Hernandez puts playoff streak on the line
‘I came here this year and expect to play in October’
When the Red Sox set out to improve their roster without dropping the kind of money that would’ve put them back in luxury tax jail, one player seemed like the perfect fit: Kiké Hernandez.
He filled the two positions the Sox needed most, second base and center field, and he had something in abundance that the Sox didn’t have a lot of: playoff experience.
Of the 129 active MLB players with at least 20 playoff games on their resume, the Red Sox had just one: Xander Bogaerts.
A year ago, they had four: Bogaerts, Mookie Betts, Andrew Benintendi and Jackie Bradley Jr. But Betts and Benintendi were traded, Bradley left for free agency and Bogaerts is now alone.
Enter Hernandez, who has played in so many playoff games (58) he says he can no longer remember them.
“I don’t know if this happens to everybody, but I talked to a few people and this happened the same way: Once you play so many playoff games, they all blend in,” he told the Herald this week. “It’s a little bit of a blur… I don’t remember much.”
Hernandez has appeared in more World Series games (17) than the majority of the Red Sox roster has playoff appearances.
He entered the majors with the Astros in 2014, got traded to the Marlins that July, was traded from the Marlins to the Dodgers that December, made his Dodgers debut the following April and has since gone to the postseason every single year.
“You always need guys like that, guys you can count on and rely on to have younger guys to go and talk to,” he said.
“I don’t consider myself an old guy, but I’ve played a lot of postseason baseball so I feel like I have some things I can bring to the table.”
There are only eight active players in baseball with more postseason appearances than Hernandez: Yadier Molina, Albert Pujols, Jon Jay, Brett Gardner, Justin Turner, Joc Pederson, Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa and George Springer.
But until 2020, Hernandez’s postseason efforts had always ended in failure, most notably in ’17, when the Dodgers and Astros exchanged blows in an epic seven-game series that went in Houston’s favor.
Three years later, it was revealed that the Astros had been cheating, and it was their bench coach, Alex Cora, who was determined to be the mastermind.
The Los Angeles City Council called on MLB to give the Dodgers the World Series trophy last January, creating headlines just as the Dodgers were participating in their annual FanFest.
At the time, Hernandez didn’t hide his feelings.
“They cheated and they got away with it and they got a ring out of it,” he said at FanFest last year. “If nothing happened to them as players, good for them…
“I think the fact that we got cheated in the World Series, whether you apologize or not, it is what it is. The other way of cheating, when you do steroids, you apologize. But for whatever reason, since they were able to get away with it, they didn’t have to apologize. Maybe they’re going to apologize in the future, I don’t know.”
Asked this week about it, he said, “I don’t really care if I get an apology or not, to be honest.”
Hernandez said he’s over it, evidence by him signing a two-year, $14-million deal with a team now managed by Cora. Another member of the ’17 Astros, Marwin Gonzalez, is now Hernandez’s teammate.
“I’ve moved past it,” Hernandez said. “I won a World Series. I got my ring. I’m not losing any sleep over it. Me and Alex talked in the offseason. I know how he feels about it, I know he was honest about his apology and everything. I didn’t talk to Marwin about it. I didn’t feel like it was necessary to have that conversation. We’re on the same side now.”
Given Hernandez’s Dodgers also lost to the Red Sox in ’18, he now finds himself in a locker room surrounded by guys he’s previously competed against in the World Series.
“It’s not weird,” he said. “It was a weird feeling because I got here being one of the new guys, but I knew so many people already that I didn’t necessarily feel like a new guy.”
Memories of ‘18 are less enjoyable for Hernandez than most of his new Red Sox teammates, who “give me a hard time about the fact that they beat us.”
“We understood that the strength of that (Red Sox) team was the rotation,” he said. “Every game we went in with a plan of getting to the bullpen early to try to expose them a little bit. It didn’t really work out that way. They kept mixing in relievers and starters coming out of the bullpen and it just threw us off our game plan. We were never really able to get in a groove. That’s why the Series went it way the went.”
He knows it’s not his responsibility alone to take the last-place Red Sox back into contention. He thinks they have a good chance and “hopefully we’ll be in the race once Chris Sale comes back.”
Asked if he gets nervous for playoff games anymore, Hernandez quickly said no.
“But I do get excited,” he said. “I’ve done it the last six years. I came here this year and expect to play in October again. You get addicted to that feeling of winning.
“It’s not a bad thing to be addicted to winning.”