Padres Continuing Prospect Rebuild Process

When A.J. Preller inherited the Padres General Manager position, he had some quality minor league talent to work with. He quickly went to work trading away said talent and rebuilding the Major League club to win it all in 2015. We all know how that ended, and now Preller is building again.

Seven of the current Top 8 prospects have all been acquired in the past year – with just Hunter Renfroe the Padres own draft pick. 18 of their 30 have been acquired since the end of last year alone. This shows not only the recent influx but also just how bare the cupboard had gotten.

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Of the newly published Baseball America top 100 list, the Padres have three players with recent acquisition Anderson Espinoza the highest rated at 21. Manuel Margot is at 36 and Renfroe at 52. It also is worth noting those top two were both from the Boston Red Sox system. The difference is the Red Sox are trading those prospects with a Major League nucleus gearing up for a World Series, not trying to build a team from scratch.

A.J. is excited as the staff and fans get excited about the next wave of Padres players: “They’re seeing talented players, and guys that they feel have a chance to come up here and impact at Petco [Park]. That’s big. … When you get these guys all on the field together, that’s what we’ve been building for.”

The Padres are in the middle of a big pitching push as they have seen some hitting prospects come to fruition like Alex Dickerson at the Major League level, Ryan Schimpf and of course those outfielders that are on their way, possibly by this September.

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While some have questioned if the Padres could’ve gotten more in some of the recent trades for Chris Paddack and others, Preller knows the true value is both in quality and quantity.

“We’re starting to develop a nice group of pitching prospects,” Preller said. “The system’s obviously gotten a lot better here in the last month or two. As a group, you need numbers, you need depth, you need quality. That’s what we’re trying to build.”

Preller is rebuilding the Padres to last for a long time without having to go out and buy free agents every season. Though slower than what fans might want, it does certainly appear to be working.