This story was excerpted from Daniel Kramer’s Mariners Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
SEATTLE -- The season in Seattle is reaching the stage where youngsters are becoming the center of conversation.
In just the past five days, a recent callup has been the club’s most prominent storyline of that given game -- be it Michael Arroyo earning his Major League promotion on Sunday, Lazaro Montes’ jaw-dropping, 474-foot homer on Tuesday or Kade Anderson’s punctuating finish on Wednesday.
The Mariners always envisioned a handful of prospects being a part of their September stretch, but to help them defend their American League West title. Yet, those hopes appear all but lost, as the club -- even after Wednesday’s 3-2 win over Texas -- carried just 4.4% odds to reach October, per FanGraphs.
“The future seems better than the present, but that's only because it's been such a struggle here, especially for these last 30 or 40 days,” Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto said, in a pregame interview with Mariners.TV. “But really excited about the young players that we have that have kind of reached the Major League level and joined what we think is a really stable core to move forward with.”
Here are some notes Dipoto shared on a few prominent prospects, for the rest of this regular season and 2027:
Ryan Sloan (SEA No. 2 / MLB No. 8)
In the early days of Spring Training, Sloan was the talk of camp -- with Anderson -- and there seemed like legitimate potential to dream on the 20-year-old recording consequential outs for the Mariners in a playoff push or October itself.
Multiple scouts in Arizona threw out a loose comparison of what Trey Yesavage did for the Blue Jays last postseason.
But that likelihood for Sloan seemed like a long shot for most of the summer, and especially so as the Mariners tumbled down the American League standings. And Dipoto confirmed that the right-hander’s season will end with Double-A Arkansas’ on Sunday.
“He'll report to high performance camp and go through the normal offseason adjustments,” Dipoto said.
Sloan will be the leading prospect to watch next spring, with a 2027 debut very much on the table.
“Ryan is in that family of some of the ace-type guys that we've had in our rotation over these last five or so years,” Dipoto said, “and he compares very favorably to a guy like George [Kirby], where he has pinpoint precision of a really wide menu of power pitches that give him a chance to do special things.”
Kade Anderson (SEA No. 1 / MLB No. 5)
Dipoto’s interview took place in the moments before Anderson turned in the best of his first four big league starts, when he cleared the sixth inning and earned his first Major League win as the pitcher of record.
The Mariners had loosely targeted a workload around 135 innings in his first pro season, which would leave him about 25 remaining. That’d put him in line to make at least three more starts, with two off-days that they can work around to keep him closer to the seven-day routine he’d been on before being promoted from Arkansas.
“We've intentionally limited his pitches to allow for him to contribute at the big league level right now,” Dipoto said. “And in September, we were hoping that it was going to put us in a position to make the postseason.”
Michael Arroyo (SEA No. 3 / MLB No. 45)
The 21-year-old has made just one start in three games since being called up, which was at second base on Sunday, the day he was promoted.
Arroyo’s positional fit has long been his biggest question mark, and Dipoto shed some light on what that could look like longer term.
“The intention was that as we move forward, the ability to mix in as a right-handed alternative to Cole Young at second base, as a right-handed alternative around the diamond. We thought he paired very well, particularly with Brendan Donovan. They play similar positions and have that type of versatility.
“We don't think Michael's likely to play a number of different spots, but it's possible in the future. You could see him pick up the other corner outfield or first base as alternatives. The left side of the infield is not as easy for him from an arm perspective.”
Lazaro Montes (SEA No. 5 / MLB No. 56)
Before Montes sent one to territory that no one could recall seeing at T-Mobile Park -- the concourse beyond center field -- there was the nine-pitch strikeout that he said helped set him up to do damage.
In that at-bat, he missed quite a few fastballs up in the strike zone, which remains an area for improvement. But then on the homer, he demolished one at the bottom of the zone.
“He's generally patient,” Dipoto said. “He takes his walks, and he is going to strike out a fair bit. And part of that is what you saw last night with the high fastball and the adjustments that he'll make as he gets that ball down. And when he gets it down, as you saw [Tuesday] night, it gets really loud really fast.”