For much of the 2017 season, Giants’ outfielder Gorkys Hernandez hasn’t looked like a Major League player.
While Hernandez fit into San Francisco’s plans as a bench presence and extra outfielder this year, his early-season at-bats were often cringe-worthy and drew the type of groans you’re more accustomed to hearing when a boxer is over-matched and continually pummeled back into the ropes.
When Hernandez’s batting average dipped to .065 on April 21, it was practically a miracle the Giants had yet to designate the Venezuelan outfielder for assignment. At that point in the season, though, Hernandez was clinging to a roster spot because he was one of the few healthy options San Francisco had left.
Injuries to Jarrett Parker and Mac Williamson blew up San Francisco’s left field situation, while Chris Marrero’s .132 average and lack of defensive prowess forced the Giants to jettison him. San Francisco tried signing veterans like Drew Stubbs and Melvin Upton, Jr., but Stubbs went 2-for-22 while Upton needed thumb surgery after being hit by a pitch in a minor league game in April.
Quite literally, Hernandez outlasted his peers in a survival of the fittest –which is probably putting it kindly– and slowly but surely, he began to refine his role on the margins of the Giants’ roster.
After hitting .154 in April, a month in which Hernandez recorded eight hits and 14 strikeouts, the Giants’ most versatile defensive outfielder improved to .196 at the plate in the month of May. Closer to the Mendoza line? Sure. Serviceable? Not exactly.
But over the past four weeks, Hernandez has completely turned around his season, becoming as dependable at the plate as rookie Austin Slater, who’s hitting .333 since his late-May call-up, and Denard Span, who’s recorded 36 hits in 102 at-bats so far in June.
In the Giants’ June 8 win over the Milwaukee Brewers, Hernandez snapped an 0-for-18 slump at the plate with a 3-for-5 performance that ignited the hottest stretch of his career.
Over his past 16 games, Hernandez has raised his batting average 30 points, rapping out 14 hits in 39 at-bats while drawing six walks to raise his on-base percentage to .435 this month.
Hernandez’s resurgence has flown under the radar over the past few weeks, perhaps because the Giants are still 21 games under .500, and perhaps because it’s hard for fans to get excited over an outfielder who’s still hitting just .225. Nevertheless, the Giants’ most polarizing player this side of Brandon Belt has turned into an asset for the team in June, and was a catalyst in San Francisco’s sweep of the Colorado Rockies.
In Tuesday night’s 4-3 walkoff win over the Rockies, Hernandez led off the 14th inning with a double off of Colorado sinker-baller Chad Qualls. The at-bat was some of the loudest contact Hernandez has made this season, and came as a result of a critical adjustment he made after seeing Qualls two years ago.
“Of course, I mean I’ve faced the guy before two years ago and he threw me the sinker, he broke my bat,” Hernandez said. “After that, you know what, I said, I’m sitting slider and if he threw me another sinker, I would try to react to it, but he threw me a slider and I made a good hit.”
After roping the slider for his seventh double of the season, Hernandez came around to score on Span’s walkoff single and slid headfirst into home plate to punctuate a win that wouldn’t have been possible without his heroics.
“It was a long game, but we fight all the time and that inning, I felt making the double we could win it and we had a chance to win the game and that’s what we did,” Hernandez said.
The resilience Hernandez showed in San Francisco’s series sweep against Colorado, a three-game set in which he went 4-for-13 at the plate and scored five runs, is a microcosm of the type of season he and the Giants have had.
After a miserable start to the year, Hernandez and the Giants were counted out and left for dead. It’s a start no one envisioned, and left the Giants in a hole that is practically impossible to recover from. But at this point, all the team can do is fight, and while it’s certainly unlikely, Hernandez is helping San Francisco march on.
“We never give up, we fight all the time,” Hernandez said. “No matter what happens, so that’s what we try to do every time.”