Padres might be closer to a shocking new starter than anyone wants to admit

The Padres have spent so many offseasons trying to buy certainty that it’s easy to miss when certainty starts growing in their own backyard. But Miguel Mendez is becoming the kind of pitching prospect you can’t keep treating like a future problem.

Not after the organization handed him Minor League Player of the Year honors, and definitely not after they bumped him onto the 40-man roster in November to keep him out of the Rule 5 Draft.

Padres might be uncomfortably close to needing Miguel Mendez in the rotation

Mendez is the classic Padres development temptation: loud stuff, scary upside, and just enough polish missing to make the timeline unpredictable. The fastball lives in the high 90s and can scrape 100 when he reaches back. The slider is the real problem for hitters — a wipeout pitch with nasty horizontal action that makes at-bats feel unfair when he’s in the zone. When you stack those two weapons together, you can see why evaluators talk about him as a mid-rotation starter with room to dream bigger.

However, an 11.2 percent walk rate is the kind of number that turns a future starter into a future bullpen monster in a hurry. Big-league lineups don’t hand out free outs, and postseason baseball punishes starters who can’t land pitch one. If Mendez trims the walks even a little, the starter path suddenly looks very real.

He’s listed around 6-foot-3 and 175 pounds, and the word you keep hearing is “lanky.” That’s not an insult — it’s more of a warning label for hitters. If he adds strength and holds his mechanics deeper into starts, another velocity bump isn’t some fantasy. It’s a reasonable next step, the kind that makes his margin for error bigger and his “starter” case harder to argue against.

The likely plan is to open 2026 back in Double-A San Antonio, prove the strike-throwing is real, then force the Padres’ hand. This team doesn’t have the luxury of waiting for perfect timing. If the rotation gets wobbly — injuries, workload limits, inconsistency — Mendez might not just debut in 2026. He might play a big role.