'This kid, man': Tatis' 2-HR night includes unprecedented feat

SAN DIEGO -- On their way to an historic NLDS upset last October, the Padres made do without Fernando Tatis Jr. They stunned the baseball world anyway, dethroning the 111-win NL West champion Dodgers in four games, flipping this once-lopsided rivalry squarely on its head.

But now that Tatis is back, the dynamic has so obviously shifted. The Padres aren't stunning anyone. They, too, are one of the sport’s juggernauts in 2023, considered the favorite to win the division by many prognostications. On Friday night, they looked the part.

Tatis’ return to the Padres-Dodgers rivalry was, naturally, a dramatic one. (Heck, it’s his rivalry as much as anyone’s. Was Padres-Dodgers even actually a thing before Tatis arrived?) He homered twice off Clayton Kershaw in a 5-2 San Diego victory -- a towering drive to left-center, tying the game in the third and a laser into the left-field seats to put the Padres on top in the fifth.

It marked just the ninth time in Kershaw’s illustrious career that any individual hitter has taken him deep twice in the same game. Tatis is the only player to have done so twice. In fact, the last player with a multihomer game off the Dodgers’ likely Hall of Fame-bound left-hander was … Tatis himself, nearly 25 months ago.

“He's one of the best of all time,” Tatis said. “When you're facing a guy like that, you for sure bring your 100 percent that day.”

In the interim, of course, Tatis missed the entirety of the 2022 season, first due to injury, then an 80-game PED suspension, which only expired last month. Tatis hadn’t quite looked himself at the plate in his first two weeks back, but the Padres nonetheless thrived with him back in their lineup. They entered Friday at 8-4 since Tatis’ return, playing their best baseball of the season.

But if Tatis returned two weeks ago in Arizona, on Friday night, he was well and truly back. His fifth-inning homer left his bat at 110.8 mph and landed in the seats in an instant. Tatis dropped his bat, then hopped a few times before turning to the home dugout and letting out a scream. This was Tatis in his element.

“This kid, man,” said shortstop Xander Bogaerts. “He’s very special.”

Bogaerts made his own introduction to the rivalry on Friday with a pair of walks and an RBI groundout. As a team, the Padres would work five walks against Kershaw and 11 total -- a franchise record in a game against the Dodgers.

Throw Bogaerts’ offseason arrival on top of Tatis’ return, and the Padres have every reason to feel the rivalry has tilted. A year ago, the Dodgers won all six regular-season series. They won the West by 22 games.

But the script flipped in October, and the Padres have since added two stars to the lineup that beat the Dodgers eight months ago.

“We can have success against anybody,” Tatis said.

Backed by Tatis’ two homers, Yu Darvish was excellent Friday night, pitching 6 2/3 innings, while allowing two runs (one earned) and striking out six.

Darvish ran into trouble in the first two innings. Mookie Betts walked and scored in the first, before Darvish escaped further damage. In the second, after Miguel Vargas’ triple, Ha-Seong Kim snared David Peralta’s liner and fired to third for an inning-ending double play.

From there, Darvish was dominant, retiring the next 12 batters he faced while leaning heavily on his two-seamer.

“Yu didn’t have his best stuff by any stretch in the first inning,” Padres manager Bob Melvin said. “And then all of a sudden, you look up, and he’s in the seventh. ... It was a complete turnaround.”

Nick Martinez provided 1 1/3 scoreless innings, bridging the gap to closer Josh Hader, April’s NL Reliever of the Month. Hader slammed the door on his 11th save in as many opportunities. Petco Park, buzzing all night long, erupted.

“They were super loud,” Tatis said. “They brought it today. It was just amazing -- an amazing vibe ... and amazing baseball to be playing like that.”

These two teams will meet 12 more times during the regular season. Perhaps they’ll play a few more games in October. If last season is any indication, the Padres should know that scores aren’t settled in May. The Dodgers, anyway, still hold a one-game lead in the standings.

But the Padres took Round 1. In many ways, it was more of the same, their fourth straight victory over Los Angeles dating back to the NLDS. Except this time, they had a certain swaggering superstar back atop their lineup.