Baseball America Gives Seattle Mariners Farm System High Marks Across the Board
There's no telling what the Seattle Mariners will look like in five years. In fact, there's still a lot of debate on what the team will look like just in 2025. But if the current perception of the club's minor league system is any indication, the Mariners could be in a good spot.
Seattle had five prospects ranked in MLB Pipeline's top 100 players rankings and eight players ranked in Baseball America's list at the end of the year. They were the most-represented team in Baseball America's top 100 rankings.
If it wasn't clear by the fact that Baseball America has the Mariners with eight of the top 100 minor leaguers in baseball, the publication continues to view the organization's farm system in high regard.
Baseball America posted two articles ranking all MLB clubs in hitting and pitching Statcast statistics. The publications used hit-plus for the batters and stuff-plus for the pitchers.
Hit-plus is a score that is calculated using wOBA (weighted on base average) as the main baseline. Similar to wRC+ (weighted runs created plus), the average score is 100.
Stuff-plus is a category that takes into account average velocity on a fastball and how well pitchers work their secondary throws off the fastball. The stat takes into account velocity, release and movement.
Baseball America had Seattle's minor leaguers tied for first in stuff-plus with the Los Angeles Dodgers (105.7) and tied for fourth in hit-plus with the Minnesota Twins (112).
According to the publication, the Mariners could have finished higher in hit-plus if it wasn't for some trades made to improve the major league roster:
The Mariners also traded some of their high profile prospects at the trade deadline, such as Aidan Smith (115) in the Randy Arozarena deal with the Rays, as well as prospects who graded high on this metric like RJ Schreck (124) and Jonatan Clase (114) in a deal with the Blue Jays. If they hadn’t made their deadline deals, they would have had the second-highest organization score. But by retaining players such as Colt Emerson (123), Cole Young (121), Michael Arroyo (117), Harry Ford (115), Jonny Farmelo (113) and Felnin Celesten (108), the Mariners are still in good shape and rank fourth in HIT+.
Pretty impressive back-side power shown from Mariners SS prospect Felnin Celesten yesterday. pic.twitter.com/sX7KIjTeRA
— Joe Doyle (@JoeDoyleMiLB) June 1, 2023
On the pitching side of things, the Mariners truly excelled with their secondary pitches. They ranked just below average in stuff-plus for four-seam fastballs (99). In contrast, they were third in stuff-plus in sliders (116) and second in two-seam fastballs (108). The publication had the following analysis when it came to their sliders:
The Mariners, just like we saw with the most arm-side horizontal break amongst four-seam fastballs, also have the most glove-side horizontal break on their sliders, suggesting an emphasis on East-West movement in their draft targets and pitching development.
13 strikeouts by Travelers pitching yesterday & Brandyn Garcia strikes out 2 in a scoreless first inning today. pic.twitter.com/7IUfWR2e0j
— Mariners Minors (@MiLBMariners) August 28, 2024
Seattle's farm system has been considered one of the best in the league for most of the season. The pitching development already spoke for considering the Mariners drafted four-of-five hurlers on their elite starting rotation.
Seattle is still looking to become consistent playoff contenders after missing out on the postseason for the 22nd time in 23 years this past season. But on the player development side of things, it looks like that's been going swimmingly.
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