The San Diego Padres are off to a hot 19-11 start. They are winning games, but their biggest star is being left behind. Fernando Tatis Jr. is doing everything right at the plate. The results just aren’t there. Tatis has not hit a home run since September 27, 2025. That is a 214-day drought. He is going through one of the worst slumps of his career, and the 27-year-old is understandably frustrated.

“Just not happy,” Tatis told Dennis Lin of The Athletic following Wednesday’s game. “I’m going through it, and I’m just trying to figure it out.”

In 30 games, Tatis has only four extra-base hits. They are all doubles. Furthermore, he has hit as many as four sacrifice flies over the last month. He is making great contact, but he is having terrible luck.

“I’ve been close for a while, but it’s just a sacrifice fly,” Tatis told Lin. “I just see it that way.”

Tatis came close against the Cubs on Wednesday. Down 5-3 in the eighth inning, he stepped to the plate with the bases loaded. On a 1-1 count, he crushed an 86-mph pitch deep to center field. It looked like a grand slam. Instead, Cubs outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong caught it. Tatis drove in a run as Nick Castellanos scored, but it was not the one he wanted from a ball with 102.8 mph exit velocity.

The numbers show Tatis is having incredibly bad luck. Holding a 64.7% hard hit rate, Tatis is among the top 1% in MLB, ahead of Munetaka Murakami, Ben Rice, and James Wood, but trailing in terms of homers. So far in the season, Tatis’ launch angle sweet spot (37.6%), fly ball rate (18.8%), and pull percentage (17.6%) have hit all-time lows.

But Tatis is still searching for answers about why the baseball gods are mad at him despite doing everything.

“I’m doing everything,” Tatis told Lin. “Hitting early, doing batting practice, after (games). It still doesn’t turn around. I don’t know. Trying to figure it out.”

Tatis, who has a career WAR of 27.2, holds 0.0 WAR so far in the season. The Athletic noted that since Tatis debuted in the MLB, only two players, Rafael Devers and Marcus Semien, have faced a similar drought at the start of the season. Yet they have managed to clock in at least 25 homers after they failed to hit one in the first 30 games.

Tatis can only hope to turn the season around in a similar fashion, with his coaches ready to encourage.

Padres’ coaching staff sympathizes with Fernando Tatis Jr.

The year he signed his 14-year, $340 million contract extension, Fernando Tatis Jr. drove in his career best 42 home runs in 546 plate appearances. Since then, his hitting stats have dropped significantly, with his OPS dropping to .609 this season.

Despite the slump, the Padres’ coaches fully support him. Bench coach Randy Knorr cannot believe Tatis’s bad luck.

“I’ve never seen that before,” observed Knorr, per The Athletic. “Every night, he’s just crushing balls, and it happens to be at somebody out there. And you kind of feel bad for him because he’s working hard every day, and you feel like if a couple of them would just drop for him, he can get on a roll.”

This season, Tatis has issued 13 walks and touched 32 bases. His 9.9% walk rate indicates that he would rather help load the bases for his team to score than keep flying out. Padres’ hitting coach Steven Souza believes Tatis is very close to breaking out. It’s a matter of when and not how he will get the results.

Hitting instructor Raul Padron is also helping. He coached Tatis back in 2018 and is giving him specific drills to fix his swing.

“You know, being the No. 1 guy hitting the ball hard in all of MLB and not getting the result he wants, it’s kind of hard,” said Padron.

According to The Athletic, Padron has drills in place for Tatis that would help him “put his body in a great spot so he can drive the ball.”

The good news is that the Padres are winning without his home runs. His teammates are carrying the load for now. He is putting in the hard work, so Tatis just needs his luck to finally change.