On Sunday night the San Diego Padres made a couple moves to shake up their roster for the final month of the season and to evaluate the team’s future. The Padres released the underachieving Tadahito Iguchi and Brett Tomko. The Padre’s then intend to call up two of the team’s top prospects, lefty starting pitcher Wade LeBlanc and second basemen Matt Antonelli.

Iguchi certainly underperformed this season, albeit while fighting lingering injuries. It would be surprising if Iguchi is playing in North America in 2009, if he is, he certainly won’t get more then a minor league contract or a Spring Training invite. I had figured Iguchi’s strong career line drive rate would transition nicely to spacious PETCO field-I was wrong.

Tomko’s tenure in San Diego was short lived and it is difficult to believe that he will be around Major League Baseball beyond this. Had Brett managed to stay healthy he would have had a much nicer career.

Entering the 2008 season, Antonelli was one of baseball’s top middle infield prospects. He has shown an outstanding eye at the plate throughout his career and recently displayed a nice power stroke. Antonelli has struggled in triple-A this season, although his plate discipline has remained exceptional.

The 22 year old second basemen is a prospect that was named #27 by MiLB.com, #39 by Baseball Prospectus’ Kevin Goldstein, #51 by Baseball America, #93 by ESPN.com’s Keith Law, and John Sickels tabbed Antonelli as the #21 hitting prospect in all of baseball sandwiched between Geovanny Soto and Elvis Andrus-some pretty good company. It will be interesting to see how Antonelli performs in September as this will be his tryout for the 2009 season.

Wade LeBlanc is an interesting prospect, specifically, because of his home ball park. Despite not owning absolutely dominating stuff, LeBlanc has managed to post a strikeout rate of just under a k per inning. If he can continue to control the strikezone he should very well be a quality big league starter. I’m thinking in the mold of David Bush or Joe Blanton.

I’ve always appreciated this type of management. There is rarely a need to keep players around that don’t have a long term future within the organization. And why not give some youngsters a crack at showing what they can do. At the very least, this allows the club to have a better idea of what they have for the following season.