How Dodgers hope Teoscar Hernández turns around disappointing season

Pittsburgh – It was not quite a bench. But it nevertheless served as a reminder.

Last year, in many ways, Teoscar Hernández was the heart and soul of the Dodgers. Not their best player. Nor their greatest star. But someone who provided effervescent vibrations in the clubhouse, a veteran leadership in the canoe and the clutch strikes in several of the greatest moments of the season on the plate.

“Teo is a guy on which we counted a lot last year,” said manager Dave Roberts. “It’s a guy I really admire, because he can balance the funny part of baseball but also have this advantage.”

This year, however, frustration has sprayed much of the pleasure. The difficulties have finished its usual edge.

Between injuries, crises, defensive errors and mechanical swing defects, Hernández endured one of his worst career seasons. He only strikes 0.247, his lowest since 2019. He has a .734 ops, the lowest in his career and just a welding over the average of the league. Its limited range in the right field has led to a wave of abandoned bullets and to some of the poorest defensive measures of any large fever in position. And to return to the last week of June, no other Dodger player (not even Michael Comforto) has been worth less victories above the replacement than the negative bar of Hernández at 0.5, according to Fangraphs.

“For me, not being the same as last year is a bit frustrating,” said Hernández. “I don’t want to be like that. I want to be better than last year. But it’s baseball. That’s life. You just have to continue working, to continue to trust yourself and to the things you can do to help the team. ”

Last weekend, however, Roberts had a different idea. In the middle of the last cold spell of Hernández, the outfall was unexpected for the final of the series of Sunday against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

“It’s an everyday guy,” said Roberts that day. “But I think where we are, you must also play to justify being there every day.”

This decision was not punitive, Roberts also representing Monday’s leave on Monday in the hope that “a two-day reset could help” double All-Star.

But still, with the section of the approaching season, the manager also left an index to his star slugger.

“I think we have lost a little of this advantage in the past two months,” said Roberts on Tuesday about Hernández, having had “many conversations” to communicate the same message with him personally.

“For me, I want to see this edge, this fight, this fire, and I bet on any result. I just want to see this. We have exceeded the mechanical part of [his struggles with his swing]. Let’s just go into the fight. I saw it. And I think that’s what will happen next month and beyond. »»

This is not the position in which the dodgers should be located when they re -signed Hernández to a contract of $ 66 million over three years during the offseason – a move that Roberts described as “evidence” at the time after pushing the front office to bring the liter to Los Angeles.

He trusted the bat of Hernández, which crushed 33 circuits and 99 points produced in his first Dodgers season in 2024. He appreciated the heart rate of Hernández, and how he delivered one of the biggest swings of the season during the fifth round of match 5 of the World Series.

By bringing Hernández back, the Dodgers hoped that his simple presence would increase the rest of the championship defense list this year.

“He knows his value for our ball club,” said Roberts. “He knows my expectations about him individually.”

Only, so far, Hernández has struggled to reproduce the same intangible magic.

After the start of the end of the season (average of 0.315, nine circuits and an MLB-MOL-MORS 34 points produced during its first 33 games), the voltiper underwent a voltage of the groin / adductor while extending for an online journey in Miami, landing on the list of injuries for two weeks. On his return, he looked far from 100%, fighting to rediscover his swing or cover a lot of ground on the right. Shortly after, a crisis settled. And as he stretched during the summer – composed by the contusion of the feet on a fault of the ball which he suffered in July – the frustration began to rise.

“It’s difficult when you feel good and something is going on and you have to miss … whatever the amount of games,” said Hernández. “It was one of them for me this year. I injured myself, then I came back. I dirty it with my foot and I missed games [again]. “”

He added later: “For me, being injured is more frustrating than having a bad year. I prefer to be on the field spending a bad year, than not being on the ground and fighting back and forth.”

Staying on the ground, of course, did not alleviate the problems of Hernández. After the stars break, he said that his body had finally started to feel better. On Tuesday, he proclaimed that his groin and his foot are back in full health.

And yet, during his previous eight games, he had only beaten three for 27 before the programming Sunday withdrawn. Worse than that, he had fallen into a habit of running too much, which led to non -competitive bats both that Roberts had tried to underline the opposite.

“”[I want to see] Teo begins to have this advantage, ”Roberts reiterated.

In the return of Hernández to the programming on Tuesday, certain positive signs finally presented themselves. He rejected a pair of two -strike land before lining a single second -handed. He did the same during the third round to drive in a race. Defensively, there was another embarrassing moment, when Hernández failed to make a sliding catch on a shallow fly ball on the line of the right field in the first round of Pittsburgh Pirates Pirates. But even on this game, Roberts supported the post -match, Hernández made a good jump and covered a lot of ground – penetrating the kind of hard sprint which had not always been there earlier this season.

“If I see a good jump leaving the ball, good effort, I have no problem with that,” said Roberts.

Really, that’s all Roberts hopes to go ahead now.

Having the kind of coherent intensity that has sometimes wobble this season. To rekindle this balance of having fun and playing with an edge in the stretch of the season.

“We will see this,” said Roberts. “I have no doubt.”

“You leave everything on the ground,” resolved Hernández. “I will continue to work, continue to do my routine, continue to do what I do normally to get back on the right track. And I hope to get the results I want to help the team. ”