Summary: While won-loss records don’t mean much in the complex leagues, the 2025 ACL Padres showed there are exceptions to the rule. The 2026 edition of the team saw much more success, finishing the year 34-26, just outside the playoffs.
The squad’s success in the offense-heavy environment of the desert was largely a credit to the Padres’ pitching staff, which gave up fewer runs than all but one on the 15-team circuit. They did it with the league’s third-highest strikeout total and finished in the top five in most categories.
Overview: Our approach to eligibility remains the same. Players are considered at whichever affiliate they logged the most service time. That means that, while Lan-Hong Su got off to a solid start in the desert, we’ll address his stellar performance in the Lake Elsinore wrap-up since he logged many more innings there. We recognize the top contributor to this year’s team as the top pitcher, while the top pitching prospect is based on our expectations for the future based on his production, age, and projectability.
Level: Since MLB moved the draft to the all-star break in a delusional attempt to build a television audience for it, the Arizona Complex League is largely made up of international free agents interspersed with players working back from injury. The lack of experience on the mound for so many teams has made the ACL one of the game’s hottest offensive environments, with teams averaging more than six runs a game.
The limit of 165 active players on domestic rosters and newly-configured minor league levels have incentivized even organizations not as prone to aggressive promotions as the Padres to move players to and through full-season ball very quickly. Long-time scouts are still trying to recalibrate to the new, lower level of competition they see in the the Valley of the Sun, especially when only tJwo pitchers in the entire league reached 50 innings of work.
Nothing you imagine U.S. professional sports to look like applies to the lowest level of domestic baseball. Games – mostly played on back fields rather than the main stadiums – are rarely watched by more than a half dozen people who aren’t team employees or players’ family members. Game-time temperatures often exceed 100 degrees, and even with the pitch clock, games frequently lumber well past three hours. Watching an ACL contest will test even the heartiest fan’s commitment.
Adler Cecil continues to post huge strikeout numbers. (Jerry Espinoza)
Pitcher of the Year: LHP Adler Cecil (Ben, Clark, David, John)
Others Receiving Votes: RHP Dariel Polanco (Kevin)
Coming off a 2025 season lost to Tommy John surgery, it was unclear what Adler Cecil had in the tank coming into this year. The 21-year-old quickly asserted himself, striking out 22 batters in his first 11.1 innings. By the end of the ACL season, he had stretched out to five innings multiple times and owned a stellar 39.3% strikeout rate to go along with a 4.79 ERA that – in the league context – was quite solid. Adler finished his run the desert second on the staff with 41.1 innings of work, limiting hitters to a .203 average. He held his opponents to one run or less in seven of his 13 appearances, but a pair of five-run meltdowns on days he didn’t have his change-up working inflated his overall ERA.
The only starter who worked more than Cecil was Dariel Polanco who, at 20 years old, put up a 4.22 ERA across 42.2 innings. In his second season in the desert, the undersized righty put up a solid 53:15 strikeout-to-walk ratio, relying on a kitchen sink repertoire that worked at this level despite a fastball that averaged less than 90 mph. As an indicator of just how little correlation there is between results in the desert and long-term potential, Polanco was released by the organization in mid-August.
Adler Cecil continued to get results in Lake Elsinore. (Robert Escalante)
Top Pitching Prospect: LHP Adler Cecil (Ben, David, John, Kevin)
It’s been more than three years since the Padres selected Adler Cecil out of Temecula Valley High School in the 19th round, and he sports an ERA of 5.02 across just 84.1 innings. Having gotten healthy coming into the year, he showed that his repertoire of sinker, changeup, curve and slider can get huge swing-and-miss numbers. Adler’s strikeout numbers were fueled by a whiff rate well north of 40%. He continued to rack up strikeouts after a late-season promotion to Lake Elsinore, where he punched out 37 in 20.1 innings and held Cal League batters to just a .155 average. The question is whether a guy whose fastball sits at 91 from a crossfire delivery will be able to make it work against more advanced hitters. His future likely is in a bullpen, but he’ll head into 2027 with the club trying to get him as many innings as possible.
Cameron Nohos generates solid velocity from his XL frame. (Photo: Jerry Espinoza)
Others of Note: Gigantic righty Cameron Nohos opened his first full season in the desert after dealing with a minor issue during spring training. The 23-year-old, who didn’t pitch at all during his senior year at University of Illinois-Chicago and wound up signing as an undrafted free agent last August, struck out nearly a third of the 179 batters he faced in the complex and had a manageable 11.2% walk rate. Opponents did get him for a .272 average when they made contact, but a huge number of balls in play that turn into hits in the desert wind up being outs at higher levels. Nohos throws both a two-seam and four-seam fastball, both of which sit 93-94 mph, but his money pitch is a nasty gyro slider. Given his size and relatively limited track record, there’s reason to think there’s more in there going forward.
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