SAN DIEGO — Last week, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jurickson Profar learned they had ended a decades-long drought. The two were voted into the All-Star Game as the San Diego Padres’ first starting outfielders in the event since Tony Gwynn in 1999, validating the work they put in together last offseason in the Dominican Republic.
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“That’s impressive,” Tatis said. “It tells how hard it is to be an All-Star starter.”
Next week will bring a different kind of difficulty. Unlike Profar and Padres rookie center fielder Jackson Merrill, Tatis will not participate in or even attend Tuesday’s All-Star Game at Globe Life Field. The right fielder was diagnosed last month with a stress reaction in his right thigh bone, an injury Tatis believes will keep him out for less time than originally feared.
Still, it will take more than a little time.
“I don’t know,” Tatis said Friday when asked for a rough estimate of when he might return. “But, I mean, they were saying in the beginning that I probably would have lost the season. … But it’s definitely not that.”
Before he went on the injured list, Tatis had played through worsening pain in his right leg since early April. Despite his discomfort, he had hit .279 with 14 home runs and trailed only Profar in Wins Above Replacement among National League outfielders. Then, last month, imaging revealed a stress reaction — a precursor to a potential fracture — in his right femur. Tatis declined to publicly detail a recovery timetable, saying only that it was a “huge gap” and that he hoped to return sometime after the All-Star break.
“These are injuries that I always tell people it’s difficult to have as a patient and difficult to treat because it’s out of our hands,” orthopedic surgeon Dr. Timothy Gibson said in a recent interview. (Gibson has not examined Tatis and was providing general insight into femoral stress reactions.) “We have to wait and see how your body responds. It can be four weeks. It could be 20 weeks. It just depends.”
Friday, about three weeks after his diagnosis, Tatis said he was no longer experiencing or waking up with pain in his right leg. Still, his activity remains limited as he waits for his bone to heal. For the most part, that activity has consisted of rest and “dry swings” with a bat. Tatis will watch next week’s All-Star festivities from afar.
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“It’s one of the (best) rewards that you can get as a player as an individual result,” Tatis said of his second All-Star selection, “and it’s really humbling to make it back again after a couple years. I’m just very happy how it turned out, and just looking forward to way more All-Stars.
“At the same time … it’s very sad to not be able to go and show my face to all the fans that voted for me.”
Tatis also expressed happiness for his fellow All-Stars in the Padres outfield. Profar, 31, is a former top prospect and a first-time All-Star. Merrill, who had never played in the outfield before the 2023 minor-league season, has flourished as a 21-year-old rookie.
“Merrill, I saw that coming out of the gate when I started seeing this kind showing up and just showing what type of player he was,” Tatis said. “I knew he was ready and, if they would’ve let this kid play, he was going to be really good, but he turned out to be even better than I thought.
“And Profar, that’s my boy. We were working out together in the offseason, and we were talking … what’s the ceiling for him, like how good of a talent he was. And now seeing … him being an All-Star, playing at an All-Star level, playing the baseball that he’s playing right now, I feel like all the hard work and all those talks, all that grind we went through together, is definitely paying off.”
Tatis spoke a little more than an hour before another teammate returned from a significant injury of his own. Xander Bogaerts, who fractured his left shoulder May 20, was back in the Padres’ lineup Friday, playing second base and batting fifth. That Bogaerts missed less than two months is considered a boon for a team fighting to stay in the playoff hunt.
The Padres hope Tatis similarly beats initial projections. At least, he is not expected to miss the rest of the season.
(Top photo of Tatis: Orlando Ramirez/Getty Images)
