Why Dodgers slugger Teoscar Hernández has a 2017 Astros ring

HOUSTON –– Over 15 years in professional baseball, Teoscar Hernández has built himself quite the collection of bling.

The veteran slugger has two World Series rings from the Dodgers’ back-to-back championships the past two years. He has a couple title rings from his early days as a minor-league player. He has another from a winter-league triumph back in his native Dominican Republic.

Then, there is one that carries a slightly more dubious distinction –– received through a technicality tinged with irony now.

In 2017, Hernández was a member of the Houston Astros organization. And though he played just one game for the team that season before being traded to the Toronto Blue Jays, he nonetheless received a ring now soiled by the club’s trash-can-banging, sign-stealing scandal. 

Hernández had no involvement in that saga, of course.

In his lone appearance for the Astros that season, he didn’t even take an at-bat.

The fact he later received a World Series ring from the team surprised him, unaware that such minor contributions still received full recognition.

That he is now a fan favorite with the Dodgers –– the club most directly impacted, and angered, by the scandal –– has only underscored the peculiar nature of the diamond-studded possession.

“Obviously, it was not the best way to get it,” Hernández told the California Post this week, during his latest trip back to Houston as a member of the Dodgers. “I don’t think it was the best way for them to do everything that they did.”

Yet, when asked what he ever did with his 2017 World Series ring, Hernández said he keeps it included in his primary, treasured, career-long collection.

The title it represents might be tainted. 

But for Hernández, it’s a reminder of where he started –– and how high he has climbed since.

When he was first signed by the Astros as an 18-year-old prospect in 2011, Hernández was on the verge of giving up his baseball dreams entirely. He wasn’t a highly sought-after player coming out of the Dominican. He told his family at the start of that year, as he later recounted to Fox Sports, that he would stop playing if he couldn’t land a deal with an MLB organization.

“When nobody tried to give me a chance when I was young, they gave me a chance,” he said this week of the Astros. “They believed in myself. They believed in everything that I had.”

Indeed, Hernández flourished during his time in Houston’s farm system, transforming into a power threat who eventually made his MLB debut in 2016.

However, his pathway to permanent playing time in the majors was always blocked on such a talent-laden roster.

And when he got his lone call-up during the 2017 season, it came to a brief and disastrous end.

On April 25 of that season, Hernández entered a road game in Cleveland as a defensive substitution for Carlos Beltrán. But before his turn to bat ever came up, he collided with José Altuve on a shallow fly ball in right field.

Both players were forced to leave the game with injuries. Hernández had to be taken off on a medical cart.

He spent the next month on the injured list, before being optioned back down to triple-A. Then came the trade deadline, when he was dealt to Toronto as part of a package for Francisco Liriano.

“At the time, I didn’t understand it,” Hernández said. “But now that I’ve grown and know the game and understand the business side and everything, I understand why. They were just looking for better opportunities. … So there’s no regrets, no hard feelings.”

The move, after all, helped catapult Hernández’s career. Since the trade, he has become a multi-time All-Star and Silver Slugger recipient, ranking in the top-15 among all MLB outfielders in hits, home runs and RBIs over that span.

That ascent was well underway when Hernández returned to Houston the following summer for the first time with the Blue Jays. He still laughs about being caught off-guard when informed that a ring was waiting for him, with the Astros having planned an on-field ceremony with owner Jim Crane.

“They said they got a ring for me, and I was like, ‘Oh, wow,’” Hernández recalled. “I didn’t know. But, I was like, ‘Why not?’”

All these years later, it remains a sentimental possession. Unlike so many others with a 2017 Astros ring, he can look back on it and still feel proud.

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