SAN DIEGO -- The Padres have spoken at length about playing a more aggressive brand of baseball this year, and they’ve backed it up on the basepaths.
But they still have a couple folks who know their way around the bases in a slow trot.
Manny Machado hit a solo home run and Fernando Tatis Jr. ripped a pair of them Friday night in the Padres’ 8-3 loss to the Giants at Petco Park. The Padres have four home runs total in their four games this year, all by that duo.
“Those guys are in a good spot,” manager Mike Shildt said.
Machado, who also homered in the second game of the Seoul Series against the Dodgers last week, struck first against the Giants. He found the second deck in the fourth inning with a Statcast-projected 398-foot rocket on a 2-1 slurve from rookie left-hander Kyle Harrison.
Two innings later, Tatis went even deeper to the same neighborhood of Petco Park for his first homer of 2024. He turned around a 1-0 changeup from Harrison with a 441-foot drive that left the bat at 114.9 mph. Homer No. 2 for Tatis came off submariner Tyler Rogers in the eighth inning. Tatis somehow yanked an outside slider from the right-hander over the short wall in the left-field corner.
Tatis has the two-hardest hit balls in play in MLB this season -- his 114.9 mph homer and a 116.7 mph single off the Dodgers’ Michael Grove in the second game in Korea.
“It’s just hard work paying off,” Tatis said.
Machado and Tatis took different paths into this season. Machado had elbow surgery in October and had to scale back in Spring Training. He has appeared only as a designated hitter. Tatis, meanwhile, stepped up his preparations. In 2023, he was the one coming off surgery and had to miss the start of the season because of his PED suspension.
This year, however, he has the foundation of an entire offseason of workouts and eight games of live competition in Dominican League winter ball before a full Spring Training. He played for his father, former big leaguer Fernando Tatis, on Estrellas Orientales and put some hitting advice into practice.
Tatis Jr. is employing a leg kick in his swing. Last year, it was just a short stride forward.
“It was all my dad’s idea,” Tatis Jr. said. “Last year, I feel I was all over the place. I was drifting too much with my lower half, wasn’t controlling it. I feel like we’re just getting in a way better hitting position, and the results are coming out.”
The Padres rarely lose when Machado and Tatis connect in the same game -- 14-3 in their five seasons playing together, including 4-0 last year. But it happened on Friday, as they faced a three-run deficit before picking up a bat.
Starter Joe Musgrove yielded three runs -- two on a homer by Matt Chapman – while tossing 26 pitches in the first inning. (Chapman had another two-run homer in the ninth off Pedro Avila.) After that first inning, Musgrove ditched his shoes in favor of another pair and found his command to last another 4 2/3 innings while allowing only one more run.
“I just didn’t feel like they had any frickin’ outs in them,” Musgrove said of the first pair of shoes.