Padres Could Call Up 25-Year-Old Outfielder for MLB Debut Amid Torrid Start – Sports Illustrated

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Even the best prospects in minor league baseball are notorious for their uneven development curves. So it is with Jase Bowen.
The outfielder was chosen to participate in the 2023 Fall Stars Game, a showcase for the best of the best minor leaguers from the Arizona Fall League.
Two years later, however, Bowen was allowed to walk in free agency by the Pittsburgh Pirates. When the San Diego Padres signed him to a minor league contract last November, Bowen was hardly seen as a future major league contributor.
Now 25, Bowen is showing the Pirates they might have made a mistake.
In 32 games at Triple-A El Paso, the Padres' top farm team, Bowen is slashing .277/.333/.615. His astronomical slugging percentage has been buoyed by 10 home runs, four triples and six doubles.
Bowen's isolated power of .338 (slugging percentage minus batting average) this season is in line with the career averages of Mark McGwire, Josh Gibson or Babe Ruth — the three greatest sluggers in MLB history by that metric. But it's legitimate enough that he might be in line for a call-up.
"Sure, it’s the Pacific Coast League," Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune wrote of Bowen, "but he has legit power, runs fast and plays adept outfield."
Acee goes on to suggest that Bryce Johnson, who's 30 years old and out of options, might lose his job to Bowen unless an injury otherwise changes the Padres' outfield picture.
"Johnson is a winning piece, and the Padres risk losing him because he cannot be optioned to the minor leagues," Acee continued. "But he is the least-used player on the roster because he is a defensive replacement, does not slug and can’t pinch-run for runners who aren’t on base."
Johnson is slashing .208/.269/.292 in 19 games. He's batted only 24 times despite spending the entire season in the majors.
Johnson is a switch-hitter. Bowen is a right-handed hitter, and the Padres have plenty of those on their bench (Ty France, Nick Castellanos) and in their outfield (Ramón Laureano, Fernando Tatis Jr.). Designated hitter Miguel Andujar also bats righty.
Other than that, the case for Bowen is fairly straightforward. The Padres are slugging .370 as a team, 24th in MLB, and could use exactly what Bowen brings to the table.
The Padres would need to make a corresponding 40-man roster move as well as a 26-man roster move to add him to their major league club.
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J.P. Hoornstra is an On SI Contributor. A veteran of 20 years of sports coverage for daily newspapers in California, J.P. covered MLB, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Los Angeles Angels (occasionally of Anaheim) from 2012-23 for the Southern California News Group. His first book, The 50 Greatest Dodgers Games of All-Time, published in 2015. In 2016, he won an Associated Press Sports Editors award for breaking news coverage. He once recorded a keyboard solo on the same album as two of the original Doors.
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