Padres bet big on a Sun Devil bat you've never heard of

Buried on day two of the MLB Draft, the Padres quietly made one of the more interesting bets of the class. San Diego took Arizona State second baseman Nu'u Contrades in the 6th round at pick No. 186, then paid him like a much earlier pick.

Jim Callis

@jimcallisMLB

6th-rder Nu'u Contrades signs w/@Padres for $300k (slot 186 value = $350,100). @ASU_Baseball 2B, bat-to-ball skills, broke out with .366/.434/.732 line & nearly as many HR (21) as K (28) during redshirt junior season. @MLBDraft

The number Jim Callis flagged says everything about how San Diego views him: a $300,000 bonus against a slot value of just $350,100 for pick 186. That's not draft-and-follow money, that's "we like this guy more than his round" money. The industry-standard 5th-round-value price tag on a 6th-round pick is the kind of overslot deal teams reserve for bats they think are underrated.

The stat line behind it is legit. Contrades hit.366 with a.979 OPS, 21 home runs and 61 RBI in his redshirt junior year at ASU, an All-Big 12 first-team season that dwarfed his first three years combined, in which he'd hit just 15 homers total. The eye-popping part isn't the power, it's the ratio: 21 homers against only 28 strikeouts is a bat-to-ball skill set that scouts almost never see paired with legitimate pop.

Contrades wasn't the only Sun Devil cashing in. Arizona State sent 10 players off the board in this draft, the most the program has had picked in a single class under head coach Willie Bloomquist, and third-most of any school this year. That kind of program-wide breakout tends to validate the coaching staff's development model, and it makes San Diego's overslot bet look less like a hunch and more like buying into a proven pipeline.

For a Padres org that has leaned heavily on college bats with contact skills over the last few drafts, Contrades fits a type. He's not a top-100 prospect walking in the door, but $300,000 says the front office thinks the strikeout-to-homer ratio translates against wood-bat-caliber pitching in the low minors. Now it's on player development to find out whether that swing plays as he climbs, starting in short-season ball this summer.