San Diego Padres 2020 MLB Draft Guide and Strategy

With the baseball season quickly approaching we put together an easy to use 2020 MLB Draft Guide for the San Diego Padres.

While we certainly didn’t get the results we were hoping for in 2019, the San Diego Padres do get a top 10 pick out of it in the upcoming 2020 MLB Draft.

I know at the time of writing this we are still five months away from the 2020 MLB Draft, but with high school and college baseball set to begin play in about a month, now is the perfect time to start preparing for the upcoming draft.

One thing I’m already excited about with this year’s draft is that it will take place in Omaha from June 10-12 just before the start of the College World Series.

This is something I’ve been hoping would happen for years and I’m glad it is finally taking place.

As someone who loves the college game almost as much as the majors, I think this will be a great opportunity to showcase the college game and get fans more excited about players they may not see for three or four years in the big leagues.

Here are a some links to keep handy as we begin this process:

2020 MLB Draft Order

2020 MLB Draft Top 100 Prospects

2020 MLB Draft Mock Draft of First 10 Picks

The San Diego Padres are set to pick eighth in the upcoming draft and they have three picks total inside the top 50, so this is shaping up to be a very good draft for the Friars.

They’ve done very well drafting in the top 10 the past three years taking MacKenzie Gore third overall in 2017, Ryan Weathers seventh overall in 2018, and CJ Abrams sixth overall in this past year’s draft.

And the last time they picked eighth overall they took Cal Quantrill in the 2016 draft and he’s been OK, but not great for that high of a pick.

What I hope to accomplish here is to go over the Padres strategy for this draft and look at the history of players taken eighth.

Then we’ll briefly look at some of the players projected to go in the first round of the 2020 MLB Draft and who they should target.

In the coming weeks I plan on posting individual scouting profiles on each as we prepare for the upcoming 2020 MLB Draft.

Names to consider

A lot can obviously change during the Spring, but as of right now there is a pretty clear consensus of the top three college players in right-handed pitcher Emerson Hancock of Georgia, first-baseman Spencer Torkelson of Arizona State, and shortstop Austin Martin of Vanderbilt.

Unless one of them has a big down year or gets hurt, it’s hard to imagine any of them falling to the Padres at eight.

Jared Kelley, a right-handed pitching prospect in Refugio, Texas is considered the top high school prospect in the 2020 MLB Draft.

But another right-handed pitcher, Mick Abel out of Portland, Ore., is not far behind Kelley.

Nick Bitsko, yet another right-handed high school pitcher, who was projected by many to be the number one pick in the 2021 MLB Draft has reclassified and will graduate early so that he will be draft-eligible for this year’s draft.

Pennsylvania native, outfielder Austin Hendrick, is projected to be the first high school bat to come off the board.

I’ve seen some outlets project the Padres to take outfield high school prospect Pete Crow-Armstrong out of Studio City, California at eight.

But high school players are really unpredictable, so I won’t get into too much detail about them.

And I think it’s much more likely that the Padres take a college player with the eighth pick, and here are same names to consider:

Asa Lacy – LHP – Texas A&M

Garrett Mitchell – OF – UCLA

Heston Kjerstad – OF Arkansas

Casey Martin – INF – Arkansas

JT Ginn – RHP – Mississippi State

If I were picking for the Padres, those are the five players I would be targeting at eight right now — assuming Hancock, Torkelson, Martin, Kelley, Abel, and Bitsko are off the board.

Keep this article handy somewhere as we begin the journey towards the MLB Draft. And in the coming weeks/months I’ll be putting together full scouting reports on each of the players the Padres could take with their first two picks in the 2020 MLB Draft.