Don’t Apologize for Fernando Tatis Jr. — Embrace Him
If you follow baseball, you might be aware of the minor scandal “caused” by Fernando Tatis Jr. on Monday night. Without the usual tens of thousands of fans in attendance to serve as direct witnesses, Tatis brazenly and maliciously hit a grand slam of Texas Rangers pitcher Juan Nicasio on a 3-0 count, while fully aware that his team had a seven-run lead. Ian Gibaut then came in and threw behind Manny Machado, sending an important message that acts of baseball will not be tolerated! Despite Chris Woodward’s efforts to explain Tatis’ violations of baseball’s sanctified unwritten rules, MLB had the temerity to give suspensions to Woodward and Gibaut. Rob Manfred may as well have thrown mom’s apple pie off the window sill.
More of this, please.
Baseball’s unwritten rules are a dreary mess, a veteran-imposed caste system of arbitrary rules and penalties that attempt to impose conformity, often on players of color, without the slightest benefit to how the game is played on the field or how the product comes across to viewers. And in addition to being tone-deaf and nonsensical, they’re rarely consistently enforced! I certainly don’t remember Woodward issuing a heartfelt apology to the Royals last year when his team hit two home runs in the ninth against Chris Owings, dragooned into mop-up duty in a long-lost game. At least Nicasio is an actual major league pitcher.
But enough about that fussiness — let’s get back to the baseball-related awesomeness of Tatis.
Tatis isn’t going to be the highest-paid Padre for a very long time thanks to the presence of Machado, but if the next decade of San Diego baseball is successful, it will be defined by players like the young shortstop, not to mention Chris Paddack and MacKenzie Gore. The resurgent, seemingly fly ballism-converted Eric Hosmer is in his decline phase and Machado, while a special player, didn’t grow up in the organization.
Tatis finished third in the National League Rookie of the Year voting, but that was primarily due to only playing in 84 games. While I can’t speak for the other voters, 20-30 more games would have been enough to leapfrog him to first on the ballot I submitted last September. And in the first month of the 2020 season, he’s built upon that strong 2019 performance, and how. Last year, he hit .317 in part due to a .410 BABIP, a mark that called out for regression. This year’s .310 BA, on the other hand, has only required a far more normal .345 BABIP to maintain. Home runs are down slightly league-wide from 2019 but you wouldn’t know it looking at Tatis’ line. With 11 homers in 25 games, he now projects in our Depth Charts to finish the 60-game season with 19 homers. A .310/.384/.710 triple-slash comes out as a 189 wRC+. For those unfamiliar with the scaling of wRC+, 100 is league average; every point above 100 is a percentage point above league average. Alex Rodriguez had a 141 mark for his career and fell just short of 180 at his best.
Now, Tatis probably isn’t this good — if he is, eat your heart out, Mike Trout — but the evidence that he’s a superstar has become overwhelming. I love Ronald Acuña Jr. and Juan Soto, but if I got to pick one player to start a new franchise, I’m taking Tatis.
For the Padres, the sooner Tatis can be signed to an extension, the better. There have been rumblings in the past about doing just that — rumblings that obvioulsy came to naught — and the rumors resurfaced again when Fernando Tatis Sr. fueled the extension flames:
https://twitter.com/hgomez27/status/1292928226264854528
As the philosopher Ted Dibiase said, everybody’s got a price. In the end, the best way to get a contract done is to make a great offer, and by a great offer, I don’t mean a contract like Ozzie Albies’s.
The only reason ZiPS had Tatis at the back of its rest-of-career WAR top 10 going into the season was because of his health the last few years. Every season Tatis is healthy, he gets a lot more expensive. Let’s start with his current projection past this year should he remain healthy. Tatis is scheduled to hit free agency after the 2024 season, so we’ll examine the contours of buying out his arbitration years, plus four years of free agency. That would keep Tatis in San Diego until at least the end of the 2028 season and give him a chance to test the market again after his age-29 season:
| Year | BA | OBP | SLG | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | SB | OPS+ | DR | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | .280 | .352 | .520 | 533 | 113 | 149 | 24 | 7 | 30 | 124 | 57 | 162 | 29 | 131 | 2 | 5.9 |
| 2022 | .285 | .360 | .557 | 522 | 116 | 149 | 25 | 9 | 33 | 131 | 59 | 162 | 27 | 143 | 2 | 6.5 |
| 2023 | .284 | .362 | .566 | 525 | 118 | 149 | 25 | 9 | 35 | 136 | 62 | 168 | 27 | 145 | 2 | 6.8 |
| 2024 | .283 | .364 | .577 | 523 | 120 | 148 | 25 | 9 | 37 | 139 | 65 | 173 | 26 | 149 | 2 | 7.0 |
| 2025 | .278 | .362 | .579 | 518 | 120 | 144 | 24 | 9 | 38 | 140 | 66 | 176 | 27 | 148 | 2 | 7.0 |
| 2026 | .281 | .366 | .593 | 506 | 119 | 142 | 23 | 9 | 39 | 142 | 66 | 172 | 27 | 153 | 2 | 7.1 |
| 2027 | .282 | .367 | .600 | 493 | 116 | 139 | 23 | 10 | 38 | 138 | 64 | 161 | 25 | 155 | 1 | 6.9 |
| 2028 | .290 | .373 | .620 | 476 | 114 | 138 | 22 | 9 | 39 | 140 | 61 | 148 | 23 | 162 | 0 | 7.1 |
That is, of course, a phenomenal projection and actually edges Trout’s over the same period; remember, Trout will be 37 at the end of the 2028 season. Pricing numbers like this is always tricky because $/WAR is as distorted at the top of the curve as it is at the bottom of it. We’ve yet to see a player hit $40 million in a single season — Trout’s extension has him peaking at a mere $36 million — so there’s no history of recent megastars getting the $50-$60 million a year you’d expect at their peaks. If we assume a hard ceiling of $36 million for 2021 (with 4% growth), ZiPS suggests an eight-year, $225 million deal for Tatis as fair, at least in the context of MLB’s economic system.
If I’m San Diego, I’d be willing to do that, though it wouldn’t be my opening bid, naturally. The Braves are getting a steal for Ronald Acuña Jr. at eight-years and $100 million, and it would be hard to describe a 50% bump from that figure as a rank insult. Forbes estimates the Padres’ franchise value at $1.45 billion for 2020. San Diego will always be a smaller market than Los Angeles, but Tatis is one of the keys to making the Padres the modern rival to the Dodgers over the next decade.
Fernando Tatis Jr. is the San Diego Padres franchise. Pay him like he is and unleash him fully, unwritten rules be damned.
Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
Wonder how Acuña extension is factoring into the negotiations— by all indications it should be the closest comp, but it’s so far below market value both sides know that it’s probably pointless to even use it as a starting point. Acuña’s agent and the Braves FO are probably rooting against a Tatís extension as hard as NL West teams, it’s gonna be awkward if Tatís’ extension is twice as large as Acuña’s and still widely agreed to be a team-friendly deal.
I don’t think the Padres believe it is pointless to use it. I don’t think they think that at all. Keep in mind that although Acuña’s deal is massively beneficial to the Braves, a huge chunk of that is just the nature of pre-free agency in baseball. In fact, Acuña’s deal, as team friendly as it is, was the first 9-figure deal ever given to a player with less than 1 year of service time. Now, Tatis is much closer to free agency (just over 4 years now, compared to 6 years for Acuña), but he’s played fewer MLB games than Acuña had. The Padres will be talking this up in negotiations and as the only team Tatis can negotiate with, there is basically no reason they shouldn’t.
I am very pro-union and believe baseball’s economics are grossly unfair, but I also don’t see the point in ignoring reality. Tatis is not getting $200 million. He’s not getting close to that. I think Dan’s target is pretty good at $150 million, plus-minus $20 million. And really the only reason he will get way more than Acuña is that he’s almost 2 years closer to free agency.
A good case scenario for Tatis without a deal is earning ~$40 million over the next 4 years. Guaranteeing that now comes with some cost for the free agent years. AAV of $27.5 million for 4 years would be $150 million. Make that 22.5 million or 32.5 million and you get the range of $130-170 million. $200 million for 8 years of Tatis seems like a steal, but that is really paying him $40 million per year for the free agent years. That’s not going to happen.
I don’t disagree…but what’s Tatis’s incentive to sign now? I get he’s making the league minimum, but wouldn’t he make perhaps just as much (if not more) by waiting a year or two?
His incentive is to be set for life, his kids to be set for life, and his grandkids to be set for life. $150 million would do that.
But if he waits even a couple years, yes, he could easily double that or triple it if he goes for max years, depending on how well he plays.
A small but, I think, important addition to what TKDC says: it’s guaranteeing he is set for life. As Dan mentions, it isn’t like Tatis has been totally injury free up to this point. As a Padres fan, I pray he can avoid the injury bug for the rest of his career, but there is a serious non-zero chance that he gets seriously hurt in the not-too-distant future and that potential money disappears
Those sound more like pitcher concerns. I don’t think him not being rich is a very valid concern.
I totally agree with TKDC. I also wonder how hard the Padres are pushing the very human, “work with us, respect that we didn’t game the system with you” angle. I would expect that they would like him to take at least a minor $ reduction for them not manipulating his service time, or at least be willing to sign for longer. As soon as I heard last year that they were putting him on the opening day roster, that was my first thought, and I think it’s probably even more true now.
If the on-field baseball is any indication, there are no conversations between any of the coaches / management and the players. I doubt there is any significant dialog taking place in a normal time and this is not a normal time. I am pretty sure we talk more about these things than they do. The smart move is for the Padres to simply let the arbitration system do its job and then let some other team pay for a terrible contract when he is 26 or whatever age he will be. That is probably what is best for everyone. Tatis will get a lot through arbitration and then a mega-payday down the road. That would also work out best for the Padres. The whole gaming the system angle is more Fangraphs narrative than anything else.
If I’m the Padres I add $25 million to that offer yesterday. Good grief he is an amazing player.
The whole controversy is dumb. The Rangers were going to try to score 8 runs when they came up to bat, which happens about once a week in MLB. Unless they were willing to concede, you keep trying to score.
There are at least four great ways to prevent a hitter from hitting a 3-0 grand slam against you in a seven run game:
– Don’t fall behind by 7 runs.
– Don’t load the bases.
– Don’t fall behind 3 – 0.
– Don’t throw a meatball.
If you can’t do any of those things, quit whining about it. It’s professional baseball, not little league. There is no slaughter rule and nobody cares if your feelings get hurt.
If you look at the video it was actually a pretty good pitch, on the corner low and away. And Tatis went oppo.
Yep, this is how I feel. Unwritten rules that are appropriate for 10 year olds in the local parks and rec league don’t apply to adult professionals getting paid wild sums of money. If you didn’t want to get beat, play better.
All the Unwritten Rules are some variant of “I sucked today and I am mad about it, so now I am going to take my anger out on you.”
I don’t get why people keep saying unwritten rules are appropriate for 10 year olds or rec leagues. I don’t agree that unwritten rules are appropriate anywhere, but especially not in little league. Do we not want the kids having fun? They have actual written rules in little league about running up the score, etc, and most the kids aren’t swinging 3-0 anyhow. And what would the unwritten rule even be? I have heard it applied to mlb situations (I don’t agree) but never once have I heard of anyone saying anything like this regarding kids, or rec league.
Just once I would like a reporter to ask one of the whiney managers why he didn’t concede if the game was so out of hand.
There are times in a baseball game where, according to many, it is unacceptable to make the best baseball play that you can. Simultaneously, according to many, it is right and expected for players to attempt to hit other players with a deadly object on purpose, despite the fact that this is explicitly prohibited by the rules, in addition to being technically illegal. Makes me kinda want to not be a fan of this sport anymore, which is a sad prospect.
Not to make this a Soto vs Tatis debate, but for all the fanfare I’ve seen on here about Tatis (and RIGHTLY so, he is young superstar who is fun to watch and brings a little character) I have not seen many if any articles about Juan Soto, someone who’ll more likely than not end up being the best offensive player in the league and certainly the guy I’d most want to start my franchise around. Will he have the all around impact of Tatis or Acuna? Obviously not. But he is a 21 year old generational hitter who has improved defensively as well as offensively.
Maybe let Soto get closer to 100 PAs before trying to analyze his 2020 improvements. I’ll give you a bull nickel if there isn’t a Juan Soto article in the next 10 days.
Eh, he has looked downright amazing (Soto). Obviously I agree he needs to get more plate appearances, but that power looks like something I can’t even explain. He goes 2-4 with a double and a walk yesterday and his OPS goes down. The way the ball is coming off his bat is something else too. Usually when I watch an at bat live I can tell when it is going out, but he is hitting pitches that look like flyballs to center 460 feet that do not look obvious off the bat. Whatever it is he is doing, it is something different. I think it is very realistic to think that he could be the best hitter in baseball soon, if he isn’t already.
On a somewhat related side note, I saw a very interesting thing that is probably worthy of an article since we all like Mike Trout articles. MIke Trout went from getting the fewest pitches in the strike zone over the last few years, to the MOST pitches in the zone this year. It is quite odd the shift in how the entire league is pitching him. Trout has responded as one would expect, by hitting a lot of home runs. But it is weird to say the least.
Lastly, if we are talking about articles, Harper. He has always had success so people always downvoted me when I said he needed a swing change more than basically anyone. Well, it looks like someone finally got him to do it. His swing plane finally looks a lot closer to optimal. In the past he literally chopped down, then quickly back up, which gives him a microscopic margin of error. His planing looks much, much better now.
Woodward is dead wrong on this one. In this HR heavy climate 7-0 is far from a certain win. Add to that the shortened season making each individual game that much more important, and the ‘unwritten rules’ simply do not apply to the circumstances in question.
This is from Ben Lindbergh via The Ringer:
“Since 1988, the first season for which we have quasi-comprehensive pitch-by-pitch data, there have been 226 situations akin to the one Tatis faced: batting team up by six runs or more in the seventh inning or later, with the bases loaded and a 3-0 count. Tatis was only the fourth hitter who chose to swing, following in the worn-away footsteps of Pete O’Brien (1988), Stan Javier (1992), and Rafael Palmeiro (1996), none of whom got a hit.”
Lindbergh then goes on to point out that Tatis wasn’t even born the last time someone swung at a pitch in these circumstances.
Wow! Seems like we were long overdue for someone to break this really stupid, unwritten rule. Kudos to Tatis!
https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2020/8/19/21375862/fernando-tatis-grand-slam-padres-rangers-unwritten-rules
I read somewhere that in general only 7 percent of the time do hitters swing 3-0. So out of 226, it should have been 16. So really you have 4 people breaking the rule, 12 people following it, and 210 just doing what they would have done anyway.
Fair point though the percentage seems to be a bit higher. I found one article that gave 7.6% for 2009-2014 and another than gave 9.8% for 2016. So more like about 18-20 expected swings. Either way, the clear majority were followed the unwritten rule.
Leaving aside the (very stupid) unwritten rules element, I think there’s a more interesting question – *should* most hitters even be swinging at a strike on 3-0?
I’ll leave it to someone with more time and skill to fully derive the answer, but I think a wOBA-based analysis would be very interesting here.
Assuming perfect ball/strike recognition (a big assumption!), a hitter should swing away on a 3-0 strike if and only if their wOBACON exceeds their expected wOBA through a 3-1 count (right)?
Using the Splits tool, league-wide wOBA through 3-1 counts since the beginning of 2018 is .476 (.265/.585/.488, 43% BB rate).
Using Statcast Search, league-wide wOBA on 3-0 would-be strikes put in play over the same time frame (n=678, or ~7% of such pitches) is .528 (.402 AVG, .914 SLG).
So on first blush there’s an argument for swinging, BUT there are two big caveats. First, players don’t have perfect pitch recognition (and would give up “free” walks). Second, there are probably sampling differences with better hitters being more likely to have the green light on 3-0. The 17 players who have put 7 or more 3-0 strikes in play include Votto, Machado, Harper, Suarez, Stanton, Donaldson, Rizzo, Bregman, and Alonso.
Maybe if you swing a couple of times you get a reputation as someone who might swing 3 – 0, which means that pitchers nibble a little and you get a few more walk instead of automatic strikes.
I’m not saying that’s why Tatis swung, but if that was your goal, a 7 run game is the time to do it.
This is probably worth like a tenth of a run a year at best.
Good point. Several of the guys mentioned above run gaudy walk totals so it could be that pitchers work around them more than they otherwise would, even on 3-0.
An 8 year extension at 225 million makes no sense. Theres hardöy any discount. It would make more sense to just go bigger and more years with a lower AAV. Just pay through his arb years if you arent getting a discount.
Paying trout should be a cautionary tale.
Tatis hit that ball so well Nicasio quit baseball.
How many people not in a Texas Ranger uniform are criticizing Tatis for the swing? I think the overall opinion is pretty overwhelming on this one, even among actual former and current players, pitchers included.
Overreacting to an obviously wrong minority must be a class in journalism now. When else would you get the chance to moralise to people without any risk?
Seems to me the only legit reaction to this entire thing is to simultaneously be critical of the unwritten rule, while also believing Tatis was wrong to violate it. Until that unwritten rule is done away with, a player violating it is taking advantage of a pitcher who is making what should be a fair assumption of a take, in a blowout game. It’s still a dick move.
Well, the problem with *unwritten* rules is that you can’t simply erase them. If you could, they would be written rules. The other problem with unwritten rules is that they are generally stupid and fluid enough to be manipulated by anyone to mean anything.
Yeah, totally Thom
I find myself wanting to defend the practice of respecting ‘unwritten rules’ against the apparent majority who seem to be scoffing at it as some form of curmudgeonry.
So here’s my best shot: we’re talking about an etiquette that has developed along with the game, arising organically from the behaviors, attitudes of those who play. Like most tenets of an etiquette, this particular unwritten rule is not arbitrary — it serves the purpose of sportsmanship, one component of which is a resistance to ‘showing up’ a clearly beaten opponent. We can argue about whether the Padres’ lead was sufficiently safe in this particular situation, but that’s beside the point of whether the etiquette itself is worth respecting.
What troubles me about the apparently dominant attitude of ridicule toward etiquette is that it rejects as ‘out of touch’ what is a pretty basic element of sportsmanship and respect for one’s opponent. And I see the implications of this attitude reaching far beyond the boundaries of sports.
The problem with this argument is that you’ve assumed that having a 7-run lead late in the game means you’re going to win. Last night, the Blue Jays scored 7 runs in the bottom of the 6th inning of a 7-inning game to erase a 5-run deficit. The Phillies, for their part, scored all 7 of their runs in the top of the first inning. Had the Blue Jays not got two back earlier in the game, their 7-run inning would have tied it. Getting 5 runs with only 6 outs remaining is tough enough, but whether the deficit were 5 or 7 runs is besides the point. The fact of the matter is they had a 7-run inning, showing that holding a 7-run lead late in a game doesn’t mean you have “clearly beaten” your opponent. Whereas the object of the game is to win, and knowing that a 7-run lead doesn’t mean that you have clearly beat your opponent, tacking on extra runs wherever possible is the right thing to do to ensure victory.
“We can argue about whether the Padres’ lead was sufficiently safe in this particular situation, but that’s beside the point of whether the etiquette itself is worth respecting.”
What does caste have to do with the unwritten rules? Call it what it is: not good, definitely old fashioned, uniquely American, racism.
Yeah, racism is totally uniquely American 🙄
This particular brand of racism is uniquely American. Only a racist would disagree.
You should totally check out some of the European soccer leagues and see how not not filled with racism other countries can be.
The people writing about the unwritten rules are people like you. Personally I find your hate for tradition to be offensive. Not everyone shares your values or is you. A bit of empathy would be a good idea. Making fun of people that embrace differing ideals and wildly applying negative stereotypes is not appropriate in any context. Go ahead and elaborate on those racist allegations. You could have just saved the first two ignorant paragraphs, ditched the title and then written the article which eventually gets to some substance.
(Me making Joe Kelly face at Chris Woodward)