This Will Have A Huge Impact on the Padres...

Our coaching staff has a huge challenge to help rebuild the pitching staff, make the roster better, and I want to take a look, yes, at the free agents all off-season long, but let's take a look at the internal talent. This one, minor league edition. What's going on, everybody? Christian Pedersen back with another episode of Padres Digest, the show that is a little bit upset that the Brewers won, given that we could have beat the Brewers, but... That's out. Flushing that out. Back to positive Pete only this offseason. And Andrew and I got you guys daily content. So if you want to, as always, like, subscribe, comment, share, follow, all those other good YouTube-y buttons, go ahead. On this episode, I want to break down all of the Padres' projected minor leaguers who are going to be making their Major League debuts this season. And now, it's an incredibly inexact science. But if you go on to the MLB.com, look at the top prospects in every organization, it provides you an estimated debut date. And I just, you know, you can use ballpark figures. And you can understand that Cash Mayfield, not Cash Mayfield, Cruise Schoolcraft or someone like that. It's 18, a long time between now and him making the debut. But Ethan Salas, still ironically listed as a prospect, but they were right. He did make a 2026 debut. So I thought for as much as we're talking about, like on the today, Michael King declines his option. And are we going to sign Tarik Skubal? And what about this, that, and the other big, big money thing? Let's look at the guys who are already in the building and specifically want to look at the pitching because Luis Gutierrez, Garrett Hawkins here, Both pitchers, righty and a lefty, they're in their early 20s. They had a 2026 MLB debut estimation, so would assume that they are guys that we have a very good chance at seeing to at least some degree in the 2027 season, if that should ever happen, season-wise, not their debut-wise. Then you go down one... Grouping further, and you come across our 2027 debut, so all the guys that are supposed to be making debuts this upcoming season. Tucker Musgrove, third total pitcher listed. Jacker Haynes, fourth total pitcher listed. And then Josh Mallitz is pitcher number five. So on this episode, we'll probably not talk about Carpathios Cunningham, William King Jr., some outfielders, some infielders. It's a pretty logjam system there. But plenty of pitching. Availability, and a couple of guys righties on here, Gutierrez and Haynes are lefties, so to me, the question would become, how willing are the Padres to dip in to this grouping? Because I do think that there is something to be said about... Doing it at both ends of the success scale of like, I'm going to go spend $150 million trying to get, or hopefully spend $150 million getting Michael King. Probably going to spend $30 million on Pavetta. Maybe spend $200 million, $300 million on Scuval or some other big splash, if you believe the writers, that our owners are here to play. And maybe there's a salary cap, so maybe it's only $75 million on Mori Hone instead of $90 million. But all of that is key and is essential. But at the same time, baseball is a really long season. And we have to get to the playoffs with... Are pieces intact? And I think something that we saw last year that certainly, I think, contributed to the value that our season went through, but definitely, you know, I don't specifically know what happened to Mason Miller. I don't know if we'll ever know what happened to him in that game against the Brewers, but Mori Hone, him. It seemed like just maybe there was this continual reoccurrence of like, our guys are tired. It's a long season, and when pitching chaos equates to all of our main high-leverage dudes are needed to get us all of the big wins to get us into the playoffs, then once we get to the playoffs, they're a little teeny bit spent. So is Luis Gutierrez going to show up and be like, hey, I'm going to win the rookie of the year out of the book? Probably not. And if you go through the numbers... It's kind of interesting to see that it's not like anybody here is projecting out to be unrealistically good. Gutierrez's numbers last season, 4-5 ERA. Garrett Hawkins' numbers. I know I'm shotgunning these at you guys really fast here, so don't worry about absorbing all of them. I'm just giving you sort of like the bulk impression. Thank Tucker Musgrove was the one that stands out the most of having a 3-4-1. Haynes at a 4-8 ERA. you And Mallets at a 4-0-4 ERA. All of these guys spending various amounts of time very at different levels in the minor leagues. It's impossible for me to be like, well, he did it at AAA, he did it at single A, much. he did it at double A, whatever. Well, this all equates to this, is that, the other. I just, though, I get the sense that the Padres, I think, have a great opportunity. Yes, to go sign and all that, but that's talk to ad nauseum. But I think the Padres, in the last couple of years, all of these guys would probably equate to great trade bait for AJ Preller. And maybe that's what they will be again. And if that is true, then... Hey, good news. AJ Preller has more flexibility this coming year because the Padres have five decent pitchers in their top 15 prospects who are all slated to be MLB ready this year. So could be guys that either make a quick little debut, show that they've got something and then get bundled up and traded away. Or alternatively, we could get Joe Musgrove back. We could get you Darvish back. We could get Nick Pavetta back. We could get all of our dudes. Go spend a little bit more and have guys coming back and have guys available to dip into the minor leagues with and not have to be like, oh, JP Sears and Kyle Hart are our only shuttle options. I think that it would be fantastic to see these guys, hey, yeah, get a chance in spring training to get out there and cut loose, show what they've got, yada, yada, yada, but also just. Why not open up the floodgates to some opportunities? And I talked about it in terms of like some of the prospects that we've signed internationally and this 20-year-old Japanese softball player and some of these other great things is the small winning in the margins. But Padres overwhelmingly have not done a lot of internal promoting the last couple of years. Recently, just to finally see Ethan Salas was like, whoa, our top prospect actually made it through as an untouchable top prospect. So I think it can be really interesting and key for the Padres to have. They're MLB talent coaches who are a relief pitcher, a middle reliever, and a good pitching coach. Guys who have a feel for the game on the mound actually capitalize on getting a fair amount of these relief pitchers who are in our projected out to be MLB debut ready this coming season, guys. Actually get here and actually contribute and let's let the cream rise to the top and get one or two of them in the bullpen regularly. Trade one of them. I don't even want to get into the minutia of who's going to go where, but in looking at this list of minor league baseball players, this is not something the Padres have had recently. I'm not going to fully call it a surplus, but a good amount of arms available and ready to burst onto the major league scene and help us sort of offset some of the depth issues that we have had at the pitching recently. All right. That's what I got for you today. As always, like, subscribe, comment, share, follow all those other YouTube buttons. Go Padres. Have a great rest of your night. We'll talk to you guys soon.