Padres hitters looking forward to altitude adjustment this week

DENVER - Fernando Tatis Jr.'s second home run of 2023 was a fly ball that he watched rocket 115 feet high and just keep going.

It sailed 376 feet and cleared the wall at Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú.

The right field wall.

It was the softest opposite-field home run of Tatis' career, at 95.4 mph. It was also the highest, with a 38-degree launch angle.

It would have been almost impossible to accomplish anywhere except in a ballpark 7,349 feet above sea level.

Tatis' blast was the shortest - by nearly 40 feet - of the 11 home runs hit that night in late April 2023.

"Wow!" Tatis said after the game. "That was crazy."

Three years later, Tatis is looking for his first home run of this season. And he is headed back to Mexico City after a stop for three games in another place where the breathing can be difficult but the home runs come more easily.

Tatis has spent the past few weeks making an effort not to dwell on his total power outage. But this week, he is happily thinking about what is in store.

"Hopefully, we can get some at-bats," he said with a smile. "That way, I can get a home run."

The Padres begin a three-game series here Tuesday against the Rockies before heading to Mexico City for a pair of weekend games against the Diamondbacks.

That is a lot of thin air.

"A lot of altitude on the way," Jackson Merrill said. "So take care of our bodies and go win some ballgames."

Sure, winning will be the main goal. And games on top of mountains drain a man.

“Maybe,” Xander Bogaerts said when asked whether it will be worth it to play these games at altitude. “Depends on how it goes. I’ll tell you after.”

But let's talk about the potential for some baseballs getting pulverized and some stats getting skewed.

The potential for an offensive breakout is talked about virtually every time a team is about to play the Rockies at Coors Field.

But rarely has a group been this ready to hit a mile high … and then 1.4 miles high.

For five straight games.

"It's going to be (expletive) great," Manny Machado said. "It's going to be a nice week."

Tatis and Machado have hit a lot of home runs at Coors Field. Merrill has a .450 (18-for-40) batting average with one home run in 10 games there.

There is no denying the place brings confidence, and the Padres' three most important hitters could use a boost.

Merrill is coming off a series in Anaheim in which he went 0-for-13 with seven strikeouts. Machado is batting .186 with two home runs through 22 games. Tatis has yet to homer and hasn't hit anything more than a single in 22 at-bats.

The Padres' .482 slugging percentage in 414 games at Coors Field is their highest in any ballpark where they have played more than 13 games. They have averaged a home run every 27.4 at-bats at Coors Field.

They slugged .770 in two games at Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú. They homered seven times in 74 at-bats in Mexico City.

"It was fun," Tatis said. "Not for the pitchers. It was definitely fun, though."

The Padres and Giants combined for 15 home runs and 49 hits in two games.

"I remember being overly cautious on which pitches I was throwing based on the movement in the altitude there," said Joe Musgrove, who allowed seven runs in 3⅓ innings.

The three home runs he allowed traveled a combined 1,385 feet.

"There was a little bit of panic in pitchers' minds about leaving anything up," Musgrove said.

Saturday night's series opener was unhinged. The Padres and Giants each hit a pair of back-to-back home runs.

Brandon Crawford and LaMonte Wade Jr. in the third. Bogaerts and Juan Soto in the fourth. Tatis and Machado in the fifth. Blake Sabol and David Villar in the seventh.

That had never happened before.

The 11 total home runs were two shy of the major league record. Only twice in MLB history had 10 different players hit home runs in a game.

The distance of the homers was the most amazing aspect of the weekend.

"I hit a homer, I thought the ball was maybe a double and it just went over," said Bogaerts, whose 455-foot blast, the longest of his career, was tied for the fourth-longest of the night.

Sabol hit one of his 13 career home runs in that game. It was hard (106.8 mph exit velocity) but also really high (43 degree launch angle). It traveled 436 feet, the furthest any ball hit that high had traveled since at least 2015.

Two primary factors led to there being just four home runs in Sunday's 6-4 Padres victory. The humidor in which balls were kept to prevent them from becoming too light and bouncy in the thin air was adjusted for the second game, and the late-afternoon start time meant shadows made it more difficult for batters to see the ball.

The Rockies and Astros combined for just 26 runs and seven homers when they played two games in Mexico City in 2024.

But 7,349 feet can still make a humidor relatively ineffective.

Austin Nola lined a 440 homer on that Sunday. It was the longest and lowest (22-degree launch angle) of his career. And it was to dead center field.

The other thing that players talked about was the turf at Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú, which played fast and hard, leading to balls skipping through the infield and bouncing over outfielders' heads.

But mostly, it was the homers.

"Just hit up in the air," Machado said. "That’s how we were thinking, just get the ball in the air. Even ground balls. I mean, it doesn’t even matter. Just try to hit the ball forward. You get it in the air and the ball is going to go. But there are a lot of hits there."

Copyright 2026 Tribune Content Agency. All Rights Reserved.

This story was originally published April 21, 2026 at 7:37 AM.