There’s something about Kiké Hernandez and October baseball.
Hernandez, who played for the Red Sox for two and a half years, hit a solo homer in the second inning for the Los Angeles Dodgers, the team for whom he played before and after his time with Boston. That solo homer would have been enough, but just for good measure, Teoscar Hernandez added a seventh inning solo shot to send the Dodgers to a 2-0 shutout of the San Diego Padres in Game 5 of the NLDS and earn a spot in the National League Championship Series against the New York Mets.
The homer was the 14th of Hernandez’s career in the postseason in 75 games. Asked on Fox’s postgame show about what it was about October that enabled him to perform so well, Hernandez said: “I don’t know, but I like it.”
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That was true of his time with the Red Sox, too. Hernandez battled inconsistency and injuries while with the Red Sox during the regular season. But in 12 postseason games with the Red Sox in 2021, he hit five homers and posted a 1.260 OPS.
After leaving the Dodgers following the 2020 season to sign as a free agent with the Red Sox, Hernandez was traded back to the Dodgers in July of 2023. He was in the lineup Friday night thanks to an injury to shortstop Miguel Rojas. That forced Dodgers manager Dave Roberts to move Tommy Edman to short and play Hernandez in center field. In the ninth inning, thanks to some other defensive substitutions, Hernandez was moved to third base, where he fielded two groundouts as the Dodgers clinched.
