Shortly after negotiating his way out of free-agent purgatory and into a new contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Kiké Hernández asked his wife, Mariana, to investigate another market. He contacted former Dodger Rich Hill’s wife, Caitlin, with a request: Could the Hernándezes move back into the Hills’ house?
The Hills purchased the property, located in the Toluca Lake neighborhood, in 2017, shortly after Rich signed a $48 million contract. The family decided not to sell it after Hill’s final season with the team in 2019. The house has become a popular destination among Dodgers personnel. Catcher Austin Barnes lived there one season. Manager Dave Roberts asked about its availability. When Hernández rejoined the team at last year’s trade deadline, he moved home, which is a convenient 20-minute drive from Dodger Stadium, with 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 is that the landlord understands the nomadic baseball lifestyle of his tenants.
When looking for housing, players often rely on recommendations, connections, and mutual familiarity with baseball’s unique schedule and travel. That leads to a different kind of hot stove market every winter, when baseball players buy, sell, and trade homes among themselves — swapping houses, coaching young players in the right places and passing some important properties while repeating the cycle.
It is common for players to report to spring training without a home for the regular season. Sometimes free agents sign 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 the Toronto suburbs to sync up with his one-year, $13 million contract. Caleb Ferguson, a New York Yankees reliever who was acquired in early February, was scrambling to find a place on Manhattan’s Upper East Side with a nearby park for his newborn son. Surprised in a Feb. 11 trade from the Miami Marlins, Minnesota Twins reliever Steven Okert said he has “no idea” where he’ll end up in the Twin Cities. “I’ve never been there before,” Okert said.
The main problem is the length of the lease. The regular period lasts about six months. Renting a home often requires a longer commitment. “It just always hurts,” Yankees infielder DJ LeMahieu said. He describes the process of finding a place to live as “in my entire time in professional baseball, one of the hardest things to do,” which is why his wife, Jordan, is taking care of it. Couples often shoulder the load: Yency Almonte, the reliever traded from the Dodgers to the Chicago Cubs in January, will live this summer in the Chicagoland home of Joe Kelly, the reliever traded from the Chicago White Sox to the Dodgers last year. summer; their husbands made the deal.
Yankee Stadium is the on-field home of DJ LeMahieu; he rents another residence from his fellow ballplayers. (Alex Trautwig/MLB via Getty Images)
In the offseason, LeMahieu lives in the Detroit suburb of Birmingham, Mich., where he owns two homes. For nearly a decade, he rented a second residence to various Tigers. So many players stayed there that LeMahieu lost track. The first tenant was second baseman Ian Kinsler. The longest resident is pitcher Daniel Norris. “I think they all left places better than they found them,” LeMahieu said. “I came back and there were new things. Super clean. I was like, ‘Wow, this worked out really well.'”
In 2022, his final year in Milwaukee, reliever Brent Suter lived in a house once occupied by former Brewers teammate Corey Knebel. Suter has rented a townhouse through VRBO for his 2023 season with the Colorado Rockies. When he signed for 2024 with the Cincinnati Reds, his hometown team, Suter didn’t have to look for a home. But he has the ballplayer network to thank.
A few years earlier, while building for Cincinnati, Wade Miley bought a four-bedroom house in nearby Anderson Township, Ohio. An elderly couple started building on a lot across the street. Miley later learns that her new neighbors are Suter’s in-laws. He called his former teammate. “When I’m done with the Reds, I’m going to sell you this house,” Miley told Suter. Suter laughed at the offer. 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.” Miley, Suter explained, “linked us to our dream house for life.”
During his time with the Cleveland Guardians, first baseman Carlos Santana lived in Bratenahl, Ohio, an affluent suburb on the shores of Lake Erie. After Santana signed a three-year, $60 million deal with the Philadelphia Phillies heading into 2018, he rented his house to former teammate Edwin Encarnación. Santana didn’t last long in Philadelphia. The Phillies sent him to the Seattle Mariners in December of 2018. Less than two weeks later, the Mariners traded Santana to Cleveland — in exchange for Encarnación. Santana returned to her 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 feel too sorry for these athletes, who play in a league where the minimum big league salary is $740,000. The teams provide them with resources, recommendations and real estate agents. This is often done by their own agents as well. The collective bargaining agreement contains provisions that will reimburse them for their living expenses if they are laid off or traded.
Their privilege still carries complications, and not all serendipitous swaps end happily. 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 are friends. They agreed to change houses. “The price is the same,” said Cora. He lives in a four-bedroom, two-story place with a yard. She was shocked when she moved into Vázquez’s apartment near Faneuil Hall. “It’s a one-bedroom, with a matchbox,” Cora said.
The dollar stretches farther beyond shores. Ferguson, the Yankees reliever, grew up about 20 minutes outside of Columbus, Ohio, home of Cleveland’s Triple-A affiliate. He has dreams of renting his house there to one of the Clippers. He joked about his willingness to pay utilities for potential tenants as long as they paid his mortgage. “I don’t want to make money off you – I just want to stop losing it,” Ferguson said.
Rich Hill stumbled into his role as the Dodgers’ landlord. During the 2021 season, Hill heard that Barnes was commuting about a two-hour roundtrip to the ballpark. Barnes and his wife Nicole had a newborn son. Driving is tiring. Hill mentioned that his place at Toluca Lake was empty. “It’s a really nice house,” Barnes said. “He just let us live there.”
Barnes had better luck than Roberts, who found the house occupied when he asked Hill about renting it. Hernández met the same fate after signing his new deal with the Dodgers. Hill is already renting to a family for 2024. Turns out, non-ballplayers need houses too.
“As much as I want to rent it to men,” Hill said, “I can’t evict the people who are there now.”
(The AthleticFabian Ardaya, Chad Jennings, Zack Meisel, C. Trent Rosecrans and Sahadev Sharma contributed to this report.)
(Illustration by Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Photo of Kiké Hernández: Michael Zagaris/Oakland Athletics/Getty Images; Rich Hill Photo: Will Newton/Getty Images; Wade Miley Photo: Frank Jansky / Icon Sportswire )
