The Situation: The September roster expansion is a pretty good time to get your top prospects some major-league experience while acclimating them to life in the big leagues. It’s perhaps a little more unusual to do it with a top catching prospect in the middle of a playoff race, but here’s Ethan Salas.

Background: Salas was one of, if not the top, IFA prospects of 2023 and was promoted aggressively by the Padres (in every sense of the phrase). As a 17-year-old he immediately came stateside and started his pro career in the full-season Cal League, making it to Double-A before the end of the year. His top-line numbers and even his underlying metrics were darn good for a 17-year-old at those levels, but it was difficult to parse exactly what Salas was going to be—even beyond normal teenaged catcher variance. Still, given his age, defensive projection, and performance, we ranked Salas among the best prospects in all of baseball, slotting him in 12th overall before the 2024 season. He settled in for a full-season in the Midwest League in 2025, but scuffled to a .206/.288/.311 line and then missed almost the entire 2025 season with a back injury (always what you want from a 19-year-old catching prospect). A healthy Salas bounced back in 2026, though, putting up a nice line in the Texas League and then raking for a month in El Paso. He’s only just turned 20 years old, and will be the youngest catcher in the majors since Dioner Navarro.