SAN FRANCISCO — Fernando Tatis Jr. missed a little more than 10 weeks this summer because of a stress reaction in his left femur, an injury he believes might have stemmed from running around on the artificial turf of Gocheok Sky Dome in March.
Whenever and however the ailment arose, it was not the first time the San Diego Padres right fielder suffered damage to that same bone.
When he was 8 years old, Tatis broke his left femur attempting to land a backflip. He spent the next few months in a cast and had to relearn how to walk. But, soon enough, he was back to running — and back to performing the occasional backflip.
“Always as a kid, I was just jumping around,” Tatis said. “I grew up on a farm, so running downhill, jumping on top of stuff. Yeah. I kind of had that Tarzan life.”
Tatis, now 25, remains an especially confident athlete. Sunday at Oracle Park, during an afternoon of relative (and scheduled) rest, he came off the bench and swung at the first pitch he saw. The result was a go-ahead solo shot, Tatis’ first career pinch-hit home run and his fourth homer in five games. The Padres won 4-3 in 10 innings to sweep the San Francisco Giants and maintain their status as a threat to the Los Angeles Dodgers’ supremacy over the National League West.
WELCOME TO THE GAME @TATIS_JR 😤 pic.twitter.com/IhwuJ5UgKe
— San Diego Padres (@Padres) September 15, 2024
Since his return on Sept. 2, Tatis has gone 13-for-44 (.295) with those four home runs, highlight-reel defense and a stress reaction that has not fully healed. He does not believe that injury and the childhood break in his thigh bone are related.
“I don’t think so,” Tatis said. “I’ve played really good all my career, and my speed has been part of my game. … (The doctors) haven’t mentioned it.”
When presented with a few basics of Tatis’ history, one medical expert agreed.
“His fracture at age 8 is totally unrelated to the stress reaction,” said Dr. Timothy Gibson, a board-certified orthopedic surgeon at MemorialCare Orange Coast Medical Center who has not examined Tatis. “The first fracture was traumatic. At age 8, you typically fully heal about three to four months post-injury. Bone heals with bone, not scar tissue, so when it heals, it’s as though nothing ever happened. Especially in kids. It’s just a coincidence that the stress reaction” — which is not a traumatic injury — “was in the same bone.”
“The artificial turf (in South Korea) may have contributed to the development of the stress reaction, and certainly could exacerbate the symptoms,” Dr. Gibson added. “But there were likely other factors at play, such as over-training or year-round play without appropriate rest.”
Tatis, for his part, does not think he played too much last year. After losing his 2022 season to a wrist surgery and a suspension — and then undergoing a shoulder operation and a second wrist procedure — he appeared in 141 of a possible 142 games in 2023. Then he played several more games in winter ball.
“My body felt great, even in the offseason,” Tatis said. “My legs were feeling really, really good. I was in a place that my lower body has never been. I was running faster, I was stronger in my lower body, and that (stress) reaction just came after Korea.”
The Padres will continue monitoring Tatis and providing periodic rest; Sunday marked his second start off in 11 games. Even if he’s not yet 100 percent, Tatis offers a combination of power and aggressiveness that could elevate a contact-fueled offense that appears built for October.
“We knew going into this series that today was a day he was likely to get off,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said after Sunday’s game. “The medical team has been great. He’s been great. The doctors have been fantastic. We’re just doing a holistic way of looking at this and making sure we keep him fresh and we stay ahead of it, because we don’t want it to go backwards, obviously.”
Lockridge auditioning to be postseason weapon
As a freshman at Troy University, Brandon Lockridge stole only one base. The next spring, he stole 11. In his final college season, in 2018, he stole 25. But it wasn’t until 2023, Lockridge said, that he learned how to make full use of his uncommon speed.
“I always erred on the side of safety, even when I got into professional baseball,” Lockridge, 27, said. “I didn’t want to make outs and whatnot. It was a very tentative mindset as opposed to erring on the side of aggression.”
Amid intensive work with Matt Talarico, the New York Yankees’ director of speed development and base running, Lockridge collected 40 steals last season between the Double-A and Triple-A levels. This year, the outfielder stole 34 bases in 72 Triple-A games before the Yankees traded him to the Padres for relievers Enyel De Los Santos and Thomas Balboni Jr. After changing organizations, he recorded 12 steals in 32 games with Triple-A El Paso.
Then, in the top of the ninth inning Friday, Lockridge made his major-league debut pinch-running for Jurickson Profar. He had been prepped by the Padres coaching staff to be aggressive. And he was.
On the first pitch he saw, and with the Padres leading by four runs, Lockridge took off for second base. He wound up with a steal that stood after replay review. He later scored on a double by Manny Machado.
It was a brief but successful first audition for Lockridge, who could be deployed as a pinch-runner and defensive replacement next month. Afterward, he traded texts with a trusted friend.
“He’s been probably one of the biggest things for my career,” Lockridge said of Talarico, “and I told him that since I’ve been traded, since I got called up. Just thanked him so much. He kind of really instilled this, like, confidence in my run game.
“Now it’s … muscle memory.”
As the Padres get closer to October, Lockridge finds himself competing with the likes of Tyler Wade and Mason McCoy for a spot on a theoretical postseason roster. His base-stealing ability and defensive versatility — Lockridge entered the eighth inning of Sunday’s game as a replacement in left field and looked comfortable handling a couple of fly balls — could give him an edge.
(Top photo: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)
