SAN DIEGO — Fernando Tatis Jr. showed this year he’s still the hitter A.J. Preller and Peter Seidler envisioned when they guaranteed him $340 million on a 14-year contract in February 2021.

Fastballs? Tatis pounded them, batting .297 with a whopping slugging percentage of .648.

Sliders? He crushed them to the tune of a .343 batting average and .643 slugging percentage.

Nor did sinkers (.288 batting average) or changeups (.438 slugging percentage) fool Tatis for long.

But the best part of the 25-year-old’s season came when Tatis put the wood to an April 30 segment by MLB Network that focused on his 173-game fall-off in the wake of his August 2022 suspension for performance-enhancing drugs.

Accompanying the report hosted by Brian Kenny and former Colorado Rockies executive Dan O’Dowd was a brown-and-gold statistical graphic that showed Tatis’ career statistics before and after the 80-game suspension announced in August 2022.

It wasn’t flattering.

Displayed on the left were Tatis’ sparkling career splits through his 173 career games logged before the PED suspension.

They showed a .293 batting average, a .369 on-base percentage, a .569 slugging percentage and a 160 adjusted on-base-plus-slugging percentage (100 is league average).

On the graphic’s right side, under the headline “Post-Suspension,” were the same four categories covering 173 games.

Relatively blah, they showed a .254 batting average, a .321 on-base percentage, a .446 slug rate and a .112 adjusted OPS.

The implication, left unstated, was that Tatis benefited from PED usage before the suspension subjected him to much more frequent testing for banned performance-enhancing substances.

When the segment aired, however, Tatis had played in only 32 games in the 2024 season. He was off to a lukewarm start, batting .236 with a .431 OPS, but a season’s first month isn’t a significant sample.

Worth considering was that Tatis’ 141-game season in 2023 came after he’d missed an entire season and spent most of the following offseason recovering from surgery on a wrist and a shoulder.

Entering this season, no such limitations encumbered him.

It seemed to matter.

Following the MLB Network segment, Tatis appeared in 70 more games. He had 299 plate appearances, hitting .295 with a .351 on-base percentage. Showing the power that fueled a sizable chunk of his $340 million extension, he slugged .520 with 17 doubles and 15 home runs in the 70 games.

All told, Tatis’ 2024 season provided a solid rebuttal to conjecture he would be a far less dangerous hitter following his suspension.

He hit the ball very hard, at a very high rate.

Ranking among MLB’s top 5% were his expected slugging percentage (.615), average exit velocity, barrel percentage and hard-hit percentage.

On cut-it-loose throws from right field, he averaged 97.1 miles per hour to place first among non-pitchers.

Showing explosive footspeed as well, he ranked among the league’s top 4% by covering 29.2 feet per second.

During the postseason, Tatis clicked up the dials.

Over the seven contests, he amassed four home runs and three doubles in batting .423. His pitch recognition soared beyond his career marks, factoring into a paltry two strikeouts in 26 at-bats. His explosiveness rivaled that of Shohei Ohtani, L.A’s $700 million star.

In the first game of the National League Divisional Series, Tatis grounded the ball so hard it reached the left-center warning track before it was gloved. The double was clocked at 118.9 miles per hour, the second-hardest-hit ball in a postseason under Statcast tracking (2015), per MLB.com’s Sarah Langs.

Two games later, Tatis topped himself by driving Michael Kopech’s 101.3 mph low-and-away pitch off the right-center wall for a double, just three pitches after Kopech buzzed a 97 mph fastball near his head.

Implications

Because of Tatis’ backloaded contract, which was negotiated some 18 months before his suspension, his post-suspension performance draws extra scrutiny.

That’s entirely deserved.

Given that MLB and some of its sponsors framed Tatis as the face of baseball when he burst onto the scene in 2019-21, it’s only fair for MLB’s TV network — and other media outlets — to contrast his pre- and post-suspension performances.

Tatis showed this year that, at 25, he’s still among baseball’s most dangerous hitters and most explosive runners and throwers.

Ahead, his foremost challenge — and it’s not a small one — is establishing durability.

But, seven months after Kenny and O’Dowd discussed whether his 173-game decline and large contract could lead to a trade, Tatis’ remaining contract seems far less daunting for the Padres.

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