Fernando Tatis Jr. is incredible
The best player in baseball is also the most exciting player in baseball and his ceiling is impossible to predict.
This is probably going to be a shorter post from me today because I’m short on time and the “T” button on my keyboard is dying (don’t worry, I’ll get it fixed later today). I could’ve just skipped today or I could’ve chosen to write about someone or something that had less Ts in the name, but I can’t not write about Fernando Tatis Jr. today.
To put it simply and bluntly, well….I’ll just say what I said a week ago:
I still very much don’t know how to process this because I don’t think baseball has ever seen anything like this. I know I haven’t. This feels like uncharted territory.
The athleticism
This is maybe the easiest thing to talk about with Tatis. He is crazy athletic. Flexible, fast, aggressive, and strong. There’s really nothing on a baseball field that he can’t and won’t do. That was on display, alongside everything else, last night in a 4-3 win over the Mets.
Taking home on a wild pitch isn’t special. But doing it on a pitch that bounces about 2 feet away from the catch is suicide, and yet…Fernando scored.
He can cover 60 feet in the blink of an eye and does so at will. Add that to his ability to dodge tags and baseballs, sometimes going so far as to do a split to accomplish it, and you start to realize that he moves in a way that 6’3” men are not supposed to.
Sure, his athleticism will eventually decline as he gets older and continues to beat himself up in an effort to score runs. The good news is, he’s got a ton more value than just his athleticism…
The talent
In most sports, including baseball, there’s a difference between athleticism and talent. There are people that can do the things Fernando can do on the base paths, although most of them are at least a half-foot shorter than him.
However, to be able to do those things and also hit the ball the way he does is where he becomes something of a unicorn.
I can’t stress this enough: Tatis’ numbers freak me out. His current OPS+ is 204 and I know that you’re rolling your eyes because you don’t really know or care what OPS+ is.
Well, I could tell you that an OPS+ of 100 is roughly “average” and that anything north of 200 is actually insane or I could just tell you this:
Mike Trout’s highest OPS+ in a single season is 198. When Ken Caminiti won the MVP Award in 1996, his OPS+ was 174.
Look at the list of players that his this well, this often, with this much power and getting on base this much and your eyes start to bleed with legendary names.
Babe Ruth
Ted Williams
Barry Bonds
Mickey Mantle
And then there’s the guys who did it once, usually in their late 20s, and your mind starts to race.
Jeff Bagwell
Frank Thomas
Mark McGwire
Almost nobody has done it as young as Tatis has, and almost nobody has done it as consistently as he has. It feels impossible to predict what his ceiling might be because I’m not sure we’ve ever seen a player this good in baseball history.
Fernando gets compared to Alex Rodriguez a lot, both are tall shortstops that hit for power, but….Rodriguez was never this good of a hitter. Maybe the only semi-recent comparison for Tatis is Barry Bonds, who got MVP votes in 11 consecutive seasons and ended up winning the NL MVP Award an astonishing 7 times.
Even before the steroids and the home run records, Barry Bonds was on his way to the Hall of Fame as one of the best players in baseball for an extended period of time. And…even he wasn’t as good as Tatis is right now until he was in his mid-20s.
The personality
Yet another thing I don’t know how to process: Tatis’ personality.
He’s brash and arrogant and yet lovable (to all except the crusty old protectors of the unwritten rules of baseball that we’re all too happy to get rid of anyway).
He’s quiet and reserved and respectful away from the diamond, but is the loudest and proudest person on the planet when he gets on the field.
Nobody seems to love their teammates more. Nobody seems to have more fun. And I believe him when he says he signed that 14-year, $340 million contract because he loves San Diego.
It’s nice to have financial security going forward, for sure, but he could’ve gotten insurance and just waited until he hit free agency. He would’ve made more than this. And he could’ve gone to a bigger market, maybe New York or Los Angeles or Chicago or San Francisco, and it would’ve led to more money away from baseball too (endorsements, business opportunities, etc.).
But instead, he’s a San Diego Padre. For a very long time. And he’s the best baseball player I’ve ever seen, probably better than any I could even imagine, and he’s nowhere near his prime. He’s going to spend years getting better than he is now, which seems unbelievable.
We, as fans of the San Diego Padres, are so lucky.