Mariners place six prospects on MLB’s 2021 Top 100 List, two in the Top Five

While every major outlet publishes their own Top 100 lists, the MLB Pipeline list has a special cache as the prospect arm of MLB proper. When people refer to a prospect ranking, generally what they’re talking about—unless they work for one of these other outlets—is the MLB ranking. Thankfully, MLB Pipeline was especially generous to the Mariners system this year, ranking six Seattle prospects in a Top 100 they revealed this evening on Twitter. (Side note though: No announcement show? MLBN running The Natural for the 26th time this week? Throw Jonathan Mayo and Jim Callis up there and have them talk about the prospects, what else are they doing?)

Taylor Trammell just squeaks onto the list at 100, and has system-mate George Kirby (92) as his neighbor. After that it’s a long wait until the low 30s to see the next Mariner players crop up: Logan Gilbert at 33, followed closely by Emerson Hancock at 31. It’s somewhat surprising to see Hancock, who hasn’t thrown a professional pitch, ahead of Gilbert, who has demonstrated success in the high minors, but it speaks to how highly Hancock’s SEC pedigree is regarded. I still think everyone in the prospect world sleeps on Logan Gilbert. But onwards! To! The Top!...Five???

It’s Julioooooooooooooooooooo!

Julio has popped up higher on other peoples’ lists (and much lower, looking at you, Keith Law, whose list I didn’t even bother blurbing this year), but #5 feels...good. Also, five is a cool number, don’t you think? It’s always just felt like the coolest of the numbers. The Mr. T of digits. Five Alive. Julio Five-oh.

And right in front of him:

Five is a cool number, but four feels like a good number for Jarred. Balanced. Two pairs of twos. A four-by-four square that’s as solid as his foundation.

So that makes six Top-100 prospects for the Mariners. Four in the Top 50. Two in the Top Five.

And prospect rankings aren’t everything (or anything, according to Andy McKay), but having sat through these kinds of list reveals in the past and largely ignored them knowing there wouldn’t be any Mariners on the list, it’s much more fun on this side of things. It’s definitely more fun to write about...well, something rather than nothing, but it’s also fun to see these players who have been working so hard get recognized nationally for what they’ve accomplished.

You can see the whole list, 1-100, here, and make sure to keep an eye out for the coming days when “players who just missed the Top 100” are announced, because we’re suspecting Noelvi Marte’s name to come up somewhere in those discussions.