Dodgerspatience with slumping offense pays off as Teoscar Hernndez keys win over Tigers

DETROIT –– The first time he came to the plate Sunday afternoon, Teoscar Hernández epitomized everything that has been wrong with the Dodgers’ offense lately.The following two trips up after that, however, the previously slumping veteran slugger injected the team — and his season — with some much-needed, long-awaited life.In the Dodgers’ 6-1 win over the Detroit Tigers on Sunday, Hernández followed up the game’s ugliest at-bat (a three-pitch strikeout in the second inning in which he twice chased low curveballs from Framber Valdez) with the afternoon’s two most important swings.In the fourth, he was in another two-strike hole before singling on a low sinker back up the middle, allowing Freddie Freeman to go from first to third and eventually open the scoring on Miguel Rojas’ sacrifice fly later in the inning.Then, in the sixth, Hernández jolted the Dodgers’ offense awake with a tiebreaking two-run home run to deep left-center, jumping on an elevated changeup from Valdez for his first long ball since Aug.3 and only the second of the team’s entire six-game, Atlanta-Detroit road trip.Granted, the Dodgers offense is still far from fixed.

Sunday was the first time since Aug.10 they’d scored more than five runs in a game not played at Coors Field; and even then, they needed two run-scoring wild pitches in a three-run eighth inning to get there. The team’s overall play also remains subpar; too overly reliant on dominant starting pitching performances, such as the seven-inning, one-run gem Tyler Glasnow produced Sunday, to keep pace in the race for a top-two National League playoff seed (they were tied with the Braves at the end of Sunday’s win).However, given the gloomy mood that had descended upon the club this week, the positive signs they saw Sunday were nonetheless important.After all, the Dodgers not only need to win games more consistently right now, but also decide how much they can trust their recently underperforming core ahead of...