Fernando Tatis Jr. took two steps out of the batter’s box, dropped his bat in the dirt and began his jog around the bases as the 200th hit of his career sailed 441 feet into the Estrella Jalisco Landing in the second inning on Sunday afternoon.
He was — and is — just getting started.
The 22-year-old shortstop added a tie-breaking single in the sixth and a second career grand slam in the seventh that traveled even further than Sunday’s first blast, allowing the team with baseball’s best record to cruise to a 9-2 win over the Mariners to complete an immaculate homestand.
The Cardinals. The Rockies. The Mariners.
The Padres ran right through all three to complete their first 9-0 homestand since May 2009, when they swept through the Reds, Giants and Cubs in a trio of three-game sets.
While the final two opponents during this run don’t measure up to the first — the Cardinals met the Padres in last year’s NL wild-card series — the circumstances make the accomplishment all that much more noteworthy.
The Padres haven’ t had their full contingent of core hitters in the lineup together since May 9 in San Francisco.
“The big thing it’s not one guy,” Tatis said after driving in six runs. “The entire team is putting small pieces together. We’re playing great baseball. We’re missing guys and we’re still winning.”
The big blow was losing Tatis and Wil Myers to positive COVID-19 tests as that road trip began at Coors Field.
Tatis returned to action in spectacular fashion Wednesday after Jurickson Profar, Jorge Mateo and then Eric Hosmer had cleared the -tracing protocols that had sidelined them roughly a week.
Myers reed the lineup Sunday, but the Padres have played the last three games without Manny Machado due to tightness in his shoulder and the last two games without Trent Grisham due to a bruised heel.
It hasn’t matter mattered all that much as the Padres have outscored the opposition 66-18 during this nine-game winning streak.
“We’ve dealt with a little bit of adversity,” Padres manager Jayce Tingler said. “The way our guys have responded and just come together, it’s been awesome. It’s been so fun to go to work each and every day. You get to the clubhouse, you start getting here earlier and earlier because it’s fun. You’ve got guys picking each other up, pulling for one another. You look at the homestand and the little bit of the run we’ve been on, you look up throughout the nights and it is a huge group of men that are contributing and it makes it a lot of fun to keep showing up.
“Right now we just have to keep it going.”
Sunday’s breakthrough arrived in the sixth after Mariners starter Justin Dunn exited after five innings of one-run ball.
Profar led off with a double, the Padres’ first hit since Tatis’ second-inning homer. Jake Cronenworth followed with a single and Tatis gave the Padres a 2-1 lead on a single to left.
The Padres’ advantage swelled to 4-1 that inning after Myers’ sacrifice fly to center and Victor Caratini’s groundout to short and then to8-1 in the seventh after Tatis’ grand slam into the bushes behind the batter’s eye in center, a 112 mph, 447-foot blast that turned a tightly-contested game in a laugher.
And there was plenty of laughing and celebrating in the dugout as Machado presented Tatis — who opted for the pin-wheel, bat-flip this time around — with the team’s new homer “swagg” chain upon crossing the plate as “MVP” chants briefly broke out at Petco Park.
He was familiar with the gawdy necklace with a spinning “SD” logo as Profar had slipped it onto his shoulders after his second-inning homer staked right-hander Yu Darvish (7 IP, 1 ER) to a 1-0 lead and got Tatis started on a 3-for-3 day in which he also also walked.
Since returning to the lineup Wednesday as the Padres’ clean-up hitter, Tatis is 11-for-14 with four homers, 12 RBIs, 27 total bases and just one strikeout.
He was hitting .154/.267/.333 on April 21 with just two homers after a miserable start that included a 10-day stretch on the injured list due to a partially dislocated shoulder.
He’ll wake up on Monday morning in Milwaukee with a .309/.384/.727 batting line and 13 homers, two shy of the major-league lead held by Ronald Acuña Jr.
“I think he’s gotten healthy,” Tingler said. “I think when he goes in these stretches, he just looks so under control. He’s on fastballs. He’s on breaking balls. He’s not trying to do too much. He’s finishing with balance. His head is behind the ball. He’s not trying to generate more.
“A lot of times with him less is more. He’s just taking good balanced swings and his talent’s playing.”
