Kade Anderson joins Skenes, Strasburg as college aces to enjoy meteoric rise
This browser does not support the video element.
When Paul Skenes was taken as the No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 Draft, the clock for his Major League debut started instantaneously. It might have even started during his junior season at Louisiana State as the most dominant pitcher college baseball had seen in a long time.
There were many who thought he should have made his Major League debut on Opening Day but the highly anticipated event occurred on May 11, 2024. While that first start didn’t quite live up to the hype and buzz, as he allowed three runs on six hits over four innings, though he did strike out seven, it did get the ball rolling for his Rookie of the Year campaign, which of course was followed up by winning National League Cy Young Award honors the following season.
Skenes came immediately to mind when the Mariners announced they were bringing up their top pitching prospect, Kade Anderson, to make his big league debut. He’s the best drafted pitching prospect since Skenes to get called up (Roki Sasaki was the No. 1 prospect in baseball in 2025, but he’s almost in a separate category as an international signee who went directly to the big leagues.). Skenes was the No. 3 overall prospect in baseball when he got the call to join the Pirates, the top-ranked pitcher and the only arm in the top 20. Anderson is No. 5 on the current Top 100, also the top pitching prospect in the game, though he has some company in the top 10 in Double-A teammate Ryan Sloan and the Pirates’ Seth Hernandez.
There are more parallels. Both Skenes and Anderson not only went to LSU, they won Men's College World Series titles in the year they were drafted. Both also took home Most Outstanding Player honors for their lead roles in the Tigers’ march through Omaha. Even with all of those similarities, there’s no question whose debut announcement caused more excitement. Anderson might be the most dominant pitcher in the Minors, with Mariners and prospect fans wondering when he would leave Double-A Arkansas. But Skenes was … Skenes, and an argument can be made that his was the most highly anticipated big league debut in a generation.
There have been other big pitching debuts over the years. Putting Shohei Ohtani in a different stratosphere, there have been buzz-creating debuts from high-end hurlers like Lucas Giolito, the No. 1 prospect in the game when he took the mound for the Nationals in late June of 2016. The Dodgers had called up 19-year-old Julio Urias, MLB’s No. 2 prospect, about a month before that. The Mariners have done this dance before, calling up No. 4 overall prospect Taijuan Walker at the end of August back in 2013. Dating back to when MLB.com started ranking prospects in 2004, Anderson will be the 16th pitching prospect ranked in the top 5 overall at the time of his debut, all with varying degrees of anticipation.
It’s hard to quantify hype, but the buzz around Anderson belongs pretty high up in the conversation of whose debut carried the largest expectations. The Mariners are trying to hang around a playoff race, an excitement additive Skenes didn’t have. Neither did the other pitching prospect who could challenge Skenes on the anticipation-meter: Stephen Strasburg.
Strasburg was, in many ways, Skenes 1.0. The No. 1 overall pick in the 2009 Draft, the best and most dominant pitcher in college baseball. He didn’t have a College World Series trophy to hoist like Skenes and Anderson, but he also was the slam-dunk, no-doubt-about-it choice to go in the top spot, while Skenes was joined by LSU teammate Dylan Crews as contender to go 1-1. And Anderson, while in the conversation, ended up being the second college arm chosen when the Angels cut a deal to take Tyler Bremner No. 2 overall.
All three were assumed, correctly, to make it to the big leagues quickly, and when Anderson starts on Saturday, he’ll finish the trifecta of top college arms making a big league debut in their first season of pro ball. Skenes and Strasburg went in May and June, but it’s still an impressive feat, with Anderson the first player from the Class of 2025 to hit the highest level.
The 22-year-old lefty, and the Mariners, can only hope his debut measures up to what Strasburg did on June 8, 2010. Facing the Pirates, he allowed two runs over seven innings, striking out 14 without walking a batter, just one off the record for K’s in an MLB debut. That’s by far the gold standard of first starts among top pitching prospects. Overall, in those 15 previous starts, pitching prospects have combined to go 4-3 with a 3.84 ERA. Over 68 total innings, they whiffed 64 and walked 28 while allowing 61 hits.
Of course, one start does not make a career, and a pitcher should be evaluated based on the breadth of that career, not how it starts. Here’s how the other 15 pitchers who were top 5 overall prospects at the time of their debuts have fared to date, listed in order of career bWAR and their debut year in parentheses:
Clayton Kershaw (2008): 80.9
Zack Grienke (2004): 77.4
Félix Hernández (2005): 49.8
Madison Bumgarner (2009): 37.2
Stephen Strasburg (2010): 32.3
Shohei Ohtani (2018): 19.2 (pitching WAR only)
Rick Porcello (2009): 18.8
Paul Skenes (2024): 15.8
Lucas Giolito (2016): 14.0
Julio Urias (2016): 13.8
Taijuan Walker (2013): 12.2
Phil Hughes (2007): 11.0
Dylan Bundy (2012): 7.5
Homer Bailey (2007): 6.2
Roki Sasaki (2025): 0.8