Miguel Mendez

Organization Prospect Rankings

• 
  Ranked San Diego Padres #4 prospect in 2026
  BA Grade/Risk: 55/High
  
  Adjusted Grade: 40
  
  Track Record: Mendez had only been pitching for six months when the Padres signed him out of the Dominican Republic for just $10,000 in 2021. He began to show signs of blossoming in 2024, when he posted a 3.86 ERA with 86 strikeouts in 81.2 innings for Low-A Lake Elsinore. In 2025, he worked a minuscule 1.32 ERA with 70 strikeouts in 61.1 innings for High-A Fort Wayne. Mendez earned an August promotion to Double-A San Antonio, where he didn’t quite have the same success but still managed to punch out 30 in 22.1 innings.
  
  Scouting Report: Listed at 6-foot-3 and 175 pounds, Mendez has a slender, projectable build with some length in his lower half. His athleticism is evident on the mound, and he has a dynamic delivery with a degree of explosiveness. Mendez attacks hitters out of a slightly lowered three-quarters slot with no shortage of arm speed and features a fastball, slider and a changeup. Mendez’s heater sits in the mid-to-upper-90s with both run and ride through the zone. It jumps out of his hand and plays especially well in the top half of the strike zone, which is also where it generates the vast majority of its swings and misses. Mendez’s tight mid-to-upper-80s slider regularly generates empty swings. It flashes plus with sharp two-plane tilt, though against righthanded hitters it will sometimes have more length than depth. Mendez used his upper-80s-to-low-90s changeup just 8% of the time, but its results were encouraging. It garnered a 37% miss rate while flashing effective tumble and fade. His command is still a work in progress, but he decreased his walk rate from 14.9% to 11% between 2024 and 2025.
  
  The Future: Mendez has one of the higher ceilings of any pitching prospect in San Diego’s system and—assuming his command and control improve—could make his major league debut as soon as 2026.
  
  Scouting Grades: Fastball: 55 | Curveball: - | Slider: 60 | Changeup: 50 | Control: 45