PHILADELPHIA — Teoscar Hernández knew immediately how well he connected on Matt Strahm’s fastball. He knew it was going to be either a double or a home run.
“Thank God, it went out of the park,” he said in Spanish. “And we were able to take the lead in the game.”
Hernández’s three-run shot to right-center field pushed the Dodgers ahead of the Phillies by two runs in the top of the seventh, a lead they would hold onto in their 5-3 win at Citizens Bank Park on Saturday, taking Game 1 of the NLDS.
It was another big moment this postseason for Hernández, who knocked his third long ball this October. It was also the fifth go-ahead homer in the seventh inning or later while the Dodgers were trailing in franchise postseason history, joining an exclusive club with Freddie Freeman (2024 World Series Game 1), Justin Turner (2018 NLCS Game 2), Juan Uribe (2013 NLDS Game 4), and Kirk Gibson (1988 World Series Game 1).
And, it helped erase a costly blunder in right field earlier in the game.
With the first two runners of the second inning on base, J.T. Realmuto smoked a liner into the alley. Hernández looked like he might have had an angle on it, but he slowed down as the ball skipped past him and hit the wall before Andy Pages could get to it from center field.
“I was playing straight in. I didn’t get a good angle,” he said. “He hit it pretty good. I tried to get it, so he can’t go all the way to third or they can score two runs in that situation. It went by me.”
Realmuto ended up with a two-run triple and later scored on a sac fly to put the Dodgers in an early three-run hole.
“I’ve got to look at it again,” manager Dave Roberts said. “I would argue that he wasn’t not trying. But, yeah, that’s a ball that you don’t want Realmuto to have a triple, certainly a short right field.”
That play was put under more of a microscope because for most of the game, the Dodgers looked overmatched against Phillies starter Cristopher Sánchez. They had collectively struck out seven times and only registered two base hits through the first five innings. Sánchez’s changeup was especially damaging to the Dodgers lineup as they swung on it 19 times and missed on 12 of those attempts.
“Sánchez was really, really, really nasty tonight, as we say,” Hernández said in Spanish. “Got to give credit where it’s due. He was throwing his pitches exactly where he needed to, he wasn’t missing a lot in the strike zone.”
During the pregame hitters’ meeting, hitting coach Aaron Bates emphasized to the players that Philadelphia is a tough place to play. He reminded them that they have been in tough postseason environments before — Petco Park last season, Oracle Park in 2021 — and, just as they did both those times, Bates implored them to cut through how loud the crowd was. To stay the course.
“There’s certain places that it’s hard to play in October,” Bates said. “So you just have to really stick to whatever your plan is that day and kind of have tunnel vision, I guess you could say. Just build momentum for yourself.”
That momentum started to build in the sixth, when the Dodgers rallied with two outs as Freeman walked and Tommy Edman lined a single to right field just past the outstretched glove of Bryson Stott.
He lined a double down the left-field line that scored both Freeman and Edman to bring the Dodgers within a run of the Phillies and chased Sánchez from the game.
“It broke the seal,” Bates said. “It takes one of those knocks to break it open. And Kiké, we know how he is in October. … You’re always kind of waiting for that big hit. And he got it with that double.”
It’s the kind of hit that Teoscar Hernández — and everybody else, for that matter — have come to expect from “October Kiké.”
“What can I say about Kiké?” Teoscar Hernández said in Spanish. “Kiké’s been doing this for several years now. It’s not a surprise to anybody that he can do that, tonight and in the playoffs.”
Teoscar Hernández followed that up in the next inning with his three-run shot that ultimately proved to be the game winner to put the Dodgers up 1-0 in the best-of-five series.
“It’s really hard to score runs,” Miguel Rojas said. “But when you have a chance to have a guy like Teo in the lineup, whatever happened in the past, it doesn’t matter for him.
“He’s ready for the opportunity and if you make a bad pitch, he’s going to make you pay.”
