{"id":271247,"date":"2025-10-02T06:54:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T06:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/271247\/"},"modified":"2025-10-02T06:54:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T06:54:13","slug":"must-be-october-because-super-kike-hernandez-is-here-for-the-dodgers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/271247\/","title":{"rendered":"Must be October, because Super Kik\u00e9\u00a0Hern\u00e1ndez is here for the Dodgers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For Kik\u00e9 Hern\u00e1ndez<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

And when summer turns to fall few players have stepped up bigger than Hern\u00e1ndez, who had two hits, scored two runs and drove in another Wednesday, spurring a Dodger comeback that ended in an 8-4 win<\/a> over the Cincinnati Reds and a sweep of their National League wild-card series.<\/p>\n

That sends the team on to the best-of-five Division Series with the Phillies<\/a>, which begins Saturday in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

\u201cOctober Kik\u00e9 is something pretty special,\u201d Dodger manager Dave Roberts<\/a> said. \u201cAnd the track record speaks for itself. He\u2019s one of the best throughout the history of the postseason.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a reputation he\u2019s earned.<\/p>\n

A .236 career hitter in the regular season, Hern\u00e1ndez has hit .286 in 88 postseason games<\/a>. He slashed .203\/.255\/.366 in an injury-marred regular season this year, but two games into the playoffs he\u2019s hitting .500, leads the Dodgers<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome guys are built for this moment. He\u2019s definitely one of them,\u201d said third baseman Max Muncy<\/a>, standing in the middle of the Dodgers\u2019 batting cage during the team\u2019s postgame celebration, his blue T-shirt soaked in champagne as a teammate poured beer over his head.<\/p>\n

Hern\u00e1ndez, 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.<\/p>\n

His teammates were all too happy to speak about him in his absence.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a guy who is not shy from the from the moment,\u201d infielder Miguel Rojas said. \u201cI feel like the regular season for him is not enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rojas said he learned that first hand after rejoining the Dodgers in 2023. Although the team\u2019s playoff run was brief, Hern\u00e1ndez led the team with two RBIs and was second in hits and average.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw it on TV before. But when I got here I saw that it was real,\u201d he said. \u201cHe always wanted the moment and he showed it tonight with a big double to tie the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019 single, putting the Dodgers ahead to stay.<\/p>\n

But Hern\u00e1ndez wasn\u2019t 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 \u2014 Hern\u00e1ndez, Rojas and catcher Ben Rortvedt \u2014 combined to go six for 12 with five runs and two RBIs.<\/p>\n

\u201cKik\u00e9 is Kik\u00e9,\u201d outfielder Teoscar Hern\u00e1ndez<\/a> said above the din of the celebration. \u201cThat\u2019s the guy you get when October starts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before that? Not so much. But for Hern\u00e1ndez, the postseason has become redemption time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know they brought me here for these types of moments,\u201d he said before Wednesday\u2019s game.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hern\u00e1ndez, 34, owes much of his fall heroics simply to the opportunity to play on the sport\u2019s biggest stage. In a dozen big-league seasons, he\u2019s made the playoffs 10 times, playing in 21 postseason series with the Dodgers and Boston Red Sox and winning two World Series rings.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been blessed to be on the right team at the right time,\u201d he said. \u201cBeing a good postseason player is kind of an individual thing, but not really. You\u2019re on a team that doesn\u2019t make the playoffs, you can\u2019t be a postseason player.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just happen to be on a lot of really good teams, and I\u2019ve been fortunate enough to get a lot of chances.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe always wants the moment and he wants to be out there,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m learning from him every single day. He\u2019s the most prepared guy that I\u2019ve ever played with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Especially in October.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Kik\u00e9 Hern\u00e1ndez, the regular season is little more than a six-month warm-up. Real baseball is played when…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":271248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,45124,2442,23590,91894,19498,2961,224,5337,5349,140838,1424,121766,130588,11578,140837,10201,3007,15613],"class_list":{"0":"post-271247","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-champagne","11":"tag-dodgers","12":"tag-guy","13":"tag-hernandez","14":"tag-hit","15":"tag-la","16":"tag-los-angeles","17":"tag-losangeles","18":"tag-moment","19":"tag-october-kike","20":"tag-playoff","21":"tag-postseason","22":"tag-postseason-game","23":"tag-regular-season","24":"tag-rojas","25":"tag-run","26":"tag-team","27":"tag-wednesday"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115303262758506623","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}