Fernando Tatis Jr. took two steps out of the batters box, dropped his bat in the dirt and began his trot around the bases as the 200th hit of his career sailed 441 feet into the Estrella Jalisco Landing in the second inning on Sunday afternoon.
He was — and is — just getting started.
The 22-year-old shortstop added a tie-breaking single in the sixth and a second career gland slam in the seventh that traveled even further than Sunday’s first blast, allowing the team with baseball’s best record to cruise to a 9-2 win over the Mariners to complete an immaculate homestand.
The Cardinals. The Rockies. The Mariners.
The Padres ran right through all three to complete their first 9-0 homestand since May 2009, when they swept through the Reds, Giants and Cubs in a trio of three-game sets.
While the final two opponents during this run don’t measure up to the first — the Cardinals met the Padres in last year’s NL wild-card series — the circumstances make the accomplishment all that much more noteworthy.
The Padres haven’ t had their full contingent of core hitters in the lineup together since May 9 in San Francisco.
The big blow was losing Tatis and Wil Myers to positive COVID-19 tests as that road trip began at Coors Field.
Tatis returned to action in spectacular fashion on Wednesday after Jurickson Profar, Jorge Mateo and then Eric Hosmer cleared contact-tracing protocols that had sidelined them roughly a week.
Myers rejoined the lineup Sunday, but the Padres have played the last three games without Manny Machado due to tightness in his shoulder and the last two games without Trent Grisham due to a bruised heel.
It hasn’t matter mattered all that much.
Sunday’s breakthrough arrived in the sixth after Mariners starter Justin Dunn exited after five innings of one-run ball.
Profar led off with a double, the Padres’ first hit since Tatis’ second-inning homer. Cronenworth followed with a single and Tatis gave the Padres a 2-1 lead on a single to left.
The lead swelled to 4-1 that inning after Myers’ sacrifice fly to center and Victor Caratini’s groundout to short and then to 8-1 in the seventh after Tatis’ grand slam into the bushes behind the batter’s eye in center, a 112 mph, 447-foot blast that turned a tightly-contested game in a laugher.
And there was plenty of laughing and celebrating in the dugout as Machado presented Tatis with the team’s new homer swag chain upon crossing the plate.
Profar had slipped it over Tati’s head in the second inning, when his solo homer staked right-hander Yu Darvish to a 1-0 lead.
Darvish coughed up his lone run in the fifth inning when Dunn’s fly ball to right turned Myers — playing in his first game since testing positive for COVID-19 on May 11 — around and around until falling over his head for a game-tying double.
Darvish scattered seven hits and no walks while striking out five to improve to 5-1.
