Padres' Must Determine 40-Man Roster Status Of Four Top Prospects

Typically, deciding  whether or not to add long-time minor-league prospects to a team's 40-man roster before the deadline for MLB's Rule 5 Draft involves working through a number of different roster scenarios and machinations.

For the San Diego Padres, the decisions of the front office for this year's 40-man roster deadline, which falls on Nov. 17 at 3 p.m. PT, regarding which of their four Top 30 prospects, according to MLB Pipeline, to add to the 40-man comes down to a simple question: have they grown enough and shown enough promise to warrant keeping around?

That's because the Padres currently have only 33 players on their 40-man roster, well below the threshold, which means they will only need to release or trade someone if they add more than seven additional players to their 40-man list.

As a refresher, players first signed at age 18 or younger must be added to 40-man rosters within five seasons and players signed at 19 or older have to be protected within four seasons or they become eligible to be drafted by other organizations through the Rule 5 Draft, which is scheduled this year for Dec. 9, though it will likely not be held if the owners' anticipated lockout of the players comes to fruition at 9 p.m. PT on Dec. 1.

If there is a 2026 Rule 5 Draft, teams pay $100,000 to the team from whom they select a player in the Major League phase. If that player doesn't stay on the drafting team's 26-man roster for the full 2027 season, he must be offered back to his former team for $50,000.

The Padres' prospect ranked highest on MLB's list is 24-year-old right-handed pitcher Tucker Musgrove, who San Diego selected in the seventh round of the 2023 draft.

Shortly after he was drafted, Musgrove, who was a two-way player at the University of Mobile, underwent Tommy John surgery and didn't debut for a San Diego affiliate until the 2025 season, when he made 14 appearances and seven starts for Single-A Lake Elsinore.

Prior to the 2026 season, he was named the top sleeper prospect in the San Diego system by Baseball America.

With that in mind, he resumed a fuller workload in 2026 with a total of 34 relief appearances split between High-A Fort Wayne and Double-A San Antonio. He went 2-2 with a 3.41 ERA and a phenomenal 68 strikeouts in 34.1 innings pitched, which is an astronomical strikeouts-per-nine rate of 17.8. That has allowed Musgrove's name to come up as a potential future bullpen piece in San Diego.

Braedon Karpathios is one of the Padres' top outfield prospects and 19th overall in the MLB rankings. He arrived in the system in 2022 as an undrafted free agent and has since played a total of 442 games as a Padres' farmhand with a .251 average, .774 OPS, 85 doubles, 41 home runs and 221 RBIs.

The 2026 season saw him get a 10-game taste of Triple-A ball in El Paso in the season's final weeks after playing 120 games at Double-A San Antonio where he hit .268 with a .797 OPS and career-highs in hits (120), runs (63), homers (17) and RBIs (73).

Karpathios is the only one of San Diego's top three outfield prospects to play at a level higher than Single-A so a good spring could help him win a depth role in the Padres' big-league outfield.

Outfielder Jake Cunningham is San Diego's No. 25 prospect. He was drafted in 2023 by the Baltimore Orioles but was released after three seasons and quickly signed by the Padres this past January. In 96 games at Fort Wayne and San Antonio, he hit .283 with a robust .885 OPS thanks to 18 doubles and 19 HRs with 61 RBIs thrown in.

While maybe a step behind Karpathios on the organizational ladder, Cunningham could figure in the Padres' big-club plans sooner than later.

Lamar King Jr. was drafted by the Padres in the fourth round of the 2022 draft. King is a glove-first catcher with some experience at first base. He spent all of 2026 at High-A Fort Wayne where he saw action in 93 games, hitting .234 with a .652 OPS with 14 doubles, four HRs, 39 RBIs and 17 stolen bases.