MLB Pipeline Top 100 update exemplifies Ethan Salas' Padres roller coaster

Ethan Salas has experienced a dramatic swing in MLB Pipeline’s prospect rankings. He’s gone from No. 5 overall to completely out of the Top 100 and now back to No. 23. The guy just turned 20 this past June. That’s some pretty extreme turbulence.

We’ve watched Salas get crowned, questioned and rehabilitated before he can legally buy a beer. His standing has swung so violently that it would be easy to assume his talent did the same. But it didn’t. The rankings just lost their minds while Salas continued to develop.

The Padres started this ride by putting their foot on the gas in full acceleration. Salas signed for $5.6 million as the top international prospect in the 2023 class, debuted at Single-A as a 16-year-old and reached Double-A at 17. By August of that first professional season, MLB Pipeline had elevated him to No. 5 in baseball.

Ethan Salas’ 2026 breakout forced MLB Pipeline to reconsider

To be fair, it was a ridiculous standard to place on a teenage catcher. The Padres deserve plenty of credit for recognizing how advanced he was. The organization also owns part of the whiplash that followed. They pushed him so far ahead of a normal development curve that ordinary teenage struggles started looking like a crisis.

Salas batted .206 with a .599 OPS at High-A Fort Wayne in 2024. He was also four years younger than the average player in the Midwest League while handling the most demanding position on the field. Then his back turned on him. Salas was held to just 10 games in 2025 when a stress reaction wiped out nearly an entire season. When the pipeline circled back for the 2026 preseason rankings, Salas became the highest-ranked player from the previous year to fall completely out of the Top 100.

That was the bottom of the roller coaster. And now that also looks really silly. Salas returned healthy and slashed .286/.361/.417 with seven home runs and 13 doubles across 72 games at the Double-A level. Then the Padres promoted him to Triple-A El Paso on July 29.

Salas is currently producing against older competition while catching, controlling the strike zone and showing more athleticism than most that play his position. The defense puts some serious shine on the entire thing. He still has a 70 grade on fielding and 60 on his arm. That’s been his foundation. He’s an athletic, left-handed-hitting catcher with elite defensive prowess and a pretty decent bat. He’s an everyday player who has a legit shot at becoming a team mainstay.

So the No. 23 ranking doesn’t exactly feel like a breakthrough. It’s more of a correction. It’s not like he magically remembered how to play baseball in 2026. He just got healthy and began receiving regular at-bats again. 

The ranking industry overreacted twice. It launched him toward the top after one big summer, then buried him after the first real adversity of his career. Now the same industry is racing to catch back up.

For the Padres, the lesson is simple. Keep Salas at the center of the organization’s next roster cycle. The talent never went anywhere. 

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