Will Padres draft a high schooler with top pick for 10th straight year? Find out Saturday

SAN DIEGO -- When it comes to the MLB Draft, the Padres clearly have a type. They’ve taken high school players with their last nine first-round picks. And they’ve taken high school left-handers with four of those picks -- including each of the past two years.

They insist that is not their plan. They insist that every year they evaluate the entire talent pool and assess all of their options. There have been college hitters and college pitchers on their board. Those guys just came off the board early.

There’s a good explanation for that tendency. The Padres are extremely confident in their ability to evaluate high school players (a much trickier job than evaluating college players, who are older have spent at least three seasons performing against high-quality competition).

Taking high schoolers is a risk. But if nothing else, the Padres have proven they’re willing to take risks under general manager A.J. Preller. Which is a big part of the reason they might make it a decade straight of high schoolers in the first round.

Then again, the Padres are adamant -- as they always are -- that that isn’t their plan.

“We just left the room, and we were debating college pitchers and college hitters,” scouting director Chris Kemp said on Tuesday. “Then, there’s a good group of high school hitters and pitchers. So, really, all four quadrants are in play. For real.”

We’ll find out Saturday. The MLB Draft is slated for this weekend, with the first four rounds taking place on Saturday and Rounds 5-20 on Sunday. The Padres will be selecting No. 21 overall in the first round.

• Day 1 picks: 21, 60, 97, 124, 134
• Bonus pool allotment: $9,479,000
• Last year’s top pick: Kruz Schoolcraft, LHP, pick No. 25 ... Schoolcraft followed Kash Mayfield, who was taken in 2024, as consecutive high school left-handers selected by the Padres at No. 25 overall. Schoolcraft’s first full professional season has been a bit of a struggle, with an ERA north of 7 at Single-A Lake Elsinore. But his ceiling -- as a 6-foot-8 left-hander with a big fastball and a putaway changeup -- remains high (rated as the Padres’ No. 2 prospect by MLB Pipeline).
• Breakout 2025 pick: Ryan Wideman, CF, pick No. 99 … It’s been a brilliant full-season debut for Wideman, who has progressed from Lake Elsinore to High-A Fort Wayne. Between the two, he’s hitting .309 with an .856 OPS. The Padres’ No. 7 prospect, Wideman has stolen a whopping 50 bags and has showcased a stellar glove. If Wideman can cut down on the strikeouts, he looks like a serious prospect.

San Diego will also benefit from the qualifying offer extended to Dylan Cease last winter. Cease declined that offer and signed with Toronto, which means the Padres will receive a compensation pick. Because they exceeded the competitive balance tax last season, that pick comes after the fourth round -- No. 134 overall.

Along with the pick comes the bonus pool money associated with that pick. Every pick in the first 10 rounds comes with an assigned value, and the total of that value is the bonus pool that teams can spend. In short: The extra pick means extra money to spend. The Padres’ pool sits just below $10 million. That’s up 50% from last year.

“Yeah, we’ve got a little more money this year,” Kemp said. “But I don’t think about it at all. For me, it’s about the players -- getting them in the right order and then signing guys that we love.”

That’s an oversimplification. Yes, the players come first. You evaluate those players and build a Draft strategy before you worry about the money. But having extra money doesn’t hurt!

“It opens up the playbook a little bit,” Kemp said. “A few more options on the board, where, years past, when you don’t have as much money, your options can be limited. So, definitely excited for this one.”

The Draft, of course, has become the Padres’ lifeblood. And not in the way that it is for so many other teams.

Preller has depleted his farm system at multiple Trade Deadlines and during multiple offseasons. He did so in 2020, ’22, ’24 and ’25. The Padres used the prospects they’d drafted as key pieces in all of those deals.

Every time Preller swung big, experts deemed the Padres’ farm system to be barren. And yet … when Preller needed prospects to trade for Juan Soto or Josh Hader or Dylan Cease or Mason Miller … he had the capital to do so.

How? The Draft. And once again -- after a spree at last summer’s Trade Deadline -- the system is in a much better place because of some quality selections in last year’s Draft.

So, with all of that knowledge, what’s Kemp’s approach to the Draft? Is he picking with future trades in mind?

“Nothing changes,” Kemp said. “Whether we’ve made a lot of trades or no trades, we still want to be really aggressive and sign great players and build a good class. If we keep consistent, doing that year after year, I think we’ll be in a good spot.”