Dusty Baker’s 25 Hours of Hell — Fernando Tatis Jr. Gives the Astros Home Run Deja Vu In a Excruciatingly Deflating Turnaround

Fernando Tatis Jr. possesses the showmanship and sense of theater of Lin-Manuel Miranda. And this weekend, Astros manager Dusty Baker has become his shell-shocked, unwilling foil. Yes, he did it. . . again. The best player in baseball snatched victory away from the Astros twice in one of the most excruciating 25 hour stretches a Major League team has ever been tortured with.

Baker is a 71-year-old baseball lifer who’s seen it all in this game, usually with the type of good cheer that makes so many in a sometimes back-stabbing sport genuinely root for him. But it’s arguable if he’s ever seen anything quite like Tatis and this weekend.

The only way Fernando Tatis could have possibly tormented Dusty Baker any more is if he opened up a spite wine store right next to the Astros manager’s Baker Family Wines outlet in West Sacramento. Baker must be wondering what if he ever did to this swag-happy bundle of pure 22-year-old baseball joy.

First pitch of the Astros’ series with the best team in baseball hit the mitt a 7:11 pm Friday. The last pitch of the second game came in at 8:18 pm Saturday. During those 25 hours and seven minutes, the Astros play nine hours and 51 minutes of baseball, much of it holding leads, only to see Tatis ruin it at the end. Twice.

“Boy, I thought yesterday was tough,” Baker says. “This was even tougher. Two outs, the bottom of the ninth and nobody on the base. Boy. . . it’s tough to take.”

Tatis forces extra innings twice. Upping the ante on Saturday to a ridiculous degree, adjusting to reach inside and blast a high 94 mph Ryan Pressly fastball onto the train tracks at Minute Maid after just missing them the night before. This time, it’s a three run supersonic rocket with two outs in the ninth inning with the Padres down 6-3 rather than a solo shot in the eighth with the Padres trailing 2-1.

Both lead to the same thing. The Padres outscore the Astros 13-3 in extras over the two games after Tatis goes boom to force them. It’s a 11-8 12th inning loss on Saturday after a 10-3 11th inning loss on Friday. But it’s all Tatis — both days. Dusty Baker only wishes Edward Norton could take his place in this twisted 25th Hour movie.

“I feel like he tried to challenge me again — and I got the victory on that one,” Tatis says of Pressly’s ill-fated two outs in the ninth pitch. “Put the barrel on the ball and had a very good result.”

Tatis just as easily could be talking about Baker or Astros pitching coach Brent Strom and the organization’s plan to pitch the Padres’ star high and inside (which works to perfection the first three times Tatis comes to the plate Saturday). But when the Astros closer tries that same attack approach with two outs in the ninth, Tatis is ready for it. Ready to steal a win away.

It is hard for even many Major Leaguers to make significant adjustments in the middle of a game let alone in the middle of an at-bat. But the truly transcendent talents can do it.

“The ability to make adjustments, at-bat to at-bat and pitch to pitch — that’s maturity. And that’s professional,” Padres manager Jayce Tingler says in his postgame Zoom. “When (Tatis) makes adjustments pitch to pitch, look out.

“That ball he hit. . .  you talk to coaches with over 100 years experience collectively, and they haven’t seen a ball struck like that.”

Fernando Tatis’ Game Changing School

Tatis hits another home run, soaring and screaming into the sky, above the towering ConocoPhillips sign in left field. Only this one goes even higher up. And is even more clutch than his home run hit to almost the same exact spot to tie the first game of this series in the eighth inning just the night before.

The bigger, badder and even bolder sequel is measured at traveling 448 feet at 114.9 MPH. It’s the second hardest hit home run that Tatis has ever hit, which means plenty when you’re talking about this prodigious 22-year-old being from another baseball world. Fernando Tatis Jr. comparing home runs is like Benjamin Franklin comparing inventions.

Yes, the Astros blow a chance to end the game when rookie Taylor Jones, who is only playing first base because Yuli Gurriel is late scratch with a mysterious left middle finger injury, cannot come up with a pop foul near the padding and netting by the seats that Tatis sends high up into the air the pitch before Epic Home Run II. But blaming Taylor Jones for this loss should be against the Geneva Convention.

Or at least those unwritten rules of baseball the old guard in the game love to talk about, the ones Tatis often hilariously and entertainingly breaks.

Jones is more than stand up in answering all the questions after the game, repeatedly saying he should have made the play. And these Astros are not supposed to win games because of Taylor Jones. Or Ralph Garza Jr., the rookie pitcher unfortunate enough to have to make his Major League debut in the 12th inning. Garza Jr. gives up the game-winning, three run shot to Wil Myers, but this isn’t his loss by anything but record either.

The Astros are supposed to win games because of stars like Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, Yordan Alvarez (who is hurt again) and Carlos Correa. And for a while on this Saturday, it looks like Correa is going to win it. Correa, who is at least in the discussion of true standout young shortstops in the game, albeit not in the same stratosphere as Tatis, hits a home run of his own to give the Astros an early lead they build on. And his lacing double in the bottom of the 10th, ties the game again, and pushes things into the 11th.

But Correa does not get to win the day. Tatis and Friends will not let him.

Dusty Baker’s Padres Problem

These Padres just keep coming and coming. They would put that old Energizer Bunny to shame. By hook or by crook — or three run Tatis shot to the sky — they’re going to find a way to win this game. From down 5-0 and 6-1 going into the eighth inning to tying things at 6 in the ninth and taking the lead in the top of the 10th and then again in the 11th before finally winning it on Myers’ blast in the 12th.

There are professional process servers who are much easier to shake.

Blaming Taylor Jones for this loss should be against the Geneva Convention.

Yes, the Astros bullpen is in shambles and Dusty Baker seems unsure if there even is a right combination lately. But do not think the Padres and Tatis have not had plenty to do with the now 27-24 Astros’ miserable plight. If Houston is playing almost any other team this weekend, going against almost other guy, the story is probably very different.

This is a Tatis problem as much as it’s an Astros’ problem.

“I think he just cheated on it,” Pressly says levelly of the high inside fastball Tatis reached up to tattoo into some prime Albert Pujols-level parallel universe. “And you’ve got to tip your hat to him. He’s an unreal hitter.

“It’s just one of those things. I’d be more upset if I missed middle-middle. . .”

This is very much partly a Fernando Tatis Jr. thing. Which is unlike anything else in the game today. Dusty Baker once had Barry Bonds on his side for a decade. But he does not hold the ultimate queen on this chess board anymore.

The only way Fernando Tatis could have possibly tormented Dusty Baker any more is if he opened up a spite wine store right next to the Astros manager’s Baker Family Wines outlet in West Sacramento.

If you think there are two other players in the game today who can do what Tatis did this weekend, you’re still living in 2019.

The good news for this flawed, but still talented, Astros team is that it will not face the Padres in a true must-win situation this season unless both these teams make the World Series. The bad news is the entire Astros clubhouse may need counseling after this weekend.

Twenty five hours of hell for Dusty Baker and one more Sunday afternoon game to go. Take a gulp. You know Fernando Tatis Jr. will be swinging. For the throat.