Ronald Acuna was to his team what Fernando Tatis Jr. was to the Padres. By last summer, two years after he’d put up 41 home runs and 37 stolen bases, the young Braves star was steaming toward the All-Star break with 24 home runs and a .394 on-base percentage.
Then it ended July 10 when, as Acuna gave chase in right field, a knee ligament ruptured.
Acuna was 23, the same age as Tatis, the Padres shortstop who’ll miss a chunk of the upcoming season with a fractured wrist.
Know this: The Braves weren’t finished. They went 44-29 (.603) to get a playoff berth they turned into a World Series-winning run as Acuna spectated. Neither did losing a hitter similar to Padres star Manny Machado prevent the Braves from earning the trophy. They got just 48 games from Marcell Ozuna, who departed in May on domestic-violence charges, months after leading the National League in home runs and RBI.
Good baseball organizations find a way.
Young Corey Seager did a fair Tatis imitation as a slugging shortstop who made the All-Star team at ages 22 and 23. When a late-April injury wiped out the 24-year-old’s season in 2018, the Dodgers plugged in Chris Taylor and added Machado for the stretch drive.
They won 92 games to claim the West flag.
So while it’s fair to insist Tatis stay away from motorcycles for the rest of the $340-million contract the Padres issued him, can we please put away the black arm bands and veils?
Let’s be conservative and pencil Tatis Jr for a return in four months. Say, the All-Star break. That gives the Padres about 80 games from Tatis, similar to Acuna in the front end of Atlanta’s big season.
His legs will be fresh. He’s shown he can handle injury layoffs.
(Tatis, by the way, has joined a crowded room of MLB alums in the Motorcycle Wipeout Club. See, Jeff Kent, the former San Francisco Giants star who fractured his wrist in 2002, when he landed hard while reportedly popping a wheelie. He was 34. See, Bruce Bochy mangling an ankle the previous year, when as Padres manager he lost control of his Indian-brand bike.)
While the season’s first half won’t be as fun without FernanDiego, there’s still plenty of opportunity for the 2022 Padres to keep folks interested.
Analytics site FanGraphs projects them to win 90 games. It gives them a 78 percent chance of reaching the playoffs.
While it was dumb of Tatis to get on a motorcycle, he’s not in charge of building a baseball operation that should be able to weather his absence.
It’s as simple as this: If the Padres can’t muster strong playoff contention, it’s on A.J. Preller.
By now the Padres should be built to win without a long season from frontline players, even one as productive as Tatis.
They’ve been building toward this “contention window” for several years.
Chairman Peter Seidler has treated Preller like he’s the next Branch Rickey, signing him through 2026 in a tenure that began in August 2014.
It’s fair, then, to expect performances that corresponds to the investment. We do it with players.
Giving Preller rare leeway, the past two Padres payrolls have ranked higher on the MLB ladder than any others in team history. Shouldn’t the depth reflect that cushion?
And from outsiders, Preller has received two recent gifts: The MLB labor pact agreed to this month expanded the playoff field, and a fire sale by the Cincinnati Reds, who last summer challenged for the playoffs with a young team.
So all Preller’s program has to do is hang around until Tatis returns, and then try to snag one of the six playoff berths in a 15-team league.
With the expanded playoff field now available to Preller’s team, the 2007 and 2010 Padres would’ve qualified for a wild card and thus given San Diego four playoff berths in the first seven years of the Petco Era.
Preller’s stewardship in the sports-medical realm isn’t earning him rave reviews. Still open for debate was the Padres’ decision not to link surgery for Tatis’ recurring left-shoulder dislocation to the 14-year, $340-million contract the team awarded him in February 2021.
In question now is whether the Padres could’ve learned sooner of the shortstop’s wrist injury apparently sustained in December, enabling a surgery that still hasn’t happened. Clues were present. December reports of the motorcycle accident, and a January photo on social media of Tatis wearing a wrist brace.
It’s encouraging that trusted major league personnel have said Preller did a fine job this offseason of hiring staffers — be it manager Bob Melvin, who’s at least a four-game upgrade on Preller’s previous two managers; pitching coach Ruben Niebla; senior adviser/former MLB pitching coach Bryan Price; and developmental man Mike Shildt.
So, the clay should be molded well.
When the plaster cast comes off Tatis’ wrist, it’s hoped that this Padres team — the eighth under Preller — has ridden a rejuvenated pitching rotation to a .500 or better start and isn’t headed toward the franchise’s third late-summer implosion in four years.
