Fernando Tatis Jr.’s Defensive Rebirth Paints Path to MVP Future

If I have one criticism of Shohei Ohtani, it’s that he has singlehandedly ruined baseball’s great parlor discussions. Admittedly, this is the only valid criticism of Ohtani that I can think of. But questions like “Which player would you want to start a franchise with?” or “Who’s the most talented ballplayer you’ve ever seen?” are so much less fun now than they were a decade ago. First person to answer just says, “Ohtani,” and there’s a brief but grave silence until someone pipes up and asks if anyone is watching the new season of Billions.

Setting Ohtani aside, Fernando Tatis Jr. would be on my short list of most talented or dynamic baseball players I’ve had the good fortune to witness. In the past, I’d compared his physicality to that of a 3–4 outside linebacker, but watching him scramble around the diamond is like watching an alien who’s holding something in reserve so he doesn’t get outed by the humans. If that is his goal, Tatis is not doing a great job of blending in.

When Tatis returned from his injury- and suspension-enforced absence, he found Xander Bogaerts playing shortstop for a team that already had more shortstops than it could use. When it became clear that Tatis was bound for the outfield, likely permanently, I felt no small measure of sadness. That’s not to say that he was a good shortstop. As a rookie, he had the worst fielding percentage and second-worst defensive WAR of any of the 27 players who spent more than 700 innings at the position. He made some defensive strides in 2020, and if his ’21 season hadn’t been partially derailed by a shoulder injury that forced the move to the outfield, then the PED suspension, then Bogaerts, and so on, maybe experience would have molded him into a spectacular defensive shortstop.

But there is a silver lining to this: the physical gifts that made Tatis such a tantalizing shortstop have already turned him into an exceptional defensive outfielder. Obviously that was going to be the case; this is one of the fastest players in baseball with one of the strongest throwing arms and zero compunction about flinging himself around the field in pursuit of a batted ball. And a move to the outfield would give him more time to react to the ball off the bat and reduce the complexity of the plays he’d have to make. If it comes down to running, catching, and throwing, almost nobody does any of those things better than Tatis.

The Athletic’s Padres beat writer, Dennis Lin, posed this question two months ago, basically as soon as it became reasonable to wonder out loud: “Is Fernando Tatis Jr. already the best defensive right fielder in baseball?” Padres manager Bob Melvin compared Tatis, who at the time had about 70 career professional starts in right field, to Ichiro Suzuki and Mookie Betts.

Tatis has the spectacular pretty much under control. He has had nine opportunities to catch what Baseball Savant calls a four-star fly ball, or one that has a catch probability between 26% and 50%. He’s hauled in eight of them. Out of 93 outfielders on Baseball Savant’s catch probability leaderboard, the only one with a higher ratio on such catches is Cody Bellinger, who’s had only two four-star attempts playing most of his games in tiny Wrigley Field. But the routine, or the slightly-more-difficult-than-routine, is what dogged Tatis when he was on the dirt. That’s no longer the case. On fly balls with a catch probability between 26% and 95%, Tatis is 49-for-52. Only Bellinger, by a third of a percentage point, has a better catch ratio on those plays.

Exactly 100 players show up on all three of Baseball Savant’s leaderboards for sprint speed, outfield arm strength, and outfield jump. Tatis is one of just four outfielders in the top 20 in all three categories, plus OAA.

He’s keeping good company; Rodríguez leads all outfielders in OAA this season, and Kiermaier is one of the best defenders of his generation.

Here’s the fun part: Tatis has speed and arm strength the likes of which few other outfielders can match, but after a little rummage around in the numbers, it seems like he’s still a little raw. As good as he is now, he could get better.

Baseball Savant breaks outfield jump into two components: reaction, which is distance covered in the first 1.5 seconds after the ball is hit; and burst, which is distance covered in the 1.5 seconds after that. Tatis is top-10 in burst but merely average in both reaction distance and route efficiency. Even being average after playing less than a season of outfield in the pros is pretty impressive, but if Tatis wants to, he could probably squeeze another few feet of range out of his physical gifts by refining his outfield play.

There’s also the potential of an eventual move to center field. Tatis would probably be playing there already if the Padres didn’t already have a pretty good center fielder in Trent Grisham. (If Tatis is Betts, Grisham is Jackie Bradley Jr. in this metaphor.)

Tatis is already the only corner outfielder in the top 10 in OAA. The only corner outfielders ahead of him in sprint speed are Perkins and the Arizona duo of Jake McCarthy and Corbin Carroll, both of whom are in the bottom five in max arm strength. Tatis is 15th in outfield jump, behind 10 center fielders, Perkins, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Seiya Suzuki, and Jake Fraley. There is no doubt in my mind that if Grisham ever leaves the Padres, Tatis would be a superb defensive center fielder.

When the Padres tried to corner the market on shortstops, my big question regarding Tatis was whether his defensive ability would be wasted in an outfield corner; it’s possible to generate real defensive value there, but exceedingly difficult. It seems he is one of the few players with that ability.

The only question now is whether his bat returns to pre-suspension form. (The best compliment I can give Tatis is that he’s such a good all-around player that I’m going to rag on him a little for his offensive production when he has a 115 wRC+ and an outside shot at going 30–30.) From 2019 to ’21, he was one of the best hitters in baseball at any position. This year, he’s been merely above-average. He’s still giving the Padres better offensive production than your garden variety right fielder, but in the first three seasons of his career, he was the best offensive shortstop in baseball by a gigantic margin. That isn’t the case this season.

There are plenty of reasons to hope for an offensive rebound to that 150 wRC+ level. Tatis is coming off a season that featured a motorcycle crash, multiple surgeries, and no meaningful games played. His xwOBA is 45 points lower than his wOBA, which is the fifth-biggest negative discrepancy among 269 hitters with at least 2.1 plate appearances per team game. So a lot of this could be rust and/or bad batted ball luck. It’s also worth bearing in mind that Tatis is still only 24, or in other words, six weeks older than Heston Kjerstad.

Even after everything he’s been through, self-inflicted and otherwise, Tatis is one of the few players with the potential to be among the best in the game on both sides of the ball. And when that potential comes through, just ask Betts or Mike Trout; an MVP award usually follows.