Padres' Fernando Tatis Jr.'s Surgery on Shoulder Injury Delayed Due to Strep Throat

Fernando Tatis Jr.'s misfortunes this season know no end.

The San Diego Padres said Tuesday the star shortstop is dealing with strep throat, which will delay his upcoming shoulder surgery.

Tatis, who missed the start of this year because of a wrist injury, was ruled out for the remainder of the season and a portion of 2023 after testing positive for a banned substance.

The 23-year-old said in a statement he "inadvertently took a medication to treat ringworm that contained Clostebol."

"There's no excuses," he told reporters in his first public appearance following the suspension. "There's no excuses. I need to do a way better job on what is going inside my body. There's no excuse for these actions."

Tatis added "my dreams have turned into my worst nightmares."

One silver lining of his 80-game suspension was that he'd have time to undergo surgery for a lingering shoulder injury. He indicated during his press conference he'd have a procedure to fix the labrum in his left shoulder.

The 2021 All-Star put off surgery last fall in the hope he could find other ways to address the problem. He fought through the injury to slug .611 and hit a National League-best 42 home runs in 130 games.

Despite missing their best player, the Padres are 2.5 games up on the Milwaukee Brewers for the final wild-card berth in the NL. FanGraphs gives San Diego a 77.0 percent chance of reaching the postseason.