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The first five months of Teoscar Hernández’s season were largely forgettable. The 33-year-old left fielder scuffled through the first seven weeks before catching fire during the second half of May, only to suffer a left hamstring strain that knocked him out for over a month. Upon returning, he was a major drag on the offense for the better part of two months. But lately, Hernández has been tearing the cover off the ball, rising to the occasion to help a banged-up Dodgers squad — one that just placed Shohei Ohtani on the injured list and called up top prospect Josue De Paula — reel off a season-high seven-game winning streak.

Hernández has hit safely in his last 10 games, from August 30 through September 9, batting .514/.595/.829 (285 wRC+) in 42 plate appearances, with two home runs and 14 RBI. On 28 batted balls during that stretch, he’s produced a 97.1-mph average exit velocity, a 25.0% barrel rate, and a 60.7% hard-hit rate, with a .441 xBA and a .786 xSLG. Fifteen of those 28 batted balls have been hit at least 100 mph; seven of them, all 108.7 mph or higher, rank among his nine hardest-hit balls all season, capped by a 112.6-mph screamer he hit for a three-run homer against the Reds’ Brandon Williamson on Monday night.

Through his ups and downs, Hernández had hit just .245/.307/.385 (91 wRC+) before the streak began. Since then, he’s lifted his overall line to a much more respectable .269/.336/.425 (110 wRC+). All of this has happened at a time when four of the Dodgers’ top five hitters by wRC+ have been either completely sidelined by injuries or slowed by them:

• Ohtani (142 wRC+ on the season) had been a non-factor over the past two weeks, going 2-for-26 with four walks, 13 strikeouts, and zero extra-base hits in seven games from August 27 through September 7. Still battling left knee, right biceps, and neck issues that have prevented him from pitching since July 3 — and that have apparently ended his moundwork for the season — he sat out four games before returning to the lineup on September 7. Then, after missing two more games, he was finally placed on the 15-day IL, backdated to September 8.
• Freddie Freeman (130 wRC+) is in the midst of a 1-for-19 slump and sat out Wednesday night’s game against the Reds while dealing with soreness in his right knee.
• Dalton Rushing (120 wRC+) took just five plate appearances over four games between missing a month due to a UCL tear and returning to the injured list with right elbow discomfort.
• Andy Pages (119 wRC+), the team’s most productive outfielder this season, has been sidelined since he was hit by a pitch that fractured his left hand on August 21.

Meanwhile, Max Muncy (131 wRC+) was mired in a 2-for-29 slump until breaking out over the past four games; he’s the only one of the team’s top five hitters to play in all four, making it a very good time for Hernández to step up. To be fair, during the course of Hernández’s 10-game hitting streak — against the Tigers, Cardinals, Nationals, and Reds — the Dodgers haven’t exactly been facing elite hurlers, but those wins matter. Los Angeles is now 89-57, just 1.5 games behind the Brewers (91-56) for the top seed in the National League and 3.5 ahead of the Braves for that all-important first-round bye.

When Hernández started this season so slowly, hitting just .241/.320/.368 (91 wRC+) with four homers and a 29.3% strikeout rate through May 12, it was fair to wonder if his best days were behind him. He had put together one of the best seasons of his career in 2024 after signing a one-year, $23.5 million deal with the Dodgers, slashing .272/.339/.501 (132 wRC+) and setting career highs in homers (33) and steals (12) en route to 3.4 WAR and the second All-Star selection of his career. That performance, plus the good vibes generated by his role in the team’s championship run, led the Dodgers to re-sign him to a three-year, $66 million deal. While he started the 2025 season hot, he cooled off after missing time due to a groin strain in May, and struggled to an overall .247/.284/.454 (102 wRC+) line, with the lowest OBP, wRC+, and WAR (0.6) of any of his eight full major league seasons. The apparent power-for-contact tradeoff that he made while cutting his strikeout rate to a career-low 24.5% didn’t quite pay off. He had his moments in October while helping the Dodgers win another championship, but it was an uneven performance. Three of his five home runs came in the Dodgers’ first three postseason games, and four of his seven hits against the Blue Jays in the World Series were in the 18-inning epic Game 3.

In that light, a slide continuing into 2026 wouldn’t have been a surprise, but suddenly, Hernández heated up, hitting .375/.426/.625 with three homers from May 13–27. Alas, on the last of those dates, he strained his left hamstring while running out an infield grounder, and while it was diagnosed only as a Grade 1 strain, general manager Brandon Gomes and manager Dave Roberts both vowed patience, having learned a lesson with the team’s handling of Hernández’s 2025 injury. Last year, he returned to the lineup two weeks after the groin strain, having played just one rehab game, at High-A Rancho Cucamonga, but hit for just a 68 wRC+ in the two months between his injury and the All-Star break.

“When [the groin strain] happened last year, we probably rushed it a bit on that front,” said Gomes.

“We’re going to be very mindful of the buildup,” said Roberts. “I’m sure there is going to be a rehab assignment and making sure things are good for him, so when he gets back to us, he can hit the ground running.”

This time around, Hernández missed just over a month, returning to the lineup on June 29, after a four-game rehab stint at Triple-A Oklahoma City. Nonetheless, the results were similar to last year’s post-injury slump. Though he collected two hits in his return, he batted .206/.253/.335 (61 wRC+) with four homers and a 28.9% strikeout rate in 166 plate appearances from that point through August 23.

By then, Roberts was openly considering reducing Hernández’s role by platooning him either with reserve Alex Call or one of the team’s lefty-swinging outfield prospects, such as De Paula or James Tibbs III, once rosters expanded on September 1. Hernández was prepared for that possibility, as he said after hitting a walk-off two-run double off Cardinals closer Riley O’Brien on September 3:

“I’m a player that, if I’m not doing what I’m supposed to do, and somebody else is doing the job and helping the team win –– I told Dave [Roberts], ‘If you feel like you have to use somebody else in there, just do it… But know that I am going to keep working and I’m going to try to be ready for the times that you need me.”

While calling the quality of Hernández’s at-bats “not great,” Roberts noted that the team’s hitting instructors had some ideas on how to help the struggling slugger. Even so, the manager benched Hernández in favor of the righty-swinging Call in a start against Braves righty Bryce Elder on August 25, the day after an off day. He returned to the lineup the next day and eked out a couple of hits, including one on a 44.5-mph tapper to third base. He sandwiched another two-hit game on August 28 between a pair of 0-fers; in the latter one, he had a pair of loud fly balls, including one off Kenley Jansen that made Javier Báez run a long way to chase down in the gap.

Hernández’s hitting streak began the next day, with a single and a homer — his first since August 3 — off the Tigers’ Framber Valdez. He’s had six multi-hit games, and five multi-RBI games during the streak, which included the walk-off double, a two-run double off the Nationals’ Jackson Kent the next night, an unsuccessful attempt at an inside-the-park home run on Tuesday, and two hits in four innings on Wednesday before getting a breather in what became a 14-1 rout.

What the slugger and the Dodgers figured out on that off day was a link between his lower-body issues and his lack of production. From the California Post’s Jack Harris:

The answer they landed on: His left hamstring injury had impacted his lower body, causing his front hip to fly open too soon and his swing to lack its normal power and adjustability.

“The more he can stay closed with the lower half and sync it up with the upper body, then it keeps him on the ball more, [gives him more] plate coverage, and then he’s able to do what he needs to do at the plate,” hitting coach Aaron Bates said. “He’s so twitchy and explosive. But he always battles staying square and that kind of thing … So that front hip staying closed, and his left hamstring [injury], it kind of goes hand-in-hand.”

In his first plate appearance against the Cardinals on September 3, SportsNet LA’s Joe Davis discussed Hernández’s correction, which includes him twisting his front leg inward and then tapping his toe.

From earlier in the game, Teoscar Hernandez is now 6-13 with 2 2B and 2 BB/2 K since. Amusingly, the change was after the game he homered. A new cope point at least. https://t.co/1qgl882c5U pic.twitter.com/iMzWwiAtR1

— Chad Moriyama (@ChadMoriyama) September 4, 2026

A couple days later, Hernández explained the link between his batting stance and his injuries. From the Orange Country Register’s Bill Plunkett:

Hernández said he has three variations that he uses throughout the season based on how he is feeling physically and other factors. His preferred stance has his front foot slightly open with a first-move timing mechanism that involves a slight toe tap/leg kick. …

“Last year, I used it before I had the injury… Then when I came back, I was doing the same thing but I was feeling it (in his injured leg) so that’s why I stopped. This year when I got my hamstring issue, I had to get rid of it because it was putting so much pressure on the hamstring.”

The variations are tough to spot in Statcast’s Batting Stance and Intercept breakdown unless one goes by specific dates. The monthly aggregations offer few clues — except for the small sample of September:

The big takeaway is that increase in his stance angle from 5 degrees open in August to 18 degrees open in September. The accompanying diagrams show the position of his feet before the pitch (black) and at intercept (red), but they miss the animated intermediate step at pitch release (purple), which I tried to capture through screenshots. This is what it looked like in June (a sample based on just two games):

And this is from September:

While the placement of Hernández’s back foot has remained pretty constant, his setup has opened up considerably, with his left foot moving more during his swing — more toward the plate and deeper in the box at release, then more toward the pitcher at intercept.

Hernández’s adjustments have translated into a faster swing. After averaging a 72.3-mph swing speed, with a 22.5% fast-swing rate, a 23.6% squared-up rate, and a 11.2% blast rate from Opening Day through the end of August, he’s averaged a swing speed of 74.0 mph with a 41.9% fast swing rate, a 33.9% squared-up rate, and a 22.6% blast rate in September. His exit velocity, barrel rate, and hard-hit rate have spiked, to the point that his overall Statcast numbers are in the ballpark of the past two seasons:

A few observations. For one, Hernández’s increased launch angle still reflects his higher rate of getting under pitches — hitting popups and routine fly balls. He did so on 20.4% of all batted balls in 2024 and 20.9% last year, but is up to 24.7% this year, with his infield fly ball rate nearly doubling, from 5.7% to 10.7%. His 14.8% pulled air rate is higher than either of the past two seasons, but that still places him in just the 25th percentile of qualified hitters, and thanks to those extra popups and cans of corn, he’s been less productive in that context than usual. He generally makes up for it by being especially productive on opposite-field air balls:

Among batters with at least 25 opposite-field air balls, Hernández’s slugging percentage placed in the 97th percentile in 2024, slipped to the 78th last year, but is back up to the 86th in 2026 despite the underlying exit velo, barrel rate, and hard-hit rate not being as robust. By comparison, on pulled air balls, his slugging percentage has fallen from the 96th percentile in 2024 to the 83rd last year and to just the 48th this year. That pulled air SLG placed in the 30th percentile (1.091) before his hitting streak began, while his opposite-field air SLG was already in the 87th percentile.

Anyway, Hernández probably doesn’t have to worry about platooning any longer, though his defense in left field remains shaky enough (-7 DRS, -6 FRV) that down the stretch he could lose some late-innings playing time to a more adept fielder, particularly in October.

As for Ohtani, the Dodgers finally sent him to the IL for the first time since September 2023 (when he was still an Angel) after Wednesday night’s win, the team’s seventh in a row. In his only game since September 2, he went 0-for-3 with a walk and two strikeouts against the Reds on Monday night, with an 89.2-mph routine fly ball to left field his only batted ball event. The Dodgers intended to ease him back into the lineup, keeping him out on Tuesday but playing him on Wednesday, though when Ohtani told them that swinging had caused him additional discomfort in his biceps, they scrapped that plan and instead placed him on the IL, something the Dodgers had been reluctant to do because the minimum stay for two-way players is 15 days, as for pitchers.

The move does give the Dodgers a chance to check out De Paula, a lefty-swinging 21-year-old who tops their prospect list and is currently no. 17 on The Board as a 55-FV prospect. De Paula hit .303/.401/.547 (145 wRC+) with 27 homers, 31 steals, and just a 14.8% strikeout rate at Double-A Tulsa. He’s the first position player prospect the Dodgers have promoted straight from Double-A since Andrew Friedman took over as president of baseball operations in October 2014. In our late-July Pre-Deadline Top 100 Prospects Update, Eric Longenhagen and Brendan Gawlowski wrote, “De Paula has been an upper-echelon prospect in this system since 2023, and continues to track as an impact, heart-of-the-order bat with plus contact and on-base skills, as well as average present power that could still improve. He’s also a bad defender who is going to cede some overall value because of this.”

The Dodgers and MLB Pipeline both consider De Paula the most advanced young hitter the team has developed since Corey Seager, with the latter calling him “a slightly smaller but more athletic version of Yordan Alvarez, thanks to his precocious combination of swing decisions and exit velocities.” Baseball America’s JJ Cooper noted that De Paula’s hitting profile at Tulsa closely resembles the 2025 profile of the Tigers’ Kevin McGonigle, the likely AL Rookie of the Year.

Cooper added that the lefty-swinging McGonigle was a few months younger, better against lefties than righties, and of course plays the more difficult position, but his take-home point was strong: “You very rarely see that kind of well-rounded profile combining extreme contact ability, excellent plate discipline and real power… If you are looking for the hitter in the minors this year who is closest to McGonigle in combining similar strengths and lack of weaknesses, it’s De Paula.”

With Ohtani out, the Dodgers can get a look at De Paula without worrying about his defense, which he has worked to improve. A full-time role for October isn’t on the table barring an injury to a regular, but De Paula could fill the high-leverage bench-bat role the team had envisioned for Rushing even if he couldn’t catch — say, pinch-hitting for Miguel Rojas in a key spot.

Thanks in large part to Hernández, the Dodgers have weathered some key injuries and distanced themselves from a stretch of mediocrity during which they went 15-19 and briefly lost their hold on a top-two seeding. Playing a Wild Card Series worked out fine for them last year as they swept the Reds, but any team with championship aspirations would just as soon avoid the extra round. Hernández won’t continue hitting above .500 with a 97-mph exit velocity, but if he can provide the Dodgers with another weapon and help them maintain their hold on a bye, their odds of three-peating are that much better.