Padres emphasize high-upside prep pitching on second day of MLB Draft

The San Diego Padres leaned further into their long-term talent pipeline on the second day of the MLB Draft, selecting high-upside right-handed prep pitcher Coleman Borthwick out of South Walton High School in Florida. The move continued a theme for the organization that has shown up across recent drafts: the Padres have taken a prep athlete in the first round for multiple straight years, and they have repeatedly targeted pitchers in those early selections.

According to reporting from Yahoo Sports, the draft class work on that final day included 16 selections total across the board, and San Diego used its first-round slot on Borthwick at age 18. The report also described the broader pattern behind the pick, noting that for the 10th straight draft the Padres chose a prep player in the first round, and that six of their previous prep first-round picks have been pitchers. In other words, this was not a one-off swing. It was consistent with how the Padres have tried to build depth and upside through pitching talent acquired at the youngest stages of development.

Borthwick is being treated as a developmental gamble in the Padres system, joining a group of young arms already in place. The same report placed him alongside left-handers Kash Mayfield and Kruz Schoolcraft, indicating that San Diego is stacking multiple pitcher development paths at the same age bands rather than relying on only one immediate breakthrough. For organizations that draft aggressively for ceiling, clustering similar profiles can help create internal feedback loops, coaching consistency, and clearer timelines for evaluation.

The Padres’ focus on pitching does not eliminate position-player value, but it does shape how their draft boards tend to look when the clock is running. Drafting a prep pitcher in the first round typically indicates that a team believes the prospect’s raw tools and athletic development can be converted into repeatable performance. That includes the kind of scouting that goes beyond college or pro-readiness and instead centers on projection, mechanical refinement, and how quickly a player can learn to harness velocity, command, and pitch shape.

For Borthwick, the practical next step is the long one: moving from high school to professional training, where every organization has to decide how to manage workload, repetitions, and progression. The report did not provide details on assigning him to a particular level, or how quickly the Padres plan to accelerate his innings and pitch counts, so the most accurate takeaway right now is simply that he is viewed as part of the system’s teenage core.

What to watch next is whether San Diego’s pitching-heavy draft identity translates into the kind of early returns that keep fans patient while prospects mature. The immediate timeline will be tied to development rather than big-league impact, but the organizational pattern described in the reporting suggests the Padres are building for multiple stages at once. If Borthwick and the other teenage arms in their pipeline develop as expected, San Diego’s draft strategy could start paying off both in depth across the minors and, eventually, in the options the big league club has when it needs cost-controlled pitching.