Fernando Tatis Jr.’s Silver Slugger nod puts Padres’ early power panic in perspective

Fernando Tatis Jr. spent the opening months of 2026 giving Padres fans a question we never expected to ask: Where did all that power go? By the end, he had given us a much better one. How much damage could he have done if he had figured this out sooner?

Tatis’ Silver Slugger nomination puts an award-season stamp on a remarkable recovery. But the interesting part is how he got there. One of baseball’s most explosive hitters had to loosen his grip on the expectation that every season should produce a certain number of home runs. Once he stopped trying to manufacture them, they started coming.

Fernando Tatis Jr. had to stop letting home run expectations dictate his swing

Padres hitting coach Steven Souza Jr. offered the clearest explanation of Tatis’ struggles during an August interview with Times of San Diego.

“He was trying to pull everything and didn’t have the ability to stay inside [the ball] and drive it,” Souza said.

Souza described a hitter whose expectations had started interfering with his approach. The pressure to produce 30 or 40 homers encouraged swings aimed at reaching that total. Letting go of those expectations helped his power production recover.

We expect Tatis to change games with one swing. It’s a reasonable expectation for someone with his ability. It becomes a problem when the pursuit of that swing starts making his at-bats worse.

Tatis turned a lost power season into a Silver Slugger case

The contrast is ridiculous even after we watched it happen. Tatis hit five home runs with a .713 OPS in 95 games before the All-Star break. In 59 games afterward, he hit 20 homers with a .995 OPS. His strikeout total also fell from 87 before the break to 39 afterward.

He covered a lot of ground to recover in a little more than two months. He hit four times as many home runs in substantially fewer games while giving away fewer at-bats to strikeouts.

That combo should be encouraging. We saw Tatis make an adjustment that allowed his hitting ability and power to work together again. He deserves credit for finding it while the season was still moving and every unsuccessful night added another reason to press.

The nomination recognizes the production he ultimately assembled. It also gives us a reason to revisit how close this season came to being remembered for the drought.

Now the expectation follows him into 2027. We have seen what this version of Tatis can do for 59 games. The Padres need him to bring that approach into April, before another summer becomes an exercise in making up for the spring.

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