Good news: San Diego Padres announce a superstar return..
After serving his suspension, Fernando Tatis Jr. will play in his first Major League Baseball game in eighteen months.
After the San Diego Padres lost slugger Fernando Tatis Jr. for the entire 2022 season, an amusing thing happened.
Tatis, who had finished third in the National League MVP voting, was expected to lead the Padres to the postseason and solidify his place in the team’s annals. Rather, he was sidelined until August due to a fractured wrist he sustained in a motorbike accident. This was sufficient time for him to be suspended for 80 games for breaking Major League Baseball’s policy on performance-enhancing drugs, which removed 2022 from his record.
The Padres prospered as well.
They defeated the 101-win New York Mets and the 111-win Los Angeles Dodgers to go to the NL Championship Series, their first postseason triumph since 1998. They won 89 games, their most since 2010. Maybe Tatis wasn’t really needed at all, as they had slugger Juan Soto leading the way and reliable Ha-Seong Kim covering shortstop.
But after 20 games this season, it’s certain that San Diego will need Tatis when his suspension is lifted and he takes the field on Thursday in Phoenix against the Arizona Diamondbacks.
On October 3, 2021, Tatis made his final appearance in a big league game. That game ended the Padres’ 79-83 season and ended the San Francisco Giants’ 107-win record.
That Padres game was managed by Jayce Tingler, who was later fired and replaced by Bob Melvin.
After signing Xander Bogaerts to a $300 million contract, San Diego moved Tatis to the outfield. Tatis began the first year of his 14-year, $340 million contract at shortstop, where he was anticipated to stay for at least ten years.
During that season, Wil Myers, Tommy Pham, and Jake Marisnick were among the players that held down corner outfield positions. However, Silver Slugger Soto, who was acquired in an August 2022 deal, and Bogaerts, whose acquisition in December ended Tatis’ often unpredictable reign at shortstop, have essentially replaced them.
More subtly said, it’s unquestionably Manny Machado’s ballclub.
While Machado has played in 95% of San Diego’s games since joining them in 2019 and has maintained his health, Tatis, who is still only 24 years old, has generated many highlight reels since his debut as a 20-year-old. Machado has also been productive with an.847 OPS and 133 adjusted OPS. San Diego signed Machado to an 11-year, $350 million contract in February to guarantee that he would not opt out of his previous $300 million agreement after this season, giving him even more money guaranteed.
A week after MLB locked out the players in a labor dispute that would last 99 days, he was involved in a motorbike accident in the Dominican Republic on December 8, 2021, and sustained what were initially reported as “minor injuries.”
Following the announcement in March of a new collective bargaining agreement and the players’ report for a shortened spring training, Tatis’s injury was revealed to be a broken left wrist, or at least one of maybe several offseason accidents, given his caustic response. Nevertheless, the wound healed slowly and required surgery.
Tatis was supposed to start a rehabilitation assignment in August, but on August 12, MLB revealed that he had tested positive for the testosterone derivative clostebol. Tatis stated that while attempting to treat ringworm, he inadvertently consumed the prohibited drug.
Tatis decided to go for the big fix since his season was done. He had a long-delayed surgery on his left shoulder in September and a follow-up on his left wrist in October.
Despite still having to play the remaining 20 games of his suspension, he arrived at spring training in good health and prepared to play.
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