SAN DIEGO -- You may have heard: Fernando Tatis Jr. hasn’t been homering all that much this season.
Lately, however, he’s done just about everything else. He’s been hitting. He’s been running. He’s been playing excellent defense, whether at second base or in right field. The only thing missing has been the power.
But he picked quite a time for his second home run of the season on Wednesday afternoon.
Tatis launched a laser of a walk-off home run into the left-field seats at Petco Park, sending the Padres to a dramatic 5-4 victory over the Reds in their series finale -- San Diego’s first series victory in its last five.
“About time we got a series win,” said Tatis, whose walk-off home run was the second of his career. “To do it in that way, do it in that fashion, it’s definitely special. Especially [because] we were putting good at-bats as a group. … All of that went building up to that moment right there.”
Tatis has been leading that charge. The Padres’ offense has woefully underperformed this season, no matter which way you look at it. It ranks last in the Majors in runs, batting average and wRC+. But there are signs it might be turning -- and none clearer than the progress being made by Tatis.
In his last 20 games, Tatis is hitting .383 with a .438 on-base percentage. He has re-entrenched himself atop the Padres lineup, even while lacking his usual power threat. Tatis might not be elevating the ball as much as he’d like -- and even Wednesday’s walk-off came with a launch angle of only 18 degrees. But he’s clearly a threat at the plate again. So what changed?
“No secret sauce,” Tatis said. “Just a lot of hard work with the hitting coaches out there. It hasn’t been looking that pretty. But we’re sticking together as a group. We’re finding a way. That’s what matters.”
Indeed, some of the recent performances have been dreadful. But the Padres still find themselves in playoff position at the moment.
“We have been in tough places,” Tatis said. “We’re finding a way to get out of those.”
That’s truer for no one more than Tatis, whose season-opening homerless drought spanned a mind-blowing 238 plate appearances. He finally launched his first of the season in Washington last month.
But this one was different. This one had Petco Park in a frenzy again. There was Tatis, after a dramatic walk-off home run, shirtless after his uniform had been ripped off by his teammates. He’d carried the Padres to a dramatic victory, mere hours after they’d lost a heartbreaker in extra innings the night before.
It felt like a statement: Fernando Tatis Jr. is back.
Though his manager would quibble with that notion.
“I don’t think he ever left, personally,” said Craig Stammen. “This is just waves of baseball. If that was a stretch in the middle of the season, it would probably be less talked about. But because it was the beginning of the season, those are the only stats we can look at.
“He’s definitely been putting in the work. And sometimes the work doesn’t just translate in a day or two. It takes time. The hitting coaches have done a great job with him, staying patient. He’s done a great job, staying positive and smiling and being OK with failing sometimes. But I think his perseverance has shown lately.”
After the Padres fell behind, it was Tatis’ RBI single that tied the game in the fifth. They would fall behind again, but rallied for two runs in the eighth to tie it. Newly promoted Samad Taylor delivered his second late game-tying hit in as many nights.
That set the stage for Tatis. Reds righty Chase Petty hung a slider. It shot off Tatis’ bat, 106.3 mph, and instantly raised the decibel level at Petco Park. But Tatis didn’t think he’d gotten enough. In fact, he hit it so hard, he wasn’t sure he’d even make it to second base, so he put his head down to run.
“It was low, so I was like, ‘You better get on second,’” he said. “Then I saw everybody jumping.”
Said Reds manager Terry Francona: “When the ball was hit, I was kind of looking at my lineup card like, ‘OK, we’re going to have an open base, what do we want to do?’ I didn’t think that ball was going to get out.”
It carried just enough, to the first row in left field -- the type of scorching line-drive home run that few hitters are capable of, Tatis being one of them.
Which sort of made you think …
“It’s a wonder that he hasn’t run into a few more,” Stammen said.
Based on recent evidence, Tatis almost certainly will.