He gets it.
“All I can do is play as good as I can play,” he said yesterday when we caught him at the health club. He had just finished a 45 minute set when we sat down. His towel was draped over his shoulder and his lean frame was rippling with post-iron definition. At 6’1”, 185, Hernández isn’t imposing so much as he is “complete.”
And, as a 23-year-old rookie, the young man from Irapuato (who friends know as "Hawk") played pretty well for the Nine. He saw action in 157 games, managed 14 home runs, 26 doubles, and slashed .290/.325/.434. His bat was better than league average from the middle infield slot (108 OPS+), and he dropped a solid, if not spectacular 1.6 WAR. Yet, it’s his glove that people want to talk about.
For 123 of those 157 games, Pedro Hernández played shortstop. To be fair, he did not play shortstop with any great aplomb. Of the 25 players who started at least 70 games at the position last season, Hernández’s Zone Rating (the mother of all fielding stats) was the worst--a horrific -11.2, meaning his play allowed the opposition to score more than 11 runs more than a merely average shortstop would have allowed, given the same playing time. He committed 16 errors, more than any short stop not names Ryan Savaikie, Jr. (who is really third baseman). People around the league caught wind of this, and started making their own fan videos of him, putting his field work on display for everyone to check out and laugh at. “It’s like the guy was wearing a pizza stone for a glove,” one late night TV commentator said.
The memory burns a bit.
“That’s not my gig, you know?” he said of the experience at short. “I’m a second baseman, but my manager asked me to play the spot, so I played it, you know? I mean, what am I supposed to do? Tell the team I’m not going to do it?” His eyes glitter and he smiles, but you can see the seep-seated resentment down in there somewhere.
The good news was that the team got it, too. “As a short stop,” one scout’s report read, “he’s a pretty decent second baseman.” After considering another season with Hernández at shortstop, general manager Ron Collins went out and acquired Calgary’s Edward Allen to patrol the slot in 2027. This move shoves Hernandez back to the second base slot next season, where he should be a considerably better value.
That 1.6 WAR, after all, was probably at least a full win worse due to the SS albatross hanging around his neck. With his combination of contact and power, the 3.0+ range is not untouchable.
The bad news, however, is that this shift moves young Hawk Hernández directly into the sites of Lucas McNeill fans—who are both loud and fervent.
So, yeah, he’s heard the whispers (which are not always so whispered). He knows the team has begun a soft-touch exploration of trade possibilities. “Ron’s called me,” he says. “He was really straight forward, which I appreciated. They’re not going to rush things for Lucas. The cat still has some things to work out, and Ron told me that he was completely comfortable with me at second base. If that lasts a year, great. If not, well, you know, baseball’s a business, right? I’ve been traded before.”
He’s right, of course. Baseball is a business, and sometimes that business ignores the part of its components that are human. Sometimes a business forgets that it hired you as a writer when it says it needs you to format copy for the next issue. And baseball is a business unlike some others in that when you get asked to step outside your role, you’re exposed to other people who don’t really care about your human side—who only want to see golden Zone Ratings and don’t want to hear such excuses as “it’s not my gig,” which is why you do the job your boss asks you to, right? No excuses allowed.
We talked about being traded. Hawk Hernández came to the Nine as a minor leaguer six years ago. He was 17, and had been signed to a contract earlier by the Atlantic City organization (who he had signed with a year earlier for a $1.7M bonus I thought I was a king then, he said. I was a kid with $1.7 mill. Everyone loved me.). Trades are hard on a guy, though. Probably even harder when you know one is on its way. As you talk to Hernandez, you get the idea that he understands, that it’s like being a turkey on Thanksgiving Day. The axe is cocked and ready to swing. You just don’t know when.
When we were done, he stood up and rubbed the towel over his head.
“All I can do is play as good as I can play,” Hernández said as he walked away.
Yeah, I thought, watching the backs of his feet as he strode down the long hallway to the shower, that sounded like he’d said it a few times before.
)
