LOS ANGELES — Teoscar Hernández unloaded on a hanging slider from Reds starter Hunter Greene. He held his bat as the ball flew into the night sky, taking a second to admire it. The Dodger Stadium crowd cheered so loudly that parts of the ballpark shook, and Hernández flung his bat into the air as he took off toward first base for his first home run of the 2025 postseason.
As he rounded first, Hernández felt one thing.
“Excited,” he said of his three-run shot. “It’s great, especially in the moment, with the team ahead because Shohei was hitting his homer in the first inning. But it’s great to have those moments and win games.”
Two pitches later, Tommy Edman also went deep, turning on an inside slider from Greene to give the Dodgers a commanding five-run lead over the Reds in the third inning of their eventual 10-5 win in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series.
Shohei Ohtani electrified the crowd with his first-inning homer, but Hernández and Edman — himself only one year removed from capturing MVP honors in the NL Championship Series against the Mets — made their presence known with back-to-back homers in the third. Hernández added a solo shot in the fifth to cap a 3-for-5 night with four RBIs in the Dodgers’ emphatic series-opening victory.
Quite a big night for the “other guys.”
“I think it’s the clutch gene,” manager Dave Roberts said. “I think they’re not afraid to fail. They like the spotlight. And it’s just a really good heartbeat for those guys in those big moments.”
Another one of those big moments came two innings after the back-to-back heroics, when Hernández took a fastball on the outer part of the plate and drove it into the seats the opposite way.
“It was awesome,” Edman said of Hernández’s night. “He had such huge homers last year, giant hits in the playoffs. He comes through in those big moments … a great start to the postseason today.”
It was the second time Hernández has homered twice in a postseason game; he previously did it for the Blue Jays in Game 2 of the 2022 AL Division Series against the Mariners.
With Ohtani adding two home runs of his own — including a 454-foot moonshot following his leadoff blast — the Dodgers became the fifth team in postseason history to have two players hit multiple homers in the same game. They also have the three most recent multihomer postseason games, with Hernández and Ohtani joining Andy Pages‘ two-homer performance in Game 5 of the 2024 NLCS against the Mets.
Edman said he and teammates had been talking pregame about making their mark in the game early. His home run on the heels of Hernández’s was a great way to establish that kind of presence.
“I feel like I definitely had, obviously, a good postseason last year. I felt like I was swinging it pretty well at the end of this year, too,” Edman said. “So I think just continuing with all the work that I’ve been doing, hopefully I can have a similar experience this year.”
Edman left the game in the seventh inning to manage a lingering ankle injury that he aggravated last week in Arizona. Roberts and Edman both looked at it as an opportunity to get him off his feet ahead of Game 2 on Wednesday.
The Dodgers’ five total homers on Tuesday tied a franchise record for most in a postseason game, equaling their total from Game 5 of the 2021 NLCS and Game 3 of the 2020 NLCS — both against the Braves.
And it wasn’t just power fueling Los Angeles’ attack against Cincinnati, as the Dodgers manufactured two more runs from the bottom of the order in the seventh inning on singles by Miguel Rojas, Alex Call and Ben Rortvedt, aided by a throwing error by right fielder Noelvi Marte.
Roberts doesn’t expect to score 10 runs in every game, but he noted that it was good to see that the way they finished out the regular season — winners of 15 of their last 20 games — is carrying over to begin October.
“Momentum is real,” Roberts said. “It’s not everything. I think that whether it’s the Rangers finding their way into the postseason to then win the World Series, or some team finishing hot and remaining hot, or in a particular game — I do believe that in a postseason game, momentum is real in how you manage it, to not let it spiral.”
