SAN FRANCISCO -- Fernando Tatis Jr. has been a force at (or near) the top of the Padres’ lineup for, essentially, his entire career.
So, yes, it was highly notable that Tatis batted fifth in the San Diego lineup on Tuesday night against the Giants -- the lowest he’s hit since his 2019 rookie season.
Then again, Tatis knows the deal. He’s keenly aware that he’s in the midst of one of the worst slumps of his big league career. (Maybe too aware.) So, no, it didn’t take Tatis by surprise that he was dropped in the lineup by manager Craig Stammen on Tuesday.
“I just know baseball,” Tatis said. “I know how baseball works.”
Beyond that, Tatis wasn’t too keen on discussing the specifics of his move in the lineup. What does he think of it? Players move spots in the order all the time, he said.
“Think nothing,” Tatis said. “I’m here to play baseball. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
“I’m just another baseball player,” he added.
True enough. But Tatis is also one of the game’s preeminent superstars. He’s a three-time All-Star who has received MVP votes in four seasons. But the 27-year-old has posted a career-low .625 OPS in 33 games. He still hasn’t homered in 143 plate appearances -- the longest span of his career without one.
“Just trying to switch it up a little bit -- the entire lineup in general,” Stammen said. “And I think, with Tati, just taking a little bit of pressure off of him at the plate. Hopefully he can work on a few things and not feel like he has to get the job done in the five-hole. … Just shaking things up.”
Not every lineup tweak is worthy of a conversation with the players affected. But Stammen said he spoke with Tatis before he finalized Tuesday’s lineup.
“Yeah, we talked about it,” he said. “The best thing about Fernando is he doesn’t really care. He just wants to play baseball. He knows it’s part of the game. He knows he can impact the game from any position in the lineup.”
Tatis posted an OPS north of .800 in both 2024 and '25, along with 20-plus home runs in each of those seasons. But Tatis’ strikeout rate has spiked to 25.2 percent this season entering Tuesday, his highest rate since '21, and he’s had a hard time optimizing his contact quality.
Despite a 99th percentile hard-hit rate (60.9 percent of his batted balls have been hit 95-plus mph), Tatis has a ground-ball rate north of 50 percent for the first time in his career, while his pull rate sat at 20.7 percent entering Tuesday, far below his 37.7 percent career rate.
The big-picture solution is right there: Tatis needs to keep hitting the ball hard, but he needs to pull it in the air more. A lot more.
But the mechanical tweaks that might lead to Tatis unlocking that solution have eluded him so far this season. He attributed his struggles to “a lack of consistency in all matters.”
“The game is alive,” Tatis said. “You’ve got to keep adapting. You’ve got to keep getting better.”
Tatis is hardly the only Padre struggling at the plate. Entering Tuesday, San Diego ranked 22nd in the Majors in runs (147), 23rd in homers (33), 26th in OPS (.680) and 23rd in wRC+ (94). But Tatis’ struggles have been the most notable.
“He’s working in the cage every day. It’s not for lack of effort,” Stammen said on Monday night. “He’s trying new things and trying things to unlock himself. I think sometimes he feels really close and then it turns a little bit the other way, facing tough pitching, and he’s not able to stay on that hot streak.
“We’ll keep working. He’s going to keep working every day. I trust that his ability is eventually going to come through and he’ll be just fine.”