Fernando Tatis Jr. just proved Yankees aren't only team with looming Juan Soto regret

The roar of the fans in the right field stands, providing a tremendous emotional pop whenever their newfound king jogged to his position. The waving flags and bombast, signifying a jubilant environment that blended midsummer baseball with high-level soccer. The perfect 1-2 punch, admiring one another's work, caught on camera claiming there's "no one better". Aaron Judge abdicated his positional throne with the Yankees for just one year to accommodate Juan Soto's arrival, and the season-long sales pitch — culminating in an AL pennant and rampant adoration — seemed to any outsider to have gone flawlessly.

Then, Soto signed on the dotted line across town anyhow. It wasn't all a lie, right? There's no way. It wasn't possible. Players leave teams all the time after being dealt against their will, but all that raw emotion on a nightly basis? The adulation? The Captain and his cohort? The mutual admiration? It was good, wasn't it? And though the Yankees have patched things up well, they may never again be the same. It's tough to imitate perfect. Judge vacated right field for this man. It's even harder to believe now than it was when it occurred.

But as the World Baseball Classic begins in earnest — and Judge and Bryce Harper fulfill another legendary "What If?" in the Team USA outfield — it's hard not to rethink the Yankees-Soto narrative. Because there's something going on with Team Dominican Republic that pokes a hole in the savior complex that was attached to the 2024 Yankees, and makes you realize that Soto's left a seemingly perfect relationship in his wake before.

When the Yankees acquired Soto, the prevailing narrative was that something was broken in the Padres' locker room, and that the Dominican star, a somewhat cold loner, may have been responsible for the disconnect. Whatever was the matter, it would be too costly for the Padres to retain all their talent and try to mend it (especially, tragically, without Peter Seidler). The Yankees swooped in and Judge gave Soto the running mate we thought he'd long been yearning for.

Except ... here's Fernando Tatis Jr. celebrating with Soto after the latter's tie-breaking homer in the Dominican Republic's exhibition win over the Tigers on Tuesday. Here are two men who look like brothers playing in their native land.

Juan Soto, Fernando Tatis Jr. seem to have same partnership as Yankees, Aaron Judge did. Why did it go so wrong with Padres?

And here is Tatis Jr. speaking about the moment after the game. He might as well have directly said, "No one better," just like Soto once did to Judge.

“I know that crack of the bat too well. The second I heard it off Pacheco’s swing, I knew he crushed it," Tatis Jr. told Dominican TV after the game. "He started jumping, celebrating right away, it was truly something beautiful to witness”

What's become perfectly clear is that, while the locker room dynamic may have been somewhat strained during Soto's time in San Diego, there were certainly people on that roster who revered him. And while the Yankees may have cultivated a winning environment around Soto, there was certainly nothing so unique in their clubhouse that no other team could ever hope to replicate.

Soto leaving the Yankees' family over what felt like a relatively small financial sum, in context, felt impossible to believe last winter, especially because of what we believed he'd forged in that clubhouse after his time with the Padres had taken an apparent dark turn. As it turns out, both the Yankees and Padres were left in a similar position — picking up the pieces as someone they loved deeply climbed the financial ladder at their expense.