Padres, Fernando Tatis Jr. show this could be a season with little room for error
SAN FRANCISCO — A San Diego-area native took the mound Friday at Oracle Park and proceeded to pay unintentional tribute to Curtis James Jackson III. San Marcos’ Fred Warner might lead conversations for the best linebacker in the National Football League, but his ceremonial first pitch missed the glove of San Francisco Giants third-base coach Matt Williams by several yards and supplied an amusing, low-stakes reminder of the difficulty in looking graceful on a baseball field.
Of course, no such margin for error exists for those who are paid millions to deliver in such settings.
Less than an hour after Warner’s meme-worthy spike, as Fernando Tatis Jr. tried to beat a force-out throw to second base, the San Diego Padres right fielder collided with Giants infielder Thairo Estrada on a popup slide that sent both players to the ground and provided early-season evidence that the Padres do not have much room for mistakes — even accidental ones.
Second-base umpire Ryan Blakney called Tatis for interference. As a result, Jake Cronenworth was declared out despite easily beating Estrada’s throw to first base. The simultaneous outs ended the top of the third inning, prevented xander from easily scoring from third base and kept the Padres from taking a two-run lead in an eventual 3-2, walk-off victory for the Giants.
“Obviously, it sucks to say,” Bogaerts said, “but that double play was kind of a pivotal point in the game.”
It ended up being so in part because the Padres, facing converted reliever Jordan Hicks for the second time in six days, mustered underwhelming offense for a fourth consecutive game. It didn’t help that the Giants came around to score on both leadoff walks Dylan Cease issued, or that on a first-inning double into the right-field corner by San Francisco’s Michael Conforto, Tatis fell for a base-running feint by Giants leadoff man Jung Hoo Lee.
Thinking Lee would score easily from first, Tatis threw the ball to shortstop Ha-Seong Kim instead of second baseman Bogaerts, who had positioned himself for a potential throw to home plate. Had Bogaerts been the one receiving the relay from Tatis, Lee might have been easily thrown out.
The Padres, however, have spent their first 10 games hinting that little will come easy this season. They have won four games and lost six, and for all their belief that things could unfold quite differently than they did last year, San Diego is precisely what some outside the organization predicted after the departures of Juan Soto, Blake Snell and Josh Hader: a third-place team.
San Diego still has ample firepower, some of which was on display Friday. Cease, making his second start for the Padres and his second start in six days against the Giants, went six innings and collected seven strikeouts and 15 swings-and-misses. Tatis, who singled to give the Padres a 2-1 lead moments before his misadventure on the basepaths, held Conforto to a single in the bottom of the sixth by expertly playing a fly ball off the right-field arcade. Bogaerts, in the first plate appearance of the game, doubled for his first extra-base hit of the season and scored on a line drive by Cronenworth, who is leading the majors in barrels after a disappointing offensive campaign in 2023.
But similar to this week’s series loss to the St. Louis Cardinals, the Giants’ home opener mostly suggested that a scaled-down Padres team will need help to stay afloat in a division that has welcomed several blockbuster acquisitions. Early on, San Diego has been buoyed by decent results with runners in scoring position. Meanwhile, it already has sprung noticeable leaks in the form of inconsistent offense and shaky relief. Both contributed to Tatis’ lament after Estrada doubled in the bottom of the ninth against Enyel De Los Santos to break a 2-2 tie and send the Giants rushing out of their dugout in celebration.
“If I control a little bit more of my game, who knows what happens today?” Tatis said. “It was a tough one.”
Tatis said that after his third-inning slide, he was told by first-base umpire Alan Porter that he needed to maintain contact with the bag to avoid being called for interference. It was news to Tatis. “Probably if I would’ve known I need to hold it, I probably would hold my ground a little bit more,” he said. “But then after that, I would’ve done the same thing.”
Padres manager Mike Shildt did not seem to object to Tatis’ effort, either.
“I actually loved the play. The call was right,” Shildt said. “Ryan Blakney does a good job, and he called it by the literal rule.
“But we got a guy trying to compete in the moment with Tati, trying to beat a force, play the game hard. Really, the contact was kind of both ways, completely incidental, both guys making baseball plays. … It’s a big call in the game, though. Croney’s gonna beat that out. Now we’re up three, we still got Manny (Machado) at the plate with two outs. But I told Tati, I’ll take that play 10 out of 10 times.”
Shildt and others around the team know the Padres will not go far without Tatis. And they might not get anywhere at all if they put restraints on their franchise outfielder, now more than a year removed from shoulder and wrist surgeries. Tatis is a Platinum Glove winner, San Diego’s most dangerous base runner and, in Soto’s absence, its primary power threat. He is showing regular flashes of his former self; Tatis entered Friday with the hardest-hit ball of the young major-league season, as well as the third-hardest.
In the meantime, the Padres’ shortage of steady offense already has put pressure on the pitching staff, a suspect bullpen in particular. There does not appear to be a quick fix. San Diego has ongoing interest in hitters such as the Miami Marlins’ Luis Arraez and free agent Tommy Pham, but team executives must weigh the acquisition cost against their desire to maintain flexibility — and their belief in what this roster can realistically accomplish.
Through 10 games, there have been plenty of signs that the Padres will have to excel on the margins while getting the most out of their remaining stars. In that sense, Tatis might have shown commendable restraint by not immediately confronting Blakney after Friday’s interference call.
“Just the heat of the moment,” Tatis said. “I know if I would’ve talked to him, I would just go straight to … ‘That’s f—— bulls—.’ But I was trying to hold myself a little bit and calm myself down, and then I went back and asked for an explanation so we can be on the same page.”
