Fernando Tatis Jr. and the Missing Pulled Fly Balls

If you read Mike Podhorzer’s article this morning (a thing you should have done – if you haven’t you should go do that, and then come back), you would have seen this post:

Fernando Tatis Jr. doesn’t have a power problem.

He has a fly ball direction problem.

MLB HR/FB by Direction:
Pull – 30.7%
Center – 7.8%
Oppo – 3.7%

He’s just not pulling his fly balls.

That’s it. pic.twitter.com/tl42YnB0nm

— Mike Podhorzer (@MikePodhorzer) April 28, 2026

Which includes this image:

Fernando Tatis Jr.’s batted ball metrics on fly balls, with a red circle around his 2026 pull rate on fly balls, which is just 4.8%, well below his career norms.” width=”691″ height=”214″ />

When Fernando Tatis Jr. puts the ball in the air this year, he is going the other way more than half the time and up the middle almost the rest of the time. Pulled fly balls are where power lives and Tatis has none of those. Tatis has been a total power zero for fantasy and this might well be why. Figuring out if that will continue requires looking at why he might be pulling the ball less.

I went to look at Tatis’s swing metrics and he’s not swinging any slower. His bat speed is up a bit (from 74.0 to 74.5 mph) and right in line with the rest of his career (at least as far back as we have data – he was 74.7 in 2024). His attack angle is a bit down (from 10 degrees in 2024, to 8 in 2025, to 6 this year) but that is not a huge change and it is still in what Baseball Savant identifies as an “ideal attack angle” (between 5 degrees and 20 degrees). Attack angle has to do with the vertical angle of the bat at contact, so it doesn’t directly relate to horizontal direction, but there is an important note in that glossary entry:

When the hitter is ahead of the pitch with his swing (i.e. too early), he will tend to have a higher attack angle. When the hitter is behind the pitch with his swing (i.e. too late), he’ll tend to have a lower attack angle.

Tatis is in the ideal range, but he has moved lower in that range over time, which could be an indication that, despite no issues with his bat speed, he is making contact a little on the late side – or at least a little later than he used to. That would result in contact happening deeper in the zone. And sure enough, his intercept point is deeper in the zone than any of the previous years we have data for. Is he just getting a late start? Perhaps. But there is another data point worth looking at that suggests there might be a little more to it.

In 2025, Tatis’s stance was 38 degrees open. This year, it is only 10 degrees open. How big a change is that? The GIF below compares where Tatis’s feet were in his stance and at contact:

At contact, he is in basically the same place, but his stance is notably different. The first image, with the front foot wide to the left towards the outer edge of the box, is from 2025; the second with his feet more directly aligned towards the pitcher is 2026.

If you think that looks like a drastic change, you aren’t wrong. I pulled a list of 168 hitters for whom we have good stance data from 2025 and 2026 and no one closed off their stance as much as Tatis. Last year, his stance was the 8th most open. This year, it is the his stance was the 80th most open – basically, right smack in the middle.

Tatis isn’t just setting up a little differently. I can’t imagine a player goes from that open to that closed (or at least that average) without it being an intentional change. Is that why Tatis has a flatter, perhaps later swing? Is that why he isn’t pulling the ball and therefore isn’t hitting for as much power? Maybe. It’s hard to know for sure. But this feels like a logical path:

Fernando Tatis Jr. made a change to his stance. That might be the reason why he is making contact deeper in the zone, which is likely the reason he is pulling the ball less, which is likely cause him to pull the ball less, which may be a major factor in his disappointing power output so far.

That said, his stance was almost this closed in 2023, which was not his best season, but he was fine and he hit 25 HR that year. Here is a video of him hitting a HR in 2021, his best season by wOBA and his biggest HR output:

And here is a still from that stance (the camo uniform) compared to his 2025 stance (the brown/grey road uniform) and his 2026 stance (the white pinstripes).

We don’t have stance data from 2021 like we do today, but that stance certainly looks more similar to 2026 than 2025. Which is to say – we know Tatis can succeed with a closed stance like this. In fact, this might suggest that the decision to change his stance has to do with getting back to what worked for him at his absolute peak.

His hard hit rate is the highest it has ever been outside the shortened 2020 season. His barrel rate is down (more grounders and fewer pulled balls in the air are how you get decreasing barrel rate despite increasing hard-hit rate), but still at 13.2%, which is 81st percentile. His swing speed is up. His fast swing rate is up. His zone contact rate is up, too. So he is swinging harder and making both more contact and harder contact.

All of that leads me to believe the issue for Tatis is timing. Whether because of an adjustment to the stance change or something else, Tatis just isn’t getting the ball out in front of the plate like he used to, but I see no physical reason to think he can’t go back to doing that. I would watch that intercept point – as it starts to move forward, his pull rate will increase and the power will follow.

As you sit there, staring at Tatis on your roster, or eying him on the trade block, what should you do with this information? I would be happy to buy low, if you can buy low, on Tatis. We know what the talent is and the ceiling is sky high. If he is on my roster, I am just waiting this out. If you are nervous that this is a new normal for him, you could shop him, but don’t just dump him – get value for the guy you thought you were drafting/keeping in March.

This also leads to a follow up question – what other players have made stance changes and what are we seeing from them? But we’ll save that for another day.