![\"Bonner-Prendie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/SUT-L-krasovic-0329-01.jpg\")
Bonner-Prendie High School\u2019s Kevin McGonigle during a Player of the Year shoot in the spring of 2023. (Pete Bannan, MediaNews Group)<\/p>\nI don\u2019t know which baseball truth is more absurd:<\/p>\n
That at age 21, Tigers rookie Kevin McGonigle has resembled an All-Star hitter;<\/p>\n
Or that because the Padres have been so good at making Major League Baseball more popular, they have less chance to draft someone as promising as McGonigle.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s start with McGonigle.<\/p>\n
Based solely off his first two games, I\u2019ll make a point of watching the Tigers this year. The 5-foot-9 rookie infielder looks like a special hitter with sharp instincts on the basepaths.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be that good at 21 would be awfully nice,\u201d Padres manager Craig Stammen said.<\/p>\n
It took guts for general manager Scott Harris and manager A.J. Hinch to promote someone so young \u2014 McGonigle won\u2019t be 22 until August \u2014 to a Tigers club in win-now mode.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has a slow heartbeat and a clear head,\u201d said Hinch, a former big-league catcher. \u201cHis swing is very sound.\u201d<\/p>\n
Give an A-plus grade to Tigers scouting director Mark Conner and Detroit\u2019s area scout who went to bat for McGonigle, who won\u2019t be 22 until August.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is one of the best pure high school hitters in the class,\u201d Conner said in July 2023, after drafting the lefty 37th out of Bonner High School in Drexel Hill, Pa.<\/p>\n
Conner, a former Padres scouting director who was overseeing his first Tigers draft, smartly agreed to pay $550,000 above the $2.3 million slot value to convince McGonigle to forgo a scholarship and NIL money with Auburn.<\/p>\n
Bonner-Prendie High School\u2019s Kevin McGonigle during a Player of the Year shoot in the spring of 2023. (Pete Bannan, MediaNews Group)<\/p>\n
So what\u2019s this about the Padres being penalized for making baseball more popular?<\/p>\n
Consider the pick the Tigers used to get McGonigle: it was one of the 15 \u201ccompetitive balance\u201d picks MLB hands out every year.<\/p>\n
The Padres don\u2019t get these plums anymore.<\/p>\n
Teams eligible for the picks sit in one of the 10 smallest markets or fall among the bottom 10 in revenue, per MLB.<\/p>\n
The Padres land among the 10 smallest media markets. They\u2019re behind every club but Kansas City, Cincinnati, Milwaukee and the Sacramento-based Athletics, per Nielsen\u2019s 2024-25 ratings.<\/p>\n
But for a while now, the Padres haven\u2019t been getting any competitive balance picks \u2014 come the next draft in July, it\u2019ll be four years in a row they didn\u2019t get one.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s four picks that would\u2019ve fallen between either the first and the second round, or the third round and the fourth round.<\/p>\n
The Padres haven\u2019t qualified as a bottom-10 revenue team since they transformed themselves into steady contenders. And that seems to be why they\u2019re not getting these picks.<\/p>\n
Read that again. The Padres are a small-market team. But because they\u2019ve grown the revenue pie much larger, MLB is making it harder for them to seed their farm system.<\/p>\n
Does it make sense to punish a small-market team that\u2019s finished fifth, second, fourth and second out of 30 teams in attendance?<\/p>\n
Seems absurd.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s believed that the list of teams that get competitive balance picks is collectively bargained.<\/p>\n
The no-picks stretch for the Padres, indeed, has come in every full year since the current CBA was adopted.<\/p>\n
Maybe other owners didn\u2019t like how Peter Seidler, the team\u2019s late chairman, went about turning the Padres into a hot ticket, running up as much debt as he did.<\/p>\n
Do you think the same 29 owners will like it when the Padres are soon sold, and the price sets an MLB record or comes close to it?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt should be a performance-driven sport for everybody \u2014 players and owners,\u201d player agent Scott Boras said Saturday.<\/p>\n
The labor pact is set to expire in December.<\/p>\n
Attention, next Padres owner:<\/p>\n
On this issue, among others, you need to go to bat for your team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I don\u2019t know which baseball truth is more absurd: That at age 21, Tigers rookie Kevin McGonigle has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,1334,74,76,75,2611,127],"class_list":{"0":"post-241610","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-latest-headlines","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-san-diego","11":"tag-san-diego-headlines","12":"tag-san-diego-news","13":"tag-san-diego-padres","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}