Still homer-less, Tatis remains confident despite struggles at the plate

Fernando Tatis Jr. stood in front of his locker in the Padres clubhouse at Petco Park this weekend when a white rectangular box was delivered. He put it on the floor and lifted the lid to reveal two bottles of red wine and a cigar.

Asked if he likes cigars, Tatis said, “Yes!”

“I’ll smoke it when I hit my first home run,” he said.

He still hasn’t hit his first home run of the season and the cigar remains untouched. Through Monday he’s played in 33 games and gone homerless in 123 plate appearances. His slugging percentage is .301, well below his career number of .504 across six-plus seasons.

It’s the slugging percentage of a middle-infielder. Hall of Fame shortstop Ozzie Smith, for instance, had a .328 lifetime slugging percentage over 19 seasons, with 28 homers in 9,396 at-bats. Coming into the season, Tatis had 152 homers in 2,726 at bats.

Padres manager Craig Stammen has occasionally moved Tatis from right field to second base this season. A shortstop when he arrived in the Major Leagues, Tatis had never played second base in a big-league game until April 11. He’s started five more games there since then as well.

“I’m a utility player now,” said Tatis, who has multiple gloves of different kinds in his locker just to prove it. He’s a two-time Platinum Glove right-fielder.

Stammen explained that he wanted to use Tatis as a substitute when giving second baseman Jake Cronenworth or shortstop Xander Bogaerts a breather. In that game against the Rockies, Cronenworth moved to short while Tatis played second. Wouldn’t it have been obvious to play Tatis at his natural position?

“We thought Tatis would be the best option at second base,” Stammen said. “Maybe getting that kid smiling a little bit might have helped, too.”

Tatis is not a dour personality, and he’s weathered it all pretty well so far this season and in his career. If his 14-year, $340 million contract is a burden, he hasn’t said so. If his shoulder, wrist surgeries and 80-game steroid suspension on Aug. 12, 2022, have made him a more circumspect player, that hasn’t been obvious to an observer.

In interviews with Tatis across several weeks, at no time did he complain or place blame on anyone but himself.

“It looks like the baseball gods are really mad at me right now,” he said. “I’m hitting the ball hard to every part of the field. That’s all right. I’ll take it. It’s a long season, and I have plenty of time to straighten it out.”

He was hitting a low of .189 the day he was moved to second base for what turned out to be back-to-back games, and he had three hits that night. From there, his batting average has risen as high as .270 on May 1, but his power numbers have gone nowhere. He’s only driven in 13 runs.

“You get frustrated, obviously,” Tatis said. “At the same time, you’ve got to know you’re doing the right thing. You have to stay confident. You have to keep your head in the game, go out there and compete with your teammates, and find a way to win in this really hard game of baseball.”

Advanced metrics support the eye test and Tatis’ personal assessment, which both indicate he’s hitting the ball hard with little to show for it.

According to Baseball Savant, Tatis’ hard-hit rate on balls smacked higher than 95 mph is 66.7%, good for the best in the Major Leagues. His average exit velocity when the ball rockets off his bat is 93.2 mph. At that rate, his expected slugging percentage should be .410, not where it currently sits at .301.

Why the discrepancy? Scouts say his swing has flattened out and that with a launch angle of 3.5 degrees he’s not getting the lift on his hard hit balls to get over the fence. Instead, many of his hard-hit liners and ground balls are finding their way into the gloves of defenders all over the field. The baseball gods at play.

He only has five extra base hits: four doubles and a recent triple. Last year he had 54: 27 doubles, two triples and 25 homers out of 159 hits. Right now, he has only 31 hits.

For that reason, Stammen took him out of the lineup and rested him Sunday in a 4-3 home win over the White Sox, San Diego’s only win in its last six games, through a Monday-night loss to the Giants in San Francisco.

“I don’t think there’s any issue with Fernando Tatis Jr.,” Stammen said. “He’s a leader of our team. He makes plays all over the place even when he’s not hitting the ball in the air exactly how he wants to. This game’s not easy. Pitchers are all trying to get him to hit the ball on the ground. He’s not hot and he’s still pretty impressive.”

To be sure, it’s not just Tatis. The Padres are suffering through a team-wide offensive drought.

The Padres are 27th of the 30 teams in batting average (.230), 24th in slug (.377), 26th in OPS (.680), 22nd in homers (33) and 21st in runs scored (147). Individually, Manny Machado is hitting .221, Jackson Merrill .220, Gavin Sheets .215, Nick Castellanos .164, Felix Fermin .161 and Cronenworth .144.

That’s pretty much their daily lineup, with some exceptions. Yet, they’ve somehow been able to remain in stride with the Dodgers for first place in the National League West. It’s a long season of 162 games, of course, as Tatis says.

“I have all the confidence in the world that the guys hitting behind me will straighten it out,” Tatis said.