Say what you want about A.J. Preller’s offseason, the haul he received for Craig Kimbrel alone went a long ways toward beefing up the Padres’ depleted farm system.

Nevertheless, the second-year general manager still has a tough row to hoe.

Even with the shortstop and center fielder of the future finally in hand (or so Preller hopes), the Padres’ farm system ranks 26th in the majors, according to Baseball America’s just-published Prospect Handbook. Though certainly improved via offseason trades, the organization comes in ahead of the Tigers, Orioles, Mariners, Marlins and Angels in its lowest ranking in at least the previous five years.

Baseball America’s assessment:

“The trade that brought Javier Guerra, Manuel Margot and Logan Allen to San Diego was a much-needed talent infusion that brought the Padres out of the talent rankings basement. Before San Diego’s Craig Kimbrel trade and the Angels trade that sent Sean Newcomb to the Braves, San Diego would have likely ranked 30th.”

That sentiment isn’t exactly flying in the face of earlier valuations.



Though three Padres farmhands landed on MLB.com’s top-100 prospects list, the organization was shut out of the site’s top-10 positional rankings and only had one player – center fielder Manuel Margot at No. 45 – land in the top 50. Shortstop Javier Guerra ranked 58th and outfielder Hunter Renfroe – a rare prospect holdover from the Josh Byrnes’ regime – sits at No. 92 after an inconsistent 2015 campaign.

He, too, ranked third among Baseball America’s assessment of Padres prospects behind Guerra and Margot.

A breakdown of the organization’s top 31 prospects follows (the early bird gets the supplement), including a telling write-up on the since DFA’d Rymer Liriano at No. 23: “At his best, Liriano has plus bat speed and above-average raw power. Though he was far more selective in 2015, he still strikes out too much with a long and hard swing that doesn’t produce enough power to justify the whiffs.”