Between the excitement of the offseason and missing a significant part of camp, little has been said about Cesar Hernandez during Phillies spring training this year. Despite that, his potential bounceback is one of the more interesting unheralded storylines of this season.
It’s easy to put Hernandez on the backburner after his 2018 season. He finished the year with a .253/.356/.362 line, 94 OPS+, and 1.4 Baseball-Reference wins above replacement, well below his numbers from the previous two years. Hernandez set career highs in home runs (15), runs batted in (60) and runs scored (91), but his overall offensive production was still weaker than it has been.