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 the postseason.

“With most of our guys, they have a track record, and that’s pretty telling,” Roberts said pregame. “BUt then the question is, who are [still those] guys right now versus what they’ve been [in the past]?”

Hernández, the two-time All-Star and frequent postseason hero during the Dodgers’ run to back-to-back World Series titles, had become a prime example of that dynamic in recent weeks. 

During his 22-game homer drought, he had batted under .200 and recorded twice as many strikeouts (28) as hits (14). Going back to his return from a hamstring strain in late June, his OPS was under .600 and his spot in the batting order had routinely dropped to as low as eighth.

With September call-ups looming next week, Hernández seemed like a candidate to potentially lose playing time, especially with the Dodgers likely to summon a left-handed bat from their minor-league ranks.

While the team recognized his clutch October history, it also needed to see performances like Sunday’s too.

Hernández was not alone in that boat.

Everyone from Mookie Betts to Tommy Edman to Kiké Hernández and Kyle Tucker –– not to even mention Shohei Ohtani and his 5-for-40 showing over the last 10 games –– had been going through glaring struggles at the plate lately, too.

That’s part of what had made the club’s offensive slump so difficult to manage and resolve.

Roberts said this week he had considered tinkering with his lineup construction, and making perhaps more profound changes to the distribution of playing time for some of his bigger stars.

But, this is also largely the same group that has won consecutive World Series for the franchise, including last year after battling through a similar second-half lull.

Thus, Roberts had settled on some middle ground entering Sunday’s rubber match at Comerica Park. 

He was waiting for something “to kind of spur” the offense, and looking “at what I can do to help spur that, too.”

On this day, that meant showing patience with the core of his roster, and trusting someone like Hernández could supply renewed life.