Kiké's 14th playoff HR shows why the Dodgers wanted a reunion

LOS ANGELES — The nickname Mr. October is already taken But Keke Hernandez has likewise proven himself to be a force opposing teams don't want to reckon with under the bright lights of the postseason.

Hernandez played a key role in sending the Dodgers to their first National League Championship Series since 2021, hitting a solo homer in the second inning that would stand as the winning run in Friday night's 2-0 victory over the Padres.

With his team's season on the line in Game 5 of the NL Division Series, Hernandez stepped in for his first at-bat against San Diego starter Yu Darvish and launched a first-pitch fastball into the left-field pavilion.

If it seems like Hernandez always finds a way to come up big in the postseason, that's because he usually does: his 13.43 home runs per at-bat is fifth-best in postseason history among players with at least 150 plate appearances. Here's who's ahead of him:

“We're in Los Angeles. Some of the greatest athletes of all time. And those greats aren't afraid to fail,” manager Dave Roberts said. “When you talk about the postseason in any sport, you're not afraid to fail. And this guy always rises to the occasion. It was a bet that Andrew [Friedman], [Brandon Gomes]What I had to achieve.

“We got him this year because he won 11 games in October.”

Hernandez tends to dial things up a notch when he's in the spotlight. In his regular-season career, his home run ratio per at-bat dropped to 29.1. More than a quarter of his postseason hits are homers, while the long ball knocked in just 14.5% of his regular season hits. His 14 homers in the postseason — though not all of them came with LA — are the most of any active Dodger.

At this point Hernandez seems preternaturally collected: He's already living in his head.

It all came in 2015 in Hernandez's first postseason. He recalls a disappointing at-bat in Game 5 of the NLDS that year, when he grounded into a double play early in the game. The Dodgers lost by one run and their season ended.

After two years, Hernandez decided he needed to revise his mental approach. He began envisioning every scenario he could imagine leading up to the big games, drawing on his prior experiences to prepare himself as thoroughly as possible.

The first night Hernandez decided to do it, he said, was before Game 5 of the 2017 NLCS. He hit three homers and drove in seven runs the next day and the rest is history.

Heading into Game 5 against the Padres, Hernandez's expectations were higher than what played out on the field. He envisioned himself matching the feat the Mets' Francisco Lindor accomplished a few days earlier: launching a grand slam to help his team advance in emphatic fashion.

He settled down to drive in the winning run.

“It's very easy for you to fail yourself in the postseason,” Hernandez said. “And anxiety, self-doubt, all these things start to creep into your mind. … That's where visualization comes into play. Whenever those thoughts come up, I visualize success over and over again.

“You get on the field the next day, and you've already seen the day happen. So nothing overwhelms you, no moment is too big.”

Hernandez didn't start until Game 4 of this year's NLDS, when lingering injuries to both Freddie Freeman and Miguel Rojas forced Roberts to shuffle his lineup. He is 3-for-7 in his two starts and has fielded well at both third base and center.

It's no doubt a blow to the Dodgers that Freeman and Rojas are largely questionable going forward each game to deal with their injuries. But when their absence creates space in the lineup, opponents beware: Hernandez lives to fill the moment in October.

“In the big games, he's always going to show up,” Gavin Lux said. “He's got that look in his eye that he's going to do something big and this team feeds off of that.”