Padres Designate Luis Perdomo, Select 3 Players
The Padres announced that they have designated right-hander Luis Perdomo for assignment and selected three players – righties Reggie Lawson and Mason Thompson, and infielder Tucupita Marcano.
Perdomo is off the Padres’ roster as they prepare for this winter’s Rule 5 Draft, but he actually first joined the team as a Rule 5 selection from the Rockies before the 2015 campaign. Perdomo has since given the 444 1/3 innings of 5.19 ERA/4.44 FIP ball with 6.74 K/9, 3.26 BB/9 and an excellent 57.3 percent groundball rate. Now, if any team takes on the 27-year-old, it could get him for two seasons of arbitration control.
Lawson was the 71st pick in the 2016 draft who ranked as a top 100 prospect that year. He made his Double-A debut in 2019 and pitched to a 5.20 ERA/4.14 FIP with 11.71 K/9 and 4.23 BB/9 in 27 2/3 frames. MLB.com ranks him as the Padres’ 10th-best prospect and gives him a chance to at least turn into a stellar major league reliever.
Thompson is not among the Padres’ top 30 prospects at MLB.com, but the site is high on Marcano, whom it places at No. 8 in the team’s system. The 21-year-old middle infielder “could develop into a serious on-base threat as a bat-first middle infielder,” per MLB.com.
Padres, Third-Rounder Mason Thompson Agree To Over-Slot Deal
The Padres and third-round pick Mason Thompson appear to have an agreement for a considerably over-slot deal, as MLB.com’s Jim Callis reports that the No. 85 overall pick will receive a bonus of $1.75MM (Twitter link). That’s more than double the slot value of $730,400, although as Callis notes, the high school righty out of Texas would likely have been a first-round pick had he not undergone Tommy John surgery. As such, Thompson likely required a considerably larger bonus in order to persuade him to sign as opposed to honor his commitment to the University of Texas.
Because of his injury, Thompson rated 105th on Baseball America’s Top 500 ranking of draft prospects and 109th on the Top 200 of Callis and colleague Jonathan Mayo at MLB.com. Both scouting reports note that Thompson was able to play this spring but was limited to hitting for the most part. He was able to throw some bullpen sessions for scouts, per MLB.com’s report, and Callis/Mayo note that he looked “as athletic and projectable as ever” in them. The 6’7″, 180-pound 18-year-old was able to run his velocity up to 94 mph when at his best, and BA notes that he shows a feel for a power curveball as well as a changeup with fade and deception. Both reports note that he is teeming with upside, so if he can make a full recovery from Tommy John (which, of course, is far from a guarantee — hence the slide), the Padres may very well have made a nice value play.
San Diego entered the draft with a $12,869,200 pool due to the fact that they possessed six of the first 85 picks in the draft (the team’s three natural picks, plus a Competitive Balance pick and a pair of compensation picks for the free-agent losses of Justin Upton and Ian Kennedy), and they’ve now reached agreement with a pair of those top six picks. The team announced last night that it had reached an agreement with Stanford righty Cal Quantrill, the son of former Major Leaguer Paul Quantrill and the team’s top overall selection. Quantrill, like Thompson, is recovering from Tommy John surgery, and MLB.com felt he might have been a top-of-the-draft consideration had he been fully healthy. The Padres look to have targeted a few players that slid due to injury concerns with the hopes of landing high-upside arms at “discount” spots in the draft, as even No. 71 pick Reggie Lawson had some injury concerns that might’ve harmed his stock.