,” he said, “whenever Doc put my name in the lineup.”
Once again, it might have swung the direction of the Dodgers’ season.
“Having him in a lineup in the postseason,” Roberts said, “just adds that extra sort of urgency, that kind of grit that you need.”
