It’s important in life, as well as in baseball, to know when a relationship has run its course and it’s time to shake hands and part on good terms. Equally, if conversely, it’s important to know when not to screw with something that works.
So Teoscar Hernández is coming back to Los Angeles. The hard-hitting outfielder will make $22 million per year for three years, with a club option for a fourth at $15 million. Because this is the Dodgers, there’s all sorts of accounting rigmarole baked into the contract: a $23 million signing bonus, and another $23 million in deferred money, which will drop the value of the contract for CBT purposes (by exactly how much, we don’t know quite yet).
A year ago, the outfielder signed with the Dodgers on a one-year prove-it contract. Hernández, a first-time free agent, was in an odd situation at the time. He’d been a critical middle-of-the-order hitter for the Blue Jays in the first few years of the 2020s, but he was due to make $14 million in his final year of team control, so Toronto sent him to Seattle.
The only way it could’ve turned out worse is if Hernández had gotten hurt or somehow been stricken blind. T-Mobile Park is the worst ballpark in the league for right-handed hitters, and Hernández — whose game is entirely built on offense — suited his new environs as poorly as you might imagine. Actually, it was even worse than that: Hernández posted his highest strikeout rate in three years and his lowest walk rate ever, and his wRC+ dropped from 130 to 106, so you can’t even place all the blame on the stadium.
That nightmare of a walk year depressed Hernández’s market to the point where the Dodgers were able to wrap him up for one year and $23.5 million (which was closer to $20.4 million after taking deferrals into account).
And he looked like a new man. Hernández collected a career-high 33 home runs and hit .272/.339/.501, for a wRC+ of 134. Even taking his horrendous defense into account — 302nd out of 304 outfielders in defense last season — he was a 3.5-WAR player. Seattle wanted Hernández to be the second-best hitter on the team; the Dodgers, with their three-MVP lineup, needed him to be something like their fifth-best option.
Put another way: In both 2023 and 2024, Hernández’s most common spot in the batting order was fourth. The guys hitting in front of him in Seattle weren’t bad by any means — this was before the Mariners all forgot how to hit this summer, remember — but the Dodgers are a completely different animal. Here are the most common 1-2-3 lineup combinations for the 2023 Mariners and the 2024 Dodgers, along with the percentage of Hernández’s total plate appearances that came with either runners on base or runners in scoring position:
How Well Has This Table Been Set, and How Much is Teoscar Eating?
*Ohtani was the Dodgers’ most-used leadoff hitter and no. 2 hitter, followed by Betts in both cases. They hit 1-2 in some order in 112 of Betts’ 115 starts
And it sure seemed like Hernández was having fun at work in 2024. He quickly established a bromance with Ohtani — by June, people were putting together montages of their interactions set to Coldplay — and endeared himself to the fans. Which makes sense — who wouldn’t love a guy who slugs .500 and spreads positive energy?
If this was destined to be a brief collaboration, it would’ve been one for the books: One year, career high in homers, make the All-Star team, win the Home Run Derby, win a Silver Slugger, win the World Series, see ya later. It’s like a memorable recurring role on a long-running sitcom — lots of fun, even if you know deep down it wasn’t meant to last.
Most of all, that one-year contract with the Dodgers set Hernández up for a more successful second go-around in free agency. The Mets, no stranger to free spending themselves, offered Hernández a two-year deal with a similar AAV but no deferrals. That wasn’t enough to entice Hernández to sign, but it turned out to be highly effective in terms of getting the J.G. Wentworth jingle (“877-CASH-NOW…”) stuck in my head.
The Hernández signing is unusual for a free agent move because we know precisely what a reasonable best-case scenario looks like: We just saw it play out. Surely both Hernández and the Dodgers are expecting another couple seasons of hugs and homers.
The value of Hernández’s contributions seems pretty well settled: A little more than $20 million a year. That’s what he made on a one-year deal last year, and while he turned down not only the Mets’ proposal but a qualifying offer from the Dodgers, it turned out to be in pursuit of more years, not a higher AAV. And if relievers are going for $10 million a year, and any starting pitcher with two arms and a pulse makes $15 million a year, that seems like a pretty reasonable price for a corner outfielder who can actually hit cleanup for a championship team.
A lot of corner outfielders end up at their position because they’re slow or have iron hands. The league-wide wRC+ for left fielders in 2024 was 101; for right fielders, it was 107. You know how many outfielders posted a wRC+ of 130 or better in 400 or more plate appearances in 2024? Only 13. Not a lot of guys can do what Hernández does with the bat, and fewer still are available for nothing but money to a team that has more profits than the Old Testament. I still chuckle sometimes about all the hand-wringing about the Dodgers’ spending. That chatter came to a head when the Dodgers signed Blake Snell, while that very same week Dodgers chairman Mark Walter’s Cadillac F1 team got approval to join the grid in 2026. The company that bankrolls GM’s most expensive racing project probably cares little about the marginal value of the Dodgers’ left fielder.
With all that said, there are obvious causes for concern in the medium term. Hernández only walks at an average rate and even in good years is among the most strikeout-prone hitters in the league. He turned 32 in October, and his defense has already reached a point where he’d probably be DHing if he played for most other teams. The Dodgers, as you probably know, are locked into expensive full-time starters at both first base and DH, so this is as far down the defensive spectrum as Hernández can go without changing teams.
Much of the rest of the Dodgers’ roster — Betts, Gavin Lux, Tommy Edman — was put together with an eye toward flexibility. Even so, having three guys concreted into the three easiest defensive positions is a non-trivial encumbrance for manager Dave Roberts. It’s one he’ll tolerate because the benefits of having Ohtani on the team are, well, substantial. Putting the best player in the world at the top of the batting order does reduce one’s thirst for other options. Nevertheless, I would be quite surprised if the Dodgers didn’t wish they had the ability to plonk some other player in left field at some point in the next three seasons.
But those are poor people problems. The Dodgers are among the very few teams that can afford to make the obvious move every time, so they don’t have to worry quite as much about what happens on the fringes. This masher who loves playing here wants to come back at basically the same salary he made last year? Yeah, let’s not overthink things.
Content Source: blogs.fangraphs.com