Teoscar Hernández Does not lack emotion. He plays with joy, with exuberance, with pleasure.
THE Riders Know that he can hit. We all do it. If emotion dissipates, performance can also.
Hernández could have been the goat on Saturday evening, in what would have been the first defeat of the Dodgers in this series. Instead, he hit the winning home run, almost levity around the first base, and became a hero of October again.
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In the dodgers’ 16 playoff games last yearHe hit three circuits and rolled at 12 points. Until now, during the three dodgers games in the playoff series, he has struck three circuits and driven in new.
You might worry about his uneven defense. You could guess a defensive piece that put the dodgers more deeply in a first hole.
Find out more: The dodgers again show their resilience in the return victory of the NLDS match 1 on the phillies
Everything is fine that ends well, as evidenced by his three -point home run that propelled the dodgers to a 5-3 victory Above the Philadelphia Phillies when the National League division was opened.
“For me, everything that happened before a big moment like that is in the past,” said Hernández.
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“I’m trying to put it in the trash and focus on the things I have to do.”
In the second round of what was then goalless equality, the phillies put the runners first and second with none. The receiver JT Realmuto struck a quick shoen Shohei Ohtani in the field of the right center, where Hernández approached the ball but did not seem to accelerate while the ball was exceeded.
If Hernández had cut the ball, Realmuto would have had a simple and the phillies would have scored two points in the round. Instead, Realmuto had a triple – corresponding to his total season – and then marked a third round in the round.
“I would say he was not trying,” said the Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said about Hernández. “But, yes, it’s a ball that you don’t want Realmuto to have a triple.”
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On Twitter, the former Dodgers launcher, Brett Anderson, posted – then deleted – this: “If I am Shohei, I’m going to need Teoscar Hernández to try a little stronger.”
Hernández said he hadn’t had a good angle towards the hard ball. Roberts created Hernández with a defensive adjustment on a subsequent bullet, shading the line to keep Bryce Harper with an additional blow that could have driven a race for the phillies.
Teoscar Hernández follows his three -point home run in the seventh round of match 1 against the phillies of Philadelphia. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The Dodgers minimized the defensive exhibition of Hernández last year by playing it most often in the left field, with Mookie Betts in the right field. This year, with Betts at the Copped Stop and the Dodgers refusing to add a right defender to the deadline, Hernández played the right field all season.
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The only major feature to play more rounds in the right field this season and finish more Saved defensive races: The Nick Castellanos des Phillies, who only entered the match on Saturday after Harrison Bader suffered an injury to the groin.
Make no mistake, however: Hernández is there to strike. The dodgers awarded a Hernández a $ 66 million contract over three years Last winter, well aware that the designated striker would not be an option because of this Ohtani.
As a Dodgers recipient Will Smith Explained on Saturday to a journalist wondering if he could spend more time as DH in the future: “We have a fairly good DH. I think we are quite put on it.”
Hernández struck or did not do much of a large part of the second half, causing Roberts to say At the beginning of September, he had urged his right defender to “embark on the fight”. During the last week of August, he even put Hernández for a day.
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Said Roberts then: “I think we have lost a little of this advantage in the past two months. For me, I want to see this side, this fight, this fire, and I bet on any result.”
In September, Hernández set up a .769 ops, his best for any month since the first. During the first dodgers match in the playoffs, he hit circuits in consecutive bats.
Find out more: Hernández: Dodgers save Shohei Ohtani, not the other way around, in the monumental game 1 nlds win
On Saturday, during their third game in playoffs, he went to the eighth round with two, two outings, and the dodgers followed by a round – and the Phillies had marked an additional race when he could not go down this triple realmuto.
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Hernández dominated. He smiles. He jumped.
“It was a great moment,” said Ohtani.
In his face, we saw joy.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
