San Diego Padres "slugger" Fernando Tatis Jr. seems to have forgotten how to hit home runs, and Los Angeles Dodgers fans are loving it. The 27-year-old Tatis has hit 152 homers in his six-plus seasons, tallying a career slugging percentage of .502 along the way, but you wouldn't know it by watching Tatis play baseball in 2026.
So far this season, Tatis has hit zero homers to the tune of a squeamish sub-.300 slugging percentage. The lowest slugging percentage that Tatis has ever tallied in a season is .446 (last season).
Moreover, fans have already figured out why Tatis is struggling to slug: he's not pulling the ball in the air. According to Baseball Savant, Tatis is pulling the ball in the air only 5.2% of the time, which is a huge downgrade from his norm.
It's not hard to see what one of Fernando Tatis Jr.'s biggest issues is right now.https://t.co/iZshw47NUv pic.twitter.com/VcV8kerSK1
— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) May 6, 2026
Fernando Tatis Jr. isn't pulling the ball in the air (or hitting home runs), and Dodgers fans are loving it
As you can see from the above metric, Tatis regularly lands in the low to mid teens in pull AIR percentage. In 2021, when Tatis hit a career-best 42 homers, he was all the way up at 22.2% in pull AIR percentage. The correlation is clear: The more Tatis pulls the ball in the air, the more dingers he hits.
It's not like Tatis is still having a decent hitting season in 2026, either, despite the drop in slug. He's batting .244/.318/.288/.606 (career lows across the board) with just six extra-base hits, plus 45 strikeouts to 18 walks.
The Padres have been okay without Tatis producing. The Dodgers just barely hung onto their lead in the NL West with a win over the Giants on Thursday. San Diego avoided being swept by the Brewers this week, but Tatis went 0-for-5 with three strikeouts in the series finale.
Dodgers fans will continue laughing at Fernando Tatis' expense
You can be sure that Dodgers fans will continue to enjoy Tatis' struggles, both at the plate and in the field defensively. In trolling the Dodgers in the past, Tatis has only set himself up to be an enduring target of scorn in LA, and he'll surely receive "special" treatment at Dodger Stadium when the Padres visit for a four-game set during the first week of July.
