Enrique and Teoscar Hernández Have Hit the Reset Button in Timely Fashion

Unhittable starting pitching has carried the Dodgers through the Wild Card and Division Series and staked them to a 2-0 lead over the Brewers in the National League Championship Series. But as Blake Snell and Yoshinobu Yamamoto have made the the biggest headlines, some of their elite hitters such as Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, and Will Smith have scuffled. Meanwhile Enrique Hernández and Teoscar Hernández (no relation) have picked up the slack, recalling their contributions during last year’s championship run; their efforts even bookended the fateful game-tying five-run rally in the World Series clincher against the Yankees. After subpar regular seasons married by injuries, both have rediscovered their groove in October.

At American Family Field on Tuesday night, the dynamic duo shone once again during the Dodgers’ 5-1 victory in Game 2. With the team trailing 1-0 in the second inning following Jackson Chourio’s leadoff homer off Yamamoto, Teoscar got ahead 3-0 against Freddy Peralta, then pounced on the next pitch thrown in the zone, a 3-2 hanging curveball, and demolished it for a towering solo home run — 105.9 mph off the bat, with a 39-degree launch angle — to left field.

That was Teoscar’s fourth homer of the playoffs, tying Michael Busch for the postseason lead (Vladimir Guerrero Jr. joined them on Wednesday). Two batters and one out later, Enrique worked the count to 2-2, then ripped a middle-middle four-seamer for a 98-mph groundball single into center field. He scored the go-ahead run when Andy Pages doubled into the right field corner.

Both batters collected their second hits of the night off Abner Uribe, who entered with two outs in the sixth after Max Muncy’s homer extended the Dodgers’ lead to 3-1. Teoscar gave a rude welcome to Uribe, lining a single off his right leg and taking second base when the pitcher threw wildly from his knees into foul territory. He went no further, but Enrique got things cooking in the seventh inning by lofting a 101-mph drive to the base of the center field wall for a leadoff double. Pages sacrificed him to third, and then Ohtani drove him in with a single to right for the Dodgers’ fourth run.

The extra cushioning, which included another run in the eighth, emboldened manager Dave Roberts to allow Yamamoto to throw the Dodgers’ first postseason complete game since Jose Lima went the distance against the Cardinals in the 2004 Division Series.

Through their team’s eight postseason games — a two-game sweep of the Reds in the Wild Card Series, a four-game victory over the Phillies in the NLDS, and the first two games against the Brewers — the two Hernándezes lead all Dodgers regulars in wRC+. Enrique is hitting .379/.455/.517 for a 176 wRC+; he’s tops among the regulars in batting average, on-base percentage, and runs scored (seven) despite hitting sixth or lower in all eight games, and eighth in both NLCS games. Teoscar is hitting .294/.333/.676 for a 175 wRC+ while leading the team in slugging percentage; in addition to being tied for the overall postseason home run lead, he’s tied with Guerrero for the RBI lead with 10. Those performances have helped offset the struggles of Ohtani (.147/.275/.324, 40 wRC+), Pages (.069/.129/.103, -35 wRC+), Smith (.238/.333/.238, 60 wRC+), and Freeman (.217/.333/.304, 77 wRC+ through the first two rounds before collecting two extra-base hits in Game 1). Muncy (155 wRC+), Mookie Betts (141 wRC+), and Tommy Edman (141 wRC+) have bolstered the offense as well, though none has been quite as relentless as either Hernández.

For both players, the postseason has provided an opportunity to turn the page on disappointing regular seasons. Enrique, who missed seven weeks in July and August due to inflammation in his left elbow, hit a dismal .203/.255/.366 with 10 homers and a 70 wRC+, his lowest mark since 2016. His 31.2% chase rate, 13.2% swinging strike rate, and 26.6% strikeout rate all set career highs, with the last of those a seven-point jump from last season, the majors’ seventh-largest increase. As usual, he was better against lefties (.202/.269/.415, 85 wRC+) than righties (.203/.245/.333, 59 wRC+), and was more than solid on the defensive side while filling in at five positions (first, second, third, left, and center). He even threw 5 1/3 innings of mopup relief, with four of his five appearances in blowout wins, though he posted a 15.19 ERA in that context, and in his last two outings, he was so bad that Roberts deployed actual relievers to bail him out.

Given the struggles of Michael Conforto this year (an 83 wRC+ and -0.6 WAR in 138 games), the Dodgers can hardly be faulted for turning to “Señor Octubre,” who has started six of their eight games this postseason in left field plus two at third base (both against Phillies lefty Cristopher Sánchez). No player in baseball history has punched so far above his weight during the postseason for so long; a career .236/.305/.403 (91 wRC+) hitter across 4,152 plate appearances in the regular season, he’s hit .290/.364/.521 (138 wRC+) with 15 home runs in 292 plate appearances in 10 different postseasons, a run that has included four pennants and two championships with the Dodgers.

Enrique has yet to homer this postseason, but he has four two-hit games, four doubles, four walks, and four RBI. His biggest hits have been his game-tying double off the Reds’ Zack Littell in the fourth inning of Wild Card Series Game 2 and his two-run double off Sánchez in the sixth inning of Division Series Game 1, when the Dodgers trailed 3-0. He’s also demonstrated a Zelig-like knack for turning up at other critical moments. His RBI fielder’s choice (which scored Teoscar) opened the scoring in the seventh inning of Division Series Game 2 (his only hitless game thus far); that plate appearance was his second of the series against reliever Orion Kerkering, who retired him in Game 1, and it proved to be invaluable. The next time he faced Kerkering, in the 11th inning of Game 4, he worked a six-pitch walk that loaded the bases, setting stage for the walk-off error that ended the series. Enrique also singled off Uribe amid the ninth-inning rally that gave the Dodgers a much-needed insurance run in Game 1, and he’s added some slick defense at both positions he’s played, as well.

In short, he’s been an absolute bottom-of-the-lineup pest. Both his 12.1% walk rate and 21.2% strikeout rate are substantial improvements on his regular season marks. While his average exit velocity is down from the regular season (86.1 mph versus 90.1), his hard-hit rate is up (from 37.6% to 45.5%), and he’s carrying an absurd .500 BABIP. It all looks rather unsustainable, but the woods are filled with the bones of opposing pitchers who underestimated him in October.

In the wake of last year’s World Series win, Betts hosted a podcast involving several teammates, including Enrique, who offered an eye-opening explanation for his October success, one that he connects to his attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder:

“I think my superpower is also my kryptonite — that’s called ADHD. During the season, my brain is just everywhere and the postseason, it just brings out hyperfocus. I just go into compete mode. I don’t really give a shit about how I feel… When I go to home plate, everything becomes silent, and there’s nobody but the pitcher and I, and I just go into compete mode.”

Prior to Game 2 of the Wild Card Series, after he’d gone 2-for-3 but taken an early exit due to back tightness, Enrique discussed his ability to reset himself in October:

“I know they brought me here for these type of moments… 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, we win it all, and nobody ever remembers what you did in the regular season; everybody remembers what happened in the playoffs.”

Teoscar is working on a similar turnaround following his second mediocre regular season out of the past three. He joined the Dodgers after a one-year stopover in Seattle, where he hit 26 home runs but managed just a 107 wRC+ with 1.9 WAR. He signed a one-year, $23.5 million contract (of which $8.5 million was deferred) with Los Angeles in January 2024, and then hit .272/.339/.501 (132 wRC+) and set career highs in homers (33) and steals (12) en route to 3.4 WAR. The combination of that performance and the good vibes generated by his role in the championship run led the Dodgers to re-sign the slugger (who turned 33 on Wednesday) for three years and $66 million, again with deferrals ($23.5 million), plus a club option for 2028 and a conditional option for ’29 related to time missed due to injury.

Following a hot start — .315/.333/.600 (155 wRC+) with nine home runs through May 5 — Teoscar’s performance eroded after he landed on the injured list due to a Grade 1 groin strain. He missed 12 games then, and three more due to a bone bruise after fouling a ball off his left foot on July 5. From the point of his IL stint through the end of the season, he hit just .223/.268/.404 with 16 homers and an 84 wRC+, with even lower marks in the last category from June through August (successive wRC+ of 62, 80, and 78) before finally heating up (112 wRC+) in September. His final .247/.284/.454 (102 wRC+) line included a career-low OBP, his lowest wRC+ since his 41-game 2016 rookie season with the Astros, and a drop to 0.6 WAR.

Teoscar struggled with the mechanics of his swing, as you might surmise. A look at his batting stance metrics at Statcast shows that after setting up with a stance angle that was open by an average of 1 degree from June through September of last year (and didn’t deviate by more than a degree in either direction prior), his monthly averages were all over the map this season, as the placement of his left (front) foot and the width of his stance varied: 5 degrees in March/April, then successive months at 16, 8, 3, 9, and 3 again. He still swung about as hard as last season, but his quality of contact suffered:

The declines in the individual metrics themselves stand out less than the broader trend regarding his percentile rankings; where Teoscar ranged from the 74th to the 94th percentile in exit velo, barrel and hard-hit rates, and xWOBA in 2024, he spanned the 55th and 72nd percentiles in those categories in ’25. In other words, he just wasn’t as special.

In terms of his quality of contact, Teoscar was generally trending upward over the final month of the season, and so far in the postseason, he’s produced an average exit velo of 91.6 mph, with an 11.1% barrel rate, a 55.6% hard-hit rate, a .524 xSLG, and a .369 xwOBA — all substantially higher than his regular season marks save for the barrel rate, which is a close enough approximation.

Teoscar doesn’t depend heavily on pull-side power for his production. His pulled air rate in 2024 was just 13.9%; it shows up in light blue on his Statcast page. That rate dipped to 12.6% and a slightly darker blue this year. His 1.053 SLG on opposite field fly balls ranked third in the majors last season, behind only Rafael Devers and Aaron Judge, both of whom had much shorter fence distances to contend with (Fenway Park’s Green Monster and Yankee Stadium’s short porch). This year, that SLG slipped to .581:

Teoscar lost an average of nine feet on his opposite field fly balls, compared to 22 feet on his pulled ones, but the change in the former often meant the difference between an extra-base hit and an out. So far in the postseason, he’s hit five oppo flies, which have averaged a more representative 309 feet; he’s slugging 1.600 on those, with two leaving the yard: his fifth-inning solo shot off the Reds’ Connor Phillips in the Wild Card Series opener, and his seventh-inning three-run blast off the Phillies’ Matt Strahm in Game 1 of the Division Series. Obviously, that’s an extremely small sample, but it bodes well.

Teoscar’s lower-body injuries had an impact on other facets of his game, as well. His sprint speed dropped from the 83rd percentile last year to the 68th in 2025, and he slipped from 12 stolen bases in 15 attempts to five in seven attempts; he stole just one base after his IL stint. Defensively, for the second year in a row, his metrics were brutal, this time while playing right field exclusively instead of splitting time between the corners:

Among right fielders, only Juan Soto (-13) and Nick Castellanos (-12) had lower FRVs this season. As in 2024, Roberts often replaced Teoscar for defensive purposes in the late innings, generally moving Pages over from center and inserting a reserve in center. Lately, that job has gone to Justin Dean, who between the regular and postseasons has played 26 games while getting to bat just twice.

One can hardly blame Roberts for that tactic, which he deployed frequently even before things came to a head following a walk-off loss on August 18 at Coors Field. In that one, two plays by Teoscar set up three of the four runs the Rockies scored. In the third inning, he pulled up short in pursuit of a Brenton Doyle fly ball, then threw to the wrong base, resulting in runners on second and third; both scored on a subsequent single. In the ninth, playing in a no-doubles alignment, he was too slow pursuing an Ezequiel Tovar fly ball; instead it deflected off his glove as he charged in, setting up the game-winning hit. “He’s got to get better out there,” said Roberts afterwards. “There’s just no way to put it. I know there’s effort — it’s not a lack of effort. But the thing is, we’ve just got to get better.”

Teoscar’s defensive lapses haven’t entirely abated. In the second inning of the Division Series opener, he was too slow in preventing a J.T. Realmuto grounder into right-center from rolling to the wall. The Phillies’ first two runs scored on the play, and Realmuto slid headfirst into third with a triple. “I was playing straight in. I didn’t get a good angle,” Teoscar told reporters afterwards. “It went by me.” Fortunately, he rebounded to hit what proved to be the game’s decisive home run. “At the end of the day, for me, anything that happened before a big moment like that, it’s in the past. I try to put it in the trash and just focus on the things that I need to do in that at-bat.”

Turning the page, flipping the script, hitting the reset button, taking out the trash — choose your metaphor — is an essential skill in baseball given the grind of the season and the frequency of failure. For both Hernándezes, it’s just one more way in which they’ve helped the Dodgers separate themselves from the pack and play deep into October.