It’s difficult to imagine a more successful one-year deal for both player and team than the recently expired pact between outfielder Teoscar Hernández and the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Generally, the motivation for a player to sign a one-year deal is to reestablish a standard that was much higher before a poorly timed down year dampened his value going into free agency. Coming off a disappointing season with the Mariners in 2023, Hernández was unable to obtain the caliber of multi-year deal he was seeking last winter and instead signed a one-year, $23.5 million pact with the Dodgers, a logical landing spot for any player looking to rediscover the best version of himself.
If the goal was strictly to put up a better season than the previous one and remind the league what he’s capable of, Hernández unquestionably accomplished that in 2024. He raised his OPS by nearly 100 points, hit a career-high 33 home runs and was one of the more productive outfielders in baseball. That said, had Hernández netted similar statistical achievements for, say, the 82-win Twins, we wouldn’t be talking about him nearly as much at the outset of free agency.
But Hernández’s year in Dodger blue carried significant weight beyond his improved numbers. From the earliest days of spring training in February, it became clear that he would be a main character on the team that attracted the most eyeballs of any major-league club. While Shohei Ohtani’s historic 50/50 campaign was the undisputed headline of the Dodgers’ latest run to the NL West title, the division crown could not have been claimed without Hernández’s contributions. In a regular season in which Freddie Freeman was merely very good and Mookie Betts missed two months due to a broken hand, Hernández proved to be the Dodgers’ most consistent source of offensive production not named Ohtani. He made his second career All-Star Game and was the surprise winner of the Home Run Derby, raising his national profile further.
No longer was Hernández a standout slugger for a fringe playoff contender, as he was in Toronto or Seattle; he was a driving force in the heart of a juggernaut lineup for the team with the best record in baseball, a team that eventually stormed through October en route to a World Series championship. Hernández delivered multiple massive swings to help L.A. take down the rival Padres in the NLDS, and he reemerged after a quiet NLCS to drive in several more key runs in the World Series against the Yankees. A season that began with optimism that the talented outfielder could return to star form ended with Hernández in tears on stage at Dodger Stadium, expressing his appreciation for an adoring fan base as part of a raucous championship celebration.
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What went wrong for Hernández in Seattle?
Hernández’s dream season with the Dodgers makes his lone campaign in Seattle look like even more of a miserable slog in retrospect. But it’s inaccurate to suggest that Hernández was downright bad as a Mariner — his production was just wildly uneven.
On the surface, it’s not difficult to understand why Hernández’s 2023 was universally deemed a down year. He struck out a career-high 211 times, ran a career-low 5.6% walk rate and finished with his lowest OPS (.741) since he became an every-day player in 2018. But a closer look reveals that his performance at the plate with Seattle was not a decline in output across the board but, rather, the product of sky-high peaks and particularly unpleasant valleys.
This is crucial for understanding not just why Hernández ended up in Los Angeles on a one-year deal but also how to project him moving forward as he enters free agency a second time on a much higher note.
The most obvious place to start — and the dominant narrative surrounding his struggles — is Hernández’s issues hitting at T-Mobile Park. This is something he has spoke openly about since leaving the Mariners, and the numbers don’t lie: Hernández hit .217/.263/.380 in home games, a far cry from his .295/.344/.486 line away from Seattle that better reflected his career norms in road games.
But the lopsided nature of Hernández’s 2023 performance can be found in more than just his much-discussed home/road splits. Hernández has always hit left-handed pitching a lot more consistently than he has righties (more on that later), but he was especially poor sans the platoon advantage in 2023: His .718 OPS against right-handers was the worst such mark of his career.
Inspect how he performed against certain pitch types, and another notable imbalance emerges: Hernández’s .435 wOBA against four-seam fastballs was tied with Kyle Tucker and Juan Soto for the ninth-best mark in MLB, but his .240 wOBA against sliders, sweepers and curveballs was one of the worst marks among hitters who saw at least 500 such pitches.
The hot-and-cold motif was perhaps most exemplified by Hernández’s month-by-month production. In his career (including 2024), Hernández has had 30 months in which he received at least 80 plate appearances. Here’s where his OPS from each month of the 2023 season ranked among those 30:
Hernández somehow managed to pack both the best month of his career and four of his worst months into the same season.
Add it all up, and Hernández entered the market last offseason looking like a particularly volatile commodity, especially as a corner outfielder offering limited defensive value. It wasn’t a complete disaster of a platform year, but it was enough of a step down in production and consistency from the Silver Slugger-worthy value he provided at his peak in Toronto that teams were wary of jumping on the roller-coaster ride seemingly present within his profile. In turn, Hernández hit free agency a year ago in a weaker position than expected — and his market reflected that.
What went right in L.A.?
Fast-forward a year, and Hernández enters the market again having produced a much more complete campaign at the plate, with his performance as a Dodger markedly more stable across the board.
Liberated from the hitter-unfriendly confines of T-Mobile Park, Hernández excelled in his new home park (.884 OPS), the fairly neutral Dodger Stadium, while remaining productive in road games (.800 OPS). His worst calendar month in 2024 — a .762 OPS in June — was still perfectly respectable. And his best month — a 1.050 OPS in September — was one of the best of his career. He improved against breaking balls to a palatable .325 wOBA while continuing to hit fastballs well, with an especially impressive .420 wOBA against sinkers.
Hernández’s platoon splits also trended favorably. His biggest strength remains his ability to pulverize southpaws as well as almost any hitter on the planet. It is no accident that he batted third against left-handed starters for the Dodgers on occasion down the stretch and in October, even over a former MVP in Freeman; this has been an elite skill for Hernández for a long time. He owns a .902 OPS against left-handed pitching since he became an every-day player in 2018 and a .963 mark since the start of 2021 — fourth in MLB over that span behind only Aaron Judge, Paul Goldschmidt and Ketel Marte (min. 500 plate appearances).
But while Hernández continued to pummel lefties with the Dodgers, even more encouraging was his bounce-back against same-handed arms after such a dismal split in Seattle. Hernández posted an .808 OPS against righties, his best mark in a full- season, with a career-high 22 home runs against same-handers along the way.
All in all, the splits were far less stark. Concerns remain about his limited defensive contributions and his still-high strikeout rate as he ages, but Hernández the hitter did a lot in 2024 to quell concerns about how his bat appeared to be trending a year ago.
What’s next for Hernández?
Where will the next chapter of Hernández’s career take place? He has not been shy about his preference to remain with the Dodgers, but that will depend on a few factors. The positional fit remains ideal, both because of how Hernández excelled in his role in left field and considering GM Brandon Gomes’ recent comments that the team expects to move Mookie Betts back to the infield in 2025, opening up the other corner outfield spot as well.
We also know it won’t be an issue of whether L.A. can afford what Hernández is seeking. Rather, it’ll be a question of the degree to which the Dodgers’ front office prioritizes retaining their new fan favorite outfielder, relative to some of the other bigger free-agent fish available on the market, whether that be engaging in an epic bidding war with the New York clubs for Juan Soto’s services or pursuing another frontline arm a la Corbin Burnes, Blake Snell or Max Fried. As evidenced by their hot stove activity a year ago, participating at the top of the market will not necessarily preclude the Dodgers from also retaining Hernández — especially if he badly wants to stay — but the more their focus is directed elsewhere, the more likely it is that another suitor emerges with an offer Hernández can’t refuse.
As far as other potential landing spots, Boston and Baltimore have reportedly both expressed early interest in Hernández as teams seeking right-handed power. Baltimore might be losing another outfield power source in Anthony Santander, so replacing him with Hernández could be a sensible strategy. The Red Sox and Angels reportedly offered Hernández two-year deals last winter before he opted for the Dodgers’ lucrative one-year offer, so it stands to reason that both teams will be involved again. Other big spenders such as the Phillies, Giants and Mets could certainly use some offensive firepower in the outfield. Maybe an ascendent Tigers club is looking to add some veteran thump to an ultra-young lineup, or perhaps a different kind of reunion is in order: The Astros and Blue Jays could both use a left fielder.
At the very least, it’s safe to say that Hernández’s market will be far hotter in his second go-around in free agency. Whether that lands him back in Dodger blue remains to be seen, but what he accomplished in 2024 has unquestionably put him in position to definitively choose what’s best for him, rather than settling for what a depressed market dictates.
