Shohei Ohtani Reached out to Teoscar Hernández After He Joined Dodgers
When Teoscar Hernández made his debut on Sportsnet LA on Tuesday, he was beaming with excitement. When he was asked about playing alongside his new teammate Shohei Ohtani instead of against him, his smile stretched from ear to ear.
“I admire Ohtani, going and playing against him and facing him,” Hernández said to Jerry Hairston Jr. “Right now I’m really, really excited to play with him, and to see the things that I know he can do on a baseball field.”
Hernández, who spent last season in Seattle, has seven career at-bats against Ohtani. He has one hit, one walk and three strikeouts. There’s no need to prepare for facing him anytime soon, at least for this season, after signing a one-year, $23.5 million contract to be his teammate.
“I was talking to him yesterday,” said Hernández. “He’s very excited, too. He told me, he said hi, and one of the messages that he sent me was, ‘Now we play in the same team, we together doing this.’ That makes me even more excited just to go into the season and play with those guys.”
Ohtani hasn’t played a game for the Dodgers yet but he has fully embraced the club’s culture and has become quite the recruiting coordinator.
Hernández isn’t the only player that Ohtani personally reached out to. When the Dodgers were chasing a trade with Tampa Bay for Tyler Glasnow, Ohtani sent him a video pitch. He also gifted Joe Kelly’s wife, Ashley, a new Porsche for her efforts in getting him to Los Angeles and telling the world that her husband would gladly give up his number for him.
Ohtani signed a record-setting 10-year, $700 milion contract. He wants to win a World Series or two and his recruiting skills are only making the chances of that better.
Photo Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
