{"id":178075,"date":"2025-07-15T12:22:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-15T12:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/178075\/"},"modified":"2025-07-15T12:22:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T12:22:13","slug":"sports-illustrated-fernando-tatis-jr-didnt-want-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/178075\/","title":{"rendered":"Sports Illustrated &#8211; Fernando Tatis Jr. Didn&#8217;t Want to\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/01k05t8pxxm9zdwwnk8h.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\"\/>Fernando Tatis Jr. smiles in the dugout before a playoff game against the Dodgers in 2024. | Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images<\/p>\n<p>Fernando Tatis Jr. thinks it\u2019s obvious who the best player in Major League Baseball is, but that doesn\u2019t mean he wants to admit it. <\/p>\n<p>During his media availability at the MLB All-Star Game, Tatis was asked who he thought the league\u2019s best player was. He had an answer but didn\u2019t want to say the name.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI feel like that\u2019s a really obvious question,\u201d the San Diego Padres right fielder said with a laugh. \u201cBut he\u2019s my rival, I\u2019m not gonna mention his name. You know it already, 17 for the blue team.\u201d<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Fernando Tatis Jr. was asked during his media session who the best player in the league is right now.<\/p>\n<p>His answer (with a laugh):<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I feel like that&#8217;s a really obvious question. But he&#8217;s my rival, I&#8217;m not gonna mention his name. You know it already. 17 for the blue team.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Darnay Tripp (@DarnayTripp) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DarnayTripp\/status\/1944911428873543842?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">July 15, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Tatis is obviously referring to Los Angeles Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani, who has won three MVP awards. It\u2019s pretty funny that the Padres-Dodgers rivalry has gotten so heated that one All-Star has to begrudgingly admit another is the best player in baseball. <\/p>\n<p>So far this season, Ohtani is slashing .276\/.382\/.605, with a National League-best 32 home runs and 60 RBIs. It\u2019s actually shocking to see his OPS below 1.000. He\u2019s currently fifth in MLB with 4.7 fWAR, and his wRC+ (168) ranks fourth. <\/p>\n<p>Obviously Tatis was joking around, but there are only two possible answers to that question. New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge has a legitimate claim to that title this season, but it\u2019ll be tough for anyone to beat Ohtani in that contest. Especially now that he\u2019s back pitching. <\/p>\n<p>More MLB on Sports Illustrated<\/p>\n<p>This article was originally published on www.si.com as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/mlb\/fernando-tatis-jr-didnt-want-admit-pick-best-player-mlb?utm_source=RSS\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Fernando Tatis Jr. Didn&#8217;t Want to Admit His Pick for Best Player in MLB<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>      <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fernando Tatis Jr. smiles in the dugout before a playoff game against the Dodgers in 2024. | Jayne&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2407],"tags":[5,5965,19356,19360,19354,4,169,19357,19355,19358,43,137,18,4339,4338,19359,6984],"class_list":{"0":"post-178075","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego-padres","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-daily-news","11":"tag-global-news","12":"tag-inkl","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-news-app","16":"tag-news-headlines","17":"tag-news-today","18":"tag-padres","19":"tag-san-diego","20":"tag-san-diego-padres","21":"tag-sandiego","22":"tag-sandiegopadres","23":"tag-today-news","24":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}