The son of a minor league player, Fernando Tatis smashed a total of 113 homers in 11 years with five big league teams, including 34 in one breakthrough season as a raw 24-year-old out of the Dominican Republic. Two of those blasts – grand slams – famously exited Dodger Stadium in the same inning in April 1999, long before Tatis refined the approach that would one day prop up the start of his own son’s professional career.

“In those times,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said by phone from Fort Wayne, Ind., “he was basically going off his talent and not knowing much about baseball. He was only learning about hitting – not too big, not too small.

“Just quick and short to center field.”

That blueprint is serving the younger Tatis well in his first full year of pro ball.


The 18-year-old shortstop was hit by a pitch Wednesday morning, extending his on-base streak at the Padres’ low Single-A affiliate to 20 games. That stretch – which included a 15-game hitting streak – has lifted his average from .213 to .278 and included a power burst that saw the lanky, 6-foot-3 Tatis blast three homers in a five-day span as the Midwest League’s player of the week.

That Tatis Jr.’s exploits is coming as the circuit’s fifth-youngest player only adds to the intrigue of a player who opened the season ranked No. 47 in ESPN’s top-100 minor league prospects.

The Fernando Tatis Jr. file

The White Sox signed Fernando Tatis Jr. for $825,000 as one of their jewels of the 2015 international free agent class. He was considered the prize in the James Shields trade the following June and is ranked No. 47 among ESPN scouting guru Keith Law’s top-100 prospects: “There’s risk, given his age, but we might look back on this deal in a few years and call it the Fernando Tatis trade.”

Age: 18

18 Level: Low Single-A Fort Wayne

Low Single-A Fort Wayne 2017 Stats: .278 avg., .363 OBP, .462 SLG, 6 HRs, 24 RBIs, 9 steals, 24 runs, 55 strikeouts, 44 games

“For me, he’s an All-Star,” said Skip Schumaker, an assistant in Padres player development and a veteran of 11 major league seasons. “It’s up to him how good he wants to be. The sky is the limit for this kid. He’s got the size and the aptitude, and the knowledge of the game for 18 years old is so impressive.”

Credit for that head start, Tatis Jr., said is certainly owed to his father, his son’s budding career back in the Dominican Republic becoming a focus as the sun began to set on his major league career.


Time alongside the likes of Jose Reyes in the Mets clubhouse as a 10-year-old cultivated a desire to follow in his father’s footsteps. Hours on fields and in cages – structured around classes in a jam-packed home school schedule aimed at an early graduation – positioned the youngest Tatis for a $825,000 signing bonus more than three decades after his father signed with the Rangers for $8,000.

In fact, it was his baseball education, Tatis Jr. said, that was the impetus for his father’s retirement.

“That meant a lot to me,” Tatis Jr. said. “He was letting it go to pay attention to my career. That made it a challenge for me. I had to keep it going.”

The White Sox were among those who guessed he would, the tall, lanky right-handed hitter emerging as one of their top finds from the 2015 international class. Less than a year later, the Padres “were buying the prospect,” one team official said, when they sent a reported $27-$31 million along with James Shields to Chicago to land Tatis Jr.


Pitcher Erik Johnson also arrived in the deal, which could have included less cash, another high-ranking official told the Union-Tribune last summer, had the Padres not insisted on receiving a blue-chip prospect that had yet to even play in the White Sox system.

The early dividends have been especially promising for an organization searching for a long-term answer at shortstop since Khalil Greene’s career fizzled.

Four inches taller than his dad with an arm plenty strong for the middle of the infield, Tatis was 17 when four homers in his first 43 games in the Arizona Rookie League pushed him to the short-season Northwest League last summer. The following spring, he was among five players 18 or younger – Eguy Rosario (17), Reinaldo Ilarraza (18), Hudson Potts (18) and Jack Suwinski (18) – whom the Padres deemed strong enough mentally to handle a sink or swim assignment in Fort Wayne.

Against a steady diet of breaking pitches – more than anyone else, TinCaps manager Anthony Contreras said – Tatis Jr. sank, too, to start the year.


That he’s more than treading water now is a testament to both his genes and the foundation established by his big league dad, one he talks shop with nearly every day via phone from the Dominican.

“In the beginning of the year,” Contreras said, “it was like ‘I know I’ve got power and I want to show what I can do, hit the ball out of the ballpark type thing in BP.’ Now he’s in the cage and you see him going up the middle, you see him going the other way, knowing that the way these guys are pitching him, that’s the type of thing he can take into the game to allow himself to be successful.

“It’s a tribute to his maturity. For an 18-year-old, it’s exciting to see him make those types of adjustments.”

Still in the low minors, there’s more adjustments to come, to be sure.


Not least of all is the big league pedigree that precedes any matchup.

Game on.

“I have a name,” Tatis Jr. said. “Everybody kind of knows me already so they challenge me.

“I just try to do the best I can.”


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jeff.sanders@sduniontribune.com; Twitter: @sdutSanders