Padres’ surging prospect will be pushing for 2026 innings

The San Diego Padres didn’t just survive a farm-thinning year — they found a headliner. In a season that saw San Diego ship out names like Leo De Vries, Boston Bateman, and Braden Nett, a 23-year-old righty from the Dominican Republic used 95 high-octane innings to grab the organization by the lapels. Miguel Mendez didn’t enter 2025 on any must-watch lists, but he ended it as the Padres’ Minor League Player of the Year and the kind of internal pitching solution that front offices chase for years. For a big-league club that will need cost-controlled innings and swing-and-miss in 2026, that matters.

What vaulted Mendez into that conversation wasn’t mystery, it was force. The fastball sits 95–98 and has touched 100 with explosive ride at the letters. The slider, a sharp mid-80s finisher, plays perfectly off it. That two-pitch combo turned his starts into follow-alongs across the system, and it turned a once-unranked arm into the Padres’ No. 5 prospect by year’s end. Even national prospect writers took notice: Sam Dykstra and Jonathan Mayo flagged Mendez’s strikeout punch among the most eye-catching numbers on the Padres’ farm.

Padres power arm Miguel Mendez is tracking toward 2026 innings

The number in bold: a 29.4 percent strikeout rate. Over his 95 innings, Mendez piled up 118 punchouts and a 3.22 ERA while climbing from Single-A to Double-A in his age-22 season. You had to slash the innings threshold down to 60 to find a Padres minor-league arm with a better K rate in 2025. 

Just as important, the wildness tightened. Early-career walk issues (14.9 percent of batters faced) trended into single digits as the summer wore on. For a power righty, that’s the difference between “intriguing” and “on-deck.” It’s also the underpinning of any 2026 role — starter, swingman, or short-stint reliever, because the stuff is already major-league ready. If the control holds where it finished, the innings are coming.

There were bumps. The Double-A promotion in August brought a wall: tougher lineups, tighter zones, and a spike in damage when he fell behind. That’s normal. It’s also instructive. Right now, the changeup sits in the upper-80s and mostly exists to change speeds rather than miss barrels. Without more separation or movement, advanced hitters will cheat to the heater/slider tunnel and punish mistakes. The relief “risk” people mention isn’t a knock; it’s a recognition that the two plus offerings are already good enough to mow through big-league pockets in shorter bursts.

The path forward is straightforward and exciting. If the changeup adds shape, more fade, more velo gap, or Mendez folds in a wrinkle (a two-seam or a cutter that steals early-count strikes), the starter track stays fully lit. If not, the fallback is still impact: a late-inning weapon with top-scale velocity, a bat-misser breaker, and control that’s trending the right way.

Timeline? Aggressive, but reasonable. Mendez is Rule 5-eligible this winter and is widely viewed as a lock to be protected on the 40-man roster. That move alone puts him one phone call from Petco. Open 2026 in Double-A/Triple-A, tether him to a multi-inning bullpen role or spot starts, and let the fastball/slider pair dictate the rest. If the command gains stick and the third pitch shows even incremental growth, he could absorb real innings by mid-summer.