Vibes apparently translate into jersey sales, as one MLB role player can now officially attest to.
On Monday, Major League Baseball announced the 20 most popular individual player jersey sales ever since the end of the 2024 World Series last October. Many of the top 10 spots were occupied by the usual suspects (with Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani unsurprisingly taking the No. 1 spot).
But beyond that is where it got pretty interesting. Checking in at No. 16 was a very unexpected player — Dodgers utilityman Enrique “Kiké” Hernandez.
Hernandez was one of six total Dodgers players on the list and even topped young stars such as Bobby Witt Jr. and Anthony Volpe as well as multi-time All-Star veterans like Corey Seager and Manny Machado. You can see the full list below.
At 33 years old, Hernandez has never made an All-Star team, has never achieved an individual MLB accolade, and is just a .238 hitter for his career (after hitting .229 for the Dodgers last season). In fact, he probably isn’t even the best Hernandez on the Dodgers (with reigning All-Star and Silver Slugger Teoscar Hernandez also on the roster).
But what Kiké does have going for him is that he is perhaps the single most beloved player on baseball’s top team. Hernandez was a part of both of the Dodgers’ most recent World Series teams (in 2020 and 2024) and has a very long history of heroics for them during the postseason (a tradition that continued last year as well).
Hernandez’s interviews are the stuff of legend too, so he checks off just about every box for cult hero status. With the sheer amount of baseball fans who live in the Los Angeles area and with the extra excitement over the Dodgers following their 2024 World Series victory, Hernandez managed to earn a surprise berth on the list of Major League Baseball’s best-selling jerseys.
