Are The San Diego Padres Right To Get Upset About Fernando Tatis Getting Hit?

The San Diego Padres are very upset with the rest of the league for trying to get their best player out. 

This week's series between the Padres and division rival Los Angeles Dodgers boiled over repeatedly, with several players getting hit by pitches. Some, mostly, unintentional, and some, very clearly purposeful. 

What sent things over the edge during Thursday night's game was Padres star outfielder Fernando Tatis Jr. getting hit by a pitch thrown by rookie reliever Jack Little in the top of the ninth inning. Little was making his major league debut, and with the game's outcome already effectively decided, there was little cause to hit anyone. Especially because, by that point in the game, the Padres hadn't thrown at any Dodgers hitters. 

Still, after Tatis was hit, Padres manager Mike Shildt immediately charged out of the dugout screaming at Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, accusing him of hitting his player intentionally. That led to both benches clearing, and a series of postgame comments by Padres players and coaches.

READ: Dodgers (?!) Get Their Prayers Answered: Fernando Tatis Jr's Hand X-Rays Were Negative

Tatis said "enough is enough." Manny Machado made a vague threat about taking vengeance on the Dodgers if Tatis was seriously injured. Roberts said that Shildt had made the incident "personal" by accusing him of hitting Tatis on purpose. 

But are the Padres right? Does Tatis get specifically targeted? Is it "enough?"

LOS ANGELES - San Diego Padres manager Mike Shildt (8) and third base coach Tim Leiper (33) with San Diego Padres right fielder Fernando Tatis Jr. (23) as Los Angeles Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts (50) looks on after benches cleared in the eighth inning at Dodger Stadium on June 19, 2025. Photo: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images

Padres Clearly Haven't Looked At The Numbers

The answer, quite simply, is no. 

A quick glance at the Major League leaderboard in hit by pitches sees Ty France at the top with a whopping 13 already this season. Then Willson Contreras with 12, Randy Arozarena also with 12, and Eugenio Suarez, Pete Alonso and C.J. Abrams with 10. Where's Tatis then? 

Well you have to go to the second page, because he's been hit "just" four times this year. In fact, going back to his debut in 2019, Tatis has been hit by a pitch 26 times in 2,564 plate appearances. Dodgers catcher Will Smith in that same time frame has been hit by a pitch 61 times in 2,749 plate appearances. That's a much worse ratio! No one seems to have suggested that pitchers stop throwing Will Smith inside, however.

Smith gets hit a lot because he chases a lot of pitches in and off the plate. Sometimes he hits them for homers, more often he swings and misses. So pitchers attempt to bust him inside, and miss their spot. It's baseball. And it's easily visible on the heat map. 

Tatis' biggest weakness is down and away. One of the classic sequences for pitching to star-level power hitters like Tatis is to bust them up and in to push them off the plate, then throw a breaking ball down and away. Sure enough, throughout his career, that's pretty much exactly what opposing teams have done.

For comparison, here's Will Smith. 

Looks pretty darn close, doesn't it? Though Smith does see significantly more pitches up and in than Tatis does. It's not surprising that Tatis isn't anywhere close to the top of the leaderboard in hit by pitches, because that's not where he's most commonly attacked. Even then, he's also pitched similarly to other players who use arm extension to generate power.

But maybe the Dodgers try to hit Tatis more than the rest of the league? Maybe that's why they're so upset. 

Well, thanks to Baseball Savant, we can see that's not true either. When sorting by Dodgers and Padres players in games against each other since Tatis' debut in 2019, the top two most-hit players are both Dodgers. 

Will Smith has been hit 11 times by Padres pitchers in the past five and a half seasons. Max Muncy's been hit nine times. Tatis and Betts have both been hit six times. And Betts didn't even join the Dodgers until the 2020 season. Yes, Tatis has been hit more than anyone would like to see. But acting as if he's specifically targeted is factually inaccurate. It gets worse.

Between the two teams, the three pitchers who have allowed the most hit by pitches since 2019 are all Padres. Joe Musgrove has hit a Dodgers player six times, Yu Darvish has five, as does Austin Adams. Adams is easily the most impressive since he pitched all of 59 innings for the Padres and still found a way to hit five Dodgers.

Tatis was hit three times in the last week, and it's hard to blame anyone for being upset. Especially with the HBP on Thursday getting him on the wrist. But even a cursory look at the numbers shows that Tatis is not being targeted, he's nowhere near the top in terms of most hit by pitches in baseball, or even in this divisional rivalry. And while it's one thing to stand up for your players, it's another to then intentionally target your opponent with a 100-mph fastball, which is exactly what happened in the bottom of the ninth when Padres closer Robert Suarez threw at Shohei Ohtani.

"Enough is enough," is right. It's enough of being ignorant of what's happening around the sport.