MLB futures prediction: Can Fernando Tatis Jr. be NL MVP?
Two years ago, Fernando Tatis Jr. was a 22-year-old superstar with future MVP written all over him.
He already had two top-five finishes in just three seasons with the Padres, and he was making his case as the face of professional baseball after signing one of the biggest contracts in MLB history.
He hasn’t played a big-league game since, with injuries and a subsequent 80-game PED suspension wiping out his entire 2022 campaign and the first 20 games of this season.
He’ll make his long-awaited return on Thursday, and oddsmakers at BetMGM have high hopes for “El Niño” — dealing him at the eighth-shortest odds (16/1) to win NL MVP despite the late start.
It would be a nearly unprecedented feat amid unusual circumstances.
But is it worth a bet, anyway?
We’ve already seen Tatis put up MVP-level numbers in a shortened sample: in 2021, he played in just 130 games and still led the NL in home runs (42) and fWAR (7.2) to earn a third-place finish in MVP balloting.
That came on the heels of a strong first two seasons, when he combined for 39 home runs and 27 stolen bases with a .301 average and .956 OPS in 143 games.
He’s been sizzling to start this year, too, even if not at the major-league level.
In eight games in Triple-A El Paso, Tatis slashed .515/.590/1.212 with seven homers and two stolen bases in just 39 plate appearances.
While you may be tempted to shrug at those numbers, consider that most players come back from a lengthy absence rehab in the minors, and they don’t all post the type of jaw-dropping performances that we saw from the short-lived Chihuahuas star.
Projection models are a bit finicky with Tatis — whose expected games played in 2023 are all over the board — but they all agree on one thing: the San Diego star should be one of the two most productive players in the NL on a per-game basis, and he’ll be just three weeks behind the competition upon Thursday’s season debut.
The only player with similar rest-of-season projections is teammate Juan Soto, who opened as the clear NL MVP favorite at BetMGM (+550) but is dealing at 15/1 amid one of the worst starts of his career.
He surely won’t hit below .200 by season’s end, yet even if his final stat line outpaces Tatis, his teammate’s presence in the lineup will likely be seen as a key factor in his positive regression.
It’s a similar story with the Padres’ season overall.
Even after posting a losing record through their first 20 games, the Friars are still projected to win nearly 90 games at Fangraphs with a 45.9 percent chance to win their first NL West title in 17 years — just ahead of the division-rival Dodgers (38.6 percent).
If they do, and Tatis plays to expectation, he’d almost certainly get the lion’s share of credit for his team’s turnaround in a historic season — a strong narrative hook for an otherwise complicated MVP case.
That’s especially true with Soto and reigning MVP runner-up Manny Machado both falling short of expectations in Tatis’ brief absence, all while he tears it up in the minors.
He’ll also be leading off atop this star-studded lineup for the first time since Soto joined the fray ahead of the 2022 trade deadline.
That should not only help the quality of Tatis’ at-bats and overall box-score metrics, but it’ll also help offset the volume lost at the plate from his three-week hiatus.
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Even that isn’t as big of a deal as it may seem.
Just two years ago, Bryce Harper won NL MVP despite missing 21 games — one more than Tatis has missed entering Thursday — because voters simply couldn’t overlook his league-leading 1.044 OPS and .615 slugging percentage.
That’s the best path forward for Tatis, whose career .965 OPS is the highest by any NL player since he entered the league in 2019.
Clearly, there’s risk here, but the upside is immense for a player who has already flirted with MVP consideration twice before.
And if his scorching bat carries into Thursday and beyond, his somewhat modest price to win this year’s award won’t last for long.
