Padres System Analysis: Despite Farm Ranking, Padres Are Good At Acquiring Talent

Editor's note: Padres Mission spoke with two industry experts about the state of the San Diego Padres' minor-league system, what they have done right, what they have done wrong and how they got to this state. This is the second of four articles on the subject.

Part 1: Trades Have Depleted Majority of San Diego's Prospect Capital

When you are at the bottom of the ladder in anything, the instant reaction is you must be bad at what you are doing. That is easy to understand when you look at MLB standings and see that the worst teams aren’t doing multiple things well that season. For the most part, those tend to be temporary issues that get resolved over time.

But when it comes to the San Diego Padres being at the bottom of prospect rankings, it gets more complicated. The Padres are, in general, pretty decent at acquiring talent—via the draft, international free agency, undrafted free agents, or even released players—to fill their farm system.

“I actually think they drafted really well,” said Keith Law, senior baseball writer at The Athletic who tracks prospects. “They just keep trading the guys. You could argue that's fine, right? If you draft a player and you get somebody really good in return, somebody who can help your major-league club, then in some ways, that is a successful draft. You at least created enough value to, I don't know if justify the pick [is the right phrase], but to make that pick kind of worthwhile. The point of the draft is to—I don't like speaking about players as assets, they're actual people—but you are trying to create value for your organization. That can be from keeping the player, that can be from trading the player.”

Neither Law nor Sam Dykstra, a senior reporter at MLB Pipeline, would put the Padres at the bottom of the barrel for systems they have seen in their careers. It is just that Preller has mostly emptied the tank of quality talent.

“I think most orgs have gotten smarter and I think the Padres are relatively a smart organization too,” Dykstra said. “They just get really aggressive with their trades. I think developmentally they're pretty good, they're probably middle of the pack in terms of ability to develop really good players, like they do get credit, I think at least three-quarters of the credit, for developing Leo De Vries into the No. 2 overall prospect in the baseball that he is right now and Ethan Salas certainly getting back on track. They always believed in him, they deserve credit for that.”

Development is a key part to productive systems. Teams at the top of the rankings work with their prospects from rookie-level all the way up to Triple-A at becoming better players after amateur careers where winning was a bigger priority over improving skill sets. Part of that is not spinning off prospects a year or two after they were drafted or signed.

“Typically, their development tracks have been, they get a guy in the system who's just like preternaturally talented and he flies through the system, the Jackson Merrills, the Fernando Tatises. A lot of the other guys, they just developed them a little bit, but they're still pretty famous from the draft or when they got signed internationally and they cash in on that,” Law said. “I do think for them to improve this going forward, obviously the most important thing is keep your prospects, but they're going to have to do a lot of the hard work on developing guys over four- or five-year periods.

“If you draft and scout the way that the Padres do, where you're mostly taking high school guys up top, you have to be patient. (2025 first-rounder Kruz) Schoolcraft, they knew when they took him he wasn't going to be ready in two years, or at least they should have known when they took him, right? He could still be really good, but it's going to take some time and that's just generally not in their M.O. under Preller. So, I do think that that is a shift in philosophy from how they've operated for the last decade or so.”

To Law’s point, the 19-year-old Schoolcraft, Padres Mission’s No. 5 prospect, has made 14 starts and pitched 49⅓ innings, with a 14.8% walk rate and 23.5% strikeout rate in his first full pro season since being taken with the 25th pick in last year’s draft out of Sunset High School in Portland, Ore. The previous year, left-handed starter Kash Mayfield was also taken with the 25th pick, this time out of Elk City (Okla.) High School and is now Padres Mission's No. 2 prospect.

Of the 11 drafts under Preller, who took over the Padres in August 2014, nine of the 10 first-round selections were high school players. The lone exception was Stanford right-hander Cal Quantrill in 2016. (The Padres did not have a first-round pick in 2015.) Of those 10 first-rounders—all of whom did play in the majors, except for the last four who are still in the minors—only four made their MLB debut with the Padres: left-hander MacKenzie Gore (2017 draft), right-hander Ryan Weathers (2018), shortstop CJ Abrams (2019) and Merrill (2021). Right-hander Dylan Lesko (2022) and outfielder Dillon Head (2023) have not progressed beyond High-A after being traded.

The Padres have the 21st pick in this year’s MLB Draft, which begins Saturday.

“I think their strategy, in terms of the draft, is it becomes a running joke every year: Is there a big left-hander that they can go draft out of high school?” Dykstra said. “I think part of that is they are, because of their major-league success, always drafting in the back half of the first round, so you're not going to get access to the Roch Cholowskys and Vahn Lackeys of the world. Where do we see value that other teams don't and what do we think we can develop really well? I think you know they've kind of tapped into that. I know Kruz Schoolcraft has not had a great start to the year, but they always knew he was a long-term project. I think you're seeing some nice flashes from Kash Mayfield this year, in terms of him becoming maybe like a top-20 left-handed pitching prospect in baseball.”

Another spot where the Padres have had success is finding some hidden gems after the draft. Braedon Karpathios went undrafted out of Lampeter (Pa.) High School in 2021 and then a year at Harford Community College, where he was a pitcher and an outfielder. The Friars signed him after the 2022 draft, kept him in the outfield, and he has risen up to Double-A San Antonio this season and is Padres Mission’s No. 9 prospect. Outfielder Alex McCoy is another example from last year’s draft. He wasn’t selected after his senior year at Hofstra, but then connected with the Padres and is having a really nice first full season in pro ball with the High-A Fort Wayne TinCaps after debuting with the Low-A Lake Elsinore Storm. McCoy is Padres Mission’s No. 14 prospect. Both came out of Maryland (Karpathios a juco and McCoy in high school), the same as Merrill when the Padres took him 27th overall in 2021 out of high school.

“Their scouting group is really good ... they do a really good job at finding those small corners that may be getting overlooked by some of the other orgs or just baseball in general, and finding the talent and developing them, leaning into those guys' strengths,” Dykstra said. “You know, it's a very different story. Jackson Merrill being a prominent pick and Karpathios and McCoy being undrafted free agents, but that's how you build quality organizations, is doing it from top to bottom. I think they do a good job of scouting the country, finding the right fits for them and then developing them. It's just sometimes they're shipping them out the door pretty quickly.”

International free agency is another way to build a system. The Friars struck gold with Salas in 2023 and then again with De Vries in 2024 when both were the top name each of those years, but that didn’t translate into success the next two, when they didn’t land a top-10 prospect. While rankings for the 2027 class have not come out, the Padres have already landed a commitment from 16-year-old Yoel King, a 6-foot-5, 240-pound right-hander who is already throwing 100 mph.

“They're always in on the right guys in international free agency,” Law said. “I think they've been outbid a few times recently, post-Salas they haven't had a huge success there more recently. I also know that the international process, I think it's a big joke, agreeing to terms with players at age 13 or age 12. There's a whole lot more than just talent identification, whereas instead, in the draft, even if they aren't necessarily taking players I love, specifically the Padres, I can often understand it and I can see it. Like, I didn't like that guy, but they're going for upside. OK. I would not take a high school pitcher in the first round pretty much ever. But if I were going to do it, I'd probably do it a lot like the Padres do. They pick the right types of guys.”

Every Padres fan knows the franchise has only been to two World Series, 1984 and 1998, losing both times in unflattering fashion. Getting back to the Fall Classic drives every front office to do whatever it can to provide the team the best chance to hoist the Commissioner’s Trophy in late October.

Emptying out the farm system without any real postseason success has to sting for Preller. But the Padres have been in the thick of things in recent seasons. After finishing fourth or fifth in the NL West in Preller’s first five seasons, they have been in contention in five of the last six seasons entering 2026.

While there hasn’t been a division title as the Los Angeles Dodgers have dominated that category, the Friars have made four postseason appearances since ending a 13-year drought in the shortened 2020 season. Of those four tries, there was only one trip to the NL Championship Series, in 2022 when the Friars fell to the Philadelphia Phillies in five games. They came close to another in 2024, when the Padres had a 2-1 lead in the best-of-five NL Division over the Dodgers, who won the final two games of the series and went on to win the World Series.

“I think their aggression, if it had won them a title, I would never speak it over again,” Dykstra said. “They would just be like, 'Hey, flags fly forever. That works.’ It hasn't resulted in what they were always aiming for and now they're kind of having to pay the piper for those decisions.”

Interested in learning more about the San Diego Padres' top prospects? Check out our comprehensive top prospects list that includes up-to-date stats, articles and videos about every prospect, scouting reports, and more!