Kiké Hernández even checked to see if his Fox postgame interview was live.
The answer — yes, of course, in the moments after the Dodgers defeated the Padres in Game 5 of the NLDS — didn’t change what Hernández said.
When asked what makes this Dodgers team different, Hernández paused, checked about being live and then matter-of-factly stated, “The fact that we don’t give a f–k.”
Hernández’s postgame interview followed a clincher where he — in a lineup that also featured Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman well ahead of his No. 7 spot in the batting order — emerged as a hero for a solo home run that ultimately served as the game-winning blast when everything settled into place seven innings later.
Hernández, at one point a Yankees target during the offseason, signed another deal with the Dodgers — where he’d previously spent seven-plus years across a lengthy career and won a World Series during the condensed 2020 season — and hit .229 with a .654 OPS during the regular season.
“The main reason [I signed] was they were able to guarantee me to start at least against left-handed pitchers to start the year and then from there on, anything can happen,” Hernández said of choosing the Dodgers over the Yankees during an appearance on “Foul Territory” in February. “The Yankees have a really good lineup as well, just like the Dodgers, but they have a lot of right-handed hitters and their lefties are not platoon guys. So the only way for me to get in the lineup was to either give guys days off or in case somebody got hurt.”
He didn’t start in the NLDS series against the Padres until Game 4 when he collected two hits and scored a run in an 8-0 win.
Then, on a night where the utilityman played both third base and centerfield, Hernández sent a four-seam fastball from Yu Darvish 428 feet over the left-center field fence, handing the Dodgers an early lead that Teoscar Hernández would double in the seventh inning with his own solo homer.
And against a Padres lineup that didn’t score a run in the final 24 innings of the series, the pair of runs ended up being more than enough to secure a spot in their first NLCS since 2021 — with Game 1 against the Mets set for Sunday in Los Angeles.