The Dodgers for their first game of the National League Championship Series will have Kik\u00e9 Hern\u00e1ndez in the starting lineup for a third straight game. Hern\u00e1ndez plays second base and bats ninth on Sunday against the Milwaukee Brewers.<\/p>\n
Hern\u00e1ndez, who homered in Game 3 against Chris Sale of the Braves, usually starts against left-handers, but this is is second straight start against a right-handed starting pitcher.<\/p>\n
Shohei Ohtani in Game 1 of the NLCS bats fourth against Brewers ace Jacob Misiorowski. For nearly all of Ohtani\u2019s three years with the Dodgers, his placement in the lineup was more rigid, mostly all batting leadoff except when he was hitting second. But with Ohtani\u2019s month-plus slump changed things. He\u2019s batted second, fourth, and fifth so far in the postseason.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t settled on that,\u201d manager Dave Roberts said Friday, \u201cBut it\u2019s probably somewhere between one and five, I would say, or two and five.\u201d<\/p>\n
The last home run for Ohtani was hit on August 18 at Coors Field. Since then he\u2019s gone 101 plate appearances and 22 full games without a long ball, hitting just .151\/.277\/.198.<\/p>\n
During the NLDS against the Braves, Ohtani had two singles and two walks in 16 plate appearances, including a stolen base in Game 4. Ohtani is the only Dodgers hitter who has homered off Misiorowski, doing so on July 8, 2025, the only run allowed by Misiorowski on that day, his fifth major league start. In three games against the Dodgers, including last year\u2019s NLCS, the Brewers ace has a 1.59 ERA and 27 strikeouts in 17 innings.<\/p>\n
Not that a home run is necessarily needed to get Ohtani out of his slump.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s one of those things that for tomorrow it\u2019s just get on base, take good at-bats, and we\u2019ll deal with whatever. Honestly it\u2019s the same message for everyone,\u201d Roberts said Saturday night in Milwaukee. \u201cShohei is known for his slug, but when you\u2019re facing Jacob, it\u2019s just you\u2019ve got to take good at-bats. If you run into a homer, great. But if you can earn a walk, fantastic.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s more of — production is just doing anything positive for the club, and we need all guys to do their part.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dodgers for their first game of the National League Championship Series will have Kik\u00e9 Hern\u00e1ndez in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":827202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,38410],"class_list":["post-827201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-baseball","tag-baseball","tag-dodgers-news-notes"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117424953963073395","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/827202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}