Review: Healthy Tatis not enough to push Padres past Dodgers in MLB The Show

Fernando Tatis Jr.’s wrist is just fine. So is his shoulder for that matter.

The rotation, buoyed by its depth, flourishes. Luke Voit is a big help. Manny Machado is still Manny Machado, Good Wil Myers shows up and the Jake Cronenworth trade still looks really good.

And yet the Padres still can’t catch the Dodgers.

At least not in MLB The Show 22, Sony San Diego Studio’s latest entry in the long-time virtual baseball gaming experience.

To be clear, The Show is not the ultimate baseball simulator. Seamheads that relish running their own Rule 5 draft, managing a 40-man roster and an entire player development system, haggling over signing bonuses with draft picks and international signees and drawing up their own trades would do well to check out the uber-sim Out of the Park Baseball franchise.

Yes, you can dabble in all of that in MLB The Show (the details aren’t nearly as excruciating as they are in Out of the Park) but the game play is the focus on Sony’s title, available on PlayStation and Xbox consoles, as well as Nintendo Switch for the first time.

A slider diving out of the zone at the last second. A cutter blowing your bat into pieces. The middle-middle mistake that gets drilled off the top of the Western Metal Supply Co. building.

In short, The Show is as close as it gets to playing actual MLB baseball and as good a sim engine as any, once you get a few caveats out of the way.

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MLB The Show 22

• Where to play: PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch consoles
• Top-five Padres in the game: SS Fernando Tatis Jr. (94), 3B Manny Machado (94), 2B Jake Cronenworth (88), RHP Yu Darvish (85), RHP Mike Clevinger (85)

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For starters, Tatis’ fractured wrist does not exist in this digital world. Good, because the Padres’ shortstop — last year’s cover athlete — is a top-five bat in the videogame and the catalyst for a 99-win season in the Union-Tribune’s simulation of the 2022 season.

In this world (at least as of Tuesday; rosters will updated through the season), the Padres have not yet signed Nick Martinez or Robert Suarez, but they do have Dinelson Lamet ready to go when arm trouble sidelines Drew Pomeranz (realistic, right?). They haven’t traded for Sean Manaea yet, either, but the rosters are deep enough to manually offer prospects Euribiel Angeles and Adrián Martinez to Billy Beane’s rebuild, forcing Chris Paddack into long relief and MacKenzie Gore to Triple-A El Paso to start the year.

It will be a good year for Gore, too, as his rebound earns him the start in the All-Star Futures Game and a place in the Padres’ postseason plans (he gets a win in relief in the wild-card round).

That Gore wasn’t needed at all in the first half, what with the Padres racing out to a 64-34 start and a four-game lead over the Dodgers in the NL West, is a testament to the organization’s pitching depth.

Not only does Lamet step in for the oft-injured Pomeranz and save 33 games, Paddack pairs 17 wins with a sub-3.00 ERA over 44 appearances as a long reliever and the first-man-up when Blake Snell hits the injured list. Yu Darvish, Joe Musgrove and Mike Clevinger also win 15 games, efforts boosted by the second-best hitting team in the league.

An All-Star for the season year in a row, Cronenworth goes on to collect 18 homers and an .850 OPS. Myers hits 25 homers, Voit adds 29 of his own in his first year in a Padres uniform and both Tatis and Machado finish in the top-three in NL MVP voting with their best year yet.

Machado (37 homers, .905 OPS) leads the NL with 132 RBIs, while Tatis hits 39 homers and leads the league with 8.8 WAR, 10 triples, 115 runs scored and a 1.022 OPS.

That’s right in line with what the Padres envisioned when they signed Machado to the franchise’s richest contract and one-upped it with Tatis’ $340 million deal.

Unfortunately, so is this: The Padres’ record 99-win season still isn’t enough to upend the Dodgers, who surge to win the NL West by one game, bounce the Tatis-powered Friars in four games in the NLDS (MLB The Show 22 is still working with last year’s playoff format) and go on to beat the Red Sox in the World Series.

The Union-Tribune sped through a dozen or so more simulations of the 2022 season and the Padres didn’t finish ahead of the Dodgers once.

Just a video game?

Yeah, but it sure does feel realistic.