San Diego Padres Could Play One of Baseball's Best Prospects in the Outfield in 2024
After trading Juan Soto and Trent Grisham to the New York Yankees this offseason, the San Diego Padres could look to utilize some of their top prospects in the outfield in 2024.
Per Ken Rosenthal of 'The Athletic,' the trade left San Diego with only two outfielders on the 40-man roster. He says they are unlikely to make any big moves to acquire outfielders before spring training as well.
"..making it quite possible the Padres will spend the spring auditioning young players such as Jackson Merrill, Jakob Marsee and Graham Pauley.
Merrill, the game’s No. 12 prospect according to MLB Pipeline, will play both shortstop and outfield in spring training. Marsee, the MVP of the Arizona Fall League, last season became the first minor leaguer to produce a season of 15 homers, 90 walks and 40 stolen bases since at least 2005. Pauley, like Merrill, was drafted as an infielder, but played outfield in the Fall League and in the minors the past two seasons."
Merrill is currently blocked from playing shortstop by Xander Bogaerts, so the outfield could be a way to get him up the majors right away. He hit .277 last season at the minor league level with 15 home runs and 15 stolen bases.
The following comes from his MLB.com prospect profile:
Batting from the left side, Merrill uses an all-fields approach to pepper the ballpark with base knocks while protecting the plate. He doesn’t whiff often for his age and experience with an 8.1 percent swinging-strike rate that ranked 10th-best among qualified full-season Minor Leaguers aged 20 or younger in 2023. He did a better job of elevating balls last season, cutting down his ground-ball rate from 59.6 percent to 42.5, and that helps the belief that he’ll settle into above-average power later in his 20s.
Marsee is 22-years-old. The following is said about him:
The 6-foot left-handed slugger controls the strike zone perhaps as well as anyone in the San Diego system, though that’s been against lesser collegiate and professional competition to this point. His impact on contact might determine just how good of a hitter he’ll truly be, because while he does put bat on ball often, his power projects to be below average.
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