The Los Angeles Dodgers are back in the National League Championship Series for the first time since 2021 after defeating the San Diego Padres, 2-0, in a winner-take-all game at Dodger Stadium.
Kiké Hernández delivered the decisive hit with a solo home run in the bottom of the second. It was the 14th homer of his postseason career and ninth as a member of the Dodgers.
In 18 playoff series over nine seasons, Hernández is hitting a robust .277/.351/.548 across 75 games.
“I don’t know. Kind of back to what I said, these are the types of games that we dream about as kids,” Hernández said before Game 5 when asked to explain his postseason success.
“You’ve got to have the right mindset, the right mentality, to come in here and just find a way to dominate the day. Something I do at night is I visualize a lot.
“I go to sleep and I envision the next day; pitchers we’re facing; situations, whether it’s offensively or defensively; running the bases; and just envision myself having success all throughout the game; big moments, no matter the situation or the moment, just finding ways to get the job done.
“There’s anxiety and things like that that we go through as athletes, especially in big situations, big games, especially in October. And whenever you feel that little anxiety or whatever it is creep in, you just go back to visualizing yourself having success.
“And you just find a way, whatever it is, that you’ve got to find so that when the moment shows up, when the big moment shows up and you step up to the plate or whatever it is. You don’t let the moment get too big. You feel like you’re bigger than the moment and there’s no moment that’s going to get too big for you. That’s my mentality.
“That’s how I see the game and how I go about it.”
Hernández noted he didn’t always have that positive mindset for October baseball, but instead leaned into a change after his postseason debut with the Dodgers.
“My first postseason was ’15. I felt like it was not a terrible performance, but we played a Game 5 here and I had a big at-bat where I grounded out into a double play. It was early in the game, but we lost by one run, and you go through scenarios of how the game could have gone different,” he said.
“I felt if I came through for my team there the game would have been different. Maybe we would have advanced. I went with that same mentality into 2016 and it didn’t go well for me. In 2017 it was a completely different mindset. We had a great team and we were rolling.
“It was the night before Game 5 of the 2017 NLCS that I did that for the first time. I switched gears. And I just said, I was, like, ‘I’m tired of feeling what if, what if. Now I’m just going to go to bed thinking how I’m going to answer questions the next day because I just had a great day offensively. I put the team into the World Series, blah, blah, blah.’
“Fast-forward to the next day, I hit three home runs, and I haven’t looked back since then. You’ve just got to understand that there’s only two ways it can go. You can either have success or you can fail. You just can’t be afraid of failure. And you’ve just gotta want the moment, gotta want the at-bat.
“That worked for me that night and there’s no reason why to not do it that way. Regular season, it’s kind of hard to go about it that way. But during the postseason, that’s just what I do. It’s something that’s helped for me. I feed off of the stadium energy, and that’s something that worked to my advantage.”
Kiké Hernández benefitting from postseason experience
Hernández also attributed his postseason success to having an increased focus and being able to flip a switch.
“I believe it’s a little bit of everything,” he began.
“I mean, I’ve said it a lot, these are the games we’ve been dreaming of as kids. I got spoiled very early in my career to get the experience and get the opportunity to do this a lot. I think this is my ninth postseason now. It gets a little easier as you do it over and over again. It allows you to realize that it’s the same game.
“The intensity and the importance of the game is a little — it gets a little enhanced. But I don’t know, I don’t know if it’s because I’m Puerto Rican. I don’t know what it is, but it just brings the best out of me and I’m glad that it does.”
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