Asking a Necessary Question about Fernando Tatis Jr.
What has happened to Fernando Tatis Jr's power?
If you were to look at Fernando Tatis Jr’s stats today, May 10th, you would notice that he still has a big zero in the home run column. For someone as talented as Tatis Jr. is, it’s shocking that 340 big leaguers have hit a home run this season but Tatis Jr. is not one of them.
As I started to follow this over the past week, I began thinking that one of two things could have happened with Tatis Jr.
Steroids clearly played a role in Tatis Jr. becoming one of the game’s best young power bats.
Tatis Jr’s shoulder surgery changed his swing
Initially when I saw the shocking stat, I immediately thought to myself, “Maybe steroids played a big role in his ascension to stardom.” If you go back to the 2022 season in Tatis Jr’s age 23 season, he missed the entire season with a broken wrist, an 80-game PED suspension, and a shoulder surgery to end the season. It was a completely lost season.
Tatis Jr. tested positive for Clostebol, which is a performance-enhancing substance. While mistakes can happen with medications, sometimes you just don’t know if players are being truthful when it comes to PEDs. And when you look at Tatis Jr’s numbers before the suspension and then after the suspension, it definitley creates some suspicion.
When a player starts their career off like Tatis Jr. did, expectations go through the roof. Only 12 players in the history of the sport have hit 40+ home runs prior to their age 23 season. Then a disastrous 2023 season including the PED suspension occurred and things haven’t quite been the same for Tatis Jr.
While Tatis Jr. has had productive offensive seasons since he returned from his PED suspension, it has not come close to his age 22 season when he hit 42 home runs. The 2026 season is still fairly early but it is odd to see Tatis Jr. still without a home run.
The wild thing about Tatis Jr’s homerless start to the season is that he is in the 99th percentile in hard hit percentage and the 92nd percentile in average exit velocity. Tatis Jr. also has a max EV of 113.4 this season. If someone is trying to make an argument that Tatis Jr. is not the same hitter because he is no longer taking PEDs, it doesn’t make sense. He is hitting the ball just as hard as his 42 home run season and more frequently. The PED argument is a bad argument.
Tatis Jr’s batted ball data in terms of how hard Tatis Jr. hits the baseball does not suggest that he cannot hit home runs. He is hitting the ball hard at a higher rate than Aaron Judge. The reason why Tatis Jr. is not hitting home runs is due to his launch angle. Tatis Jr’s average launch angle has been between 6.7 degrees and 11.0 degrees throughout his career. This season his average launch angle is just 2.4 degrees, which is leading to a ton of ground balls. While the contact is still elite, Tatis Jr. has been unable to lift the baseball.
Photo Credit: Thearon W. Henderson / Stringer / Getty images
The inability to lift the baseball suggests that this is a mechanical issue. It’s possible that the shoulder surgery Tatis Jr. had caused him to tweak his swing and his bat path, which is leading to hitting the baseball on the ground. It’s also possible that over time Tatis Jr. has made some targeted tweaks to his swing and the results have been less than desirable. It’s possible that Tatis Jr. has tweaked too much with his swing that he is unable to do the things that let him be successful in the first place.
While I believe Tatis Jr. will start to hit home runs again, it is a bit odd how the power has dropped off considerably despite Tatis Jr. being in his physical prime years. Could Tatis Jr’s best years be behind him? I am not sure he will be able to top his age 22 season with 42 home runs. While the Padres would love to see him return to an elite power bat, he must at the very least return to being 20-30% better than league average offensively. Maybe as the weather warms up as summer approaches so too will Tatis Jr’s power. But right now it’s a perplexing dilemma and I am not sure anyone has a definite solution for how to fix it.
What do you think has been the biggest cause for Tatis Jr’s power outage?
While this is not true for every hitter, for me, I would get into these streaks where I would hit the ball right in the center, and the ball would knuckle off of the bat. While this did display my incredible hand-eye coordination, and bat-to-ball skills, I was only hitting singles b/c the knuckling took the ball right out of the air, just like it does for a pitcher.
I noticed that my weight was flying forward just a hair too early. I was identifying a pitch I could drive, but by allowing my weight to fly forward of my center, I was hitting the ball 1/2" too high on the ball instead of getting back spin on the ball when making contact.
In order to fix this, I had to work on having a soft front foot. This allowed my weight to remain in my load just a hair longer, which kept my weight over my center at the point of contact and allowed me to hit against a stiff front leg, which allowed me to get backspin on the ball and the organic result was lifting the ball or in your parlance - getting to a higher launch angle.
The last thing I needed to consistently get the ball up in the air more was a high finish. I tended to wrap my bat around my mid-section after contact. By adding a higher finish after contact, with staying back just a hair, this allowed me to hit the bottom half of the baseball, get backspin, and to get my linedrives into a launch angel which would allow them to carry out of the ballpark.
I only wish I'd had the opportunity to continue this learning in Professional baseball. Alas, some things are just meant to be and I believe it is meant to be that Tatis, Jr. gets back to getting backspin on the ball and increasing his launch angle and I would not be surprised to see him reach 20-25 HRs this season.
PEDs. Yup. The lack of the PEDs. He’s now just full of machismo, and that’s not getting it done.
I also think he knows mentally that the Padres had their perfect team and perfect chance to get to the 2024 WS. That was their chance and the Dodgers stopped them- mentally.
That five game NLDS series in October was mentally it for that team. All of that bravado with Machado , Arraez, Profar, Bogaerts… Tatis Jr. is a very emotional player, and while I think he’s talented, I think the chip on his shoulder may be far more detrimental than the post-surgery swing changes.