With the Padres down two games to none in the National League Division Series, manager Craig Stammen pointed to a regular-season turnaround that saw San Diego climb from a July swoon to September dominance. Stammen made the remarks before a Monday workout at Petco Park ahead of Tuesday’s Game 3, noting the club had been resilient and that players had repeatedly faced tough stretches.
Fernando Tatis Jr. embodied that resilience. He did not hit his first home run until May 30 yet finished the season with 25 homers. Fifty games into the year he ranked 165th among 171 qualified players in slugging percentage, but closed the campaign with a .289/.350/.470 line, which he credited to determination and continued work.
Tatis rebuilt his approach by revisiting old mechanics, overhauling his swing and leaning on help from a former hitting coach and a future Hall of Famer. That effort produced a two-month surge that paralleled the Padres’ rise. The peak came in the postseason opener, when he homered on the first pitch he saw — a 405-foot leadoff shot — and later scored on an attempted steal of second; since that game he is 1-for-14.
The offense as a whole struggled in Milwaukee, where San Diego scored five runs across the two losses and went 3-for-18 with runners in scoring position against Brewers pitchers. The defeats were marked by a roof-interrupted fly ball by Ty France and a blown save by Mason Miller. Since the current 2-2-1 Division Series format began, only three of 36 clubs that lost the first two games on the road have won the series, underscoring how urgent an offensive rebound is for the Padres, a point Xander Bogaerts highlighted by saying when Tatis is right the team follows.
Tatis’ swing tinkering was evident even in spring: he hit a grand slam and was 2-for-4 against Israel in World Baseball Classic pool play on March 9, raising his OPS to 1.567 through three games, then began experimenting with adjustments that drew notice from manager Albert Pujols. A closed stance to start the regular season aimed to reduce moving parts but left him getting off his back foot, not loading and separating properly, and hitting too many grounders despite high exit velocities. Pujols checked in around mid-May as Tatis worked to correct the issues that left him homerless at that point.
