After finishing the regular season by winning 17 of their final 20 games, the San Diego Padres pretty well embarrassed the Chicago Cubs in a two-game sweep in Petco Park in the Wild Card Series. Next up for the Padres is a much taller order: the 103-win, best-record-in-baseball Milwaukee Brewers in the NLDS. The Brewers are similarly on fire, having won 15 of 18 to close the season.
This series should be all kinds of fun with both teams operating at such a high level, and we get the added bonus of them being two of the five active franchises to have never won the World Series. If the Padres are to pull off an upset here, an integral ingredient will obviously be Fernando Tatis Jr. His 2026 has truly been a tale of two seasons.
It seems like a distant memory now, but for months, he was broken at the plate, as were most of his teammates. It actually started to get pretty annoying to discuss, but it required discussion because what was happening with this offense was so jaw-dropping. For those unaware, at the All-Star break, the Padres ranked dead last in all of baseball in batting average (.226), on-base percentage (.302) and were 29th in slugging (.370, only one point ahead of 30th).
Sure enough, they were last in runs scored, checking in at 379 overall, which was a paltry average of 3.94 per game. After the break, the Padres would average 5.2 runs per game. They led the majors in average (.270) and were second in OPS (.781).
It wasn't just one player. Jackson Merrill picked things up, Austin Hays hit well, Ty France was outstanding and there was a bunch more supporting cast help. Tatis is the lifeblood of this team, though.
At the forefront of the annoying-but-baffling discussions from the Padres' anemic first-half offense was Tatis and how long it took him to hit a home run. Through May 16, he was hitting just .233/.310/.276. In the next two weeks, he got hot in terms of average (17 for 42, good for a .405 average) and on-base percentage (.479), but he still wasn't hitting for power.
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