Teoscar Hernandez went to hell and back last night

Welcome to the Teoscar Hernandez experience! While Hernandez has a lot of upside, mostly in his bat, he’s certainly prone to gaffes, both in the field and on the bases. Last night, we got a look at both ends of Hernandez’s spectrum.

In the sixth inning, Hernandez was standing at first with Brandon Drury at the plate and the Jays down 3-1. Drury took a 2-2 pitch for a ball, thought for some reason that he took a walk, and began to jog to first base. Hernandez, obviously confused about what was going on, began trotting to second base. The pitcher threw the ball to the first baseman and tagged Hernandez out before he could make it safely back to first.

Uhhhhhhhhh. Okay! I’ll be honest, I don’t think this is on Hernandez so much as it is on Drury. I mean, Hernandez is the one who looks like a donkey on the play because he got thrown out, but the batter reaaaaaally needs to know what the count is.

Anyways, Hernandez obviously felt bad about the play, but he ended up compensating for it soon after when he absolutely demolished a pitch for a go-ahead three-run bomb. This homer felt special because it was reminiscent of Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion back in the good old days when they hit balls into space at Target Field.

The Jays would end up winning the game 5-3 on the power of that Hernandez bomb, a good start from Matt Shoemaker, and some solid relief pitching.