San Diego Padres Top 31 Prospects

I had Merrill as the seventh-best prospect in baseball entering 2023, but he slid to 30th entering 2024 due to a downtick in power production and what at the time seemed like a looming shift to left field. He was tasked with a move to center field in the wake of the Juan Soto/Trent Grisham trade and, despite having never played there before, took to it quickly. I updated my thoughts on his defense in April and Merrill returned to top 10 overall prospect status. He’s had an incredible rookie season (as of the All-Star break, he’s slashing .282/.315/.440 with 12 bombs and his expected stats are even better than that) and is easily going to set a single-season career high for homers. Merrill has one of the prettiest swings in baseball and it’s feasible that the 21-year-old will come into more raw power as he matures. He’s a special player who the Padres signed for an under-slot bonus. They supposedly had him ahead of Marcelo Mayer on their draft board that year and absolutely nailed it. This is a franchise center fielder (who knows, though, he might return to short one day) with a special bat. He’s one of the best young hitters in the game.

Salas was generally viewed as the best prospect in the 2023 international amateur class, and weeks after signing in January for a whopping $5.6 million, he went to Arizona and began to reinforce that notion. Salas, still just 16, was performing well in Double-A or big league “B games” against players who often had five to 10 years on him. After a few weeks in extended spring training (a level above where most 17-year-olds play), the Padres assigned Salas to Low-A Lake Elsinore just before he turned 17. He aced a two-month test there (122 wRC+), and the Padres promoted him to High- and then Double-A for the last several weeks of the season.

Salas has struggled since leaving Lake Elsinore and has a 72 wRC+ as an 18-year-old at High-A Fort Wayne at the 2024 All-Star break. It’s incredibly hard to contextualize that performance because Salas is not only very, very young for the level, but he’s also playing a very demanding and punishing position. Salas is still a precocious defensive catcher. His receiving is advanced for his age, and the ease and accuracy with which Salas throws to the bases is remarkable, but he’s regressed in one key area this year: His ball-blocking has been an issue. Right now, he often looks afraid of the baseball and is constantly bracing for impact when the pitch is in the dirt. He flinches and loses sight of the ball, seemingly hoping it finds its way into his glove on its own, but instead a lot of balls in the dirt are skipping past him and he’s been doing a lot of running to the backstop in the weeks leading to this update.

I’m still bullish on Salas’ future as a hitter. There are aspects of his swing that have given one or two of my scout sources pause, with his length to the outer half chief among them. He still does a pretty good job covering the top half of the zone and is a dangerous hitter up there for an 18-year-old. This isn’t a guy with monster bat speed, but he has a well-rounded blend of patience, in-zone contact, and what is presently doubles power. Salas isn’t built like Elly De La Cruz or anything, but he’s still quite projectable. He is probably going to be much thicker than he is now at maturity and it will be interesting to see how that bulk impacts his mobility and explosion as a hitter, be it positive or negative. His bat path is such that he struggles to elevate stuff down and away from him, and he has to get into his lower body pretty good in order to scoop low pitches at all. That’s something else to watch as he fills out. The possibility of some kind of meteoric rise where Salas debuts as a teenager is starting to fade, but his long-term forecast as a franchise catcher has not. His underlying data supports the notion that this is still a precocious offensive player who is simply dealing with the rigors of his position (he’s caught more games this year than all of last season) and a very difficult assignment for a prospect his age.

De Vries was almost unanimously viewed as the best prospect in the 2024 international signing class, a do-everything, switch-hitting infielder with power from both sides of the plate. There are international scouting personnel whose club reports on De Vries said “everything is at least plus” and think he’s a no-doubt shortstop with a 60- or 70-grade arm and a projectable frame; one executive considered him the best international prospect in more than a half decade. Same as they have with their recent high-profile prospects, the Padres wasted no time in pushing De Vries’ promotion pace. Most prospects who sign in a given year spend all of the rest of it in the Dominican getting their feet wet in pro ball. De Vries was on the Peoria complex weeks after he signed, competed with guys who had pro experience during a little bit of extended spring training, and then was sent out to Lake Elsinore at the end of April. He turns 18 in October.

De Vries is doing fine at Elsinore, though not great unless you account for his age. He has a slightly above-league average line as of list publication and the pace of the game has been a little too much for him on the defensive side. De Vries does have one hell of an arm, but his footspeed (he’s running 4.4 from the left side on tape) isn’t that of a typical shortstop, and pro scouts have tended to project him to second base. I think it’s a little too early for that. De Vries is definitely bigger and stronger now than when he was an amateur and it does seem to have slowed him down, but he’s plenty young enough to change course. He’s a skill-based fit at short (not the best bender, though) with plenty of arm, and his range is a thing to monitor.

On offense, De Vries can bang from both sides of the plate. He has remarkably consistent feel for elevation in basically every part of the strike zone and enough power to be dangerous already at age 17. De Vries’ righty swing is fairly grooved, but he’s hit most of his homers from that batter’s box so far and he’s going to damage mistakes that run into his bat path from that side. De Vries hit exclusively left-handed for a stretch in late May but has been back to switch-hitting since then. His lefty swing is more dynamic than the righty one, but his hands are really noisy before they fire, and he’s late to the contact point frequently enough to do a good bit of whiffing as a lefty right now. Again, he’s 17. This is a very talented young fella with the potential to be an impact middle infielder. The range of outcomes is pretty big: He could be an Ozzie Albies type of power-hitting second baseman, he could be a pre-tweak Anthony Volpe. Most of the outcomes are good so long as De Vries fine-tunes aspects of his game the way most teenage hitters have to.

Lesko was arguably the most complete high school pitching prospect to come along in a decade, with an ideal pitcher’s frame, a gorgeous delivery, mid-90s velocity with huge riding life, and one of the better amateur changeups most scouts had ever seen. His curveball looked like it had gotten better during his draft spring, then his elbow blew out and he needed Tommy John, which precipitated his fall in the draft. Lesko was already the consensus top high school pitcher in the draft before the curveball showed up and would have been a lock for the top 10 had he stayed healthy throughout the spring, but instead he fell to no. 15, where he was picked by San Diego. Lesko looked incredible when he first returned to the mound in 2023, sitting comfortably in the mid-90s with explosive vertical movement across an inning or two of complex duty in Peoria. He ended up pitching 33 innings, ending the year with a few walk-prone starts at High-A Fort Wayne. Those walk-prone starts were a harbinger of things to come in 2024, as Lesko has struggled very badly with free passes. His command as well as his mechanical consistency and ease waver as he gets deeper into games, and he’s walking 16% of opponents.

When Lesko was written up on the offseason Top 100, it was hoped that this might be remedied simply through reps as Lesko matures and gets further away from TJ. That hasn’t happened yet, but it’s too early to panic about his strike throwing. What could prove harder to solve is that Lesko might have The Lucas Giolito Curveball Problem, which is to say that while his fastball tends to have downhill trajectory, his huge, mid-70s curveball does not. It pops up out of his hand on release and, at 20 mph slower than his fastball, is easy to identify. It was only chased at a 15% rate in 2023, per Synergy Sports; the big league chase rate on any given pitch in 2023 was 29%. It’s a sexy-looking 73-77 mph curveball with big depth, and it will have strike-getting utility, but that may be it. He also has a slider, but that pitch isn’t great from a stuff standpoint. We don’t want to undersell Lesko’s changeup, which is also pretty slow, sitting 79-82 mph, approximately 15 mph slower than his fastball. It has ridiculous screwball action and Lesko makes frequent, non-traditional use of it as an in-zone weapon.

There’s still huge upside here, but if there’s a truly discouraging aspect to Lesko’s 2024, it’s that his first attempt at incorporating a slider is not going well. The command stuff isn’t great, but it could be a short-term issue (definitely hurting the weight he’d carry in a trade this month) and isn’t necessarily a long-term one. Even if it is, we’re talking about a guy with an 80-grade pitch and huge velo, which will probably play at the back of a bullpen.

Snelling was a multi-sport athlete in high school, earning acclaim as both a quarterback and linebacker, before an outstanding season on the mound earned him a first-round selection and $3 million signing bonus in the 2022 draft, luring him away from the gridiron for good. Last year was Snelling’s first season of professional baseball and he rose quickly through the Padres system, starting the season at Low-A and finishing it at Double-A as a 19-year-old.

The evaluation of Snelling here at FanGraphs has been lukewarm since he was an amateur. His delivery requires a ton of effort and features quite a bit of head violence, and in our (mostly Eric’s) opinion his stuff is only fair. Snelling’s best pitch is his uphill low-90s fastball, which has lost a couple of ticks this year. The pitch lives more off of angle and deception than riding life and velocity. None of Snelling’s secondary pitches have generated an above-average rate of swing-and-miss as a pro, and that includes his 2023 season with the sterling ERAs.

His 84-87 mph changeup has been his most used secondary offering so far in 2024, which might be a developmental effort rather than an indication that it’s his out-pitch. It isn’t great from a stuff standpoint. Snelling’s arm speed when he throws it is actually pretty good, but it lacks movement. The better of his secondary offerings is his 78-80 mph, 2,200 rpm slider, which is effective as a strike-stealing pitch but lacks the depth of a finisher. Snelling goes right at hitters and is a poised on-mound competitor. He’s going to throw enough strikes to be a starter, but his stuff quality is going to limit his impact. Here he’s 40+’d rather than just 40’d because we like Snelling as an athlete and competitor and think he’ll work efficiently enough to handle a truck-load of innings.

Valenzuela’s athleticism and physique are uncommon for a catcher. Defensively, he still has some things to work on (mostly his ball blocking, which has been subpar for a couple years), but his arm strength and pitch framing are above-average. There’s enough here to project Valenzuela as a viable big league defender, but probably not a special one.

It seems like it takes Valenzuela a little while to adjust to each new level. He has had a dip in production upon each of his last two promotions before rebounding in his second attempt. Much more comfortable from the left side than the right, Valenzuela’s hands have an aggressive load from both sides of the plate and produce lots of airborne contact. Catchers with this kind of physicality are rare, let alone ones who switch-hit. It’s tough to call Valenzuela a primary catching prospect because he lacks a plus tool and really needs to sandbag the baseball better. But he also looks like more than just a backup. He has enough pop to get an occasional DH or first base start in addition to part-time catching duty. This might be the offseason San Diego puts Valenzuela on the 40-man roster, though he might be another couple years away from an active roster role.

The wispy Mazur, a transfer from South Dakota State to Iowa, boosted his draft stock early during the spring of 2022 before his velocity fell off a cliff at the end of the season. He was peaking in the 97-99 mph range early on, then was sitting in the upper 80s during his final two starts of the season. He is so slight of build (Triston McKenzie is a fair frame/body comp) that there was concern Mazur would have long-term issues holding his peak velocity as a starter throughout a full pro season. Mazur held a 93-96 mph fastball across 96 innings in 2023, finishing his season at Double-A San Antonio. He coasted through Double- and Triple-A during the first half of 2024 before making his big league debut a few weeks prior to this update.

Mazur’s walk rate has exploded in the big leagues. He never walked more than 1.89 batters per nine innings at any minor league level and suddenly his big league mark is over five. It’s fair to have some long-term questions about the viability of Mazur’s repertoire at the big league level. His fastball is his only chase pitch because both of his breaking balls tend to finish in the strike zone. His arm slot makes it tough for him to create two-plane break on his slider, so while his best ones are still pretty nasty, they tend not to turn the corner and finish off the plate. Mazur will probably need to pitch backwards a lot of the time in order to survive. His fastball is getting tagged in the strike zone and he’s surrendering a 94% z-contact rate against the pitch as of publication. His arm strength and breaking ball quality ensure he’s going to be a useful big leaguer, but the Mazur we’ve seen in the majors looks more like a future reliever.

Vásquez pitched in the big leagues last year but not enough to graduate from rookie status. He was a spin-rate sleeper near the bottom of the Yankees’ prospect list for several years, then broke out in 2021 when he had a two-tick velocity bump, climbed three levels of the minors, and put himself on the doorstep of the big leagues. He worked 118 innings combined between his minor league and major league outings in 2023, pitching as a starter at Triple-A Scranton but working in a variable role for the Yankees prior to the Juan Soto trade. The high-effort nature of his delivery and his lack of size all put him in the long-term relief bucket a little more definitively than the other pitchers San Diego acquired for Soto. But Vásquez has started all year and he’s throwing more strikes than we projected he would. He’s also giving up a ton of hard contact. Of Vásquez’s five pitches, none is generating an above-average swinging strike rate, and his FIP and xFIP suggest his ERA is due for a substantial regression. We still think he’s going to be a useful part of a pitching staff and we haven’t altered Vásquez’s FV grade from the time of the trade or the Padres Imminent Big Leaguer article from a few months ago, we just think he’s miscast in this role out of necessity and would be better in a multi-inning relief capacity.

Slender and explosive (if a little uncoordinated), Pena has been ripping fastballs past mid-minors hitters in 2024. Since leaving rookie ball, he has allowed six earned runs in 58 innings with just a fastball and cutter. He starts on the first base side of the rubber and strides open, creating an odd release point for a righty. The angle it creates on his fastball crowds the hands of opposing righties. Most guys with low release heights aren’t as long-limbed as Pena, who also generates seven feet of extension. His cutter lacks the bat-missing length of a typical reliever’s secondary pitch (which is why it isn’t called a slider here), but it’s really hard and he’s thrown a few of them in the 94-97 mph range this year. Without a swing-and-miss breaking ball, it’s tough to project Pena into the back of a bullpen, but he can feast off his heater enough to project him as a middle reliever even if that’s the only good pitch he has.

A $400,000 over-slot signee from 2022, Lowe is a stocky 21-year-old righty with a catcherly build and a riding low-to-mid-90s fastball. It looks like Lowe’s arm slot has changed since last year, when he was more over the top and tended to pronate over top of the baseball. He’s a little lower now and supinating on release to generate rise-and-run shape. His arm action has also gotten a little longer, but there’s still enough feel to pitch here to project Lowe as a backend starter. His slider is a little cuttery right now; hopefully that lengthens back out with some more adjustment as Lowe climbs. Lowe’s changeup feel is less consistent than that of his slider but it might be his best pitch at maturity; it has much more overt bat-missing action. San Diego has taken things slow here and Lowe has been back at Lake Elsinore even though he performed well last season. He’s due for a promotion and is a nice developmental backend starter prospect.

Rosario was part of San Diego’s 2015 international class, which also included Emmanuel Clase and Andrés Muñoz. He was barely old enough to sign in 2015; had he been born a few days later he would have had to have waited until the following July. The Padres pushed him pretty quickly and he got his first taste of Double-A at age 18. He made his big league debut in 2022, then suffered a broken ankle playing winter ball in early 2023. He was still able to play a little bit in the big leagues later that year but not enough to lose rookie status. Injuries pressed him into action in 2024 and Rosario graduates as chase-prone, power-hitting third baseman.

Rosario’s defense at third is highly entertaining. He loves to show off his arm and will wait an extra beat to let the ball go so he can throw it over there hard. He has mostly played third base of late. Eguy also loves to swing. He’s chase prone and dying to do damage to his pull side. When he leans on one, it can go a long way, but all the chase has caused a ton of strikeouts during his big league stints. Rosario is still very young and could probably play third base every day for a handful of big league teams. Ideally he’ll reintroduce another position or two to his toolbelt as a way of staying on a good roster.

Ornelas’ swing has undergone several changes in an effort to help him get to his power in games. His surface stats at El Paso are impressive — he currently has an OPS near .900, is slugging over .500, and is on pace to once again set a career high in homers — but his minor league Statcast data suggests that’s something of a PCL mirage. Ornelas is more upright and isn’t as spread out in his stance this season. He’s also cut his strikeouts down to 17% and is still pulling the ball in the air at nearly the same rate as he did in 2023 even with the uptick in power output. He projects in a part-time outfield role similar to Billy McKinney‘s.

Pauley took just a year to go from Day Three afterthought to arguably being a top 100 prospect (he was a 45 FV prospect on the Padres Imminent Big Leaguers list). He slashed a combined .308/.393/.539 with 60 extra-base hits and ended his 2023 season with a month at Double-A and then a great Fall League stint.

Out of nowhere he has had a pretty terrible first half of 2024. He made his big league debut and looked totally lost, and those struggles have followed him back to Triple-A. Pauley’s gorgeous swing is similar looking to Corey Seager‘s, his lift-heavy style of hitting to Brandon Lowe‘s. He doesn’t have huge raw power, but a 50 bat with actualized 45 or 50 raw power would make for a good big league hitter. But Pauley hasn’t looked like that this year. His power output is way down, even in the PCL environment, and he isn’t tracking the baseball to the contact point. Pauley also struggles to make strong, accurate throws to first base, and appears to be trending off of third and toward some combination of first base, second base and left field. He’s played all four in 2024. How much of a rebound can we expect? It isn’t as if Pauley’s underlying data is terrible; he’s still making a ton of contact in the zone and has roughly average raw power. The expressway rise is over and Pauley has a lot of defensive development to do for a nearly 24-year-old, but he could still feasibly be a bat-first utility guy. His option clock is officially ticking, which puts a time limit on this stuff from the Padres’ perspective.

Kemp shares some similarities with Chris Paddack when he was drafted out of high school, with similar size and a really good changeup. There’s big ceiling here but the Padres are going to have to build it. Kemp is tall and skinny, his short stride keeps him upright throughout his delivery, he repeats his super short arm action, and he throws his fastball and changeup for strikes. At just 88-92 most of the time, Kemp will need to add velocity and find a breaking ball that has more of a power finish than his current upper-70s curveball. He’s currently on the 60-day IL with a right shoulder impingement and has yet to make his pro debut outside of an Instructs environment.

Cruz, who hails from Monterrey, is another in the long line of Mexican pitching prospects (often from the Diablos Rojos club) who end up being Padres. Cruz is loose and rather projectable despite his small-ish listed height. His gorgeous delivery is similar to Brandon Pfaadt‘s and Sandy Alcantara’s — everything is connected and fluid, enabling Cruz to fill the zone with upper-80s sinkers. He has a shapely (albeit inconsistent) breaking ball and a tailing changeup that round out a nascent starter’s pitch mix. He signed for $750,000 in January but has yet to report to the DSL team and pitch in an official pro game. He was one of the more polished pitching prospects from the 2024 international class.

Kolek, the younger brother of former Marlins top five draft pick Tyler Kolek, yo-yo’d back and forth between the bullpen and the starting rotation in the Dodgers and Mariners systems until the Padres made him their 2023 Rule 5 Draft pick. Kolek made the team and has been in the big league bullpen all year, pitching fairly well in a middle inning role.

San Diego is reaping the rewards of changes Seattle made to Kolek’s repertoire. Last season, they moved him back to the bullpen, where he had a two-tick velo bump and started working more with a sinker. His groundball rate spiked and has remained strong in the big leagues. Kolek will whip out the occasional four-seamer, and this plus his slider is how he tends to miss a bat, which he doesn’t do a ton. Instead his sinker and cutter generate weak contact. It’s great to have this guy in your bullpen for when you need a groundball. He’s poised to be a lower-leverage part of San Diego’s ‘pen for a while.

Originally drafted by the Orioles in 2018, Sandridge was released during the pandemic and used an eligibility loophole to enroll at Division II Lynn University, where he pitched early in 2021. He signed with the Reds that June and became a six-year minor league free agent after the 2023 season, then signed a minor league deal with the Padres. He’s been pumping mid-90s gas at San Antonio and El Paso this season.

Sandridge was throwing pretty hard with the Reds, but he’s taken a leap this year, living in the 95-97 mph range for much of it. He has a drop-and-drive style delivery and a three-quarters arm slot that imparts rise/run action on his heater. Sandridge’s low-80s slider has a long arc and moves so much that Sandridge struggles to locate it where he wants. That issue pervades his entire mix and is standing between him and a big league role in the relatively short-term. He’s had very high walk rates his entire career and that hasn’t subsided with San Diego. The ceiling for Sandridge is like Jake Diekman, where he walks a ton of guys but is so unhittable at other times that it’s not only worth it to roster him, but he’s actually quite good. More likely he ends up in a middle inning role.

The bespectacled Rodriguez didn’t pitch in affiliated ball in 2022 or 2023, but he was seen during backfield activity in Arizona pumping upper-90s gas and working with a plus changeup. His fastball’s traits and his lack of command cause that pitch to play down, but his changeup is really nasty. It bottoms out as it approaches the plate at 87 mph or so. His slider is about that hard and really more cutter-y, and is far less consistent an offering. It’s fair to hope that Rodriguez will sharpen his command a little bit since he’s had so few reps, but his build, athleticism and type of delivery (huge effort and violence) don’t allow for a ton of projection. He’s got a good shot to be a solid middle reliever.

Cruz was traded to Pittsburgh in the Joe Musgrove deal, stalled out at Double-A Altoona, and was left unprotected in the minor league Rule 5 draft during the offseason. The Padres picked him and Cruz has had a gigantic leap in performance coming out of the San Antonio bullpen in 2024. His fastball velocity is up, more often in the 93-95 mph range with plus vertical ride. His changeup, which was always the cornerstone of his repertoire, remains excellent and has been playing like a plus-plus pitch this year. He can change speeds on two different breaking balls and has retained the command he had as a starter. It just seems like Cruz is suited to work two innings at a time so he can have something approaching average velocity, and the rest of his repertoire is playing up as a result. His body looks better and more athletic than ever before and he’s dominating Double-A hitters. He’s taken a circuitous route there, but Cruz looks like a changeup-driven long reliever.

Krob has been a reliable starter since his sophomore year at TCU, but in the big leagues, his stuff would be more typical of a slider-heavy lefty reliever. He’s light on fastball velocity, but Krob’s ability to land his 80-84 mph slider with machine-like precision is going to enable him to get lefties out and it has enough depth that it can play as a backfoot weapon against righties as well. Especially if he can throw a little bit harder letting go an inning at a time, Krob looks like a very reliable second bullpen lefty.

Jacob has thrived as a submarining long reliever, striking out no fewer than 27% of opposing hitters all the way through the minors. He made his big league debut in July of last year and was shut down for the rest of the season two weeks later with right elbow inflammation. He was optioned to El Paso when camp broke and has been down there all of 2024, running an elevated ERA because it’s El Paso.

Jacob only sits 84-87 mph, but he has a funky, low slot similar to that of Brad Ziegler. His delivery has a special grace and fluidity to it — watching Jacob run his tailing heater back over the corner of the plate is a thing of beauty. He will show you three sweeping and tailing pitches, including a ton of right-on-right changeups. His stuff is so slow (his sweepers are like 74 mph) that he’s going to need to have plus or better command to avoid getting rocked by big league hitters. He looks more like an up/down guy right now who has a shot to seize a permanent middle inning role down the line.

The 6-foot-8 Reynolds had been a power-hitting, whiff-prone 1B/OF throughout his minor league career (he posted a 57% hard-hit rate but also struck out well over 40% of the time) until the Marlins moved him to the mound in 2021; he had a velo spike in 2023 and was traded to San Diego as part of the Garrett Cooper/Ryan Weathers swap. Reynolds is sitting 94-97 and has touched 100 this season in Triple-A, and his changeup and mid-80s slurve both have bat-missing movement when they’re located. Reynolds’ issue is that they often aren’t, and none of his pitches are so nasty that he can miss bats while having 30 control. Reynolds walked 16.3% of hitters in 2023 and is doing so just under 15% of the time this season in El Paso; he continues to be a reliever with high-octane stuff who is hindered by his lack of strike-throwing ability. Reynolds was called up just a couple days ago and is poised to make his big league debut. He’s an up/down relief type.

Bush is poetry in motion on the basepaths, running with grace and speed unlike all but a handful of pro baseball players. His speed gives him huge long-term ceiling as a center field defender if he can continue to improve there with lots of pro reps. Right now, he’s capable of making some spectacular plays but looks a little uncomfortable at the catch point on the occasional routine one.

Bush and the Padres have made some changes to his swing and approach in an attempt to coax something more out of his offense than he showed at Grand Canyon. He’s got a closed stance and dives to the outer part of the plate to cover pitches away from him, and Bush is now using a bat with a weighted knob. He isn’t swinging and missing very much, peppering the opposite field while dropping the occasional bunt, which should probably be a bigger part of his game. He has 42 steals in his first 77 games of the 2024 season and is going to be a weapon on the basepaths. It’s not likely that he’ll be more than a nine-hole hitter type on offense, so it’s important that his defense keeps improving so he can be rostered as a runner and defensive replacement rather than just the former.

The Padres have pushed Lizarraga through the minors pretty quickly and is holding his own as a 20-year-old at Double-A. He’s relatively physically mature for his age and yet is only sitting 89-92, which is the biggest reason he’s classified as having a spot starter prospect here. The other reason is that, aside from Lizarraga’s curveball, he doesn’t have a swing-and-miss weapon. His upper-70s curve has late bite and bat-missing two-plane wipe, and Lizarraga commands it. His slider and changeup aren’t as nasty. We love Lizarraga’s fluidity and athleticism, but he probably needs to either throw harder or develop a good split or change to outpace this projection.

Baez is a strike-throwing 21-year-old righty with a standard 6-foot-3 build and a generic but repeatable delivery. He’s throwing a ton of strikes at Fort Wayne and has a 3-to-1 K-to-BB ratio as of list publication. Nothing happening here is plus. Baez sits 92-95 with downhill plane. He has a vertical curveball and a mid-80s splitter that both look average to the eye and are performing a shade above that. He’s a fair athlete with modest physical projection, and is tracking like an eventual no. 6-9 starter type.

Unknown to FanGraphs until he showed up at the 2023 MLB Draft Combine, Gonzalez had one of the better high school BPs at the event and arguably the prettiest swing. He’s a loose rotator with lovely natural loft, though his swing does have some length to it. His swing path and length lead to a lot of oppo gap contact and a general inability to turn on the ball. He has really struggled on offense at Lake Elsinore and might have a bottom-of-the-barrel hit tool because he won’t be able to get around on pro fastballs. His receiving is also predictably raw, but the twitch and explosion from his crouch and Gonzalez’s raw arm strength are both exciting. He’s a dev project with extreme risk and variance, mostly on the main section of the list because of how we value catching.

Paplham emerged as one of the better 2022 undrafted free agent signings, a wild, hard-throwing, sinker/sweeper reliever who kissed Double-A in 2023 and pitched in the Arizona Fall League. He has mostly been hurt this season, with a three-week window of health during which Paplham looked mostly like his usual self. His velo was down a little bit, but he was still sitting 95-96 and bending in a plus-flashing sweeper in the 84-86 mph range. His drop-and-drive, somewhat cross-bodied delivery is very explosive and hard for him to maintain, and he scatters his fastball all over the place. Not long after he got back to San Antonio, Paplham was shut down again and this time was put on the 60-day IL. He has an up/down reliever projection.

An undrafted free agent from St. Charles Community College in Missouri, Nett presents the Padres with interesting raw material to develop — emphasis on raw. Nett is a quick-armed 6-foot-3 righty who will touch 99 and sit 94-97 when deployed in short bursts, but he often has poor control. He walked nearly a batter per inning in 2023 and then was wild (but also one of the more exciting pitching prospects) in the that year’s Fall League. His 2024 has been sidetracked a couple of times with injury and he’s been brought along gingerly as he’s come back, working just an inning at a time. As list publication has approached, Nett has been stretched out to three innings.

It’s unclear if Nett has two or three different breaking balls. He definitely has a curveball (which has good depth, but is easy to spot out of hand) and might have both a slider and cutter. The velo band of the sliders/cutters is wide enough to assume he has both (81-91 mph), but Nett’s feel for release is so crude and the movement on these pitches is so variable that it’s possible they’re versions of the same pitch. He has a splitter, too, but he rarely lands it where he wants. Super raw and athletic, Nett has the better part of the next couple of seasons to develop as a starter just in case something clicks, but he’s more likely to be a messy long reliever.

A sly late round pickup by the Padres, Balboni is a sidearm reliever who has had a two-tick velo bump in 2024. He has big time arm speed for a low-slot guy and generates six and a half feet of extension with a big stride down the mound. This type of low-slot rise/run fastball and slider combo platter is becoming more common across baseball and Balboni is an older, developmental version of it. His slider spins at nearly 2,800 rpm, but he doesn’t command it well enough to garner many whiffs right now. Polishing his command and shaping his slider to have more two plane tilt will be key for Balboni to seize a big league bullpen job.

German has been very walk-prone so far as a pro (11 BB/9 IP), but he’s a 22-year-old touching 101 and needs to be monitored in case his command improves. He’s a well-below-average athlete and we’re not sure there’s a simple fix for this, but it would feel derelict not to mention him in this section because of his arm strength. Both of his secondaries flash on rare occasion, but they are so often nowhere near the zone that it’s hard to even put a grade on Guzman’s raw stuff quality.

Hawkins was the first NAIA player drafted in 2021 even though he was difficult to scout in British Columbia due to border restrictions throughout 2020 and 2021. He was instead mostly seen pitching for Trenton in the 2021 MLB Draft League. Hawkins had a great post-draft summer on the complex and generated some offseason trade interest. Then in 2022, he had a little uptick in velocity, working 91-93 mph and touching 95-96 at peak, with his heater’s effectiveness bolstered by its movement. Hawkins’ arm strength backed up in 2023 and his fastball was only averaging 91 mph before he was shut down with a lat strain in May, which ended his season. He still hasn’t pitched in 2024 and is on the 60-day IL. His delivery is similar to Ubaldo Jiménez’s, with a vertical arm slot created in part due to his big, open stride. Hawkins still finds a way to create tumble on his changeup from this slot and his slider has vertical action; both are about average. Hawkins has only thrown anything resembling a full slate of innings once since 2019, but he has lots of background traits (cold weather, small program, fewer reps due to the pandemic) that indicate he may just be scratching the surface.