Padres’ second wave of cuts includes a prospect talent evaluators haven’t quit on

With opening day inching ever closer, we are beginning to see front offices and coaching staffs make decisions revolving around who will stay at training camp for the remainder of March.

The Padres have already cut a pair of left-handed pitchers in Jagger Haynes and Ryan Och, as well as a pair of righties in Manuel Castro and Justin Yeager.

San Diego also made the difficult decision to cut 25-year-old outfield prospect Tirso Ornelas completely from the roster.

A.J. Preller and new manager Craig Stammen have worked effortlessly to make the roster moves best for the team. In fact, they just made their next large batch of decisions, and one of them happened to include one prospect that many believe can still make an impact.

“We have reassigned RHPs Sean Boyle, Evan Fitterer, Francis Peña and Ethan Routzahn, INFs Marcos Castanon and Romeo Sanabria, INF/OF Clay Dungan and C Brendan Durfee to minor league camp and optioned RHP Miguel Mendez to Double-A San Antonio. With today’s moves, we now have 59 players in Major League camp.”

Miguel Mendez is part of Padres’ latest cuts, but belief has not vanished

The prospect in question is right-hander Miguel Mendez, who, at 23 years of age, was sent back to the minors after two spring training appearances. In those two appearances, he pitched a total of two innings but allowed six runs on five hits with four walks to his name.

That is not going to cut it on a Preller-led team, and while he does have high upside, it was not enough to keep him on the spring training roster for the team to get a better look at him.

The Padres have a total of 14 spring training games remaining on their slate, and during that span, the roster is only going to get slimmer. However, with many starters competing in the World Baseball Classic, this is an opportune moment for prospects still at camp to prove their worth.