Fernando Tatis Jr.'s Power Has Returned, Courtesy of Long-Needed Mechanical Tweaks

[Randy Holt]

There has been no shortage of weird and/or frustrating storylines for the San Diego Padres in 2026. Exceeding almost all of them, though, was the perplexing manner of Fernando Tatis Jr.'s early season power outage. 

It wasn't that Tatis was slumping across April and May. In fact, he was quite good. His batting average ran at .250 and .284 each month, respectively, while reaching base at rates of .323 and .360 over that span. Even better was the fact that he progressively cut down his strikeout rate between the two, maintained a walk rate over nine percent, and was a contributor on the basepaths. Of course, the broader narrative centered around the fact that, within all of that, his power was nowhere to be found. 

In the season's opening month, Tatis Jr's isolated power number read just .036. He followed that up with a .069 mark in May. As far as the raw count goes, he had four extra-base hits in March/April and three in May. Most notable was the fact that he went more than 50 games and well over 200 plate appearances before his first home run of the season, which occurred in May 30. That's two months of no long balls for the Padres hitter with the highest upside and a track record of upper-tier offensive performance. 

Theories abounded for what was causing such a stifling of the power side of his game. Most of them centered around something mechanical, notably in the form of timing or his swing path. The quality of contact was there all season, but the results didn't follow in terms of the impact. Until June and now into July. 

Tatis' more comprehensive skill set has continued to manifest over these last two months. His line included a .318 average & .356 on-base percentage in June and a .265 average & .365 OBP thus far in July. The power, however, is what has been particularly notable. After a minimal output on the ISO side in the first two months, Tatis Jr saw that figure climb to .191 in June. It's at .193 this month, highlighted by the longest home run in Major League Baseball in 2026 last week.

A 27-degree launch angle, 111 MPH off the bat with a bat speed of 82.2 MPH culminating in 474 feet of power. Tatis appears to be back in a real John Wick sort of way. That's just the latest example, though, as Tatis' raw numbers featured nine doubles and four homers in June before his nine extra-base hits in July so far. Which means that after eight total extra-base hits spread across the first two months, he's more than doubled it since.

With such a turnaround in this facet of his game, there are obviously going to be some embedded mechanical tweaks. For Tatis, the most notable ones have come in the form of his footwork. This is his stance through the end of May: 

And this is Tatis in June and through the first three weeks of July: 

The change is apparent in that his stance has become something much more akin to what we've seen from him in previous seasons with the open stance. So it's no surprise that his pull rate is up near 50 percent (49.1) in July after lingering in the low-30s in May & June.

In addition to opening back up, Tatis has adjusted his swing path. Through the end of April, his attack angle was six degrees, rising to seven by the end of May. In these last two months, it's up at eight. His rate of an ideal attack angle has risen about eight percent between those two-month splits, resting at 59.5 percent in the latter half of the season so far. His bat speed is also up between each segment, rising from 74.5 MPH in the first two months to 76.8 MPH in the latter two. 

We know that Pull-AIR% has become a crucial component for hitters to generate power. Tatis' 7.8 percent rate in that regard was the Padres' worst through the end of May. It's at 11.1 percent since the start of June. That hasn't put him into elite company by any means, but it's not as if the launch angle itself has seen a dramatic steepening, either. This is all about margins. 

Tatis has been a very good hitter in 2026. He's just had to do his damage more methodically thanks to a power outage. His mechanics early sacrificed nearly all of the power for the sake of line drive contact. It was an overcorrection with an unknown origin. The changes we're seeing got him opened up and just level enough to begin tapping into more regular power. It's the slight changes across his attack angle and bat speed that have allowed him to rediscover elements of his power without the expense of everything else he was doing well.

The line-drive hitter is still there in between the manifestation of impact contact, but that also shouldn't be looked upon as a negative either. Instead, we're looking at a player who made just enough of an adjustment to continue his crucial role as a top-of-the-order hitter capable of hitting or walking his way on base for (in an ideal world) the other drivers of the offense coming up behind him, especially when you factor in his baserunning prowess.

This is the purest form of Fernando Tatis Jr. The exceptional hitter and threat on the bases capable of extreme power when the opportunity presents itself. As the Padres attempt to remain afloat in the National League playoff picture, it couldn't have come at a more ideal time.

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