And Teoscar goes to the…Dodgers

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. Likewise, on the contrary, it is important to know when not to ruin something that works.

Teoscar Hernández then returns to Los Angeles. The outfielder will make $22 million annually for three years, with a club option for a fourth at $15 million. Since this is the Dodgers, there’s all sorts of accounting bells and whistles in the contract: a $23 million signing bonus and another $23 million in deferred money, which will reduce the value of the contract for CBT purposes (exactly by how much, we don’t know). I don’t know yet).

A year ago, the outfielder signed a one-year prove-it contract with the Dodgers. Hernández, released for the first time, was in a strange situation at the time. He had been a key middle-of-the-pack hitter for the Blue Jays in the early 1920s, but was due to make $14 million in his final year of team control, so Toronto sent him to Seattle.

The only reason things could have been worse was if Hernández had gotten hurt or been blinded somehow. T-Mobile Park is the worst ballpark in the league for right-handed hitters, and Hernández, whose game is built entirely on offense, was as poorly adapted to his new surroundings as you might imagine. In fact, it was even worse: Hernández recorded 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 blame all blame it on the stadium.

That nightmare of a walk-through year depressed Hernández’s market to the point that the Dodgers were able to lock him down for one year and $23.5 million (which was closer to $20.4 million when accounting for deferrals).

And he looked like a new man. Hernández racked up a career-high 33 home runs and hit .272/.339/.501, for a wRC+ of 134. Even accounting for his horrendous defense – 302nd of 304 outfields on defense last season – he was a 3.5- Player WAR. Seattle wanted Hernández to be the team’s second-best hitter; 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 at all – 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 2024 Dodgers, along with the percentage of Hernández’s total plate appearances coming with runners on base or runners in scoring position:

And it sure looked like Hernández was having fun at work in 2024. He quickly established a bromance with Ohtani — by June, people were piecing together montages of their interactions set to Coldplay — and endeared himself to fans. Which makes sense: Who wouldn’t love a guy who shoots .500 and spreads positive energy?

If this was meant to be a brief partnership, it would have been a textbook partnership: one year, one career high in homers, making the All-Star team, winning the Home Run Derby, winning a Silver Slugger, winning the World Series, see you later. It’s like a memorable recurring role on a long-running sitcom: great fun, even if deep down you know it wasn’t meant to last.

Most importantly, that one-year deal with the Dodgers set Hernández up for a more successful second go-around in free agency. The Mets, no strangers to free spending, offered Hernández a two-year contract with a similar AAV but no deferrals. This wasn’t enough to entice Hernández to sign, but it proved very effective in getting the JG Wentworth jingle (“877-CASH-NOW…”) stuck in my head.

Signing Hernández is unusual for a free agent move because we know exactly what a reasonable best-case scenario looks like: We just saw it unfold. Surely both Hernández and the Dodgers are expecting another couple of seasons of hugs and homers.

The value of Hernández’s contributions seems fairly well established: just over $20 million per year. That’s what he did on a one-year deal last year, and while he turned down not only the Mets’ offer but a qualifying offer from the Dodgers, it turns out he was looking for more years, not a higher AAV. And if relievers cost $10 million a year, and any starting pitcher with two arms and a wrist makes $15 million a year, that seems like a pretty reasonable price for a corner outfielder who can actually clean up for a championship team.

Many corner outfielders end up in their position because they are slow or have iron hands. The league-wide WRC+ for left fielders in 2024 was 101; for right fielders, it was 107. Do you know how many fielders posted a WRC+ of 130 or better in 400 or more plate appearances in 2024? Only 13. There aren’t many who can do what Hernández does with the bat, and even fewer are available just for money for a team that has more profits than the Old Testament. I still laugh sometimes at all the hand-wringing about the Dodgers’ spending. That chatter came to a head when the Dodgers hired Blake Snell, while that same week Dodgers president Mark Walter’s Cadillac F1 team won approval to join the grid in 2026. The company financing America’s most expensive racing project GM probably cares little about the marginal value of the Dodgers’ left fielder.

That said, there are obvious reasons for concern in the medium term. Hernández walks at an average pace 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 would probably DH if he played for most other teams. The Dodgers, as you probably know, are stuck with expensive full-time starters at both first base and DH, so this is as far down the defensive spectrum as Hernández can get to without changing teams.

Much of the rest of the Dodgers roster — Betts, Gavin Lux, Tommy Edman — was put together with an eye on flexibility. Even so, having three guys slotted into the three easiest defensive positions is a non-trivial obstacle for manager Dave Roberts. It’s something 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 reduces the thirst for other options. However, I would be quite surprised if the Dodgers didn’t wish they had the option to place a few more players in left field at some point over the next three seasons.

But these are problems of the poor. 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 as much about what happens on the sidelines. Does this spiker who loves playing here want to come back with basically the same salary he got last year? Yes, we don’t overthink things.