San Diego made it official on Tuesday: Ethan Salas, its No. 1 prospect and MLB's No. 23 overall, is coming up as part of September roster expansion. He's 20 years old, which makes him the youngest player in the majors right now the moment he steps on a field.
The Padres are calling up catcher Ethan Salas, per @sdutKevinAcee. He is San Diego's No. 1 prospect and set to be the youngest player in the Majors at 20-years-old.
The number that actually stops you: youngest catcher to reach the majors since Iván Rodríguez did it at 19 back in 1991. Pudge is a first-ballot Hall of Famer. That's the company Salas is keeping before he's even caught his first big-league inning.
This wasn't a straight-line path. Salas signed for $5.6 million as a 16-year-old out of Venezuela and was regarded as the best catching prospect in years, but a rough 2024 and an injury-banged 2025 knocked him all the way down to No. 63 on some boards entering this season. He answered it: a combined.296/.374/.448 with 10 home runs and 47 walks across Double-A San Antonio and Triple-A El Paso this year, capped by a.326 average with El Paso that made the call-up impossible to ignore.
Padres are calling up 20-year-old catcher Ethan Salas, per @sdutKevinAcee Salas is San Diego's #1 prospect and MLB's #23 overall prospect
The timing isn't a courtesy call-up to reward a good farm season. San Diego enters play holding the third and final NL wild-card spot, up half a game on Arizona, in what's shaping up to be a dogfight through the final month. Catching Kevin Acee described it as reporting the move first, and the Padres front office clearly isn't treating this as a look — they need outs, at-bats and a defensive-minded backstop who can help them hold on.
Throwing a 20-year-old catcher into a playoff push is a real bet, not just a feel-good story. Catcher is the position where experience usually matters most — game-calling, framing, managing a pitching staff under pressure — and San Diego is choosing upside over safety with the season on the line.
Whether Salas actually starts games behind the plate or eases in as a bat off the bench will say a lot about how much the Padres trust him right now. Either way, the youngest player in baseball is about to be a September storyline whether San Diego hangs onto that wild-card spot or not.