Below is an analysis of the prospects in the Seattle Mariners farm system. Scouting reports were compiled based on information gathered from industry sources and my own observations. This is the sixth year we’ve defined two expected relief roles, the abbreviations of which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year in which a player must be added to the 40-man roster in order to avoid Rule 5 draft eligibility. Manual adjustments are made where appropriate, but we use this as a rule of thumb.
A brief overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. There is a much deeper overview to be found here.
All prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource that provides the site with sortable scouting information for each organization. It provides more detail (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates each team’s list so readers can compare prospects between company systems. It can be found here.
Other notable prospects
Grouped by type and ranked in order of preference within each category.
Deep arms with a hint of upward force
Po-Chun Lin, RHP
Chia Shi ShenRHP
Charlie BeilensonRHP
Peyton AlfordLHP
Jimmy JoyceRHP
Lin is a wild card. He left Taiwan for $460,000 in the 2025 international window and is now healthy after not throwing any games since signing. There’s a push and pull all over his profile. It has hit the mid-90s, but is much lower. He is a good athlete with body control, but also a violent delivery. He was once a two-way player and now has two substitutions. There’s simply less known about him than pretty much everyone else on this list, to the point where I didn’t feel comfortable giving him a full profile. Signed to a Taiwanese semi-pro league, Shen has great body control and a bit of deception in how long he holds the ball. It has a nice variety, but the stuff is otherwise frilly. Beilenson’s mix of 70 control, average stuff and below-average commands is an unusual, dinger-prone mix. He could really use a few more ticks as his low-to-mid 90s fastball plays below the number. I’m skeptical that Alford’s fastball will continue to miss bats like it has in the mid-tier league, but he’s left-handed and has two above-average breaking balls, so he could eventually find his way into the mix. Joyce once looked like a plausible backend starter. He sputtered in the upper minors and is out at least until July due to the shoulder injury that sidelined him last spring.
DSL guys
Leandro RomeroSS
Elias PerezBY
Manuel Almeidac
Kendry MartinezIF
Romero signed for $1 million in the 2024 international class. He’s an extremely projectable shortstop who hit much better on his second run through the DSL, but I don’t like his swing. He is the most interesting position player in the Others of Interest section. Perez was paid $600,000 in the class of 2025 and played center when Yorger Bautista was out. He’ll have to shorten his swing length or get a lot stronger, but he has a plan and can hit a little bit. I’m afraid he’s physically maturing early. Almeida is a catcher with pop, but currently a poor glove, and despite a good year overall, his lack of contact was concerning given the level. Martínez signed for $2.5 million ahead of the 2025 season, but his first professional campaign was a disaster.
Undersized older signees from Mexico
Juan CazarezRHP
Francisco PazosRHP
Angel ChicuateRHP
Maximo RodriguezRHP
Cazarez runs his heat into the mid-nineties. He has a nice delivery and can turn a bit, but he is a stiffer athlete. He doesn’t miss many bats in a length roll, but he may have the highest relief ceiling in this group. The square Pazos hits 95 and has a feel for throwing shots and spinning the ball. Models seem to like him more than scouts. Chicuate is small and barely pitched last year, but he hit 96 with interesting pitch data. Rodriguez, now 20, was signed from the Mexican League, where he pitched a handful of innings as an 18-year-old. Fittingly for a man who was teammates with more than a dozen former big leaguers, he is polished for his age. He’s a deceptive sinker-slider guy who generates tremendous tail and sink on his two-sieve, and combines it with a pretty good breaking ball. He sits either side of 90 and isn’t physically projectable, but the story is good enough to highlight, and there are plenty of guys who have made an up-down career from worse ingredients.
Outfielders, mainly from the higher levels
Rhylan ThomasBY
Spencer PackardL.F
Victor LabradaL.F
Jared SundstromBY
Carlos JimenezC.F
Thomas made his debut in 2025. He is a spray hitter with a great feel for contact and the strike zone, but I would round up to get him to power 30 and that is killer. I’m curious to see if he can hit .400 in Korea. Packard has a good approach and a short swing helps him put seemingly everything into play. However, the contact is not very firm and it is underpowered in a corner. I’m skeptical he’ll make it work long term, but maybe he can hit .275 for a while and give the big league club a complementary line mover amid all the power bats. Another Triple-A tweener, Labrada can hit a bit, but he has some 40s on the card everywhere else. Sundstrom is a good athlete with tweener tools and an aggressive approach that caught up with him in Double-A. Jimenez, a Low-A repeater, is a good athlete with average power and above-average speed, but a 30 strike.
Walking in Relief Wonderland
Grant KnippRHP
Michael HobbsRHP
Brock MooreRHP
StefanRHP
Elijah DaleRHP
Emphasis on ‘walking’. Knipp was a two-way player at Campbell. He only appeared in four games there, but he hit 100 mph at the 2024 Combine. He got TJ just before the 2025 season; we’ll see what it looks like in 2026. Hobbs is running a plus curve and also has an interesting mix of things. The effort in his delivery is such that I shudder with sympathy at every throw; we don’t have to call the Hardy boys to find out why he’s walking people. Moore is touching triple digits and his slider is flashing plus, but he’s a stiff athlete with a big hit to the head and bigger control issues. Raeth is trying to become the latest Washington Husky to play for the Mariners. He is a spin-to-win right-hander who leans on his sweeper. He found some extra gas in 2024, breathing life into a man who looked like an organizational arm earlier in his career. Dale’s sense of running a hard sweeper at a speed other than 30 degrees is an outlier; maybe something useful can be made of it.
Backstop Backstop
GrantJayc
Jos Caronc
Jay has good hands, a strong arm and looks like a heads-up defender behind the dish. His bat is scary though. He has power, but also a dominant bottom swing with a steep path and a lot of swing and miss against the competition. He could be a backup. Caron has the tools to be a leadoff catcher, but his aggressive approach was offset by A-ball arms.
System overview
This is the most stratified system in the game. As Eric wrote last year, most farms of this size are among the worst in baseball, but Seattle’s is not just good, it’s great. Teams especially covet bats these days, and the Mariners have five at the 50 FV level or better, even after the trade Harry Ford and graduation Cole Young. They have one low variance 55 in Colt Emerson, with several possible stars lurking behind him. If they get two regulars with more than two wins from that group, it will be a big step in the right direction for the big league club. If even half of the 50s live up to their expectations, they will likely be annual pennant contenders.
Stars and scrubs is a risky way to build an agricultural system, and generally we favor a more diffuse spending approach, especially in Latin America. The Mariners are the league’s best counter to that philosophy. Even with a touch here and there (Calm down Joseph signed for $3 million and may never escape the complex), Seattle’s success rate in big-dollar signings is very high. The scouting and development system deserves a lot of credit for focusing on elite and malleable talent, and has more than earned the benefit of the doubt regarding the way it works. When you hit like that on your big swings, there’s no reason to dial things back.
Strangely enough for a club that scouts and develops so well, there are a lot of org guys taking up space on the farm. For a player development group that has had success in different ways with different pitchers – think about it George Kirby’s velo-peak, Bryce Molenaar’s split, Logan Gilbert’s evolving pitch mix and approach, which extends Logan Evansfinding a lower slot for Tyler Cleveland, etc. – the system’s depth pieces feel cookie-cutter. So many arms turn into spin-to-win sweeper monsters, often with lower slots on their breakers than the heat, in a way that will never fool quality hitters. Seattle has also taken advantage of some opportunities to add depth on the position player side. The Mariners only have one DSL team, and most of the ACL lineup was hilariously old and out of tools for this level. Up and down the system there are many players without projectable tools, many of whom stick around longer than on other teams. This isn’t a criticism, just an observation and perhaps an inevitability given all the over-slot signees Seattle has prioritized. The shape of the system may be unusual, but it is certainly functional.
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