Months before he made his minor-league debut or acquired his driver’s license, Ethan Salas found himself drawing the kind of attention many major leaguers never experience.
His first interview on MLB Network came on live television last Jan. 16, the day after the San Diego Padres signed him for $5.6 million — and seven months after his 16th birthday. Salas spent the next afternoon touring Petco Park and fielding questions from local media inside the home clubhouse. He soon returned to the building to sign hundreds of autographs at the Padres’ annual fan festival. Several weeks later, after he had caught bullpen sessions for Yu Darvish and Joe Musgrove, Salas caught the final four innings of a big-league spring training game.
The Padres deliberately exposed Salas to such environments, believing the teenager possessed a poise beyond his years. Later, as they weighed where to begin his career, team officials carefully observed Salas amid the quiet and obscurity of extended spring training in Peoria, Ariz.
“Spring training is very busy, very hectic, and he did great in spring training, but once you get past the excitement of spring training, we want to see if he’s going to be mature day in and day out,” assistant farm director Mike Daly said last week. “Was he going to be able to show up early each and every day? Was he going to be able to get in the weight room each and every day? Was he going to be able to do his recovery? Was he going to be able to do his catching drills at a high level?”
Salas, in the Padres’ estimation, passed every one of those tests. A sore throwing shoulder delayed his organizational debut until late last May when he became the first 16-year-old to play for a full-season affiliate since Julio Urías in 2013. Salas logged a robust .837 OPS in 48 games with Low-A Lake Elsinore. Amid aggressive promotions to High-A Fort Wayne and Double-A San Antonio, he struggled on offense before a knee sprain ended what was still a uniquely successful season in early September.
Now, a year after he signed with San Diego, Salas is 17, back to full health and widely considered one of the five best prospects in baseball. The Padres expect to add another heralded international player, shortstop Leodalis De Vries when the 2024 international signing period opens on Monday. They also expect to continue accelerating the education of a fellow teenager: The Padres have not yet announced their non-roster invitees to major-league spring training, but it would be a surprise if Salas is not one of them.
17-year-old Ethan Salas walks it off for his first Double-A hit!@Padres | @missionsmilb pic.twitter.com/SRaD1Pkuur
— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) August 23, 2023
Salas, in his brief time in professional baseball, has demonstrated a smooth lefty swing, uncommon plate discipline and precocious defense behind the plate. His talent and physical traits give him the upside of a perennial All-Star catcher. Meanwhile, his maturity could encourage an organization known for pushing its prospects to pursue a big-league appearance before the end of the 2024 season. Even if Salas does not arrive until next year, he still could become the first teenager to catch in the majors since Ivan Rodriguez in 1991.
“This guy’s 17 years old, and he’s like this old soul that just kind of gets it,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said last month. “So, I’m clearly going to get to know him further and deeper. But I’m really impressed by his ability. I’m impressed by how together this dude is and how he really handles himself for everything that’s being thrown at him. And that’s another important part of the development process, is how do we make sure that he gets a lot thrown at him that he’s still emotionally and mentally in a good spot.”
Salas had a lot thrown at him since before he entered the organization. The son of a former minor-league catcher and the younger brother of Minnesota Twins shortstop prospect Jose Salas Jr., he split his childhood between Florida, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, where he caught in a professional winter ball game a few months after turning 16. His polish and work ethic quickly became evident last spring. Padres officials said Salas, who converses fluently in both English and Spanish, was the first player at the team’s complex every day during minor-league camp and extended spring training. In his Cactus League cameo in March, he showcased deft receiving skills and handled a PitchCom hiccup by calmly calling time.
Player development staffers already had considered starting Salas in the Arizona Complex League, an advanced assignment for someone the age of a high school junior. They came away from that big league exhibition — as well as Double-A spring games, including one in which Salas tripled against Seattle Mariners starter George Kirby — further convinced that Salas could be ready to handle a higher level.
“To see the way that he handled it in such a professional way and just not let the moment kind of speed up on him, that’s when you realize, ‘Hey, man, this guy has something that’s a little different, a little special,’” Daly said.
Soon after joining Lake Elsinore, Salas validated that belief. He collected two hits in each of his first two games and drew seven walks across his first five. He finished his 10-week stint in Low A with nine home runs, near-even splits against righty and lefty pitching, and a 21 percent chase rate that illustrated rare strike-zone awareness.
“Especially for younger players, that’s a great foundational aspect to have,” Daly said. “You don’t have to spend a lot of time working with him in really trying to understand balls and strikes or being able to not chase or anything like that. Now you’re able to really drill down into what your hot zones are, where you really drive the ball, where you really do damage.”
Salas did not have nearly as much success after being moved to High A in early August and, just nine games later, going to Double A. In a small sample between the two levels, he hit .190 with six walks and 18 strikeouts. Those struggles were perhaps predictable, given his extreme youth. They also could be viewed as reflective of a front office guilty of pushing some prospects too quickly. Since 2015, only three position players who were developed in San Diego’s system — Fernando Tatis Jr., Ty France and Jack Suwinski — have recorded a season of more than 2.5 FanGraphs WAR. Tatis could be described as an outlier talent. France and Suwinski emerged as major-league regulars after the Padres traded them.
The Padres, in describing their rationale for the late-summer promotions, cited Salas’ immense talent and their desire for the catcher to experience San Antonio’s playoff push while working with better pitchers. Team officials even considered jumping Salas directly from Low A to Double A, although Daly noted that that discussion included other prospects and was “not unique” to Salas. Still, the industry consensus was that virtually any other organization would have been content to keep Salas in Low A for the entire season or to have him end the year at High A.
“I think that you could definitely make a case that he could’ve stayed at Low A. You can make a case that he should have stayed at High A,” Daly said. “We ultimately made that decision to send him to Double A. Development is not linear. … I think we feel Ethan is a special talent who we feel has a chance to advance quickly in the system and has shown the capability of taking on challenges and handling them very well.
“We did feel that he was starting to get a feel for Double A (before Salas sprained his right knee moving to block a ball),” Daly added. “He was not overmatched by that.”
The Top 10 catching prospects list is led by 17-year-old Ethan Salas and also features three players with MLB experience: https://t.co/LbM59YYK1Y pic.twitter.com/drbwivq07l
— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) August 17, 2023
The Padres sought to protect Salas and ease his development in other ways. They had him alternate, for most of the summer, between catching and serving as a designated hitter. (Salas finished the season with only 287 innings behind the plate. Later, after his knee healed, the Padres opted not to have him play in the Arizona Instructional League.) Daly mentioned Lake Elsinore manager Pete Zamora, bench coach Jhonaldo Pozo and catching coordinator Brian Whatley as a few of the instructors who spent considerable time reviewing games and discussing the sport’s mental side with Salas. And weeks earlier, the Padres held up an iconic athlete as inspiration.
During extended spring training, Daly said, Arizona Complex League manager Lukas Ray, a few other staffers and a handful of prospects — including Salas and pitching prospect Dylan Lesko — routinely gathered to watch “The Last Dance,” the documentary miniseries that delves into the career of Michael Jordan.
Before each episode, the minor leaguers were handed two questions on paper. Afterward, they talked about what they had just watched, using the prepared questions as prompts. One example: Fans and money are taken away. What brings you to the field each day? Another referenced Dennis Rodman, the undersized forward who carved out a career alongside Jordan as an all-time rebounder and defender: Where can you dominate in a “forgotten part” or the “little details” of the game of baseball? The viewings and corresponding discussions, according to Daly, were intended to help grow the players — the youngest player in particular.
The group watched eight of the series’ 10 episodes before Salas left Arizona for Lake Elsinore, where he embarked on a season the Padres now consider a clear success on and off the field. The next steps could include big-league camp as a 17-year-old and then a return to San Antonio or Fort Wayne. In the meantime, some patience is required. Salas will not turn 18 until June 1, and he needs at least another full season to adjust to the physical rigors of professional catching.
Yet, just as in 2023, an aggressive front office is not ruling out significant movement by the end of the year. It remains early, and catching is the most difficult position to develop, but the Padres so far have seen little to disabuse them of a certain notion: Salas appears to possess the ability, and the maturity, to officially debut at Petco Park before his 20th birthday. And maybe well before then.
“Given what Ethan has experienced over the last year, you would hope that he had taken a step towards that goal, but he probably took two or three steps towards that goal,” Daly said. “How many steps that is total, I’m not really sure, but given everything that happened for Ethan and what we were hoping for on January 15 last year and where he is one year later, we could not be more excited and happier for what has transpired over the last year, not just from the production but from the type of person that he’s shown to be day in and day out.
“And we think that’s going to make him a huge target for good fortune and luck in the future, because we just think that he’s going to be able to do things day in and day out, and that’s going to help him advance through the system at his pace but at what we hope is a pretty rapid pace.”
(Photo of Ethan Salas: Tracy Proffitt / Four Seam Images via Associated Press)