Should Fernando Tatis Jr. be the Padres cleanup hitter?

There's no answers here, just wondering out loud about the type of hitter(s) San Diego Padres OF Fernando Tatis Jr. has been and how a shift down the lineup might change that.

One of the strangest things about baseball is the lines that are drawn around team sport and individual sport.

For instance, a pitcher has an individual win-loss record. However, that win-loss record is determined equally by the performance of the pitcher and the performance of the offense while said pitcher is sitting (or standing) in the dugout. The performance of the bullpen after the starting pitcher is also a determining factor! What an odd stat.

Juan Soto is considered to be one of the best hitters in all of baseball because he gets on base a ton and almost never strikes out, in addition to the whole “when he makes contact it goes really far” thing. But the first part of that sentence brings in the context of the team.

Getting on base via the walk is great if there are hitters behind you that stand a better chance of hitting you in than you do of hitting yourself in with a home run. Taking a walk so that the worst hitter in the lineup can strikeout is a good decision for someone that probably stands no chance of hitting one over the wall, but for Soto (who has good hitters around him and has hit 40+ HRs in his last two seasons) it hasn’t always been the right decision. I remember being frustrated by this when he was in San Diego.

That brings me to Fernando Tatis Jr.

Tatis last season hit 25 HRs, racked up 71 RBIs and stole 32 bases over 155 games. He also won the Platinum Glove (again) in what was maybe his best all-around season. He posted the highest walk rate and the lowest strikeout rate of his MLB career. He also had the lowest ISO of his career, which is why it felt like we were watching a different Tatis.

For a player of Tatis’ almost unlimited potential, it can be easy to dream on him meshing the best parts of his 2025 (sustained health, low strikeouts, higher walk rate, impeccable defense) with the best parts of his previous best season, 2021 (when he hit 42 HRs, stole 25 bases and had 97 RBIs in 130 games). But, I’m starting to think to do so is to ignore the trends of his career.

I tend to try and ignore the COVID-shortened 2020 season when it comes to stats, and doing so would create a trend where Tatis’ strikeout rate has gone down every season he’s been in MLB (from 29.6% his rookie season to 18.7% last year).

The walk rate, as you can see, was trending up until his suspension and trending down in the two years following before exploding last year. That coincided with changes that he made to his batting stance and swing that were highlighted on MLB Network:

DeRosa was right when he said “Don’t be surprised if you see the leg kick return in July when he’s not feeling great,” Fernando definitely tinkered around to try and find the right balance between comfort and effectiveness.

My opinion is that Tatis changed the type of hitter that he is. Maybe that’s because he was told he was going to be batting leadoff, and he knew it made more sense to get on-base for the big hitters behind him than it did to swing for the fences. Maybe it’s because he wants to become more of a Juan Soto-type player that has built-in value (and can get on base) even when the bat goes cold.

Whether it’s a permanent change or a temporary one is anyone’s guess and, as much as I would love for the solution to the Padres’ lack of power in the lineup to be “Fernando Tatis Jr. hits 40+ home runs”, I think dreaming on that would do a disservice to the ways in which Tatis has built himself into more of a complete, dependable All-Star level player.

That being said, Craig Stammen is already talking openly about dropping Tatis to the cleanup spot in the lineup, which would (in theory) incentivize him to make big contact when he has RBI opportunities. It would also discourage him from taking walks, understanding that the hitters behind him are worse than the ones in front of him. If that happens, it will be interesting to track how his K-rate and BB-rate (and HR rate!) do over the course of the season.

A move like that could end up hurting the Padres’ ability to score runs (they were 18th in runs scored last season) and leave Fernando stranded on base a lot, or it could be the thing that wakes up the 2021 version of Tatis and the Padres offense.