For Kiké Hernández, the regular season is little more than a six-month warm-up. Real baseball is played when the evening air turns crisp and the leaves begin to change.
And when summer turns to fall few players have stepped up bigger than Hernández, who had two hits, scored two runs and drove in another Wednesday, spurring a Dodger comeback that ended in an 8-4 win over the Cincinnati Reds and a sweep of their National League wild-card series.
That sends the team on to the best-of-five Division Series with the Phillies, which begins Saturday in Philadelphia.
“October Kiké is something pretty special,” Dodger manager Dave Roberts said. “And the track record speaks for itself. He’s one of the best throughout the history of the postseason.”
It’s a reputation he’s earned.
A .236 career hitter in the regular season, Hernández has hit .286 in 88 postseason games. He slashed .203/.255/.366 in an injury-marred regular season this year, but two games into the playoffs he’s hitting .500, leads the Dodgers with three runs scored and ranks second to Mookie Betts with four hits. He also made a splendid over-the-shoulder catch while racing to the warning track in the first inning Wednesday.
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“Some guys are built for this moment. He’s definitely one of them,” said third baseman Max Muncy, standing in the middle of the Dodgers’ batting cage during the team’s postgame celebration, his blue T-shirt soaked in champagne as a teammate poured beer over his head.
Hernández, wearing goggles but not a shirt, made a brief appearance at the victory party but departed to celebrate with family before the champagne and beer began to puddle on the plastic sheeting that covered the floor.
His teammates were all too happy to speak about him in his absence.
“He’s a guy who is not shy from the from the moment,” infielder Miguel Rojas said. “I feel like the regular season for him is not enough.”
Rojas said he learned that first hand after rejoining the Dodgers in 2023. Although the team’s playoff run was brief, Hernández led the team with two RBIs and was second in hits and average.
“I saw it on TV before. But when I got here I saw that it was real,” he said. “He always wanted the moment and he showed it tonight with a big double to tie the game.”
That came with one out in the fourth, when his line drive to center field scored Muncy from first to tie the score, 2-2. Four pitches later he scored on Rojas’ single, putting the Dodgers ahead to stay.
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But Hernández wasn’t finished. Two innings later he led off with a squibber up the third-base line that was going foul before it hit the bag for a single, starting a four-run rally that put the game away. The bottom third of the Dodger lineup — Hernández, Rojas and catcher Ben Rortvedt — combined to go six for 12 with five runs and two RBIs.
“Kiké is Kiké,” outfielder Teoscar Hernández said above the din of the celebration. “That’s the guy you get when October starts.”
Before that? Not so much. But for Hernández, the postseason has become redemption time.
“I know they brought me here for these types of moments,” he said before Wednesday’s game.
“The beautiful thing about the postseason is that once we get to the postseason, everything starts at zero. You can have a bad year and you flip the script and you start over in the postseason. You have a good postseason, help the team win, and nobody ever remembers what you did in the regular season.”
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Hernández, 34, owes much of his fall heroics simply to the opportunity to play on the sport’s biggest stage. In a dozen big-league seasons, he’s made the playoffs 10 times, playing in 21 postseason series with the Dodgers and Boston Red Sox and winning two World Series rings.
“I’ve been blessed to be on the right team at the right time,” he said. “Being a good postseason player is kind of an individual thing, but not really. You’re on a team that doesn’t make the playoffs, you can’t be a postseason player.
“I just happen to be on a lot of really good teams, and I’ve been fortunate enough to get a lot of chances.”
With his performance Wednesday, he assured himself at least three more chances in the division series with the Phillies. And Rojas expects him to take full advantage.
“He always wants the moment and he wants to be out there,” he said. “I’m learning from him every single day. He’s the most prepared guy that I’ve ever played with.”
Especially in October.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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