The San Diego Padres have three minor leaguers showing up all over the Arizona Fall League’s Statcast leaderboards, and not just in one corner of the game.
Through the first month of the AFL season, MLB.com’s rankings show Padres prospects in the mix in hitting, pitching and throwing. In all, one Padres minor-leaguer is placed in five of the league’s nine Statcast categories.
At the top of one of those lists is outfielder Alex McCoy, San Diego’s No. 26 prospect according to MLB Pipeline. On Oct.
15, McCoy launched a home run that produced 118.2 mph of exit velocity, the highest mark in the AFL so far. The ball traveled 435 feet, making it the fourth-hardest hit ball in Arizona Fall League history and putting it in the top 10 longest home runs in the league this season.
McCoy’s damage hasn’t stopped there. Among AFL hitters with at least 15 balls in play, he ranks second with an average exit velocity of 96.7 mph. Only Cincinnati Reds prospect Yerlin Confidan, who sits at 98.5 mph, has been better in that category.
Kannon Kemp is giving San Diego another strong data point on the mound. Injuries limited his 2026 season to 18 games, 10 starts and 38.2 innings, but the Padres’ No. 13 prospect looks healthy again in the fall. With at least 35 Statcast-tracked fastballs, Kemp ranks fourth in average fastball velocity at 97.1 mph.
The hardest fastballs in the AFL belong to Washington Nationals prospect Jarlin Susana, the game’s No. 66 overall prospect, who is averaging 100.6 mph on his fastballs.
Behind the plate, catcher Ty Harvey is also flashing elite metrics while returning from an injury-marred 2026 season. San Diego’s No. 4 prospect is tied for fourth in pop time to second base at 1.83 seconds, just behind Texas Rangers catcher Julian Brock, who leads the group at 1.81 seconds.
As the AFL regular season enters its fourth week, the Padres have three prospects standing out in exactly the ways clubs love to see: impact contact, premium velocity and quick work on throws to second.
In Other News...
Padres Just Got A Reminder Of How Dangerous Their Stars Are
Fernando Tatis Jr. and Mason Miller gave the Padres another reminder of how much star power sits at the center of the roster, landing on Bleacher Reports All-MLB Team for the 2026 season. Tatis kept doing what he does best, piling up a .289 batting average with 25 home runs and 83 RBIs, while Miller emerged as one of the sports most intimidating late-inning arms after leading the National League with 38 saves.
For San Diego, the recognition is more than a nice nod from an outside outlet. It reinforces the shape of the clubs identity, with Tatis driving the lineup and Miller shutting down games at the back end, and it comes at a time when the Padres are trying to stay in the conversation among baseballs most dangerous teams. When two players can make that kind of national list in the same season, the bigger question is how much more room there is for the rest of the roster to rise around them. [Read more 🡒]
Padres Face A Costly Bullpen Decision With Jason Adam
Jason Adam has become one of the trickier questions on the Padres offseason board, because the interest is there on both sides but so is the risk. He has made it clear he would like to remain in San Diego, and the bullpen depth he provides still matters to a club that has leaned on him when healthy. But with a torn quad last year and a shoulder strain this season, the conversation around him is no longer just about stuff and results, it is about how much durability a team can reasonably expect going forward.
For now, contract talks have not even gotten to the point where the Padres and Adam have hashed out a number, which leaves plenty unresolved. His market value is hard to pin down because the injury history complicates everything, and that creates a real possibility that San Diego will have to decide whether the price goes beyond what it believes makes sense. It is the kind of bullpen call teams dread in the winter, when a useful arm can still matter, but the medical file is impossible to ignore. [Read more 🡒]
Dodgers Just Got Pulled Into A Padres Rotation Rumor
The Padres are expected to spend the offseason looking hard at their rotation, and that search has already pushed them into the kind of star-powered territory that tends to reshape a winter. A Bleacher Report analyst has pegged Tarik Skubal as a prime target, which is no small matter for a team that has made starting pitching one of its clearest priorities going into the next round of roster building.
Skubal is coming off a 2026 season with the Dodgers, and the price tag attached to his next deal is expected to be enormous. For San Diego, the appeal is obvious: an elite left-hander at the top of the market would immediately change the look of the staff. Whether the Padres can actually get involved at that level is the real question, especially with a record-setting contract likely waiting on the other side. [Read more 🡒]