San Diego smashes: Soto, Tatis tattoo pair of no-doubt dingers

In consecutive innings of Friday’s series-opening 5-1 victory over New York, the two Padres sluggers launched second-deck moonshots — Soto to right field in the fifth and Tatis to left in the sixth.

To say they were no-doubters would be an understatement. Soto’s blast left his bat at 114.1 mph and carried a Statcast-projected 432 feet; Tatis’ at 113.4 mph and a projected 439 feet.

And both home runs came with prodigious bat-flips befitting of the superstars who hit them.

First was Soto. Yankees right-hander Randy Vásquez tried to sneak a cutter past Soto on the inner-half of the plate. Bad idea. 

Soto unloaded on it, tying his hardest-hit home run in the big leagues. For a moment, he watched it. Then, before he hopped and trotted to first, he thumped his bat onto the grass in foul territory and pounded his chest. There could no longer be any doubt: Juan Soto is all the way back.

Tatis, meanwhile, hasn’t quite fully returned to form since coming back from his PED suspension last month. But he heard the boos at Yankee Stadium Friday night and responded by, quite literally, shrugging them off.

How’s this for an emphatic response? He launched a hanging Ron Marinaccio changeup deep into the New York night. As he watched, he flipped his bat toward the Padres’ dugout without looking and embarked upon his trot around the bases, his first home run at Yankee Stadium, giving the Padres a 4-0 lead in the sixth.