Shortly after bargaining his way out of free agency purgatory and signing a new contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Kique Hernandez asked his wife, Mariana, to investigate another market. She contacted former Dodge Ridge Hill’s wife, Caitlin, with a request: Could the Hernandez family live in Hill’s house again?
The Hills purchased the property near Toluca Lake in 2017, shortly after Rich signed a $48 million contract. After Hill’s final season with the team in 2019, the family decided not to sell the house. The house has since become a popular destination for Dodgers personnel. Catcher Austin Barnes lived there for one season. Manager Dave Roberts inquired about its availability. When Hernandez rejoined the team at last year’s trade deadline, he moved into the house, which is just a 20-minute drive from Dodger Stadium and has access to three different highways.
“It’s very attractive because of the location,” Hill said.
But that’s not its only selling point. Almost as important, the homeowner understands the tenant’s nomadic baseball lifestyle.
When looking for a place to live, players often rely on each other’s recommendations, connections and familiarity with baseball’s unique schedule and travel. This results in a different kind of hot-stove market each winter, with baseball players buying, selling, and trading homes among themselves—swapping homes, steering young players to the right spots, and passing on certain key properties as the cycle repeats itself.
It’s not uncommon for players to report to spring training without a place to stay during the regular season. Sometimes free agent signings arrive later than expected; sometimes trades happen without warning. In the final days of February, Toronto Blue Jays infielder Justin Turner was still looking for a lease in suburban Toronto to fulfill his one-year, $13 million contract. Caleb Ferguson, a reliever with the New York Yankees who signed up in early February, was looking for a place on Manhattan’s Upper East Side with a nearby park for his newborn son. Minnesota Twins reliever Steven Orcutt was surprised by the Feb. 11 trade from the Miami Marlins, saying he had “no idea” where he would live in the Twins. “I’ve never been there before,” Ocutt said.
The main issue is the length of the lease. The regular season lasts approximately six months. Renting often requires a longer commitment. “It always hurts,” Yankees infielder DJ LeMahieu said. He describes the process of finding housing as “one of the hardest things to do in my professional baseball career,” which is why his wife, Jordan, takes care of the process. Spouses often bear the burden: Reliever pitcher Yancy Almonte, who was traded from the Dodgers to the Chicago Cubs in January, will live this summer in the Chicago home of reliever Joe Kelly, who was traded to the Dodgers from the Chicago White Sox last year. Summer; their wives brokered the deal.
Yankee Stadium is DJ LeMahieu’s home ballpark; he rents another home to his teammates. (Alex Trautwig/MLB via Getty Images)
During the offseason, LeMahieu lives in the Detroit suburb of Birmingham, Miss., where he owns two properties. He has rented his second home to different Tigers for nearly a decade. Too many players are left there and LeMahieu has lost his way. The first tenant was second baseman Ian Kinsler. The longest resident is pitcher Daniel Norris. “I think they leave these places better than they came in,” LeMahieu said. “I came back and I had new stuff. Super clean. I was like, ‘Wow, this works really well.'”
In 2022, his final year in Milwaukee, reliever Brent Suter is living in a home once occupied by former Brewers teammate Corey Knebel in the house. Suter rented a townhouse through VRBO for the Colorado Rockies’ 2023 season. Suter won’t have to look for a house when he signs with his hometown team, the Cincinnati Reds, in 2024. But he does have the player network to thank.
A few years ago, while pitching for Cincinnati, Wade Miley purchased a four-bedroom home near Anderson Township, Ohio. An older couple began building a home on a piece of land across the street. Miley eventually learns that his new neighbor is Suter’s in-laws. He called his former teammates. “When my relationship with the Reds is over, I’m going to sell you this house,” Miley told Suter. Suter smiled at the suggestion. When Cincinnati placed Miley on waivers after the 2021 season, Suter received another text: “Go check out the house. We’ll open the garage for you.” Suter explained that Miley “set us up with a lifelong dream house.” connect together.”
While playing for the Cleveland Guardians, first baseman Carlos Santana lived in Bratnaval, Ohio, an affluent suburb on the shores of Lake Erie. In 2018, Santana signed a three-year, $60 million contract with the Philadelphia Phillies and later rented his home to former teammate Edwin Encarnación. Santana’s time in Philadelphia was short-lived. The Phillies sent him to the Seattle Mariners in December 2018. Less than two weeks later, the Mariners traded Santana to Cleveland in exchange for Encarnacion. Santana moved back to his old house.
Edwin Encarnación and Carlos Santana were teammates in Cleveland in 2017. After that, things got more complicated. (Duane Burleson/Getty Images)
Don’t completely pity these athletes, who play in a league where the major league minimum wage is $740,000. The team provides them with resources, advice and real estate agents. Their own agents often do the same. Collective bargaining agreements contain provisions to compensate workers for their living expenses if they are laid off or traded.
There are still complications to their privilege, and not every chance exchange has a happy ending. In the summer of 2005, the Boston Red Sox acquired an infielder named Alex Cora from Cleveland in exchange for fellow infielder Ramón Vázquez. The two Puerto Ricans were friends. They agreed to trade the house. “The price is the same,” Cora said. He had been living in a two-story, four-bedroom house with a yard. When he moved into Vazquez’s apartment near Faneuil Hall, he was stunned. “It was a one-bedroom matchbox,” Cora said.
The dollar is indeed far from the coast. Ferguson, a reliever for the Yankees, grew up about 20 minutes outside of Columbus, Ohio, home of Cleveland’s Triple-A affiliate. He dreams of renting a house there to a member of the Clippers team. He joked that he would pay the utility bills for potential tenants as long as they paid his mortgage. “I don’t want to make money off of you – I just want to stop losing it,” Ferguson said.
Rich Hill became the owner of the Dodgers by accident. During the 2021 season, Hill heard that Barnes’ commute to and from the ballpark would be about two hours. Barnes and his wife, Nicole, have a newborn son. Driving is tiring. Hill mentioned that his Toluca Lake residence was empty. “It’s a really beautiful house,” said Barnes. “He just let us live there.”
Barnes had better luck than Roberts. When Roberts asked Hill about renting the house, he found that the house was already occupied. Hernandez met the same fate after signing a new contract with the Dodgers. Hill has rented a home through 2024 to a family. It turns out that non-players need houses too.
“As much as I’d love to rent it to these people,” Hill said, “I can’t kick out the people who are there now.”
(CompetitorFabian Ardaya, Chad Jennings, Zack Meisel, C. Trent Rosecrans and Sahadev Sharma contributed to this report. )
(Illustrations by Dan Goldfarb/ Competitor; Photos of Kiké Hernández: Michael Zagaris/Oakland Athletics/Getty Images; Photos of Rich Hill: Will Newton/Getty Images; Photos of Wade Miley : Frank Jansky / Icon Sportswire )
