Fernando Tatis Jr. Is Crushing Baseballs, But His Timing Is Way Off

[Randy Holt]

When working with a small sample in April, it’s sometimes difficult to get a read on a player. Are there trends that we can chalk up to bad luck? Is there some underlying information we can use to project a quick rebound before the calendar turns to May? Or could said trends manifest into something more worrisome over the longer-term? In the case of Fernando Tatis Jr., it’s a mix of all three. 

The San Diego Padres are off to an uneven start. Almost nobody in the lineup is immune to it, either. Tatis represents one such case given a stat sheet that doesn’t look too favorable. While the physical tools have remained in place (we’ll touch on this in a moment), the early returns through 11 games and nearly 50 plate appearances have featured a brutal .195/.292/.268 line and a wRC+ of only 68. The walk rate, which Tatis reset when he walked at a nearly 13 percent clip last year, has remained high (12.5 percent), but there’s a clear contact issue pinning down his ability to contribute. 

That inability to feed into an underperforming offensive unit comes in spite of Tatis putting nearly all of his physical tools on display. The defense continues to look outstanding, and the sprint speed is up in the 96th percentile. The most impressive thing he’s done thus far, though, is hit the ball hard. Like, really hard.

With the major caveat that we’re working within a minuscule sample, Tatis has made hard contact at a 70.4 percent rate. It’s a wildly unsustainable rate that, nevertheless, has him in the 99th percentile in contact quality. His 14.8 Barrel% is four percent higher than his overall clip from 2025. He’s also making more contact overall by about two percent, with a swing rate that has increased only slightly. These are all, objectively, good things. 

At the same time, something isn’t jibing between the contact metrics, the approach, and the overall production. It’s not as if Tatis is simply running into bad luck. A .276 batting average on balls in play may not be indicative of the elite contact trends he’s displayed, but it’s also not some horrendous figure. And while a strikeout rate lingering up near 28 percent is abnormal for him, it’s not as if he’s taking too many pitches or expanding the zone too frequently. In fact, his plate discipline numbers look really similar to last year across the board. 

So, what’s the issue here? 

Don’t get it twisted; the strikeout rate is, in itself, problematic. It’s not as if he’s working deep counts and experiencing punchouts as a byproduct of that. Tatis’ 3.83 pitches per plate appearance sits below league average at this point in the year. There’s a whiff issue happening, with a rate of 30.4 percent that sits three percent above where he was at last year. So, while the contact rate itself looks decent, there’s too much whiff happening in between that’s leading to the ballooned K%. We also can’t put all of it on merely swinging too much. 

There’s also a contract distribution issue at play. The concept of PullAIR% has gotten plenty of run in the last couple of years as a key ingredient in unlocking a player’s power potential. Tatis Jr’s PullAIR% through nearly 50 PA sits at 0.0 percent. In fact, he’s only pulling the ball 20.7 percent of the time overall. That’s nearly half of what’s he done in basically every season in which he’s played to date. Nearly half his contact (48.3 percent) has been to the center of the field, with another roughly 30 percent to the opposite field. None of those are going to yield particularly impressive power results. It’s not as if he’s seen a bat speed decline or anything mechanical. If there’s one thing to which we can remotely point, it’s in the intercept. 

Tatis’ intercept point (the point at which he makes contact with the ball relative to home plate) in 2025 was 3.6 inches in front of the plate. That’s almost identical to what he’d posted in the previous year. This year, he’s at just 0.9 inches in front of it. There’s a timing issue at play. He’s compensating effectively with bat speed, but there’s clearly something happening in his reaction that’s stalling his ability to recognize and swing early. That’s really the only explanation we have to offer at this point. 

Perhaps that’s something that can be worked out in short order. Tatis spent time last year adjusting his mechanics and his approach. We’re not even to the middle of April yet, so there may just be a further adjustment that’s transpiring in these early days of the season. But given that it’s leading to an absence of power and an influx of strikeouts, it’s something that he needs to adjust early in order to help this offense begin to move along with any level of consistency.

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