PEORIA, Ariz. -- In many ways, every way in which each goes about it is drastically different from the other.
Yet, in equally as many ways, that’s part of the organizational allure centered on Kade Anderson and Ryan Sloan, the next arms anticipated off the Mariners’ assembly line of homegrown starting pitchers.
- Anderson is listed at 6-foot-2, 172 pounds; Sloan at 6-foot-5, 220 pounds.
- Anderson throws left-handed; Sloan is righty
- Anderson already knows the spotlight, earning MVP honors in last year’s College World Series while leading LSU to the title; Sloan was in high school just two years ago in Illinois, a state not exactly known as a baseball hotbed
The separators go on, but there is one distinct similarity -- the Mariners see both as big parts of their not-too-distant plans.
“Obviously, Kade hasn't thrown a professional pitch yet, and Ryan hasn’t pitched above A-ball, but you would never know it by watching the way they go about their business, how they command the ball, the consistency and repeating their stuff,” Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto said. “I don't imagine either one of them is going to spend a heck of a lot of time in the high Minors.”
Anderson and Sloan have been the talk of Seattle’s early camp -- yes, for their lofty pedigree, but also for how their stuff has backed it. Each was part of the first live batting practices over the weekend, which began earlier than usual for hitters departing for the World Baseball Classic.
“I feel like with both of them, it’s the mature approach already,” said Trent Blank, Mariners director of pitching strategy.
The southpaw wowed by working around a 3-0 count to Cal Raleigh then getting the 60-homer slugger to pop out on a fastball that dotted the outer half, a by-design location after the sequence’s first pitches were borderline. He then struck out the next three in order -- Randy Arozarena, Miles Mastrobuoni and Dominic Canzone -- all on breaking balls, including the 12-6 curve that scouts have likened to Max Fried’s.
What shined most was Anderson’s cerebralness, which mirrored in his first bullpen two days prior. When a pitch didn’t go his way, facial expressions were firm, but he was quickly able to move onto the next pitch.
“That's what makes me who I am,” Anderson said. “I'm a really competitive dude.”
These were among the first pitches that Anderson had thrown to hitters since the College World Series last June. Weeks later, he was taken by the Mariners with the No. 3 overall pick -- when he fell into their lap after being passed on, and via the MLB Draft lottery, of which they were the sport’s biggest winners.
Anderson won MVP in Omaha largely due to his complete-game shutout in Game 1 vs. Coastal Carolina, in which he threw a whopping 130 pitches. That high workload, coupled with his 119 innings in the regular season, was why the Mariners opted to shut him down the rest of the year.
Instead, Anderson focused on conditioning and added roughly 15 pounds of muscle -- which the club hopes can correlate to sustaining an even higher volume in his first pro season.
“It's never good enough, necessarily, in my eyes,” Anderson said. “Like, there's always a chance to grow. Obviously, I'm trying to put on as much weight as I can. I'm a skinnier guy, but I need all I can get.”
Meanwhile, Sloan is built like a tight end -- but teammates heckle him for a far younger facial expression.
“If you gave me his headshot, I’d think he's like 12,” Bryan Woo said. “When you send me a picture of his body, I’d think he's like 25, a body builder. He's got legs like a centaur.”
Sloan throws harder than Anderson, approaching 100 mph, and he pairs the heater with a firmer slider, a changeup that he calls his favorite -- and a two-seamer that he unveiled for the first time against hitters on Sunday that hit 98 mph.
In his live BP, Sloan battled for eight pitches vs. Raleigh before an antsy Josh Naylor ended it by chirping Raleigh out of the box, after which he rolled over a hard groundout. Then came the headliner, a strikeout to Arozarena that ended with the slugger chasing a slider that had 20 inches of vertical break, per Blank, and led to his bat sailing down the third-base line.
The Mariners are delicately installing the two-seamer and will encourage a higher changeup usage in ‘26, after he threw it 8% last year, per Synergy data that tracks the Minors -- both of which, they hope, will give him a four-pitch mix that’ll be vital as he climbs the ranks.
Because the strike-throwing ability is already there. Sloan threw first-pitch strikes to 73% of batters last year, per Synergy, which led to 90 in 82 innings.
“The Mariners do a really good job at giving you the confidence to throw your stuff in the zone,” Sloan said. “So at the end of the day, my stuff is above-average, so I'm just going to throw it down the middle, and in the long run, I'm going to be really good.”