The Padres are 36 games into their season. Outfielder Fernando Tatis Jr. is still searching for his first home run. The 27-year-old has yet to leave the yard despite hitting the ball harder than just about everyone. Tatis was slugging .305 heading into Wednesday, nearly 200 points below his career mark. He has six extra-base hits in 148 plate appearances.
Tatis isn’t going to get shut out in the home run column all season. He’s recorded 12 barrels, which should’ve translated to around a half-dozen homers, based on the rate those batted-ball events tend to leave the yard. Luis Rengifo has the second-most barrels without a home run at six. Last season, Jose Tena had the most barrels without a home run, also with six. If he continues to barrel the ball at a 12.5% clip, Tatis will get on the board before long.
Since his 42-homer season in 2021, Tatis has been more of a mid-20s guy in the power department. He has exactly 25 dingers in his two full campaigns during that stretch. Injuries and an 80-game PED suspension sidelined Tatis for all of 2022. A stress fracture in his leg cost him two months in 2024, but he still hit 21 home runs in 102 games. Even as Tatis’ combination of power and speed has trended toward the latter, he’s still been an extremely productive offensive force. The outfielder has had a wRC+ above 130 in each of the past two seasons.
Tatis has slashed .250/.320/.305 through 34 games. He’s been 20% worse than league average at the plate by wRC+. And that’s with a .337 BABIP, his highest since his rookie season. So, what’s gone wrong for the superstar?
Suboptimal directional contact
The easiest way to turn loud contact into a parade of singles is to use the whole field. Tatis had been almost exactly league average in terms of directional contact for his career. His pulled, up the middle, and opposite field contact rates have seldom skewed more than 5% off of the league norm. Tatis has upended that trend this season. He’s pulling the ball just 20.8% of the time (per Statcast), well below the league average of 37.4% and nowhere near his career mark of 37.7%. Tatis is going up the middle at a massive 46.9% clip, nearly 10% higher than league average. He’s using the opposite field on 32.3% of his batted balls, a nearly 7% jump from his previous career high (25.4% in 2024).
Using the whole field isn’t inherently bad, particularly when you rank in the 99th percentile in hard-hit rate. Tatis has a solid .280 expected batting average, which ranks in the 82nd percentile. It’s just not the ideal path toward turning hard hits into damage.
Decline in fly balls
Tatis isn’t just spraying the ball more than ever. He’s also hitting it on the ground at a career-high 52.1% rate. Tatis has typically leaned slightly higher than average on grounders, but his lifetime mark was only a couple of percentage points above the league average of 44.2%. Tatis still provided plenty of power with a 49.0% groundball rate in 2025, which was a career-high at the time. He posted a sub-20% line drive rate for the first time as a big leaguer, but his fly ball rate remained intact last season.
The jump in groundballs has come at the expense of fly balls this year. Tatis’ line drive rate is up to 28.1%, the best of his career. He’s trimmed his pop-up rate to 3.1%. But Tatis is lifting the ball at just a 16.7% clip, a 9% drop from his career average, and well below the leaguewide mark of 24.1%. He’s also pulling the ball in the air at a career-low 5.2% rate. It’s the eighth-lowest mark among qualified hitters. The bottom 10 in pulled air rate is littered with no-power speedsters like Victor Scott II, Chandler Simpson, Jake Mangum, and Luisangel Acuna. It’s not the kind of group you want to be in, particularly as a high-impact offensive contributor.
Bump in strikeouts
Tatis entered the league with a swing-and-miss issue. He had a strikeout rate near 30% with a concerning 67.1% contact rate as a rookie. Even during the massive 2021 season, when he finished third in NL MVP voting, Tatis struck out at a bloated 28.0% rate. He had the fifth-lowest contact rate among qualified hitters. While the power has ticked down in recent seasons, Tatis has also made more contact. He was in the low-20s for strikeout rate in 2023 and 2024. The 2025 campaign saw him punch out at just a 18.7% clip.
The strikeout rate has jumped back up to 25.0% in 2026. Tatis’ called strike + swinging strike rate is at 26.9%, his highest since 2021. His whiff rate is above 30% for the first time in three seasons. These numbers are in line with the first three seasons of Tatis’ career, but he was a premier power bat in those years.
Now what?
The Padres handed Tatis a 14-year, $340MM extension heading into the 2021 season. It gets more expensive the longer it goes. Tatis will be making $36MM a year from 2029 through 2032. He’s generally been worth the money up to this point, lost 2022 season aside. Tatis has been a 5+ WAR player (per Baseball Reference) in 2021, 2023, and 2025. He has two Gold Gloves for his splendid work in right field, and he’s chipped in some additional defensive value by playing second base this year. It’d be nice if he hit more like a corner outfielder than a second baseman.
Tatis appears to be himself from a physical perspective. His bat speed remains elite at 74.6 mph, and his fast swing rate is higher than ever (51.1%). His stance is a bit more closed, and he’s standing slightly further back from the plate, but he hasn’t made any massive changes with his setup. Tatis’ intercept point is much closer to the plate than normal, which explains the change in contact direction. His sprint speed is right in line with the past couple of years. He’s not broken. He’s just been the worst parts of his previous selves in 2026.
Photo courtesy of David Frerker, Imagn Images
No roids no power
Here there Mr. Ringworm, where have you gone?
No education, can’t read an article.
How will he ever hit home runs again without steroids
Biscuit – What surprises me even more is only 6 extra-base hits.
You’d think with his legs and speed he’d be able to leg out some doubles like Duran always does. And yet Duran has more extra-base hits than Tatis despite having far fewer hits.
Duran with the top flute mullet 🤝
I certainly can. Tatis needs more roids!
99th percentile in HH rate = incredible power.
You would know that if you read the article.
Steroids=power
Steroids do not equal power. They equal muscle recovery.
“Steroids do not equal power.”
Outinleftfield back with another banger lmfao.
Just wrong. Ask Ahrnold about his body-building days.
They do a LOT more than that. Look it up – they help fast twitch, strength, even eyesight improves.
Steroids allow faster muscle recovery so the user can work out more and harder. By themselves they don’t build more powerful muscles. To do that the user has to commit to working out more.
You could take steroids in massive doses and if you sit on your behind at your computer, the only muscles that will get stronger is the ones in your fingers.
Nice zinger Ryan.
“Ryan”
You create a new account. You try to dial back your attitude a little bit. But just like the scorpion that stings the frog, you can’t resist your nature.
What happened to websoulsurfer anyway? Ban?
No one seems to want to talk about the benefits of his PED use. 160 career OPS prior to his suspension, 118 OPS after. He hit 42 home runs with a SLG over .600 in 2021 and hasn’t come remotely close to it ever since. He’s definitely better than what he’s been like so far this season, but this seems like a normal early season slump for a 110-120 OPS hitter, which is what he likely is.
Oh I don’t think there will be a shortage of talking about that below. 😀
Well yeah I’m sure average baseball fans with no skin in the game would say it. I’m more so talking about the people who get paid to cover the sport and think it’s wrong to outright say a player directly benefited from PEDs.
I am not an expert on all the various PED’s that are available on the black market or in the Dominican, but my understanding is that most athletes take them to recover faster from injury and to make the day-to-day pains of playing everyday easier to withstand. I don’t think there is a magic pill that caused Tatis to have that monster season in 2021, it doesn’t appear to be how PEDs work these days. So just saying “huh duh ringworm duh huh huh” doesn’t really get us anywhere or provide us with a valid explanation for what’s going on with Tatis.
Other than his stats since that 1 season
No joke. 2023, 24 and 25 combined OPS is 65 total points over in 3 years. The last season pre-popped was 66 over in 1 season… no way do PEDs have anything to do with it…
It sounds like your lack of knowledge on current PEDs should help you sit this one out.
And if you’re under the assumption that it is only or even mainly just for day to day recovery, keeping you fresh, think of how much harder it is to catch up to 95 when you’re sore than days when you’re fresh.
It’s not just to get Barry Bonds head or McGuire arms.
Agree. Steroids let you recover from injuries faster and let you hit the weight room harder. They don’t make your swing faster or your eyes better. Foolish to say that steroids do not help because they help you recover from injury. They also have nasty side effects.
There is zero evidence that the decline from 2025 to 2026 has anything to do with steroids. Zero.
and zero evidence that they do not affect performance. go wait for Greenland to melt and get your new mexico beach…not gonna happen. cu it’s not tru
miketrout was specific in stating he was talking about the decline from his monster 2021 season to the subsequent years. And that this year looks like a slump for that lesser player. I think it was a good comment.
MLB – It’s actually HGH that is the top choice of athletes who want to recover faster, and it’s not a steroid.
Steroids are all about testosterone, it builds muscle which helps players swing and throw harder. Yes they do also help with recovery, but not as well as HGH.
Actually yes PEDs can help someone swing faster and harder.
That said I agree there is no conclusive evidence that PEDs have led to a decline for Tatis. He is still hitting the ball hard. There is also the issue with the known variance on MLB balls back in 2021. In less MLB were to come 100% clean we ll never know to what extent they influenced games and how often.
Dudes like ARod, Nelson Cruz, David Ortiz, and Robinson Cano used a cocktail of drugs that improved all their underlying baseball skills. Steroids for muscle strength and twitch. HGH for improved eye sight and recovery. Adderall type amphetamines for focus and high octane performance. And diuretics to reduce swelling and eliminate waste. Dudes can do a cycle during the off-season and stay ahead of detection with help from medical teams. Then, during the season, they stay clean, but reap the benefits from the diminishing off-season gains.
We don’t know what Tatis was taking because he gave us lame excuses instead of transparent honesty. Anyway, its obvious, his one superstar season was the result of drug use. Not correlation, but causation.
It is unknown what PEDs Papi tested for. And Adderall actually causes swelling and in no way reduces swelling.
Im not sure what players you are referring to that have given transparent honesty. They have all given limited information after the fact.
Obviously not causation. Not even correlation.
Tatis said he took exactly what he tested positive for. That particular PED is in creams that they sell in the DR for treatment of skin diseases like ringworm.
You are also forgetting that players had no access to ream medical personnel to vet medications because of the lockout by the owners.
I guess it’s easier to make stuff up and hate on a player than deal with the reality of the situation.
Tatis did not test positive for a specific product, he tested positive for a specific PED. The product he claimed to use contained said PED.
Im not saying whether what he said was true or not, but he very well could have claimed that it was the ringworm product so it would not look as nefarious. Only he and maybe a handful of people no for sure. What we do know is said product was claimed after the fact and he clearly had a motivation for looking for something less nefarious.
Are you certain that team medical personnel were made completely unavailable to them during the lockout?? I doubt they were, anyone who had been being treated were patients of those doctors. Even if they were not available these players have a ton of resources at their disposalm in Tatis’s case he even had his father as a resource.
You say it as you know unequivocally what he said was true, which absolutely is not the case.
Your understanding is limited it would appear. Yes roids for recovery is a huge benefit but… They also help with strength gains and fast twitch muscles. The roids have become more subtle but they’re still making dudes way stronger.
Anabolic steroids don’t help with building muscle unless you are working out. Anabolic steroids main function is developing and maintaining male secondary sexual characteristics such as facial hair, deep voice, and libido.
Anabolic steroids do help you bounce back from workouts faster. Building muscle mass requires breaking muscle fiber down through muscle stress and muscle damage.
The way anabolic steroids helps athletes is in faster recovery from work out efforts. Because anabolic steroids help muscles recover faster, athletes can work out more often and do more intense workouts. That is how steroids help build muscle mass in athletes. Bottom line is if you don’t work out, you don’t build muscles whether you are using steroids or not.
What is “making dudes way stronger” is working out and anabolic steroids allow them to work out more often and more intensely.
Bro that’s a lot of words for a semantics argument. Anabolic steroids let you work out more, recover faster and build muscle/strength faster. I’ve lifted with dude on the gear and watched them fly past me in a month or two. They quit and in 3 months it’s all gone. This obviously is low level gym users not guys with their own chemistry team.
I just wanted to apologize for making light of the people who get on Tatis’s case for the ringworm alibi/excuse. Tatis did indeed say that and it was a stupid thing for him to say so he does of course deserve any ridicule coming to him for that. MY bad.
PED had nothing to do with the drop in power. Multiple shoulder subluxations that resulted in multiple shoulder surgeries that resulted in a completely changed swing did. Go look at his swing early in his career compared to today.
People would much rather hate than pay attention to the facts. Sad statement about those haters.
Tatis’ 133 wRC+ in 2024-2025 was 18th in baseball. FWIW, Mike Trout put up a 123 wRC+ mark in 500 fewer PA’S over those same seasons.
Baseball Savant #’s:
2024
Avg exit velocity 93.5 (97th percentile)
Hard hit % 55.8 (99th!)
expected line: .294/.390/.548
2025
Avg exit velocity 93.3 (95th percentile)
Hard hit % 51.8 (93rd)
expected line: .272/.370/.488
In 2022 he had two wrist surgeries AND a shoulder surgery in the year he tested positive for PED, a season he did not appear in.
To have all that happen and come back and put up those numbers and win 2 platinum gloves in 3 years is very impressive.
His 99th percentile hard hit% this year has me not worried in the least bit about him not going deep yet. I posted a few days ago how he, Witt Jr. and Acuna Jr. had 4 homeruns in a combined 450 PA’s… baseball is funny that way.
Awesome, he’s a gold glove caliber corner outfielder with a .800 OPS. Theres nothing wrong with that but he’s clearly not the 40 plus home run threat he was prior to his suspension, and he likely never will be again.
The PED suspension had nothing to do with the drop in power. Multiple shoulder subluxations that resulted in multiple shoulder surgeries that resulted in a drastically changed swing did. Go look at his swing early in his career compared to today. He may never be a 40 HR threat again, but steroids had nothing to do with him being a 40 HR threat before the injuries.
Dude needs another case of ringworm.
Does ringworm affect your eyesight?
Roids do
Ophthalmic steroids are medications used to reduce inflammation, swelling, redness, and pain in the eyes, often prescribed after surgery, injury, or for certain inflammatory conditions.
Well, the good news is, they’re only on the hook for another $260M through 2036.
Maybe his Papa needs to take Jr. back to the same places Juan Gonzalez, Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, Brady Anderson, Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado, etc. former teammates used to go with Sr.
Oh yeah, and Rafael Palmeiro too!
Buddy is down bad for another case of ring worm.
Guess it was all that Winny.
Armchair manager: “They either need to tweak his launch angle (they hadn’t thought of this before) or let him go back on the juice and hope he doesn’t get popped.” 🤡
He’s not hitting 40 bombs again, probably because of obvious reasons, but he really does need to pop 25 to be a productive hitter for a team that’s got playoff aspirations…
Someone show Tatis the Pete Rose adjust your position in the batters box video
Maybe he needs his Soul Glo. Just don’t get caught.
All the metrics say he is going to hit home runs at a normal pace.
I have a question? Look at all the hitters and teams having poor starts to 2026. Is there something different with the ball or mound.
Everyone wants to skip over the “juiced ball” that was used in Fernando’s 42 homer season. I think that his constant “tinkering”has him in a head spin. I’m also not going to be naive and say he wasn’t cheating before hand. Let’s hope he will figure it out, soon. Go Padres
I wonder if he still dances good.
I hope Charlie asked for permission before writing negative things about the Padres.
Maybe tomorrow we’ll get a piece about Logan Webb leading the league in runs and hits allowed?
Very possibly. It’s a worry. Would love to read the opinions.
I’ll try not to attack the writer. I think I’ll manage.
10-5, 5-1, same thing
Ha ha. You are such a child. You really think that is going to hurt an adult ?
Congratulations. Yeah. Couple of good wins.
The dancing joke may turn out to be more prescient than you think. I haven’t seen him have fun playing ball in a couple seasons now. He had to grow up, no doubt, especially after the PEDs. But he’s completely lacking energy and enthusiasm, which used to be a huge part of his game
The Padres are playing good baseball. Tatis is a big part of that.
He is hitting the ball so hard, harder on contact than all except 3 hitters, that just some small adjustments will result in more home runs. Not that I’m a hitting coach, but in my opinion he just needs to move a few inches forward and open his stance slightly and his launch angle and pull percentage will increase.
That’s what she said
Amazing how many people want to speculate about unknown steroids when known shoulder issues more than explain the biomechanics here.
So many experts on steroids in the comments. Are you guys taking PEDs for your weekend slow pitch games?
2 gold gloves are actually 2 platinum gloves.
“Tatis isn’t going to get shut out in the home run column all season. He’s recorded 12 barrels, which should’ve translated to around a half-dozen homers, based on the rate those batted-ball events tend to leave the yard.”
Should’ve = didn’t. That’s the problem with some of the analytics that are implied.
I think what the analytics are trying to say is that he is long overdue for a home run surge.
Unrelated to Tatis but I once saw a note that said singles are still the most common hit in a game. I think fact that they are lumped in with hits and don’t usually have own listing in stats like 2B, 3B or HR do, you can miss them altogether.
“singles are still the most common hit in a game”
By far
This season
1B: 5798
2B: 1700
3B: 130
HR: 1147
fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?pos=all&st…
If you’re hitting more than 50% of your batted balls on the ground it stands to reason balls hit against the wall or over the wall will decline. As an aside, the Padres have more pressing issues than Tatis’ non-existent HR total. To wit, need to trade for a solid SP.
Fearless Prediction Dept.:
Come season’s end, Tatis will have hit 25 HR and knocked in 90-100 runs.
He needs another case of ringworm.
Maybe he should cut the mop off of his head. Maybe his luck will change.
I’ve always been curious about how long the effects of peds,or steroids last in the body. How long do they help you in strength and power? When do they wear off? Not saying this is what is going on with Tatis but just a general question..
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that the lack of steroids has turned him into a negative WAR guy. As a tepid White Sox fan, I don’t feel so bad about one of the most lopsided trades in MLB history.
A rocket scientist would presumably be smart enough to know he’s not a negative WAR player. Even with no pop he’s on pace for a 1.5WAR year and he had over 5 WAR last year which was 3 years after his PED suspension.
Look at all of the data and analytics in this article that explains Tatis isn’t hitting home runs because he’s not pulling the ball and he’s hitting it into the ground. He’s in the 99th percentile for hard hit rate, if he starts pulling the ball in the air, it will start leaving the park.
Fernando Tacheats Juicer
MLB did an indepth analysis of Tatis Jr’s stance in the batters box, his swing and his problems hitting the ball into the ground and not into the air where it is more likely to leave the ballpark.
It has nothing to do with Tati’s suspension since he had much more power even after returning from suspension.
This is something Tatis Jr.and Padres batting coaches can work on and fix according to the analysis by MLB.com (charts, graphs galore).
mlb.com/news/fernando-tatis-jr-strange-start-2026
Tatis Jr. is swinging and hitting balls hard.
But, he is hitting too many into the ground for ground balls.
And, Tatis Jr. is late on many pitchers and hitting too may to RF.
His batting stance has changed from when he was hitting a lot of home runs.
The analysis states that he must pull the ball more and put more balls into the air and not into the ground to correct his lack of power so far this year.
Some sessions with the Padres batting coaches, hitting to LF, and time in the video room studying what he is doing right and wrong in the batters box
should help Tatis Jr. to get back to his power hitting stance and swings.
Maybe too much time looking for walks and hitting to RF like the stats/computer experts encourage are messing up Tatis’s swing
and getting him away from his home run power game.