After reaching the postseason in three of their last four seasons — with their second season in a row of at least 90 wins, a total they had not reached since 2010 — but failing to reach what would be only the third World Series since the franchise began as an expansion team in 1969, the San Diego Padres are at a crossroads.
They have already lost two pitchers from their starting rotation. Dylan Cease left to sign with the Toronto Blue Jays as a free agent, and an elbow injury for Yu Darvish will keep him out until 2027. San Diego needs pitching perhaps more than anything else, and that does not always mean acquiring front-line starters. Organizational depth can be just as important.
The Padres made just such a depth acquisition this week when, in a signing announced Monday on minor league baseball’s official transactions page, they acquired Evan Fitterer, a promising, 25-year-old free agent starter. When he was drafted in the fifth round back in 2019 by the Miami Marlins, he was described by SB Nation Marlins correspondent Spencer Morris as “one of the more exciting names to follow” in that year’s draft class.
The Marlins apparently thought so. Though waiting until the 141st pick to take the then-19-year-old out of Aliso Niguel High School in California — the first player from that small, public high school to be drafted higher than the 10th round — they showered the teenager with a $1.5 million bonus.
The designated bonus for the 141st pick that year was just $390,000. By nearly quadrupling that amount, Miami persuaded Fitterer to back out of his commitment to play college baseball at UCLA and join the Gulf Coast League Marlins, a rookie league-level affiliate.
More MLB: Former Top Red Sox Pitching Prospect Makes Surprising Career Move: Report
Fitterer was ranked as the No. 74 prospect in the 2019 draft class, meaning that evaluators initially saw him as a second-round pick for whom a seven-figure bonus was typical. Of the 37 players picked in the second round that year, 23 received bonuses in excess of $1 million. The Orange County native received the largest bonus of any player selected after the third round in 2019.
The cancellation of the 2020 minor league season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by an injury in 2021, derailed Fitterer’s development at a time when he was already the No. 18 prospect in the Marlins’ system, according to MLB Pipeline rankings.
“Fitterer repeats his delivery well and should have no trouble providing strikes,” the Pipeline scouting report said. “He’s more polished than most young pitchers, and his main needs are to get stronger and develop more consistency with his pitches. If that happens, he could blossom into a mid-rotation starter.”
Now, Fitterer has a chance to revive his career and possibly even get a shot at a big-league promotion with the Padres. The club immediately assigned the right-hander to the Triple-A El Paso Chihuahuas, where, according to the Padres prospect-monitoring site MadFriars, he will be “likely to toss a ton of innings” in 2026.
With the Double-A Pensacola Blue Wahoos this season, Fitterer posted a 3.42 ERA over 94 2/3 innings across 33 games, of which 10 were starts. He struck out 94 and allowed only four home runs, but walked 42, indicating that keeping the ball in the strike zone remains an issue for the Padres’ new prospect.
More MLB: Tigers Say Goodbye to 6-Foot-8, 300-Pound Reliever Poached by Rockies