Prospect rankings are essentially opinion polls, all meant to be taken with a grain of salt. That said, the San Diego Padres' farm is ranked 30th out of the 30th MLB organizations by ESPN, FanGraphs and MLB Pipeline. The consensus shallowest organization in baseball is definitionally short on talent.

Outfielder Alex McCoy just cracked the Padres' top-30 list, according to Pipeline, ranking No. 26. McCoy isn't listed on any national Top 100 lists, but he joined dozens of more heralded prospects who recently began playing in the Arizona Fall League.

Optimistically, the AFL presents McCoy an opportunity to impress opponents and evaluators alike. He already acquitted himself well in the 2026 regular season, splitting time between advanced Class-A Fort Worth and Double-A San Antonio.

McCoy slashed .314/.360/.467 in 25 Double-A games after his midseason promotion — not bad for an off-the-radar prospect whom the Padres signed as an undrafted free agent out of Hofstra in July 2024. Two years later, the Padres' decision looks prescient.

It's a small sample of AFL games — 12 — but McCoy is continuing to make 29 teams look foolish for passing on him out of college. He's got five home runs and a .997 OPS. Strikeouts might be an issue (20 in 48 at-bats), but it might be offset by one number: 116.3.

The exit velocity on McCoy's fifth home run of the AFL season Thursday was not merely high for a minor league game. Only 10 major league batters hit a ball harder in a major league game this year.

That's indicative of a special talent, but not merely for a single night. For rookies with at least 200 balls in play, max exit velocity is more predictive than wRC+. With each additional mile-per-hour of max EV, league-average wOBAcon increases by roughly 11 points and league-average hard% increases by roughly 1.8 percentage points.

In other words, as Alex Chamberlain of FanGraphs notes, increased exit velocity means improved contact quality, which means increased probability of superior production on balls in play. McCoy's 116.3-mph homer is a harbinger of his potential, which he announced rather loudly with one swing against the Glendale Desert Dogs.

Regardless of what he does between now and the end of the AFL season, McCoy just became a prospect to watch.

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