Padres make a cold DFA call on a young outfielder as the roster crunch spikes

The Padres didn’t exactly hide the math here. The moment Griffin Canning’s deal became official, somebody on the 40-man was going to get squeezed, and this time it was a young outfielder with a little intrigue and not much major-league proof yet.

Ornelas’ big-league sample is basically a coffee stain. Seven games and 16 plate appearances produced a .071/.188/.071 line, which is too small to draw real conclusions from. What it does show is that he hasn’t forced the issue when given the tiniest window.

Padres DFA Tirso Ornelas as spring pressure starts forcing real decisions

The minor-league résumé is the part that keeps this from being a shrug. Over the last three seasons, he’s put together strong plate discipline and real pop, including 48 homers, with a walk rate north of 11 percent and strikeouts sitting around 17 percent. There’s also the usual fine print, though, because much of that production came in the Pacific Coast League where offense tends to play louder. Even after you adjust for that environment, being above-average in Triple-A still matters.

The bigger issue is the profile. Ornelas isn’t an obvious defensive upgrade, he isn’t a speed lever, and he’s mostly a corner bat. Meanwhile, the Padres already have Fernando Tatis Jr. and Ramón Laureano on the corners with Jackson Merrill in center, plus a stack of options behind them like Gavin Sheets, Nick Castellanos, Miguel Andújar, and more. In that context, the easiest player to lose is the one who hasn’t carved out a clear big-league role yet.

The interesting part is what the league thinks of him. He could clear waivers because teams might see him as a Quad-A player, the kind of guy who’s intriguing but not essential enough to burn a 40-man spot for. Then again, all it takes is one front office that needs a left-handed bat with some power upside. The Astros, for example, have been searching for lefty thump, and this is the exact type of low-cost dice roll they’ve made before.

Either way, he’s in DFA limbo for up to a week while the Padres gauge trade interest and the waiver clock ticks. If nobody bites, San Diego can keep him in the organization since he still has an option remaining. But the move still lands the same way. The Padres chose roster certainty over an unproven “maybe,” and that’s the kind of cold decision contenders make when spring pressure spikes.