With key players down, Dodgers’ patience with Teoscar Hernández is paying off

LOS ANGELES – During a months-long spiral at the plate, Teoscar Hernández tried to maintain his upbeat, convivial persona. But for much of the summer, before his September revival, it was difficult for the Dodgers’ fun-loving, seed-tossing veteran presence to look or feel like himself. “I try to stay positive and bring the same energy that you guys know and see everyday — smiling, making jokes,” Hernández told me. “But at the same time, it’s really hard.” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts noticed his typically jovial outfielder looking a bit more sullen at times, too. It was understandable. Hernández, a fixture in the Dodgers’ lineup whose clutch hitting, encouraging nature and penchant for performing on the sport’s biggest stage helped his team win back-to-back World Series titles, had a respectable .785 OPS when he went on the injured list on May 29 with a left hamstring strain. But the 33-year-old did not look the same when he returned a month later. From June 29 to Aug. 29, his .592 OPS was the ninth-lowest mark among all qualified MLB hitters over that stretch. “Some of the joy was sucked out,” Roberts told me, “because it’s hard to be so joyful when you’re not performing. He was still a good teammate, always a good teammate, but I know there were a lot of frustrating moments for him.” Hernández’s struggles were compounded by the fact that the Dodgers were also getting little from their other corner outfielder, Kyle Tucker, or the rest of an offense that looked lifeless for much of the summer. But now, at a crucial juncture for his team with All-Stars Shohei Ohtani and Andy Pages sidelined, another All-Star in Freddie Freeman battling knee soreness and the playoffs just weeks away, Hernández is taking his frustration out constructively. He is annihilating the baseball in September, leaving his summer slump behind and giving the Dodgers reason to believe in the depth of their offense again. “When he catches fire,” Dodgers infielder Tommy Edman said, “he’s as good as anybody in the game.” Even among Hernández’s best career stretches, the tear he’s on now stands out. Every part of his offensive profile is enhanced. Hernández, who’s prone to swing and miss even when he’s going right, is making better swing decisions. From last month to this month, he has lowered his chase rate from 36.7% to 24.8%, tripled his walk rate from 4.3% to 15.1% and cut his strikeout rate nearly in half from 31.2% to 18.9%. And along with a more selective approach, he is punishing every mistake in a way he couldn’t earlier this season. Hernández’s hard-hit rate has skyrocketed from 34.5% in July to 47.5% in August to 60% this month. His average exit velocity this September (96.6 mph) is the highest of any month in his career. Eight of his 10 hardest-hit balls this season have come in the last two weeks, and his power is being generated by the highest average bat speed he has produced in any month over the last two seasons (74.1 mph). It’s a far cry from where Hernández was just a couple of weeks ago, when his year-long struggle against right-handers had the Dodgers considering using a platoon in left field. That no longer appears to be a consideration. “Right now,” Roberts said, “it’s just night and day.” So how, exactly, did Hernández find his way back? “The most important part, he’s healthy,” Dodgers infielder Miguel Rojas told me. “If he’s healthy, we can see the Teo that’s running hard on the bases, stealing bases, going first to third. Obviously the bat is there because it’s his best tool, but seeing the complete player now is really refreshing.” Earlier this season, Hernández’s downturn looked familiar. A year ago, he had the highest batting average on the team when he went on the IL in May with an adductor strain. He returned two weeks later, then watched his OPS precipitously drop 200 points from May 21 (.927) to July 21 (.727). Clearly, the lower-body injury had lingered, throwing off his swing and sapping his power. This year, it was happening again, only with his hamstring. The swing that worked for him before the injury was putting too much pressure on his lower half. Upon his return from the IL, he had a .562 OPS overall in July and a team-worst .496 OPS against right-handed pitching in August. “I told Dave, ‘If you feel like you have to use somebody else in there, just do it,’” Hernández said. That would not be necessary. At least, not again after Aug. 25. The decision to sit him that day was noteworthy, considering the Dodgers were coming off an off day and facing a Braves team they were battling for a first-round bye. In hindsight, it might have served as a wake-up call. On Aug. 26, Hernández returned to the lineup in Atlanta with a two-hit day. He then ended the Dodgers’ next series in Detroit with a two-run homer off Framber Valdez, which might have been the turning point. “I think that at-bat gave him the extra life that he needed for the last part of the season,” Rojas said. “Obviously, baseball is about confidence, and you find confidence with success, and I thought that’s what he needed. He needed, like, one good swing that he knows he’s back, and then all of a sudden we see the results we get now.” There’s also a mechanical component to Hernández’s upswing. Too often, Hernández felt both rushed and late at the plate as he worked his way back from his hamstring injury. He has since opened his stance in an effort, he says, to slow his body up, prevent his front hip from flying open and give him more time to see the ball. He has also traded his more subtle toe tap for a slightly more exaggerated leg lift and hip twist as a timing mechanism that seems to be producing more power. These were moves he used before in his career. Now healthy, he feels his body can withstand the added force once again. Sometimes with hitting, the littlest tweaks can yield the biggest results. “That’s why it’s hard,” Hernández told me. “One day, you don’t know what you’re doing. The next day, you change barely — sometimes it’s your hands, sometimes it’s your legs, sometimes it’s how low, how tall [in the stance] — and it can click, and you go on a heater.” Even compared to heaters of the past, though, this one is unlike most for Hernández. If September ended today, his 1.211 OPS this month would be the highest mark in any month of his career. Hernández maintains that his confidence never wavered through the rough patch; that he knew, at some point, things would turn. His teammates shared that belief. This was the same guy, after all, who homered in every playoff series last season. “The clutch gene and everything that he has in him, the reason why we got him and the reason why we’ve been so good with him in the lineup the last couple years, nothing changed this year just because of a bad stretch,” Rojas told me. “To be honest with you, I was never concerned about it … I want nobody in a big at-bat more than Teo.” After the big hit last month in Detroit, Hernández returned home, made the swing changes and provided the elusive clutch hit the scuffling Dodgers’ offense had been missing with a walk-off double to salvage a series against the Cardinals. That hit helped spark an eight-game winning streak for the Dodgers, who started to look like themselves again. Their ebullient left fielder is looking that way, too. “I feel really good right now,” Hernández said. “I’ve been working really hard for this, and I’m glad and happy that everything is coming together.”​With tweaks to his swing and better health, Teoscar Hernández is annihilating the baseball at a crucial time for the Dodgers.