Could '26 mark the start of Tatis' greatest era?

Fernando Tatis Jr. is an excellent Major League player. No one is doubting that.

Entering his age-27 season, Tatis owns a career 137 wRC+, 5.4 fWAR per 600 plate appearances, two Gold Gloves and a pair of Silver Sluggers. Few players in MLB history possess such a resume through their first six seasons.

Still, given how Tatis began his career -- with that 42-homer, 25-steal 2021 breakout -- and how he filled up his Baseball Savant page with solid red bars in '20 and '21, it feels like his trajectory plateaued. Yes, he's still been an above-average player in recent seasons, but when he first arrived in the Majors, he was Shohei Ohtani-like as an offensive force. Tatis was pushing the 100th percentile in a number of underlying skills. He was one of the game's physical marvels.

The biggest culprit was the left shoulder dislocation that occurred in April 2021, and which bothered him throughout that career-best 6.8 fWAR campaign. The injury eventually required surgery in September '22, a completely lost season as he also missed time due to a fractured left wrist and served an 80-game suspension for PED usage. The suspension further cast a cloud over his early career performance.

Six years in, Tatis has yet to have that season: the MVP year when he stays healthy and his production matches his underlying skills. But that might change in 2026. There's reason to believe that Tatis might be ready to return, or even surpass, his '20-21 level of play.

Let's begin with exit velocity. The way the ball exploded off his bat was a signature trait when he led the league, posting a blistering 95.9 mph mark in 2020. That was the best mark for a qualified hitter in the Statcast era (since 2015) until Aaron Judge's 96.2 mph mark in '24.

Tatis’ bat wasn't quite as quick when he injured his shoulder in 2021, though he still produced exceptional exit speeds, averaging 93.9 mph. But when he returned in '23 after missing a full season, the average fell off to 91.9 mph, sitting at the 89th percentile. That was the first year we have access to bat-speed data, and Tatis clocked in at the 66th percentile (73 mph). Good but not exceptional.

The Tatis that returned in 2023 wasn't as electric. His batting average dipped as did his power, with his HR/FB rate falling from 32 percent in '21 to 17 percent in '23.

But in 2024, Tatis' exit velocity increased. His bat speed jumped up to the 86th percentile, with his exit velocity up to 93.5 mph. His Statcast page began to show more vibrant red bars again. He was looking more like himself. He seemed to become stronger a year further removed from surgery.

Much of that continued to build into last season, but what is odd about his 2025 campaign is this: as his underlying numbers returned to look more like early-career Tatis, he posted the lowest isolated power (ISO) measure of his career. His slugging fell to a career-low mark (.446), too. In a career-best 691 plate appearances last season, he again failed to exceed 25 home runs, something he still has done only in '21.

What was going on? It was a bit of a mystery. Upon closer inspection, though, there's a curious outlier in his profile that seems impossible to repeat.

Last season, Tatis ranked in the 4th percentile in sweet spot rate, which measures how often a player makes contact in the optimal launch-angle range. His actual slugging trailed his expected slugging by 42 points, making him one of the unluckiest hitters in baseball. Tatis was swinging hard and often stinging the ball, but it was too often into the infield turf or a fraction of an inch off on the barrel.

Even at his best, Tatis never graded well in making optimum contact -- but he was never this poor, he was never such an outlier. His career launch angle sweet spot rate is in the 37th percentile. That alone suggests some positive regression to the mean is in store.

Moreover, sweet spot rate is not a particularly sticky year-to-year metric, meaning there can be significant change from one season to the next. The R squared value for the relationship between league-wide 2024 and 2025 sweet spots was just .12, meaning it's not very predictable in making a future forecast.

In other words, it would be extremely unlucky for Tatis to be so poor again at squaring up baseballs. And if Tatis is more near the MLB average in the measure, or if he enjoys a spike year bettering it, there's room for explosive growth.

Consider how he has enjoyed growth in other areas, too.

He's cut his strikeout rate for three consecutive seasons, to a career low of 18.7% in 2025. He also enjoyed a career-best walk rate (12.9%), and a career-low chase rate (24.4%). And there's plenty of room for him to grow into lifting a greater volume of pitches in the air and to his pull side. Hitters generally become better at this skill as they age, as I studied for Driveline Baseball.

Tatis is still electric on the bases, recording a career-best 32 steals last season and doing so efficiently (caught seven times). He's been an elite defensive right fielder since moving away from shortstop in 2023.

While the recent chapters Tatis authored have not been as compelling as his introductory work, there's still much to be written. There's a very plausible case his best seasons are yet to come, perhaps beginning this year.