DETROIT — Shohei Ohtani didn’t know what to make of it when his best friend on his new team pelted him with sunflower seeds after his first home run this season.
“It was funny – but he got a little bit scared, I think it was, the first time I threw it at him,” Teoscar Hernandez recalled with his ever-present smile spreading a little wider. “But after that, he was ready for it, the seeds.”
Ohtani has been pelted the most often, thanks to his National League-leading 29 home runs at the All-Star break. But Hernandez’s home run celebration has traveled with him from Toronto to Seattle to L.A. – prompting the creation of “Mr. Seeds” T-shirts with Hernandez’s smiling face on them.
“It started when I got traded to Toronto,” Mr. Seeds said of his origins story. “I got traded in ’17. That’s when all the teams started celebrating homers and all that stuff. The Blue Jays didn’t have anything. At that time they had a contract with a different brand of sunflower seeds – and we had a bunch. So I started throwing and throwing and throwing.
“So everywhere I go that’s a thing. When I got here, I asked the guys, ‘Hey, when we hit a homer, is it okay if I do this?’ They all said, ‘Yeah, for sure, for sure.’ So I started doing it.”
A new way to celebrate home runs is not all Hernandez has brought to the Dodgers. He heads to the All-Star Game for the second time this year – and the Home Run Derby for the first time – second on the Dodgers (behind his friend, Ohtani) in home runs (19) and RBIs (62). No Dodger has driven in more runs with two outs (25) than Hernandez.
Batting behind some combination of fellow All-Stars Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Will Smith, the RBI opportunities have been plentiful for Hernandez — his 108 at-bats with runners in scoring position are second in the majors.
Given how poorly the bottom half of the Dodgers’ lineup has performed and how long Max Muncy has been sidelined with a strained oblique muscle, however, Hernandez’s level of competence has been essential to the Dodgers’ offense.
“He’s been invaluable,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “A guy that can go to left field, right field, doesn’t bat an eye where he bats in the order, versus left, versus right, 1s and 2s (top pitchers) – he doesn’t duck anyone. he’s in there. Day game after night game, he’s in there. It doesn’t matter.”
And the Dodgers are getting all this for the low, low price of $15 million down and 10 easy payments of $850,000 each starting in 2030.
The 31-year-old Hernandez had high hopes when he entered free agency for the first time last winter. He hadn’t had his best season with the Seattle Mariners in 2023 – which he blames in part on a slow start following his participation in the World Baseball Classic for the Dominican Republic and his discomfort hitting at T-Mobile Park (where he had a .217 batting average and a .643 OPS). But he had expectations of multi-year offers, maybe as much as a four-year deal. Those offers never materialized. He had a two-year offer from the Boston Red Sox. Instead, he signed with the Dodgers for one year and agreed to defer $8.5 million of the salary – essentially putting pressure on himself to perform well enough to make multi-year offers more likely next winter.
“I said I’m going to bet on myself,” he said. “With this team, I’m going to have a good season. I’m going to learn. Now that I know the (free agent) process and I know everything, I’m going to be ready if I have to go through it again.”
Hernandez would rather not go through it again. He doesn’t hesitate to say he would like to continue tossing sunflower seeds as a Dodger beyond this season.
“I don’t want to,” he said of returning to free agency. “If I got the chance to stay here for two, three years I would like to stay. I like everything that this team, this organization, they do. For me, I’d feel really good if they come to me and offer me an extension.”
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It remains to be seen how anxious the Dodgers might be to make that offer. The outfielders around Hernandez are largely young – Andy Pages, James Outman and converted infielder Miguel Vargas. But Hernandez doesn’t see them as threats to his longevity with the Dodgers. He has embraced a role as mentor.
“It’s not that it’s my responsibility. It makes me feel good doing it because I didn’t have that when I started,” said Hernandez, who came up in the Houston Astros’ system. “For me, doing things to help others through what I went through, to me it’s a blessing. I’m at a point in my career where doing that makes me feel good about myself and the things that I went through. I thank God that I went through that and now I have the power to show others to not let down, to not feel down, to keep going. Because this is not easy.
“I know those guys are going to be the future for this team and they play my position. A lot of people ask me, ‘You don’t worry about that?’ No, I don’t care. I don’t think about that. I just want the people around me to be good, my teammates to be great and everybody to be good.”