The San Diego Padres acquired Anderson Espinoza in a mid-season trade. What can he do in his first full season in the organization?
Player Profile
The San Diego Padres traded for Espinoza this summer from the Boston Red Sox.
Boston signed Anderson Jose (Dominguez) Espinoza from Venzuela as part of their big 2014 July 2 class of signees. While the signing of Cuban Yoan Moncada drew the biggest headlines of their big spending in the 2014-2015 signing period, Espinoza’s deal was the biggest of traditional 16-year-old signees, with $1.8M in signing bonus and $200K for future college for Espinoza included in his signing.
Espinoza opened the 2015 season in the Dominican Summer League, and after two weeks and just four appearances, he was moved up to the Gulf Coast League, where he spent most of the rest of the summer. He finished with one regular season start with Greenville in the low-A South Atlantic League.
Combined among the three levels, he made 15 starts, throwing 58 1/3 innings with a 1.23 ERA, 0.94 WHIP, 6.01 percent walk rate and 27.9 percent strikeout rate.
His incredible production and pedigree rocketed him up prospect lists, as Baseball Prospectus was the low spot on Espinoza at #73, MLB Pipeline ranked him #39 and Baseball America rated him #19.
Espinoza opened the 2016 season with Greenville, the youngest player opening the season in a full-season league in 2016. He made 17 starts with Greenville.
On July 14, the San Diego Padres acquired Anderson Espinoza in exchange for lefty Drew Pomeranz from the Boston Red Sox. The trade was later found to have misleading medical information, but the Red Sox chose not to seek a reversal of the trade.
Espinoza made eight appearances (seven starts) with the low-A affiliate for the San Diego Padres in Fort Wayne of the Midwest League before being shut down for the season for innings purposes.
In all, Espinoza made 25 appearances in 2016, 24 of them starts, throwing 108 1/3 innings. He posted a 4.49 ERA, 1.39 WHIP, 7.54 percent walk rate and 21.55 percent strikeout rate.
After that fairly solid season as an 18-year-old in full-season ball, he ranked well again, sitting at #21 with BA, #25 with MLB Pipeline and #24 with BP.
I had Anderson Espinoza #16 in my top 125 for Call to the Pen in January.
Next: Espinoza's scouting report