2025 El Paso Chihuahuas Position Player of the Year

Summary

Rather than being focused on developing prospects, the El Paso Chihuahuas roster essentially operated as a taxi squad for the Padres’ big league club, providing players who could fit in on the big league squad, rather than developing prospects.

Pitchers Alek Jacob, Sean Reynolds, and Kyle Hart earned their Southwest Airlines miles, shuttling between the Sun City and San Diego multiple times while Bryce Johnson and Mason McCoy both had multiple stints waiting in the wings.

Under second-year manager Pete Zamora, the Chihuahuas finished a game over .500 in the first half, but 12 over in the second half for an overall record of 81-68.

The unquestioned star of the club was catcher/first baseman and designated hitter Luis Campusano, who nearly won the modern-day Triple Crown in the Pacific Coast League, leading the league in on-base and slugging percentages, but falling percentage points short of in batting average.

Overview

Our approach to eligibility remains straightforward. Players are considered at whichever affiliate they logged the most service time. We recognize the top contributor to this year’s team as the top player, while the top prospect is based on our expectations based on his production, age, projectability, and potential impact in the major leagues.

Level

Triple-A is a unique crossroads in professional baseball, with rosters often featuring as many players looking to get one last shot as those hoping to get their first. Even in organizations that haven’t had as huge a purge of minor league talent as the Padres, it’s not uncommon for the top roster in the system to have a significant number of minor league free agents. In El Paso, there were more than a dozen players in their first year in the organization.

The Pacific Coast League is a renowned hitter’s league, with El Paso’s homer-friendly Southwest University Park only in the middle of the pack of offense boosts.

Player of the Year

Luis Campusano, C/1B/DH (unanimous)  .336/.441/.556, 25 HR, 25 2B, 95 RBI

Campusano received significant big league playing time in 2023, when he posted an OPS of .847. That helped earn him the opening day catching job in 2024 before he lost his job to Kyle Higashioka and ultimately getting sent to El Paso.

He didn’t earn a big league spot began this year as the everyday catcher for the Chihuahuas. In 105 games and 475 plate appearances, the 26-year-old absolutely destroyed the Pacific Coast League, as Zamora rotated him between catcher (52 games), designated hitter (40 games), and first base (14 games), which helped El Paso reach its best record since 2022.

He finished third in the league with 25 home runs and 95 RBI, with 51 extra-base hits and an 82:72 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Any way you slice it, his offensive numbers were some of the best over a full season that we have seen in over 20 years of doing this.

But in three different haphazard stints on the big league roster, he went 0-for-21 in 10 games. So the million-dollar question is, can he fit in San Diego?

From the outside, it’s hard to see how his big right-handed bat would not have helped the Padres somehow this season. However, decision-makers clearly determined that he wasn’t a viable option behind the plate for the big league pitching staff. Even when Elias Diaz got hurt at the end of the season, and Campusano was added to the playoff roster, he didn’t make an appearance at the plate and the Padres exhumed the nearly-retired Martin Maldonado in case of emergency catching needs.

Campusano cannot be optioned to the minors again and is already going into his second year of arbitration, so the Padres will need to decide if they think they have use for a right-hander who can catch, play first, and  provide power threat from the right side as a designated hitter and pinch-hitter, or if they should let him move on to another organization for little or no return this winter.

Top Hitting Prospect

Tirso Ornelas (Clark Fahrenholt, Kevin Charity, and Ben Davey)

Tirso Ornelas got our nod as the top position prospect with the Chihuahuas last year, but didn’t come especially close to making the big league roster in spring training and then went out and had a similar season in El Paso. He got his first big league call-up but made just 16 plate appearances and then he missed almost two months with plantar fasciitis once he was back in the minors. The 25-year-old still finished with a .833 OPS and a .384 on-base percentage in the PCL, which was slightly above league average. However, there isn’t a clear path to regular big league playing time for him in San Diego as the same question that has followed Tirso for the past eight seasons in the organization still hangs out there; Can he hit with enough power for a corner outfield position?

Yonathan Perlaza (John Conniff and David Jay)

The Padres honored Perlaza as their minor league player of the year, despite an OPS that was 135 points below Campusano’s, but that is a story for another time. Perlaza had 70 extra-base hits in 138 games, and showed he could play both outfield corners.  The 26-year-old switch-hitter was slightly better from the left side in his return from a season in the Korean Baseball League. He has consistently performed well at the plate, boasting an eight-year career OPS of .831, but being undersized and deploying an ultra-agressive swing has yet to earn him an opportunity for a big league shot. He’s one year older than Ornelas, and the 5-foot-9, 210-pound Venezuelan would provide more versatility in the field and at the plate than Ornelas should the Padres elect to add him to the 40-player roster and keep him from reaching minor league free agency again this winter.

Others of Note

Trenton Brooks, who grew up in San Diego County, signed with his hometown organization last winter and had a scorching June, when he hit six home runs and had a 1.143 OPS for the Chihuahuas. That earned him his second big league call-up, but he wasn’t able to show much at the plate at the highest level and the 30-year-old finished the season back in El Paso without a spot on the 40-player roster. He has already hit the free agent wire heading into the offseason. Clay Dungan, finished his second season since the Padres selected him in the minor league phase of the Rule 5 draft with 34 doubles and 14 home runs to fuel an .816 OPS. The left-handed hitter from Indiana State also stole 30 bases, while seeing significant time at shortstop, second, third base, and center field. The Padres have already re-signed him to a minor league contract for the 2026 season, when he’ll be 30 years old. Defense has always been the calling card for Mason McCoy, 30, who got an opportunity to go to the big leagues when Xander Bogaerts got hurt, but he had the bad luck of breaking a pinky finger and not getting a chance to show off his elite glove for long. Once he got healthy and was optioned back to El Paso, he finished one of his best years at the plate, with a .354 on-base percentage and an .804 OPS. 

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