The Mariners farm was ranked worst in baseball so recently that Baseball America, one of the premiere destinations for prospect rankings, still hasn’t imputed all the newest Mariners into all their lists. The dizzying array of trades made by Jerry Dipoto this off-season has catapulted Seattle’s farm up through the rankings and injected some exciting young talent into a system that was widely seen as lacking impact talent.
While there will be plenty of new faces to learn at the major-league level in Spring Training this year, it’s worth getting to know some of the faces that will be impacting the club in years to come. Bonus: if you’re headed to Spring Training or plan to hit up any minor league games this year, consider this a primer to help when approaching players for autographs. Our Ben Thoen has scoured the grainy pages of minor-league baseball to get you a handy-dandy cheat sheet to 50 notable prospects currently in the Mariners organization. We will make every attempt to keep this list current, but since under Jerry Dipoto, trades are more a matter of “when” not “if”, there will be times where this list does not represent the current composition of the team’s minor leagues.
Methodology: as a staff, we each created an individual ranking of players in the Mariners organization, and then Ben synthesized those rankings into an overall list. While there is mostly agreement among the staff about which names belong in the top ten, there is some dissension regarding positioning among those ten. The back end of the list has much less consensus than the top half of the list, and should be regarded as such; after the entire list is revealed, we will publish a short-form version of the list, along with those who narrowly missed out on securing a spot in the Top 50.
If you haven’t followed the minors in years past, this is a great year to get started. As we’ve had in years past, we will have plenty of in-depth coverage of the minors this year, written from the perspective of a group of people deeply familiar with and invested in the Mariners and their development—something the major prospect sites can’t offer. This year, we plan on expanding our coverage, commensurate with the exciting infusion of young talent into the system. So whether you are a prospect maven or new to the world of the minors, we will provide you information and a space to discuss all Mariners prospects, all the time. We’re excited for the future, and excited to have you with us.