Yeah, the Padres have a type.<\/p>\n
For the 10th straight year, the Padres selected a high-schooler with their first pick to begin the 2026 draft.<\/p>\n
Burly, 18-year-old high school pitcher Coleman Borthwick \u2014 already sitting on a commitment to Auburn \u2014 didn\u2019t exactly hide his intentions after the Padres selected him 21st overall on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve dreamed for this since I was a kid,\u201d he said on a video conference call from a party at a beach house at Santa Rosa Beach, Fla. \u201cI\u2019m ready to play some baseball, especially over there in California. I\u2019m ready to go beat the Dodgers. That\u2019s my main goal. Whenever I heard San Diego, I was like, \u2018Oh yeah, that\u2019s the team to beat the Dodgers.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
First things first.<\/p>\n
As the 21st overall pick with a recommended signing bonus of $4.22 million, the 6-foot-6, 245-pound Borthwick will be the biggest expenditure from the Padres\u2019 $9.48 million bonus pool.<\/p>\n
The industry believed Borthwick to be a difficult prospect to sign away from his college commitment, but he said Saturday the chances of him joining the Padres were \u201calmost 100%.\u201d The Padres have until July 27 to sign this draft class.<\/p>\n
The Padres selected Canadian high school shortstop Elliot Lascelles with their second-round pick and closed the first day of action with three collegians: right-hander Ryan Lynch, catcher Robbie Lavey and outfielder Alex Conover.<\/p>\n
The final pick of the day was compensation for losing right-hander Dylan Cease to the Blue Jays in free agency.<\/p>\n
The draft will conclude with the final 16 rounds on Sunday as president of baseball operations A.J. Preller looks to boost a farm system ranked last in the majors by Baseball America following recent trades of prospects for big-league pieces.<\/p>\n
In fact, the only first-rounders that Preller has not traded away in more than a decade on the job are big-league center fielder Jackson Merrill (2021) and left-handed pitchers Kash Mayfield (2024) and Kruz Schoolcraft (2025).<\/p>\n
The 19-year-old Schoolcraft is currently at low Single-A Lake Elsinore, while the 21-year-old Mayfield is joining catcher Ethan Salas \u2014 the organization\u2019s only consensus top-100 prospect \u2014 in Philadelphia on Sunday for the All-Star Futures Game.<\/p>\n
Borthwick has traits that could put him on the same path.<\/p>\n
Borthwick sits in the mid-90s with his fastball and can approach triple digits on the radar gun. He pairs that heat with a mid-80s slider and a changeup that likely tops his developmental to-do list. He simply didn\u2019t need it while striking out 121 batters against seven walks over 65 \u2154 innings (0.21 ERA) his senior year at South Walton High School.<\/p>\n
Borthwick also paired nine homers with a 1.498 OPS in helping his high school win a state championship and himself 2025-2026 Gatorade Florida Baseball Player of the Year honors. He was also named the MVP last fall after throwing 10 shutout innings in the championship game against Japan in the 18U World Cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just a track record of domination,\u201d said Chris Kemp, vice president of amateur and international scouting. \u201cJust the \u2018compete\u2019 level is so high, which raised our conviction level. There\u2019s just no let-up in the kid. When you\u2019re that dominant and that consistent for as long as he has been, it really stands out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Added Preller: \u201cI think if you\u2019re on Team USA and you pitch a championship game against Team Japan, that obviously kind of stamps you as one of the top guys in the country. Had an opportunity to see him this spring, and it\u2019s a very unique player. You don\u2019t see somebody that big that controls his body that well, can also play shortstop and honestly could get drafted or go play college baseball as a two-way player.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Padres believe Borthwick\u2019s future is on the mound, and he appears sold on their developmental plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to do both as long as I can until baseball tells me I can\u2019t,\u201d Borthwick said. \u201cRight now, baseball\u2019s telling me that I can\u2019t because it\u2019s going to hold me back from making it to the big leagues and being the best player I could possibly be.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Padres\u2019 history with Borthwick \u2014 via area scout Clint Harrison \u2014 dates back to his sophomore year at South Walton, where his dad was the head coach.<\/p>\n
A Driveline-like throwing program at that school, Borthwick said, emphasized promoting the durability of a pitcher as much as the velocity that jumped as he neared the draft. He played some high school football as a backup quarterback and middle linebacker, but Borthwick very quickly aimed his future at the diamond.<\/p>\n
The Padres making him their top pick on Saturday is the next step in his journey.<\/p>\n
He can\u2019t wait to get started.<\/p>\n
\u201cVelocity is great; that\u2019s a great thing to have,\u201d Borthwick said. \u201cBut the thing that\u2019s going to get you drafted, the thing that\u2019s going to get you to the big leagues is being a competitor and learning to throw strikes while being durable. And that\u2019s what we founded off of that throwing program. We don\u2019t want to be our best at the beginning of the year. We want to be the best at the end to win a high school state championship or a Team USA gold medal and a World Series for the Padres.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s my goal: To be durable at the end, not at the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n
==<\/p>\n
PADRES\u2019 2026 DRAFT CLASS<\/p>\n
1\u00a0\u00a0 |\u00a0\u00a0 RHP Coleman Borthwick (South Walton HS, Fla.)
\n2\u00a0\u00a0 |\u00a0\u00a0 SS Elliot Lascelles (Upper Canada College HS, Ontario)
\n3\u00a0\u00a0 |\u00a0\u00a0 RHP Ryan Lynch (North Carolina)
\n4\u00a0\u00a0 |\u00a0\u00a0 C Robbie Lavey (George Washington University)
\n4C |\u00a0\u00a0 OF Alex Conover (Oklahoma State)<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
Sunday: Rounds 5-20 (MLB.com, MLB TV)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yeah, the Padres have a type. For the 10th straight year, the Padres selected a high-schooler with their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,1334,74,76,75,2611,127],"class_list":["post-395231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-latest-headlines","tag-mlb","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395231","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=395231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}