Is Fernando Tatis Jr. how has he not come home yet? Forensic swing investigation

The level of Tatis Jr. the hard hit remains at 98 percent.

His bat speed is up from last year sitting at 75 mph, and he ranks in the elite – 84th percentile.

His launch angle improved from a lowly fourth percentile last year to a ranking of 60th this year.

Barrel level? It is also strong by 11.7%.

Anyway, zero home runs. Nothing. And Tatis Jr. he is now 175 games deep into his season. He has hit at least 21 in every one of his full seasons, including a career-best 42 in 2021.

“I don’t know what (expletive) is going on,” said Tatis Jr. he told reporters recently. “But, man, keep getting out there and keep grinding.”

What happened?

I used our in-house SamCast tools and spoke to Driveline coaches, to understand what’s possible – and what could help Little Tatis.

“His fastball percentage is the fastest of his career,” hitting coach Dylan Robertson said. “We can’t go back to when he was at his best in ’21, or before, because of the off-speed stuff, but I don’t think he was swinging too fast. He’s hitting the ball the way he was then. So, I would think it’s a lot based on technique.”

Two major indicators are tied to his batting profile.

His ground ball rate has risen to a career high (52%), and his slugging percentage has risen to 29%. More importantly, his strikeout rate – never strong – dropped to 5.4%. The best type of batting in the game.

The only year Tatis Jr. was above average was 2021 (22.2%) when he hit a career-best 42 home runs. Although there are doubts about Tatis Jr.’s best campaigns. due to a later PED suspension, he has always had high bat speed. What was very different about 2021 was that he lifted the ball higher on his pull side at the highest rate of his career.

Of the 288 hitters who produced at least 20 fly balls this season, Tatis owns the third-lowest strikeout rate.

What’s going on here?

Tatis has closed his position significantly this year, from opening 32 degrees last year to only 9 degrees this season.

“It looks like he’s trying to push the balls the other way for whatever reason,” Robertson said. “His condition is, I think the opposite thing is like 20 degrees more closed compared to last year, I would say that’s a big thing. … He’s got his contact point deeper, his attack angles are much lower. I think the biggest thing is, his approach is more than that. There’s probably a little effort to go the other way, for whatever reason.

“He’s just too late.”

As Robertson explains, his setup and bottom half affect how his bat moves through the area.

The best hitters always know how important contact points and proper techniques are. But we can estimate the importance of these features today, which should allow the strikers to quickly get out of bad habits and breakdowns.

If we can measure it, we can train it – we can improve on it.

“The biggest thing is like the contact depth is deep. The angle of attack is very low,” said Robertson. “The path is more toward the opposite field. Unfortunately, we don’t have the bat tracking data from when he was at his best, you know, in ’21. But even if you look back from the second half of ’23, his angle of attack has been cut. It was 12 degrees. It’s six now.”

For some reason, Tatis Jr. he did the opposite of what led to his best moment – getting the ball in the air on his side of the draw.

As we can see from examining the SamCast data, many of his swing characteristics and metrics are trending in the wrong direction from where they have been in recent years.