Teoscar Hernández Bound for L.A. On One-Year Deal

Like the wealthiest man in the grocery store, whose cart is so full of expensive foodstuffs that an extra block of aged cheese merely blends into the bill, the Dodgers have signed Teoscar Hernández. This deal allows them to fill the J.D. Martinez-shaped void in the lineup by replacing him with the other corner outfield/DH guy the mid-2010s Astros gave up on too early.

Hernández, 31, will make a sticker value of $23.5 million over his one-year contract, though — and you might want to make sure you’re sitting down for this one — the practical value of the deal will be lowered to roughly $20.4 million by deferrals. Hernández probably will not register as more than an afterthought in an offseason that brought in Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Tyler Glasnow. (I’m old enough to remember the 2000-01 free agent class being billed as: Alex Rodriguez, Mike Mussina, Manny Ramirez, Mike Hampton… and also Darren Dreifort!) But Teoscar brings necessary right-handed pop to a lineup that could have used a little extra power, particularly from that side of the plate.

Hernández is coming off a bit of a turbulent season in Seattle. The Mariners acquired him from Toronto in exchange for pitching prospect Adam Macko and Erik Swanson, a good reliever with a couple years of team control left. They knew Hernández was in his walk year, and that his impressive power and batted-ball numbers came at the cost of some pretty terrible strikeout-to-walk figures.

Seattle’s mistake, if you want to call it that (a more charitable description would be losing on a calculated risk) was focusing on what Hernández could be, rather than what he is. Hernández put up three huge offensive seasons to end his 20s: a ridiculous COVID-shortened 2020, in which he had a 142 wRC+ and 16 home runs in just 50 games, followed by two seasons of wRC+ in the low 130s.

A hitter who’ll swing and miss, but who punishes the ball on contact — Hernández was in the upper 90th percentiles for stats like hard-hit rate and xSLG his last year in Toronto — conjures images of Bryce Harper or Corey Seager. The Mariners gave up a useful pitcher in order to pay such a player $14 million over one year. Unfortunately, Teoscar at his best is more like Harper or Seager at their worst, and not only did that step into legitimate MVP territory never come, he took a step backward in 2023.

Those elite quality-of-contact numbers backed up into the merely “very good” range in 2023, while Hernández took more forays than ever outside the strike zone: His 38.5% O-Swing rate was the highest of his career, and his 5.6% walk rate was the lowest of his career. Despite playing a career-high 160 games, Hernández hit just 26 home runs and posted his lowest wRC+, 105, since 2019.

When free agency came around, the Mariners didn’t even tender him a qualifying offer.

Silly them; Hernández ended up finding a team to give him more money (at least on paper, before deferrals) to play on a better roster with better infrastructure to help him succeed. If the Dodgers can fix Jason Heyward, they can turn Hernández into Stan Musial.

The Dodgers don’t need him to become a franchise hitter, to be clear; they already have three of those, in Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Freddie Freeman (seen here photobombing a singer-songwriter at the Golden Globes).

But that lineup was getting a little lefty-heavy, even with Betts leading off and Will Smith in the fold. The Dodgers already added Manuel Margot in the Glasnow trade, which would presumably move Betts to second base full-time and figure into a platoon with Heyward. (Margot posted a reverse split in 2023 but is more normal for the rest of his career.) Putting Hernández in the other corner gives the Dodgers a legitimately impactful right-handed hitter.

Hernández has never had such a severe platoon split that it impact his ability to play every day, but he’s always done better against lefties than righties: 120 wRC+ vs. 100 last season, 136 vs. 110 for his career.

All in all, the Dodgers sticking a good hitter in left field on a lucrative one-year deal is a blindingly obvious value proposition for both player and team. Even Hernández’s down year in Seattle was worth 1.8 WAR. That’s not the kind of bargain that’ll get managerial efficiency porn written about your team, but it’s fine. Barring injury (and Hernández has no significant history of that), the Dodgers make out fine even in a realistic worst-case scenario. From an on-field perspective, there just isn’t that much to hem and haw about.

The financial side of it is a little more interesting, if only because the Dodgers (if only by reputation) are ruining baseball or whatever by trying to sign good players. It bears repeating that even with this glut of signings, the Dodgers are still only second behind the Mets in taxable payroll, and only $32 million ahead of the all-homegrown, all-under-market extensions, do-it-the-right-way Braves. And those selfsame Braves are on course to spend $38 million more than the Rangers, whose World Series doesn’t count because they signed a bunch of free agents. At least I think that’s how it works, from a normative perspective.

The Dodgers are one of only a few entities in baseball who understand that money is all made up anyway, and penalties that come only in money don’t have to impact the on-field product.

When the Dodgers signed Hernández, they were already over the second tax surcharge threshold of $277 million. That’s the one where all the draft pick penalties kick in. Anything beyond that only costs money. Especially because the Mariners didn’t put a qualifying offer on Hernández on his way out the door.

I heard once that people who don’t have their emotional needs met for long enough will convince themselves that they don’t actually need the love and support they’ve been missing. (As portrayed in the saddest scene from the final season of Succession.) And based on their budgeting, I’m starting to suspect that the Mariners feel the same way about making the playoffs. Either way, they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) risk Hernández accepting a qualifying offer, which as a revenue sharing recipient would’ve netted them a pick in the second compensation round when he signed with another team. Last year, Round 2C was picks no. 68 through 70.

The Dodgers, therefore, retain the two picks they would’ve lost for signing Hernández. Signing Ohtani cost L.A. their second- and fifth-highest picks, plus $1 million in international bonus pool money; signing an additional qualified free agent would’ve cost the Dodgers their third- and sixth-highest picks as well. Moreover, since Hernández has never been given a qualifying offer in his career, the Mariners’ conservative behavior gives the Dodgers a chance to recoup a pick in the 2025 draft if the Hernández signing pans out.

If Hernández hits, the Dodgers could drop a qualifying offer on him and receive a draft pick in Round 4C. In 2023, those picks landed from no. 132 to 137 in the draft, and each came with a pool value just shy of half a million dollars. For a team in perpetual win-now mode, like the Dodgers, every additional pick helps.

It’s amazing what a motivated baseball team can do merely by spending money, and how much the inaction of its competitors allows such a team to profit even more.