Juan Soto-Fernando Tatis WBC moment will give Padres fans pang of regret

Padres fans know that feeling: you’re scrolling, you see Fernando Tatis Jr. doing Fernando Tatis Jr. things, and for half a second your brain goes, oh yeah… that lineup. Then the clip hits — Juan Soto and Tatis celebrating a homer like it’s 2023 again — and the regret creeps in before you can even pretend it doesn’t. It’s not jealousy. It’s whiplash.

This all happened in a WBC warm-up down in Santo Domingo, where Soto ripped a go-ahead two-run bomb to swing it to 6–4 for the Dominican Republic — and then Machado and Junior Caminero basically piled on with back-to-back shots right after. And the little Soto-Tatis celebration? That was the gut-punch: effortless, loud, and way too familiar, like a five-second trailer for the Padres lineup Preller thought he was locking in when he shoved the whole stack to the middle.

Padres fans will feel a brutal sting watching Soto and Tatis celebrate at the WBC

And that’s why it stings. Not because Soto wasn’t good in San Diego, but because the “Soto + Tatis + Machado” dream never really got to be the finished thing. Soto’s Padres run was basically two seasons of constant gravity: he walked like a machine, played every day, and in 2023 he put up the kind of line that’s supposed to anchor October baseball (.275 average, 35 homers, 109 RBIs, and 132 walks — tied for the franchise single-season record). 

The cruel part is we did get the peak-ish version of it on paper, and the team still faceplanted in 2023. San Diego went 82-80 and missed the playoffs with a roster that looked illegal in April.  That’s the mental trap. Fans remember the names, not the messy reality of a club that never fully clicked and couldn’t afford to keep pretending payroll was optional.

That’s what the Soto trade was. Not a baseball breakup, an economic one. The Padres dealt him to the Yankees in December 2023 for pitching-heavy returns, the kind of move you make when you’re trying to keep the whole thing from collapsing. 

So that Soto-Tatis celebration is going to punch Padres fans right in the “what if.” But it’s also a reminder: San Diego didn’t lose Soto because they didn’t understand the magic. They lost him because the Padres chased the magic first, and had to pay the bill after.