Extending Tatis

If Fernando Tatis Jr.’s sensational rookie season gave us a glimpse of his ceiling, 2020 just served to raise his floor. By production at the plate, Tatis’s first two seasons were almost identical, as his wRC+ dropped from 150 to . . . 149. And with slight variations by metric, his per-game WAR was a dead ringer, too. Tatis has now played 143 regular season games—still not a full season, of course—and slashed .301/.374/.582 with 39 home runs, 27 stolen bases, and a 149 wRC+. And he doesn’t turn 22 until January.

He’s good. While Tatis’s encore didn’t produce as many jaw-dropping highlights on the bases or in the field as his rookie campaign did, he answered any lingering questions about the sustainability of his game with gusto.

Could he stay healthy for a full season? Well, okay, the shortened season kind of disrupts this question. But the Padres played 66 games in 2020 and Tatis played in 65 of them. For the first time in three seasons, there were no injuries. While Tatis still played with the all-out style that defined his rookie season, he was a little more careful on the field. By the end of the year, he even got (unfairly) criticized for not busting it down the line at 110 percent in a game that didn’t matter to the Padres, a sign that he toned it down some.

Would a high strikeout rate limit his growth?

Even though Tatis couldn’t out-do his rookie year hitting production, his most important gains in 2020 might have come at the plate. In 2019, Tatis posted a 150 wRC+ with a .410 BABiP and a 29.6 percent strikeout rate, a shape of production that generally isn’t sustainable from year to year. Here’s a list of the 10 highest single-season BABiPs since 2010 (min. 300 PAs), with each player’s wRC+ in both the year in question and the one following it:

Note how each player’s BABiP fell much closer to .300, near the league’s average, in the year after the .400-plus number. And outside of Tatis and Jorge Alfaro, each player’s wRC+ dropped by at least 10 points, many by a lot more. Some players, like Tyler Naquin, Chris Colabello, and Danny Santana, haven’t come close to replicating either the BABiP or the wRC+ in any subsequent season. The Brewers Keston Hiura is an interesting comp for Tatis, since his rookie season was also in 2019, and he entered the majors with good prospect credentials. In 2020, however, Hiura’s strikeout rate went up from an already high 30.7 percent to 34.6 percent. Combined with a 125 point drop in BABiP, his overall output tanked in Year 2.

Tatis’s BABiP also fell by 100 points, so his performance could have cratered, like Hiura’s or Yoán Moncada’s. Instead, he did this:

The BABiP regressed but Tatis improved in roughly every other category; he walked more, struck out less, made contact with more pitches, and hit the ball harder when he did. In his second season, Tatis led the league in Exit Velocity (plus hard hit and barrel rate) while his strikeout percentage went from the fringe of the danger zone to right on the league average. A 60-game season can only prove so much, but Tatis reinforced what many of us already believed—that his early success wasn’t the product of an abnormally high average on balls in play alone.

Could he play a good shortstop? In 2019, Tatis filled his fielding ledger with highlight reel plays and bad miscues, like routine bobbles and lots of off target throws. Over the offseason, he worked to slow the game down and improve his throwing accuracy. It worked, as he cut his throwing errors from 14 to two. While Tatis didn’t make as many flashy plays in 2020, sure-handed fielding and accurate throws worked in tandem to expand his effective range. By Baseball Savant’s Outs Above Average—our best measure of infield glovework—Tatis’s +7 ranked in a tie atop the league, a year after his -13 put him toward the bottom. Already equipped with plus range and plus-plus arm strength, this year’s improvements in more boring areas turned Tatis into a Gold Glove candidate going forward.

Okay, one more question: Should the Padres sign Tatis to a contract extension this offseason?

Uhh, yes.

As mentioned earlier, Tatis has only played 143 games for the Padres, yet two of his team control years have been burned, leaving just four left. Tatis missed half of his rookie season to injuries and everyone missed 102 games in 2020 to the pandemic. An extension would lock in Tatis’s next four seasons—three of which are arbitration years—at a fixed cost and also buy out some of his free agent years.

Four years is a lot of time to work out an extension, of course, so it doesn’t have to transpire this winter. We’ve seen some examples of hefty extensions getting hammered out later in a team’s control years, like when the Rockies signed Nolan Arenado to an eight-year, $260 million deal before his final arbitration year. On the other hand, we’ve seen as many or more examples of the opposite, with young stars failing to come to an agreement with their team early and then opting to wait for free agency. Both Manny Machado and Bryce Harper hit free agency in 2019, leaving the Orioles (and Dodgers) and Nationals, respectively. The Indians have shown little interest in extending Francisco Lindor, and the Astros haven’t locked up Carlos Correa yet. The Red Sox somehow failed to strike a deal with their franchise cornerstone, Mookie Betts, trading him to the Dodgers this past offseason with one arb year left. In LA, Betts signed a pricey but entirely reasonable 12-year, $365 million deal.

You could argue that the Padres would be wise to be more patient, letting Tatis repeat Hall-worthy performance for a full season before delivering him a truckload of dough. Sure, they could do that, and it might even be smart, or prudent, or financially responsible. But there are downsides to the wait-and-see approach. If Tatis gets even better—or simply repeats his past performance over a full season—his price tag will only go up, perhaps one day breaching the Padres upper limits. Further, the longer the two sides go without reaching an agreement, the more opportunities arise for something to go wrong.

Consider the Red Sox and Betts. Betts was a homegrown player, a model citizen, and after the 2018 season, a league MVP and a World Series champion. He was the second-best player in baseball, then just 25 years old, playing in a major media market. He had to be a Red Sox, if not for life, then at least through his prime years. Instead, Betts played just one more season in Boston. There was no single catastrophic event in the downturn between the team and player’s relationship. Presumably, it was more death by a thousand paper cuts, with the Red Sox continually failing to make a good-faith effort to retain their biggest star and then opting to trade him when negotiations broke down.

There’s no reason to expect something similar to happen with the Padres and Tatis, no more so than what happened with the Red Sox and Xander Bogaerts (they extended him), or the Rockies and Arenado, or even the Angels and Mike Trout. The point, however, is simply to avoid the worst-case scenario, which is Padres baseball without Tatis anytime in the near future.

There are no easy comps for a Tatis extension. The Braves Ronald Acuña and Ozzies Albies signed their deals too early, for too little money. Those contracts were largely panned as offensively team-friendly and shouldn’t be used as baseline for a would-be Tatis extension. Alex Bregman signed a deal with the Astros before his third season of team control back in 2019, but he was 25 at the time, so it’s not a one-to-one comparison. Trout’s first extension could be a model for Tatis, but Trout had already accumulated 21 WAR by then. Tatis is unique because he’s so young and so good, but also because he’s only played 143 games.

The good news is that the Padres should have the payroll flexibility to extend Tatis without dumping any money. Manny Machado is under contract for the long haul—though he could actually opt out after 2023—but the Padres other two big contracts either expire or shrink soon. Wil Myers is due north of $40 million over the next two seasons, with the Padres possessing an option on his deal for 2023. And if Eric Hosmer doesn’t opt out after 2022, his annual earnings drop from $21 million to just $13 million from 2023 through 2025. If the Padres sign Tatis to a deal, they can structure his salary to escalate gradually, like it would if the two sides played it year to year. Tatis wouldn’t start making the big bucks until 2023 or so, when the Padres receive payroll relief. Trading Myers—or not spending in free agency—shouldn’t be a prerequisite to extending Tatis.

The Padres don’t have to sign Tatis yet, but it should be at the top of the team’s priority list this offseason. There’s risk in any type of long-term pact, of course; maybe Tatis’s injury woes return, or maybe his strikeout rate jumps back up. Maybe he’s more Correa than Betts, more Lindor than Trout. But Tatis has already displayed so much in so little time, even a backtrack in performance or semi-frequent trips to the IL wouldn’t sap too much of his value. (Check out the numbers of Correa and Lindor.) Plus, there’s a chance—a reasonable chance—that he just keeps rolling, someday challening Trout as the game’s best player while fending off fellow youngsters like Acuña and Juan Soto. Either way, the Padres would be smart to tether themselves to Tatis for as long as he’s willing. There are few better ways to spend money.

The Padres have finally found the heir to Tony Gwynn’s throne, some 19 years after Gwynn retired, as king of Padres baseball. They can’t let him abdicate after just five or six years. The Padres could put off the extension for another offseason, but we’ll be able to enjoy Tatis even more if we know he’s going to be around for at least most of the decade.