Kiké Hernández is known to exuberate a comedic-esque personality, a prankster in some ways, and one who has certainly fed off the fans’ energy during his last five seasons with the Dodgers. But with a shortened 60-game season, things will be a whole lot different for Hernández and the boys in blue.

Among a slew of new game rules, fan cutouts in the stands due to the COVID-19 pandemic, MLB has left the decision regarding crowd noise up to individual teams, to which the Dodgers planned to incorporate a pre-trial run during intrasquad games this week.

“I don’t know what that’s going to sound like, I don’t know how accurate it is or how realistic it’s going to be,” Hernández told reporters during Wednesday’s Zoom meeting. “I think maybe it’s going to help the guys that play with a lot of emotion, and it’s probably going to help them be themselves on the field.

“It can get a little awkward when you are being all emotional and yelling and fist-pumping when you can absolutely hear every single thing that’s going on in the field. Hopefully, it sounds real and hopefully, it makes it feel more like a real game and not just another intrasquad game, live BP, or sim game, so hopefully that gives it a feel of a real big league game.”

But the thought of having all the organic snap, crackle, and pop sounds that come with a game and it being amplified could possibly turn into a leg up, not to mention when players look up to the stands and see a few thousand empty seats.

“I tend to be pretty loud, so I don’t like the fact that everybody can hear me when I talk on the field,” Hernández said. “But I think it’s an advantage when you are playing defense, and you can actually get a clear sound of the crack of the bat, especially when you are playing outfield to know whether the bat is barreling the ball or getting jammed or hitting it off the end.”

With any sort of normalcy has stretched thin nowadays, rest assured, skipper Dave Roberts said crowd noises would be a necessity as it would bring a closer sense of reality.

“I mean, we’ve got cutouts of fans that are going to be in the stands this year, so to pipe in some chatter, the buzz, cheers on obviously nice plays,” Roberts said. “I’ve already seen players get their walk-up music. At least it kind of makes it as normal as possible for the guys. It’s helpful.”

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