Prospect Watch: Franchy Cordero is on the Rise
Credit: MiLB.com
I would be lying if I tried to say I have always had a strong interest in prospects.
As a San Diego Padres’ fan, I have always been told to hold hope for the future, because there were always better players coming up to make the Padres a winner.
For the last twenty years I have watched the Padres. I have watched young players get called up, play well for a few years, and get traded to better teams. For a long time, the big league roster was referred to as a farm system for some of the more high payroll teams in MLB.
For the first time in my life, I genuinely feel like that is no longer true, that the Padres are finally on a different path than the one they have been on for the better part of the 21st century.
After the Padres all-in push of 2014-2015, and their teardown of late 2015-2016, it finally feels like the Padres are doing something more long-term, not just playing year to year, like they have done in years past. Obviously the Padres are “rebuilding” (we all know how both fans and front offices truly hate that word), but for the first time in a long time, I truly feel happy with the long-term direction of the San Diego Padres, and that’s a weird feeling.
That feeling brings me to think about the future of this team. As I said before, I was never much into prospect watching or understanding which prospects were good and which were bad. For me it was always just a crapshoot that wasn’t worth my time or energy. However, ever since the Padres decided to once again blow up the team with the trade of Craig Kimbrel, I have made a concerted effort to pay more attention to prospects.
Since then, I have been able to not only see the game of baseball in a whole new way, but I have also gotten a whole new appreciation for not only baseball, but for my San Diego Padres as well.
With that in mind, and with mere weeks before pitchers and catchers report, I thought now was the time to highlight some of the Padres most noteworthy prospects in the hope of sharing my enthusiasm for the future of the Padres with fans who may not share quite the same enthusiasm.
So for the next period of weeks prior to the start of Spring Training, and for the remaining two months before the start of the regular season, I will use this platform to highlight some of my favorite Padres prospects.
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Editorial and Prospect Writer for East Village Times. Twenty-five years young, Patrick has lived in San Diego for his entire life and has been a Padres fan nearly as long. Patrick lives for baseball and is always looking to learn new things about the game he loves through advanced stats.