Fernando Tatis Jr. likely done for the season with back injury

Here’s some news!

You’re probably saying to yourself right now, “Oh, no! Our young prince! What ever will we do without him?”

Enter me, a reasonable fellow, to paint a picture that will allow you to rest easy at night.

Protect the Prince

Fernando Tatis Jr. spending the rest of this season on the sidelines means that, barring some sort of catastrophe, he will be 100% healthy for the start of Spring Training 2020 and anything the team wants him to do this offseason.

Bebo could even use the time off to try and retrain himself to protect his body and play a style more akin to Manny Machado’s.

Bringing Tatis back, where he is still going to play with the gas pedal pushed to the floor in meaningless games, and you risk an even bigger and more serious injury than the back spasms that sidelined him earlier this week.

If the games are meaningless, why not wait until they’re not? Speaking of...

Drill Tank Baby, Drill Tank

Sure, someone is going to write about how this opens up the shortstop position for Luis Urias and how the team wants to see Urias play there a bit to

a) see if he takes to a utility role
and/or
b) increase his trade value.

This is not that post. Here, I’m just going to say that removing the best player from the team gets them a better draft position next year.

If the season ended now, the Padres have the 10th pick in the 2020 MLB Draft. However, they’re only seven games back from getting the 5th pick! That’s a big difference. And one that is worth chasing more than the playoffs in 2019.

Look at the bright side?

The next time we see Fernando Tatis Jr., he’ll probably be wearing brown-and-yellow. And, if the team uses this “off time” wisely, maybe he’ll be wearing it for the rest of his career.