No Padres Prospects Ranked in Baseball America or Baseball Prospectus Midseason Top 50s

The Padres passed their season midway point (81 games) a few games back and the rest of the league has now caught up (for some reason the Padres seem to play more games early in the season than everyone else, even account for rain outs). With that midpoint comes the midseason prospect lists. Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus are two of the more esteemed websites that produce such lists. By this point in the season a number of prospects have graduated to become bonafide big leaguers and others have had their stock go up or down.

Here are the links to their lists:

• Baseball America Midseason Top 50
• Baseball Prospectus Midseason Top 50 ($)

There are no Padres prospects on either list.

The Padres have had one of their prospects graduate who may have been in consideration for a top 50 prospect list: Austin Hedges. Most prospect lists use rookie eligibility to determine if a player is still a prospect. Typically, the prospect loses eligibility with 130 at bats or 50 innings pitched, but there is a third way. Eligibility is also based on if the player has spent 45 days on the active roster (not including time on the DL). Hedges was called up on May 5, which is definitely more than 45 days ago.

Another Padres prospect that had been a top 50 consideration was traded away. Matt Wisler was included in the Craig Kimbrel/Melvin Upton Jr. trade and was ranked 34th on the Baseball America preseason list, but didn't make the top 50.

Speaking of trades, the Padres dealt SS Trea Turner as a player-to-be-named later in the Wil Myers trade. He is now ranked 9th by Baseball America and 43rd by Baseball Prospectus. He has been moving through the minor league ranks at breakneck speed. He began the year with the Padres in High A, was promoted to AA while still with the Padres and after joining the Nationals organization he was bumped up to AAA. He looks to be the heir apparent to Ian Desmond at SS.

But, enough about graduated prospects and prospects the Padres have dealt away. Who is the Padres' top prospect? If these lists kept going, who from the Padres would eventually pop up? That prospect is likely Hunter Renfroe. The young power hitting OF was ranked 50th by Baseball Prospectus and 73rd by Baseball America. It would see that if he had just kept progressing that he at least would have made the BP midseason top 50, but he started quite slow this year. However, recently things have started to click for him and I expect that if things continue you will see him make a top 50 or two in next year's preseason rankings.

As for the rest of the system, there isn't a lot of hope for an elite, top 50 or 100 ranked prospect. Much of the shine has come off of Rymer Liriano, who is still a decent prospect and could be a decent major leaguer, but now that he's shown pretty much all he has to show in the minors at age 24 there isn't that dream of a higher upside. SP Colin Rea is even older than Liriano, but was recently selected to pitch in the upcoming Futures Game. His age and pitching profile limit his upside to the point where he's considered a future big leaguer, but that's not enough to get ranked on these lists. 18 year old SS Ruddy Giron is tearing up the Midwest League, but he only recently burst onto the scene and I think scouts will need more time to evaluate the youngster. However, if he tears up the California League then I wonder if starts getting some top 100 consideration. Many of the newbies on the preseason top 100 lists come straight from the draft. The Padres didn't have a 1st round pick and 2nd round picks, for obvious reasons, don't usually make top 100 lists. Elite prospect talent is going to have to come from trades or next year's draft.