Quote from Randy Manese on September 20, 2023, 5:16 pm

A healthy, rested and fully participating in winter instructs Snelling will start at the AA level in 2024 and if he shows as well as he did in Lake Elsinore, he could actually be in the majors in 2024; it's a long shot but Snelling has unusual composure for someone so young and once he locks in his off-speed stuff, he will be at least a #3 starter.   In fact, this current San Antonio rotation has 3 possible pitchers competing for big league jobs in 2024 - Snelling, Bergert and Iriarte, although the latter may be our closer in waiting if he can't sustain his excellent stuff for more than 3 innings.

Padres just promoted Krob and Loewen to further fortify the pitching staff.  Loewen and Paplham were arguably the best relief pitchers in the system this year, so if the arms are not too tired, I'm looking at very good odds for a San Antonio Texas League championship.  Hitters don't have to score 12 runs a game but 4-5 should favor a strong SA staff.

Quote from fenn68 on September 21, 2023, 3:32 am

Quote from Randy Manese on September 20, 2023, 5:16 pm

A healthy, rested and fully participating in winter instructs Snelling will start at the AA level in 2024 and if he shows as well as he did in Lake Elsinore, he could actually be in the majors in 2024; it's a long shot but Snelling has unusual composure for someone so young and once he locks in his off-speed stuff, he will be at least a #3 starter.   In fact, this current San Antonio rotation has 3 possible pitchers competing for big league jobs in 2024 - Snelling, Bergert and Iriarte, although the latter may be our closer in waiting if he can't sustain his excellent stuff for more than 3 innings.

Padres just promoted Krob and Loewen to further fortify the pitching staff.  Loewen and Paplham were arguably the best relief pitchers in the system this year, so if the arms are not too tired, I'm looking at very good odds for a San Antonio Texas League championship.  Hitters don't have to score 12 runs a game but 4-5 should favor a strong SA staff.

Padres are at least in an encouraging position with multiple quality prospects in the cusp of the ML while having a significant need with only Darvish / Musgrove locked down for any length of time.

Would expect them to be in AA to start 2024 but probably will see some mix as call-ups during 2024 given the lack of alternatives and the reality of injuries at the ML level (or failure of one or more of whoever the Padres end up with to start the season on the 26 man). Might be a stretch but Preller had no issue doing that with Weathers (we can debate the effect of that decision).

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I keep reading that Paplham is rising as a RP prospect … don’t know much other than he is a recent college non-drafted guy with a strong FB. Any other insight? I always am careful about college type pitchers coming out of nowhere and succeeding in the low minors.

Quote from Randy Manese on September 21, 2023, 7:11 pm

Bergert didn't look like himself today.  Off-speed stuff was not biting and FB didn't have the movement I've seen in the past plus less velocity and therefore, far more hittable.  As a result, didn't look confident on the mound.  Long season, but he'll be back next year!

Quote from fenn68 on September 22, 2023, 8:24 am

Jeff Sanders

@sdutSanders

#Padres prospects on Peoria’s roster for the Arizona Fall League: 3B Graham Pauley 1B Nathan Martorella OF Jakob Marsee LHP Jagger Haynes RHP Cole Paplham

7:30 AM · Sep 22, 2023

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Setting up a quicker pace to reaching the ML (mid-2024?) for Pauley, Martorella, and Marsee.

Good to see Haynes being healthy enough to participate and get his career back on track.

Paplham? maybe a good test to see where he really stands as a prospect.

Quote from Randy Manese on September 22, 2023, 9:51 am

It will be a very long season for the former college hitters but all showed very well in their progression to San Antonio this year.  Padres need to get a better idea if their hitting approaches, all are a little bit different but all from the left side, plays against tougher competition.  Marsee will be coming back from a hamstring injury but I hope all have a little left in the tank to allow a good evaluation.

Haynes was fighting blisters and not any injury to his arm, shoulder or elsewhere on his body so he should be okay to go; he was very impressive at Lake Elsinore after not having pitched for 3 years.  A good performance could see him start the season at Ft. Wayne vice back at Lake Elsinore.  Paplham reminds me of Keegan Collett, another Padres farmhand who has excellent stuff  but can't find the plate consistently.   After a strong debut, Paplham fought off an early season injury (injured in May and struggled and then out almost all of June), but slowly worked his way back in Lake Elsinore and looked very good at Ft. Wayne.  He's got better command than Collett but needs to get even better to stay relevant; command was not his strong suit in college, which is why he was not drafted.

Quote from fenn68 on September 22, 2023, 10:01 am

Padres ... beyond just the general prospect development ... being LHH Pauley, Marsee, and Martorella ... might be pushing them a little harder to try to get them to the ML.

Consider next season the LHH is not very deep (or even good) past Soto ... Grisham, Carpenter, and Cronenworth ... then ??? Might not want to spend for a LHH while needing to focus on pitching ... so IF they can get one of those prospects in the mix ... even if it is targeted for mid-season ... will help the roster construction for 2024 and beyond. Not that big of a threshold to hurdle to be an upgrade from Carpenter and Grisham.

Quote from Randy Manese on September 22, 2023, 10:07 am

I've commented on this before, but very impressed with the job done on young pitchers at Lake Elsinore.  Don't know if it was mainly Eshelman (1st year pitching coach) or a combo of him and Zamora, who was a long-time pitching coach, but got strong performances from Snelling, Krob, Baez, Haynes, Lowe, Castro, Pinales, Paplham, Pena, Galindo and others under his/their tutelage.  Several of these pitchers will be back from injury or need more time in Low A, but there is yet another group of draftees and upcoming arms from the ACL that we haven't seen yet who could add to what's becoming a much stronger minor league pitching pool than we've seen in a long time for the Padres.

Quote from Randy Manese on September 23, 2023, 12:42 pm

There are 3 other pitchers assigned to the AFL besides Haynes and Paplham.  They are Pinales, Pena and Nett.  Pinales and Pena were brought up from the ACL and seemingly put their so-so ACL stats behind them and performed very well at Lake Elsinore; in fact, Pena was so impressive he was elevated to Ft. Wayne to help in the push to the playoffs.  Nett was rehabbing from injury and started out in the ACL.  He had some very good games and some very bad games, which might be expected in rehab starts.  Same uneven performance at Lake Elsinore.  So for these three pitchers, want to see which version will emerge going forward.  Likely all will be back at Lake Elsinore to start 2024 since very few competitive innings under their belts.

Quote from Randy Manese on September 25, 2023, 3:47 pm

MadFriars indicated today that the new domestic ceiling for active minor league players was 175 during the winter and 165 once the season begins.  According to my unofficial count, the Padres had 253 total minor league players on rosters plus several not on rosters but not assigned; this also accounts for players that were injured, including those who were out all season or on 60 day IL.  I'm assuming all these players have to be activated and then dealt with accordingly.

If you minus the 65 players on the two Dominican Summer League teams, then that brings the number down to 188, which is very manageable since 99% of the El Paso roster will be free agents and there are numerous others sprinkled among the other minor league teams.  Mad Friars mentioned 15 FA's on the EP roster, but I think that only covers position players; I have almost the entire pitching staff also as free agents.

What we don't know is how many of these free agents are worth trying to sign and also what impact the international signings will have on who we decide to keep.  Remember Leodalis DeVries is this year's uber prospect and although not as far along as Ethan Salas, is still a top shelf player who will probably start in the ACL vice the Dominican.   Most of the new international signees (not counting those coming from the KBO or JPPL) will go to the Dominican and expect only a handful of players from this year's Dominican teams to be moved to the ACL.  It will be interesting to see the transactions lists and several of our old "organizational" players are likely to be gone before the 2024 season begins.