Looking Into the Future

The Padres have made significant moves in order to bolster their roster heading into next season. Their mega stars are still very young and they continue to bring in more talent to complement them. Peter Seidler, the Padres owner, has proven that he is willing to empty his pockets in order to bring a World Series Championship to San Diego and unless ownership changes for some reason, I have faith that we will be a contender for many years to come. Juan Soto, Fernando Tatis Jr., and Manny Machado, as long as Machado doesn't opt out and Soto gets resigned to a lengthy contract, are an extremely nasty trio and are all still able to play at a high level for a significant amount of time. An issue that can be worrisome is the aging rotation and the lack of length in the contracts of the starting rotation. Both Yu Darvish and Blake Snell, two of our best three starters, have expiring contracts after this year, which if not resigned, will create a massive hole in the rotation. This is why either a trade at the deadline this season to acquire young pitching, resigning them to fair deals, or looking forward into the next free agency are the plans of action that the Padres need to look into in order to gain some long term pitching options. The current farm system for the Padres isn't great, due to the trades that brought in Juan Soto and Josh Hader that completely decimated it. Though this is the case, Jackson Merrill has been showing out in the minors with a .906 OPS last year and doesn't have a single prospect grade under 50 (50 is the equivalent to the tool of an average MLB player). Another prospect that I'm extremely excited for is Dylan Lesko. The Padres picked him in the first round with the 15th pick in the last draft and he was projected to be the first pitcher taken off of the board before he had to get Tommy John surgery in order to fix and injury that he had sustained. The last prospect that I'm extremely excited for is a catcher that the Padres recently signed out of the international prospect pool, out of Venezuela , Ethan Salas. He is the consensus number one overall prospect in his class and has all the tools to be one of the best catchers, if not the best, in the MLB, oh and I forgot to mention, he's only 16. So while the farm system may not look good on paper, they're rebuilding the talent that they have traded away and will eventually have a surplus of very good prospects again, along with this insane MLB roster. Though many things in the future for this team are in question, I am extremely excited for what this team has to offer and know that Seidler will keep this team contending for a World Series title!