San Diego Padres: Projecting The 2018 MLB Draft

We”re just a few weeks away from the 2018 MLB draft so it’s time to start highlighting a few potential players the San Diego Padres could select with their first-round pick.

The 2018 Major League Baseball Draft begins on June 4th and the San Diego Padres have the seventh overall pick. Last season, the Friars used their first six picks to select players out of the prep ranks, highlighted by first-round pick, LHP MacKenzie Gore. Will the Padres make it two straight years in which they take a high school, left-handed pitcher?

It’s now mock draft season, and a few have featured LHP Matthew Liberatore from Mountain Ridge High School in Arizona as the possible selection of the Padres. He’s an 18-year-old LHP who sits at 91-93 mph and offers three plus-pitches as well as a new slider that could develop into a plus-pitch. He also showcases plus-command. Sounds like the perfect draft pick, right?

Liberatore is an elite prospect who could find himself in the major leagues in a very short time. However, the consensus among the scouting community is that he doesn’t have a lot of projection left, he struggles to hold his velocity and has one of the lower ceilings of all the potential first-round picks this year.

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San Diego loves their high-ceiling, high-risk, high-reward players, and Liberatore just doesn’t seem to fit that mold. It’s true, you can never have enough pitching prospects, however, the Padres should be going after Sandra Day O’Connor High School third baseman, Nolan Gorman.

The first thing that stands out about Gorman is that he’s a left-handed bat. Standing 6’1” and 205 pounds, Gorman may have the most game-power potential in the entire draft class. According to MLB Pipeline, Gorman’s power is graded at a 60 with a 50 hit tool. Some evaluators have placed a 70 grade on his power.

He already has experience mashing bombs out of Petco Park. 

If you comb through scouting reports of Gorman and pre-draft reports of Kris Bryant, you see a lot of similarities: extreme power, slightly above-average contact, athletic, but lacking any sort of speed. The big difference is their defense.

MinorLeagueBall.com contributor Shaun Kernahan (among others) believe that Gorman has the glove and arm strength to stick at third base in the major leagues. He moves side-to-side very well, but he struggles if he has to drop back and track down a ball. If he’s selected by the Padres, what he lacks in athleticism could be complemented by playing alongside Fernando Tatis, Jr in a few years.

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Gorman fits the mold of a high-upside pick the Padres like and would fill a need. The organization has plenty of elite arms but lacks an elite third base prospect who can hit for average and power. We’ll find out on June 4th who the Padres select, but expect them to go left-handed bat with their first-round selection.