Giants Prospect Gave Up a Homer to a Rehabbing Fernando Tatis Jr., and Did NOT Hold Back His Thoughts
San Diego Padres star – can we still call him that? – Fernando Tatis Jr. just started a minor league rehab assignment as he recovers from offseason wrist and shoulder surgeries.
… well, that’s part of the story. We all know the other part. Tatis is currently suspended until April 20 thanks to a positive PED test last year, so his minor league rehab stint – the maximum allowed 15 games – is really more just about gearing him up for the season by playing real pro games, since he couldn’t do so before now.
If he’s good to go, you would expect Tatis to really knock around minor league pitching. After all, the 24-year-old is a career .292/.369/.596/153 wRC+ hitter in the big leagues, and assuming the juice wasn’t all of that, he can probably beat up on Triple-A arms.
To that end, Tatis hit a homer last night off of Giants pitching prospect Kade McClure:
Not much to see there under normal circumstances. A rehabbing big league star taking a Triple-A arm deep. That’s to be expected.
But it’s when a highlight of Tatis got shared and caught McClure’s attention that things got interesting. And spicy.
Because McClure was definitely NOT going to treat this like a story to tell his kids one day. Or at least, not the story you might think:
No holding back! I guess the Giants-Padres rivalry is alive and well.
McClure is not wrong, of course, and as a 27-year-old who has been trying to break past Triple-A for parts of the past few seasons, you can understand why he would be PARTICULARLY aggravated by any player using banned performance-enhancing substances. I doubt he’s alone in that thinking, and Tatis is probably going to hear it a lot more over the years. If he stays clean and rakes for the next decade, then MAYBE he gets past this, and it becomes a story about a youthful mistake. But in the meantime, a lot of players – and a lot of opposing fans – are going to be perturbed about his successes against other players, the vast majority of whom are clean.
