The showcase circuit is a grind, and Kash Mayfield was feeling it at the end of his junior year.
Stressful innings. Fatigue. Wear and tear.
So he did the unthinkable for a high-end draft prospect.
He took the summer off.
“Didn’t want to go into the summer and possibly risk an injury,” Mayfield said. “ … Just kind of developing my whole body again, strengthen my shoulder back, strengthen my core and my legs and basically my whole body so that I could go back into the Super 60, perform well there and … then have a great senior season. That ended up being a really good decision to take the summer off.
“I don’t think I would be in this situation if I didn’t.”
The situation?
The 19-year-old Mayfield was selected No. 25 overall by the Padres on Sunday, the first of two high-school left-handers picked by the organization to start the amateur draft.
After drafting a two-time Gatorade Oklahoma Baseball Player of the Year out of Elk City High School, the Padres used their second-round pick on 6-foot-8 Boston Bateman out of Camarillo’s Adolfo Camarillo High School to continue the organization’s trend of fishing in prep pools.
It is the eighth straight year that Preller’s Padres have selected a high-schooler with their first selection of the draft, a run that includes 2024 All-Stars Jackson Merrill and C.J. Abrams and pieces that helped complete trades for Juan Soto and Luis Arraez over the last couple of years.
It is the second time in the last three years that the Padres selected a pair of high school pitchers with their first two picks. They picked Dylan Lesko and Robby Snelling to start the 2022 draft and watched both quickly land in industry top-100 lists.
“The good ones come quick,” Padres president of Baseball Operations A.J. Preller said Sunday evening.
They are banking on both Mayfield and Bateman to join those ranks, the latter the largest high schooler that Chris Kemp, the Padres’ vice president of amateur and international scouting, has laid eyes on.
“We love the way he competes and just love the stuff out the hand, the way he goes about it,” Kemp said. “It’s an outlier frame. We believe there’s huge upside here with Boston.”
An LSU recruit, Bateman was ranked No. 57 in the draft class by MLB.com. He boasts a fastball that touches 97 mph and a big curveball.
As the 52nd overall pick in the draft, Bateman comes with a recommended signing bonus of $1.76 million.
The slot for the Padres’ first-round pick is $3.44 million — or more than a third of the $9.36 million they can spend on the 2024 draft.
The senior season that Mayfield put up looks to be worth every penny.
He allowed four hits all season, just one earned run and piled up 115 strikeouts over 44 innings in leading Elk City to the state semifinals. The 6-foot-4, 200-pound Mayfield’s overall athleticism also showed well at the plate as he paired a 1.593 OPS with two homers and 21 steals in 22 attempts.
Mayfield was ranked No. 27 in the class by MLB.com, which graded his changeup an “advanced” weapon to throw off a fastball that leapt from the high-80s the spring of his junior year to as high as 97 mph after taking a break from throwing last summer.
“He does it easy,” Kemp said. “His fastball will be 93-96, he throws a lot of strikes. He’s a winner. I think he only lost one high school game in his career. We love the person, the work ethic and just the overall upside of the package.”
Of course, so does Oklahoma State, but Mayfield isn’t anticipating any signing issues.
“This is something I’ve always wanted to do ever since I was a little kid,” Mayfield said. “I was gonna go play at Oklahoma State. But pro ball was always that top pick that I was wanting to do ever since I was a little kid. So I’m extremely excited to start doing this.”
MLB DRAFT
Day 1 Padres picks
No. 25: LHP Kash Mayfield, Elk City HS (Okla.)
No. 52: LHP Boston Bateman, Camarillo HS
Rounds 3-10: 11 a.m. Monday (MLB.com)
Rounds 11-20: 11 a.m. Tuesday (MLB.com)
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