They Might Be Mariners: 2024 Draft Review

Kate Pruser
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Kate Pruser
Hello, and welcome to another episode of they might be Mariners, the Miners podcast arm of the meet at the Mitt podcast, which is in turn associated with, brought to you by the folks who do. Look.

That is so many layers. That's such a root directory.

I confuse myself every time I say it. My name is Kate Pruser. I'm the managing editor of Lookout Landing and also one of your podcast hosts. And we have MLB draft to talk about. So I'm here with Max Ellingson, our minor league draft expert. We are both just, like, fanning ourselves and lying on our fainting couches every year. I forget how much work the draft is every year. It's fun, but it's also exhausting. Thank you, Max, for joining me and capping off. I know we'll have articles to come, but we did it. We made it. Virtual high five.

Ryan Seacrest
Let's go. Nice. Nice work. Yeah, it was a bit of a haul, but it's always. It's always a good time.

Kate Pruser
It's always fun. And this draft was maybe, like, not the most fun draft. I mean, last year's draft was so fun, and it was crazy, obviously happening in Seattle. We weren't credentialed or anything for it. So because that has to go through MLB, who are not as nice to us as the Mariners are.

So this was my first year actually getting to be kind of in the draft room, like, very close to it, which, you know, is just as shrouded in secrecy and mystery as you expect. It has a very, like, mystical feeling all around it to be in the room and see everyone.

It's very cool. Like, it is very cool, regardless of whatever happens.

And it's a really fun day around the league, a lot of dreams coming through. And, yeah, even in a draft that is, I believe Scott Hunter has called it weird. He called it a bad bingo board.

It was a challenging draft to navigate, I think. But the thing is, every team had that, and we'll talk about the mariner strategy, maybe talk about some teams in general. Max, what was your overall takeaway from this draft? Did it go the way that you expected it to? What do you think?

Ryan Seacrest
I mean, I don't think I would say I expected them to do this. Like, this is, it was kind of an atypical draft. Obviously, they had a similar draft from way back when, when they had the Sam Carlson pick in the second round. But I mean, typically they haven't really gone as top heavy as they did this year.

So it's, I mean, to some degree, like, you know, the Gerangelo pick, there was some, some smoke there. Like, I kind of, my gut said that that was going to happen, but I just want to point it out.

Kate Pruser
I was like, I don't see it. I don't see it. And you were on top of Jurangelo from the jump. What made you so convinced that they were going to go with him?

Ryan Seacrest
You know, I don't know. It was just kind of a gut feeling. Like, just, I gathered, like, it was pretty. I think most people could easily gather that they wanted pitching.

I don't think that was a secret. Or if it was, it was the worst kept secret of all time. Right? Like, they made it clear they wanted pitching. And I honestly thought Yusavage was going to be gone.

I would have thought that Yosevich would have been one of their, you know, bigger targets, so to speak. But I. Gerangelo is just such a freak athlete, you know, and he's, like, so projectible. I.

My gut said that they would like that. And, you know, obviously, Jerry depot loves to have, like, cool, fun, interesting players, and I don't know how involved or uninvolved he is. I know he's to some degree making picks, but Scott Hunter is, you know, running the show, and. But, you know, he's an extension of Jerry and Justin, so, you know, he's. Durangelo is just so interesting. Like, I don't know, he just. He seemed like a fairly natural fit. But I'm not going to say that on draft day, I thought that they were going to take him over. Tracy. I thought Trey would have been. Been the guy. I mean, in retrospect, Durangelo is much more Mariner II, you know, if that's a term. But. But I, you know, I just. There.

If you break it down, Darangelo has a lot more upside and Trey has a lot more safety, and they clearly are shooting for upside.

Kate Pruser
And I think that that is what is interesting. Is it really signaling a shift in the way this team has drafted? Right. Like we're so used to for years, then building up the farm with these kind of high floor, low ceiling, polished college performers, you know, and even though I think George Kirby was and Logan Gilbert, like, I love the. I love the Logan Gilbert pick. Like, they were very much expected.

They were sort of, you know, performers out of these, like, what call Stetson, at least for sure, a mid major elon, obviously even smaller. Like, you know, they were really good draft value where they came from. I think, you know, when you're not picking in the top ten, you have to get a little creative. And mariners, unfortunately, have been just good enough for long enough that they really, their best shot was, unfortunately, in that pandemic, shortened draft when pretty much everyone had a bad draft. So it's a pivot away, I think. And last year, I really understood it because they had so many first round picks, they wanted to build up the young core. I was like, oh, wow, we're going high school. We're going high school heavy. So that was an exciting change. Obviously, we knew this year that they were gonna kind of go back to their roots a little and try to find some quick moving college pitching. Everyone knew that.

But the way in which they did that, I fully expect them to pick you, savage, once he was available and on the board, and that they didn't, and that they didn't really seem to think about him even as a plan b. Their plan a was Jorangelo. Their plan b, according to Scott Hunter, was still to get Ryan Sloan and try to go that way. And really, so he wasn't exactly just spewing hot air when they said, hey, we would be open college pitching or to high school pitching, that was not like a red herring or anything. Like, they showed that and they followed through with that commitment. But yet even, even in taking college performers, I thought that this was a slightly different approach that really targeted athleticism. And you see that with all the two way players that took, right?

Ryan Seacrest
Oh, yeah. Like they're, they are betting on, they have full faith in their development system and their development program. So they are putting the best and most capable athletically players into that system because they think that they can maximize those profiles. Right. Like, I kind of alluded to it. I talked about it, but you. Savage is kind of like a finished product to an extent. Obviously, there's going to be something, but he is huge. There's not much projection left, and he's really good.

The Mariners, you know, even like the Gilbert and the Kirby's, right. Like, they were polish college pitchers, but they still had, you know, some. Some stuff left to unlock. Right? Like Kirby Washington, you know, he wasn't as physical as he is now. He added weight in the offseason. Same with Gilbert. Gilbert was a string bean coming out of college. He's obviously, you know, gained velo. Right. And Yusavitch is not that. He's incredibly talented, but he is not necessarily. He's similar but not quite the same thing as those other guys. So Gerangelo is younger than those guys. He's barely 21. He's like a few months or something into being 21.

He's obviously a switch pitching, crazy athlete, but he gives them a lot of exciting capabilities that you. Savage doesn't.

There's a real chance that Durangelo never reaches his ceiling, but they are betting that they can get it. And I would have full faith in them extracting as all of the capabilities that he is that are inbound for his career because they've proven that they can do it. You know, Bryce Miller, Brian Wu.

I mean, all of the, I mean, pick your, you know, reliever, scrapheap guy that randomly turned in a crazy good season, right? Like they know what they're doing.

Kate Pruser
And it almost seems like. Yeah, it almost seems like when somebody on one of the house buying shows goes in and they're like, no, I want to put my personal touch on it. Like I want something that's more of a fixer upper than something that is just move in ready because I want to put my stamp on it. And it feels a little like this is a draft where they really felt comfortable, like you were saying, like banking on themselves, betting on themselves to be able to extract the most value rather than let some other school have extracted it for you. And I think that is maybe most cleanly illustrated by the picture they didn't take out of ECU and the picture they did take out of ECU. Right. Because they skipped the savage in the first round and they went in the 16th round for this guy has the best nickname.

I credit whoever at whichever staffer at the ECU Pirates came up with the law firm for Wyatt, Lunsford, Shankman, which does.

Ryan Seacrest
I would love to know the story behind that.

Kate Pruser
It's fantastic. Hopefully, hopefully we can get in touch with him at some point and hear it because I would love to, love to hear that and love to hear his story in general because when I was looking him up, I was like, is there an injury here? Like, what is. Why was this guy available in the 16th round? Like he was excellent for ECU this year?

The numbers really jump off the page. I mean, but then you look and you're like, oh, well, he has some control issues. He has some command problems. So again, the Mariners are going to go for a later round value on that with what they feel is a tremendous amount of upside and leave you savage for a team that is, you know, maybe not so good at developing their own in house pitching. Cough cough, Angels cuff cough. Although who wound up taking him eventually.

Ryan Seacrest
The Torano, which is one of those clubs they have really historically struggled at developing arms. Obviously, like Manoa had some, some good seasons, but he's obviously really fallen off a cliff and, you know, they've tried with Brandon barrier and Nate Pearson.

Kate Pruser
Nate Pearson was supposed to be. I mean, he's a great relief now.

Ryan Seacrest
But Pearson, and Pearson was more injury like. He always had a talent. He just couldn't stay healthy. So I'm not going to blame them, but they have tried quite a, quite a bit of just getting a homegrown arm to head that rotation and they just cannot seem to do it. So I think that's a great pick for them because he's probably going to be able to enter their rotation maybe late 2025 and, you know, he'll be plug and play. Like he'll be, he'll be, he will. You put him in there and he'll probably be more than sound as a mid rotation guy.

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This was a very picture heavy draft, right? Was that on both the college and the high school sides?

Ryan Seacrest
I think Scott Hunter said, like, it's a, it was an arms draft. Like, they tried to get in, they tried to get in some position players here and there.

Um, but yeah, for the most part, it was a very heavy, uh, pitching draft.

Kate Pruser
And that is speaks to the need to be able to scout not just this upcoming draft, but be able to scout all the drafts that come after it for a while. Because you have to know, like, last year was your year to capitalize on position players and to capitalize on like, high upside prep plays because there weren't so many and they had the bigger bonus value. Honestly, if they were going to have like, not a ton of draft capital to spend, I'm glad it was in this draft specifically.

And again, I really like the strategy that they took. I thought that they maximized what they had value wise. They went for upside plays.

It sort of seemed like the general, from Scott Hunter's comments, from some of Jerry Depot's comments, the feeling that I got was like, well, hey, this draft is probably not going to return a ton of value anyway, so let's have fun with it. Like when it comes to two players, the differentiation, whereas I think in previous years, this has maybe not been what it was. The differentiation was, let's take the high athletic, let's take the more athletic guy, let's take the fun player, which I feel is like, for me at least a really, even though this draft, especially as we entered day three, got to be a real grind to write up as we're like, trying to dig up stuff on these guys.

It was still one of the more fun drafts for me. On aggregate to cover than in previous years when it was like, lord bless Wyatt Mills. And he was a performer for the team and he outperformed everything. But I just remember when he was picked and there was just that moment of absolute silence and just the terror in their eyes when, you know, because that's still when the draft is being televised and they're like, ugh. And nobody wants that. Makes them feel bad, too, as analysts. Like, they want to, they don't want to be crapping on anyone's special day by basically sitting there with the equivalent of, like, WTF on their faces. But sometimes that's just how the draft shakes out.

I read a review from, I think it was USA Today. It was like, I don't like doing draft grades. I think it's the stupidest thing. But it was like, which MLB teams had, like, the worst and best draft? Because obviously there's a hunger for that content.

I was curious, and they pulled a bunch of different people. RJ Anderson said the Mariners had one of the best drafts, and then Garav Vidak from SB Nation, apparently from our own site, somebody I have never heard of, said the Mariners had one of the worst drafts, and both of them kind of zeroed in on the same thing that Vidak says. There's no denying.

Shanta, how do we say his name again?

Ryan Seacrest
Who?

Kate Pruser
Cynthia Cincha. Right.

Ryan Seacrest
Oh, Sanja. Sanja.

Kate Pruser
We're gonna have. I'm gonna have to learn that. I'm gonna have to learn spelling it, too. That is a lot of, lot of cons.

Ryan Seacrest
I think I've typed that name so many times, I don't think I'm ever gonna forget it. But, yeah, it's, it's not phonetic. It's not at all.

Kate Pruser
It's, it is Dutch. It is, it is difficult.

But they said, oh, full slot value for him is interesting.

Sloan the second is fantastic. But the issue is they don't, if they don't develop, if you don't hit on those two, which is risky, you're kind of putting all your draft eggs into those two baskets, which I think is like a very fair criticism. On the other hand, RJ Anderson says that he likes the sencha.

Sencha pic.

Ryan Seacrest
Sanja, Sanja.

Kate Pruser
Darn it.

They like that picnic. But, and that he has, if he feels like at least he's middle of the rotation, like as a floor, and Sloan, like, between the two of them, the incredible promise of Sloan. And, you know, I like RJ Anderson. I'm slanted, obviously. So I like that assessment. I think as far as this draft goes, as far as what was available to them, and that's just the way that the draft is.

Ryan Seacrest
Right.

Kate Pruser
Like, you are putting your eggs in these first two picks and you're hoping that that pans out because other than that, it does seem like there's a lot of role players.

There's some roll the dice and maybe they're good. Like, could come out of nowhere, but it's.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah.

Kate Pruser
And there's no other upside in the, other than the player, you know, like nip or some of the other guys who are maybe a little more intriguing. There's upsides in the board. Yeah. There's no high school players in the rest of this draft. It is all, all sort of mid majors. And, I mean, I disagree with myself now that I say that, actually, because I think Christian little is a really interesting pick and I'll be interested when we get around and talk to, talk about him, but, yeah. So what is, what's your feeling on that? It. I will admit it makes me a little bit nervous because you are just banking on these two guys. They're both pitchers. We know that pitchers break like it's risky. One of them is a prep arm, the risky, a cold weather prep arm, like the riskiest of the risky of the riskiest.

But, so I'm nervous about that. But I have a lot of confidence in the mariners development system. I have a lot of confidence, even if they, even if Sloan doesn't come out of the gate strong, that we've seen them work with players and help keep them on track, the Michael Morales, Ashton, Izzy, the progress that those who have made gives me a lot of confidence. I'll admit it's risky, though. What are your thoughts?

Ryan Seacrest
Oh, yeah. I mean, they're, they're definitely taking a risk in, in going so heavily into day one. They invested, you know, I'm not sure of the exact math, but, you know, close to close, you know, 870% to 90% of their.

Kate Pruser
Yeah, I was gonna say bonus point.

Ryan Seacrest
A day one because it's like, it's 7.87.9 or something. So out of 9.7.9 out of nine and a half plus the cushion. I don't know.

Kate Pruser
Yeah.

Ryan Seacrest
Like the cook. And then it's, it's, it's probably around like 80% of what they could spend in total.

Maybe a little less, but, yeah, I mean, that's obviously, like, that just brings inherent risk.

That said, I do think that it was a smart play. When you look at the landscape of this draft and it was consensus. It was a down year. It was not a great year in the draft. So in these later round picks, taking these reliever profiles, which are, they're boring, but they're also fairly low variance. Right. So you kind of know what you're getting to some degree. You never know exactly what you're getting. But guys that are already in the bullpen, like if as relievers, they're money savers for a reason, they have the least upside for, you know, impact potential. To use a Jerry depot, you know, keyword there. But using going big upfront and then saying, okay, I'm going to take these kind of more lower risk players, I think is somewhat smart. It's not, you know, they're not low risk in the sense that, oh, Hunter Cranton, he can just come straight up and he can pitch in our bullpen now. Right? Like that's, you can get overzealous and thinking, well, if a college player is 24 and he's throwing 100, you can just throw him in the MLB right now. Like everybody needs some time to onboard and get acclimated to professional baseball.

But if you get guys that are, they have the stuff and they have time and time again proven that they can get people to throw their good stuff over the plate and get, you know, make it work, to me, that's a smart play, especially when, you know, if you're aiming, if you're aiming for upside in a down year, it's going to be tougher to find it. So why not go to a little bit less risky, a little bit more boring, but a demographic that they have really maximized and they play to their strength.

Kate Pruser
Right, right.

Ryan Seacrest
Like we're probably going to touch on these guys, but you know, just like you mentioned Shankmanda, but you know, I mean, Brock Moore. Right? Like athletic, huge guy, he's pumping upper nineties to 101. Just can't control it. Right. So maybe I was going to say.

Kate Pruser
Is like, even as these guys are quote unquote boring because they're older college relievers, this is not like guys who throw 92, 93.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah.

Kate Pruser
Ability, there are some of those mixed in there, but a lot of them are of big power stuff like Charlie Brown.

Ryan Seacrest
They're boring in the sense that they're not going to be a starting center fielder or your starting shortstop or a top 100 prospect.

Kate Pruser
Right.

Ryan Seacrest
But they're still incredibly valuable pieces to have in a system. Right. Like that's, just because they're quote unquote boring doesn't mean they're bad players and they will, I mean, the Mariners, like, you need to fill a bullpen and the more guys that you can have and bring in through your system, you know, maybe they wouldn't have to go out and get a bullpen at the bullpen arm at the trade deadline, you know, right.

Kate Pruser
Less you have to give away from your precious pile of resources either in the off season or at the trade deadline, which it's looking like they're going to have to do because they're going to have to shore up that bullpen. They are paying the price somewhat for not having a lot of MLB adjacent arms right now. Or, you know, maybe some of these guys can, can be that. But I was thinking about Scott Hunter said multiple times that they did not want to go into this draft trying to, quote, don't chase something that might not be there. And this year it felt like they maybe chased a little bit of upside with Aiden Butler. I could see that. But generally what the draft had to give was not a ton, not a deep prep class, not a lot of like, really signable guys who wanted to get their career, like, a lot of strong commitments, right. A lot of high dollar signs in a year where they didn't have a ton of draft capital and a lot of like, it had a lot of power arms. And I think that they did a good job maximizing some of those picks.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah. And I like, sorry, I just want to get this in real quick. Like, I will say, like the, I do think the, the prep pitching was like one of the deeper places that it was and they tapped into it. They got Ryan Sloan in the second.

Kate Pruser
They got arguably one of the best. Should we, should we just dive in? Should we set aside the relievers for now and just like dive in on him? Do you want to do more on, on the first rounder or can you tell that I'm trying to avoid.

Ryan Seacrest
I mean, I feel like I just can't get it right. We've given Jurangelo quite a bit of run. I think, you know, he's, he's kind of, that's kind of what he is. Right. We're probably not going to get to see him this year. I think they'll probably shut him down. Maybe we'll get a little bit, but.

Kate Pruser
You know, a few innings in Arizona just to kind of.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah, but we're not going to see it. Right. Arizona, I would agree.

Kate Pruser
I don't think there's any or anything.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah, I think they're going to be fairly slow with him as the, you know, probably they should be right. You don't want to. This guy's been slowing down his throwing program for the last month plus, you know, no need to ramp him up for the ACL.

Kate Pruser
Right, right.

Ryan Seacrest
But, yeah, and they tapped into it. But, you know, when you tap into the top end of a really deep and exciting and expensive demographic, you have to take your, your warts and you have to slow your roll down. You can't just keep going, especially when they don't have any added resources and they're picking at not a premium pick. So I think it was smart. Yeah.

Kate Pruser
We've talked about how this draft really does rest on the success of these two players. I want to dig in on Sloan specifically and what we think of him and why we think the team was willing to commit so much to him. And we did get some great quote from Scott Hunter. I think the one that probably stands out to me most of all is him saying Andy McKay went in for his mental skills, meeting with him and left and said, if you have to take a high school picture, I don't think Andy McKay loves that particular demographic. You have to take a high school picture. This is the high school picture to take. Like, everyone raves about just his maturity and his sort of self reliance and all these character things, and then he just looks physically very solid. He looks the part. Right. Enormous, strong.

Seems to be like a very solid kid, both physically and mentally.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah.

He's a freight train on the mound. He's just a massive, massive human being.

He is such a good dude, from what I can tell.

I think he's like, wanted to be a mariner to some degree. I'm not sure exactly how all of the, you know, behind the scenes agent negotiations work, but, you know, he slipped and Scott had said they stayed at really in close communication with him and they ended up striking a deal. And obviously everyone was happy.

Kate Pruser
I think what Scott said was like, sometimes a big number can scare away teams, and he obviously had a, I didn't think it was an insane, insanely.

Ryan Seacrest
Big number, but I thought it was more than reasonable.

Kate Pruser
Yeah. And then I do kind of wonder, because if we take the word of Scott Hunter, like, every pitcher wants to be a mariner, and I do think there is some degree of truth to that, but it is, it's something where it has to be between the player and between the team because I think a player can be flexible on their end with their number if they really believe in the place that they're going. And it sounded like they had a real connection with him and that he seems to believe that this is going to be a place where he can develop.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah. I mean, he, he just has a ton of, like, upside. His upside is absolutely huge now. I don't, you know, people that are already ordaining him as, you know, future ace or whatever, I think you obviously need to pump the brakes a little bit. He is 18 years old.

A lot can happen. But he is fantastic. Like, I just love, I love the player. Like, as a, as a person.

I think his stuff is really intriguing.

I do think they're gonna have both of those day one guys. I think they're both gonna have them start throwing the, the mariner special of two fast balls and probably a cutter.

I think they're, you know, they're, they're gonna add, they're gonna tinker, they're gonna add some stuff to his arsenal for both of those guys's arsenal. But, yeah, I just think it provides them in a draft that lacked upside and they lacked resources, they about got as much upside as they could have hoped for is how I would take away day one.

Kate Pruser
I agree. I mean, I think that they got two first round picks, basically, which, to do that in a draft where you're picking 15th in a top heavy draft, I think is, again, it is the smartest way to approach this particular draft with the resources that they had.

I think, too, that, I don't think that it is extreme to call Sloan a rounder because I know that he was, like, a little bit of a fringy round one in a lot of the earlier mock drafts, but it seemed like he was a riser as the season went along and as the draft drew closer. Was that your perception as well?

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah, from what I saw, I thought he was going to be like a fringe top 20 guy, is what I would have guessed. I think I had him in my horrendous mock draft. I think I had him going 21st or something.

Yeah. To get him there, obviously. You know, I think people, yeah, I think Sloan has, like, I thought he would have been a first rounder. I thought he would been fringe top 20 is where I thought he was going to go.

He, the, when he added the change up, he definitely progressed heavily. Like, he, he rose up draft boards quite a bit after he added that third pitch, and it was excellent. Like, he threw it very well, especially for a prep guy who typically.

Kate Pruser
What was that interview? Did you see that interview with him where he's like, well, I don't know. I just started throwing and it went whoop.

Ryan Seacrest
And I was, I mentioned that yesterday when I was talking with Anders. Yeah. It was just like, you know, he's just like, well, I was facing a bunch of lefties, so I figured I have to get this thing figured out. So I started throwing it and then it worked. It was like, okay, he is hilarious.

Kate Pruser
I don't think he understands how talented he is. Like, I think he does kind of, because people told. But it just, it feels like a very almost, like, naive kind of presence.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah.

He's like, oh, I think I described him as, like a big, giant teddy bear that is like, could rip your head off if you wanted to.

Kate Pruser
It's a teddy bear, but then it has, like, a knife stick sticking out of the middle.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah. I mean, he's, he's mad. Like, he is just massive. He is a massive human being.

Kate Pruser
Massive.

Ryan Seacrest
So, yeah, I'm very curious on how they develop him and obviously it'll be as a starter, but, you know, how, where do they kind of lean into? I would be very surprised if he's not throwing two fast balls. They seem to love that saying. I think they explicitly said he's going to throw a two seamer.

Kate Pruser
Right.

Ryan Seacrest
Or like, it was, like, strongly alluded to, but yeah, I mean, tons of upside, tons of fun. I'm incredibly excited to cover Ryan Sloan. I think he'll be hilarious and obviously a really good human. So, yeah.

Kate Pruser
Excited to get down to spring training next year and hopefully be able to see him because I doubt we'll be able to see any of him. So it'll be kind of those first looks of getting to watch him off a mountain that the spring training and I should stop now and say if anyone is going to the park this week on Tuesday, it sounds like they're gonna have the, they're gonna bring the guys up here on, like, over the weekend maybe. And then Monday kind of do the tour of Seattle with them and then Tuesday have them at the stadium. So if you want to see these players and peep, see how massive Ryan Sloan is in person, like, go to the park. Go to the park on Tuesday.

Ryan Seacrest
He is massive.

I can't even imagine, like, how big in person he would be.

Kate Pruser
I'm excited. I will bring, I will go and I will bring back information for all of us.

Ryan Seacrest
Excellent. That is what I love to hear.

Kate Pruser
Well, let's get, let's get out of the top two because obviously that's where all the money went and all the interest went. We could just talk about them forever. But let's talk about the rest of this draft and what maybe who kind of, because these are all your upside plays, right? These are your dart at the wall kind of. Some of them, I think, have safer floors than others. I really like the reliever they took in the fourth, Charlie Bilison.

Ryan Seacrest
That's yeah. 5th.

Kate Pruser
5Th yeah, I like I like him. He's described as having a double plus change up.

I just as far as like somebody who seems he might be at the end of his developmental track, I like that that means that maybe they talked about potentially even sending some of these guys to Hia Double A and if they're in Double A, you know, it's just not that far away to see how the stuff plays. I would love, love for them to give these guys some aggressive challenges. Is there a new. So Bilasin is one for me just because I feel like if you have a double plus change up that'll play at the big league level and then he's got the mid nineties basketball as well. Is there anyone that stands out to you from that group of older relievers that you think could be a fast mover?

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Ryan Seacrest
Well, I mean, Cranton's the easy one, right? The third rounder he was largely considered the top senior guy.

He's upper nineties with the fastball that has a ton of carry. It's a sharp slider, like upper eighties, you know, I mean, I. That one's easy. That one's not hard to see, but, yeah, I mean, I think.

Kate Pruser
What school? Cranton came out of Kansas. Kansas. So he would be playing in the ACC.

Ryan Seacrest
I think it's like the big ten or the big twelve or something.

I always get those mixed up because.

Kate Pruser
One of the things that we want to look at with how fast guys can move, obviously, is like what competition they were facing by lesson was at Duke. So you know that he was playing against.

What is that? Is that the ACC?

Ryan Seacrest
That's ACC.

Kate Pruser
That's what I was thinking of, yeah. So maybe not like top level SEC.

Ryan Seacrest
Competition, but still pretty ACC is about as good as the SEC. I mean, it was a four to four split in Omaha. It was ACc and for ACc, four sec, so.

Kate Pruser
Wow. Okay.

Ryan Seacrest
They're legit.

Kate Pruser
Yeah. So, I mean, that's who I'm backing. But I agree with you, Cranton, especially because it's a little confusing then as to why a team didn't want him last year. What, what do you think was going on there? Why didn't he get drafted last year? Why was he a senior?

Ryan Seacrest
Sign Cranton or Charlie?

So Cranton was a starter before this year. This is his first year as a reliever. And when he went to the bullpen, his boy, his fastball ticked up 5 miles an hour, which is pretty, pretty massive.

And then he also, he tweaked his slider. So it used to be kind of low eighties and like kind of loopy. And now it's upper eighties and very sharp, kind of like a cutter. So, yeah, that is definitely why he was not drafted last year, because he was not as good last year.

Kate Pruser
I'm loving that as a third round choice then, because it does feel like that's your money saver. But also that guy would have been gone probably if you'd waited a couple other rounds. So I. I think that that's a really smart maybe doesn't have quite the upside. Some of the other guys do came after him, but that, to me, him and Bilas and both sound like guys who I could see like they don't need a whole lot tweaked with them. You can put them in Arkansas's bullpen and you can see how they start doing immediately. And I really hope that that is what we get to see as far as aggressive assignments.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah. I wouldn't be shocked if both of them go to Arkansas. I mean, they're both 24, you know, advanced age. Why not give it a shot?

Kate Pruser
I mean, what do you have to lose at this point? Really?

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah.

Kate Pruser
You want to?

Ryan Seacrest
I mean, if they really wanted to be safe.

Yeah. Like, hi. Like, if you really want to be safe, give them a week in high a, make sure they're good, and then go.

Kate Pruser
But, yeah, yeah. And that way you have, you start them out here kind of close to home, and you can get all the decision makers up there pretty easily to see them. I think that that might be the way they get. I feel like they've done that before, too. They've sent guys to Everett.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah. I don't remember the last player they sent straight to Arkansas. Honestly.

Kate Pruser
No, I honestly don't know that they've done that. But also, I don't know that they've had a draft that was quite this senior sign, pitcher heavy.

As many drafts as we've seen where they have taken a ton of relievers. This one, to me is the one where I cannot remember as many 24 year olds being drafted.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah. You know what's interesting, though, and I mentioned this. I mentioned this the other day, half of this draft is younger than 22.

Like, that surprised me. Like, a bunch. It feels like all of these dudes are ancient, but, like, most of them were kind of young. Obviously, there was a lot of, like, later round guys that were the young guys, so there's not as much upside there. But it did kind of surprise me. Like, all of these, like, you know, 1112, 1314. Like, they're. They're fairly young, so at least that's something, you know, that's not really a ton, but it is like, obviously day one had quite a few older guys, and that's, I think, where my brain just kind of locked into. All of these guys are seniors and.

Kate Pruser
I think that we're still feeling the effects somewhat of the COVID years of people who red shirted. And, you know, we're seeing them with junior. They're 24, but they are juniors this year because they were forced to take time off. I'm wondering if this is going to be the last year that we see the really Covid impacted draft to use.

Ryan Seacrest
Probably. I would assume it's either this year or maybe next year. Yeah, I mean, which will kind of.

Kate Pruser
Get everyone back on even developmental footing again, which will be nice because it's really thrown a wrench into specifically dealing with player ages and trying to analyze them against their competition.

Yeah.

Let's talk about some of the. So I think that those two are, is there anyone else who you would put in that bucket of, like, extremely polished, could maybe head to Arkansas by the end of this season or possibly even Arkansas?

Ryan Seacrest
I don't think so. I think those are the two that have the shot because they're essentially finished products. They're not going to be doing a ton there.

But there's, you know, there's plenty of other dudes that are very, you know, intriguing. So maybe we can kind of work our way down the draft board and go from there.

Kate Pruser
Yeah. Do you want to just stick with pictures right now or.

Ryan Seacrest
Whatever? I mean, I can talk about Josh. Josh, Karen. I know you're kind of lower on him, but.

Kate Pruser
Yeah. All right. Sell me, sell me on him. Sell me on Josh, Karen, because it was not, I look at that and I see organizational capture. You know, I see Jake and Chia or Charlie Pagliarini.

Ryan Seacrest
I think he's, I think he's got no, he's definitely better than, than Peggy Rainy and she, I mean, Karen has, he's got a lot more athleticism to him than those guys. Right. Like, he is, he's a good mover, and he is developing very well as a catcher. Right. But he was Nebraska's best hitter for most of their season.

He has a ton of power.

He is good. He's a good athlete. He's fringy right now as a catcher is, from what I'm, what I'm hearing, he's like maybe like a 45, but he was trending positively. So if you can get him to be like, you know, even just like an average catcher with, with home run power, you know, that's a pretty, like, that's a backup catcher, right. And in the fourth round, if you can get a backup catcher, I would, I'm more than happy with taking that. I think he's got, like, the approach I think they can work on. I think they've, he, like, I don't think it's unfixable. He makes enough contact where it's like he, it worked for him at Nebraska, but he does need to kind of calm down a little bit. But it's like when he hits the ball, it goes out of the ballpark. I mean, he just murders baseball. I was watching his tournament run where he just went off. He won, like, MVP of the entire tournament. He had six homers, and it was unbelievable. But granted, he was playing out of his mind, but I mean, it was pretty, you know, he was pretty amazing to watch. He hits the ball very hard.

He's a catcher, he's a good athlete. I don't think he's going to be like, he's not a Harry Ford athlete, right. But he's a good athlete behind the plate. He's strong. You know, it's just like, I think there's something there as a fourth round pick. I think, and this system needs catching, too.

Kate Pruser
It does.

Ryan Seacrest
So, you know, if you, you bet on him in the fourth round.

I don't. I think it's kind of an interesting pick. I don't. He's not going to be a Cal Rawley pick where they got him in the third and this is like, oh, slightly worse than Cal Rawley and we're getting him in the fourth. Cal Rawley is an incredible power hitter and he's metrically probably the best catcher defensively in the league.

I don't think he's going to be that. But you're betting on a good athlete with a ton of power behind the plate. And I like that. I like that play.

Kate Pruser
Okay. I can see that. I, maybe I was swayed by all the people I saw, all the takes I saw on twitter that were like, oh, well, this means Harry Ford is definitely getting traded. And I was like, in no way is this a replacement for Harry Ford. Like, this is not going to be maybe. So I guess the reality is probably somewhere in between maybe organizational catcher and top catching prospect in the organization. Is that fair to say?

Ryan Seacrest
Oh, well, yeah, he's definitely between those guys, but, like, he's also.

Kate Pruser
That's a pretty.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah, like, it's pretty much everybody, I'd say.

But, you know, also, I don't know if you kind of clued in on this. Josh, Karen is younger than Harry Ford.

Kate Pruser
Wow. No, I didn't.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah, Josh, Karen is not yet 21, so, I mean, they've got some time to develop him and really work with him.

Kate Pruser
So is he the one who ate the rest of the signing bonus money? Was he a draft eligible sophomore then?

I know we just wrote all these up, but honestly, I have totally forgotten so much of this.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah, I don't think so. I think he was a junior, but I just think he was a young, a young junior. Like, he's almost 21, right? Like, he's like a couple weeks away from turning 21. But I think, I mean, I don't know. I had him as, like, a slot guy, but maybe he was over. I'm not sure.

Kate Pruser
We'll probably get some information on that pretty soon. It sounds like they have everybody signed except maybe one player who they're, you know, still working.

Right. I'm guessing that we'll probably get some signing bonus numbers, information starting next week so we can update some of the.

Ryan Seacrest
I would think so as well.

Yeah.

Kate Pruser
Maybe we can do like some kind of a draft tracker then updates where they, where they allocated these funds. Yeah, I like, I like it. As a fourth round pick, obviously, it was the first position player to go off the. That they took all day, so it wasn't hard to get excited about, especially sandwiched between two.

Wait, it went third round was Karen Cranton.

Ryan Seacrest
And then Karen, then Karen.

Kate Pruser
Then by lesson. Yeah, Bilason.

Ryan Seacrest
They said the, the duke announcer called him Bielenson, but I'm not sure if he was right or not.

Kate Pruser
Oh, I don't know. I mean, Scott Hunter might be reading that name off of a piece of paper, too. That was how he, Scott Hunter keeps.

Ryan Seacrest
Calling Brandon Garcia Brayden.

Kate Pruser
I have noticed that, too. I thought I was going crazy. Okay.

Ryan Seacrest
No, yeah.

Kate Pruser
I'm so glad. And he's named so many times that I just became convinced that I had it wrong.

Ryan Seacrest
No. Yeah. I mean, I don't, I've never heard they call him Braden. Yeah, it's spelled Brandon.

Kate Pruser
It's definitely.

Ryan Seacrest
The guys on the team called him Brandon. So I think.

Kate Pruser
Okay. All right.

Whoo. All right. Because I have noticed that just because he name dropped him so many times as like a point of comparison for similarly someone who's drafted into the organization later rounds.

And I don't think that pick got a lot of attention, but somebody who is definitely on the big upswing. So as far as picking up swing, do you want to pick a breakout candidate among these?

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah, I was just going to ask who is, who is your guy? I know. I think I know the answer, but.

Kate Pruser
I mean, I don't want to know. Are we talking just pitchers?

Ryan Seacrest
Anybody? Let's say outside of day one, who is your guy?

Kate Pruser
You know what, I'll let you pick first because I have a few that I could, I have a few I could do.

And I have a feeling that we have the same guy. So do you want to stay it on three? Let's say it on three and see if.

Ryan Seacrest
Well, I don't know. I think you're going to go between two. I think I'm torn between two.

Kate Pruser
Really?

Ryan Seacrest
They were both.

I think. I don't know. I think you're gonna say butler.

Kate Pruser
Oh, God, I love Butler. Yeah.

Ryan Seacrest
But I. It's either the. Him or little. Right?

Kate Pruser
I thought you were gonna say little.

Ryan Seacrest
Okay, yeah, yeah, I was. I was. I'm probably more in on little, but Butler's also really fun.

Kate Pruser
Okay. All right. I think that those are the two most fun guys. My, like, sleeper pick is cryling Harrison Kreiling.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah.

Kate Pruser
I love Lunsford Shankman, too.

Ryan Seacrest
And, yeah, I think he's my favorite.

Kate Pruser
We've talked about him a little bit. I think just from stuff perspective, he's the most fun.

We have talked about him. But let's dig in on christian little a little. I think he's. Let's do little and then Butler, because I think those are the two.

There are three people left to discuss who I think are really interesting, and those are two of them. So let's. Let's dig in on little a little bit.

Ryan Seacrest
Okay. Yeah.

Well, I mean, Scott spoke glowingly about him, which is at length, a lot.

Kate Pruser
Of the scouting call time went to talking about christian little.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah. And, you know, when you get a guy of that pedigree, historically in the 11th round, there's. It's. That's something clearly went wrong. Right. And for christian little in college, a lot went wrong. But it's not as though that player is gone. You know, he didn't suffer huge major injuries that derailed his career. You know, he didn't, he's not a head case where he lost his mind and he just couldn't pitch right. Like, just didn't go right. And that happens.

So to me, if you're an organization that is as good as maximizing pictures, take the guy that, you know that's in there, you know, that upside is there.

And obviously they did, and they are incredibly excited about it.

Kate Pruser
Several people on Twitter pointed out that this is very similar to Jerry Depot's strategy of collecting discarded first round prospects, like former top prospects, which I think has had limited success as far as it turns out that, like, MLB organizations are much better at developing players than perhaps colleges are on aggregate. But, you know, you have to point to JP Crawford, I think, as like, the number one biggest. If you get one JP Crawford out of every, like five or six players you try this with, I think that's still.

Still pretty good odds considering what you are, what you are giving up. So.

Ryan Seacrest
And with this, when you also have the bonus that you don't have another organization feeding this player anything else, like, he is 100% your player.

So, you know, they, they have every opportunity to talk to him, get him right. Like what? Like they were saying basically in the combine interview, they were like, why don't you just throw your first, your best stuff for strike one?

Kate Pruser
Yeah.

Ryan Seacrest
And he was like, what?

Kate Pruser
Like, I know, which should not be a mind blowing thing. We've talked, we've joked before about how Mariners pitching development, the secret seems to be throw your good pitches more and your stinky pitches less. And like, I don't know why this is such mind melting information, but yeah. That Hunter relayed the story of how the scout, I think it was Mark Loomis. Mark Loomis was the scout who was talking to him and said, you know, hey, don't be afraid to throw your best stuff and that you really see him visually take a step back and think, is it really that simple? And I think, especially for a guy like Christian little, who was a top draft prospect coming out of high school, so much noise around him turns down the draft, turns down first round money, goes to Vanderbilt early 17, doesn't find success there. And I don't think Vandy is.

Vandy is great if you are doing well there and if you're not, I'm think it's a terr. It's the best place to be in base college baseball if you are a great player and is the worst place to be if you are not having your best time. It's, it just sounds like the players who struggle there really, really struggle and struggle to regain their footing after that. So he goes to LSU.

Ryan Seacrest
He was very not happy with his Vanderbilt experience. He made that clear when he transferred. So, I mean, who knows exactly what happened, but he's very upset.

Kate Pruser
So it's interesting to hear that he wanted to become a manor. He wanted to become a mariner. Trying to become a mariner.

He has a lot of confidence in this organization and I think for him it's going to be kind of a fresh start. And it's interesting to hear them talk about an 11th round pick, a college, polished college arm, as somebody who has, quote, untapped potential.

But I really do feel like Christian little hasn't played his best baseball yet, and his best baseball might well be ahead of him in this organization. And that's really exciting in the 11th round.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah, like, he's a, he's a, and he's got a great frame. He's really athletic. He's a good mover. And his stuff is legit. You know, he's up upper nineties with the fastball.

He's not, he's not sitting there, but he can hit 99 is what Scott Hunter said.

Kate Pruser
And bringing him to an organization where he can go through gas camp, the training. But he can also be exposed to all that mental skills training that they do, all the resources that they have without expectation too. Right.

Ryan Seacrest
Because 11th round he came into Vanderbilt as this chosen one. Right. He was the 17 year old people.

Kate Pruser
Who are not deep into college baseball knew who he was.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah.

And now he gets a completely fresh start. He has a great brain trust of pitchers around him. He knows he can trust and he has zero expectations.

It's a great situation for him. I'm happy that he ended up here in the spot that he did. I think he's got a really good chance to kind of start anew and get his feet on the ground and hopefully take off running.

Kate Pruser
Do we think that they'll slow play him? Just trying to get him kind of mentally, physically, just bring him into the organization and I don't want to say coddle, but nurture him for a while before they send him out into a competitive environment? Or do you think because he's so polished they'll send him to Modesto?

Ryan Seacrest
You know, I could see either way.

I really don't know what they're gonna do with pitchers just cuz the, you know, they're obviously have. I mean, I don't know if they've been throwing privately, but.

Kate Pruser
Right.

Ryan Seacrest
For most of these guys, the college season ended right away quite a bit ago. So I could see them like all of, all of these guys just kind of being in the d load. I mean, maybe some of the lower, you know, lower round picks get sent to Modesto to kind of help out because their bullpen's been a little spotty and could probably use some, some reinforcements, but a little. I mean, I. Yeah, it's been bad, but yeah, just I could see. I could pretty much see anything. I think that the top guys, they'll definitely slow play. I think the relievers, you know, they're only sitting at probably between 20 and 30, maybe 40 innings. Like they could probably go out. Yeah, because relievers are relievers and if they were relievers in the season and they were throwing one to two innings, you know, stints, they can get that ramped up pretty quick.

But yeah, guys that they see as starters, I I'm not sure that they would be so ambitious in getting out there. I think they might just, you know, help them maybe refine some stuff in Arizona, go into the off season, you know, do the performance camp and then come out next season and be ready to rip.

Kate Pruser
I agree.

And you know, there's no reason to rush any of these guys like, and one thing that I think the organization does a good job of is they make good decisions for their players and for their players long term health, and they make decisions that are not immediate knee jerk to respond to needs. The organization, like, they will not push one of these kids if they don't think that that's the best thing for their career.

Ryan Seacrest
Just maybe the Logan Evans decision is the only one that I can think of.

Kate Pruser
Yeah.

Ryan Seacrest
And they reverted on it really quickly.

Kate Pruser
Yeah. And that's not the first time I feel like we seen them do that. They have. They have tried it out before and, you know, a couple times coming out of the bullpen as an experiment, it's not going to derail his career that much. You know, he's already overperforming expectations.

Ryan Seacrest
A ton of people started in the bullpen and then began starting again. Like, it's not, like, unheard of, but, you know, if big, big, big macro picture, you know, they obviously didn't know that his stuff wouldn't tick up, but if they had that hindsight, they probably would have done that.

Kate Pruser
Right. And that is one of those things where I feel like you kind of don't know how it's going to work until you try things. And that's one of the things you can do with pictures is you can experiment a little bit and it doesn't work. You just stop doing it and it.

Ryan Seacrest
Doesn'T mess up rotation, a hitter, swing.

Kate Pruser
Change messes, you know?

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah.

Kate Pruser
Well, let's.

Ryan Seacrest
Just a matter of time.

Kate Pruser
I'm just fixated on this quote that I've written in my notes from Scott Hunter, where he says, a lot of these are power polished arms who could start in high a or even aa. So, been trying to think through, like, who our candidates are for that. And I think, like, we've. We've. We've talked about the ones who really make sense. Bilasin or b lesson, however you say it, and cran. And do we have one more?

Ryan Seacrest
I think those were the two. Those are the only two we talked about. Shankman, just generally, but I don't think we.

Kate Pruser
Yeah, no, I think they've got. They've got stuff to do to get his command in. Get his command in order. And he's got such. And I would put more in that same Brock Moore. Yeah, I was gonna say more as somebody.

Ryan Seacrest
He's 24 already.

Kate Pruser
I would lump those two guys together as guys who I think will be quick movers once they get into the.

Ryan Seacrest
Program, but I think Shankman will move faster than Moore. Shankman is more pro ready than Moore.

Kate Pruser
I agree with that. Moore has.

I mean, I think Moore will be, once they quiet his delivery down some. And I think that quieting his delivery will result in better command.

Just because he's all over the place.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah. I mean, he doesn't even really have, like, control, you know, at. You know, he's. He's still trying to throw the ball over the plate, let alone command his arsenal.

Kate Pruser
So it's a. It's a development project.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah. And like, you know, like, Wyatt Lunsford Chinkman, you know, like, the command is, you know, it can waiver a bit, but, you know, he's. He doesn't have a major. Major walk problem. You know, like, he's. He just could. He doesn't have as overwhelming as stuff as Brock Moore does, so he needs to kind of be a little bit more fine. But the. The breaking balls, I mean, I'm in love with those breakers from. From the law firm.

Kate Pruser
I would.

Ryan Seacrest
Unbelievable. Breaking balls.

Kate Pruser
So I would say that we're. We're sort of chunking guys, right? We have, like, the two who we think are pretty polished. Double a ready senior signs. Then we've got more Shankman.

I feel like we have to call him Wyatt Lunsford Shankman every time.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah.

Kate Pruser
And then I would maybe put Harrison Kreiling into that chunk as well. Who was the.

1112? 1314. I think it's 17th rounder.

He's been working as a starter. I think they're. They have to figure out whether he's going to be a starter or reliever. He's had some injuries, but I think his arsenal. He's another one where once they figure out how they're going to use him, then he starts. His. His developmental uptick is very fast because I think kind of is what he is as far as the pitches he has. He's our. He's our little analytics darling. He's our. He's our boy who's into analytics and hates walks. So very much a mariner. Someone I think will be a quick mover. Maybe not as quick as those top two, but yeah, I would mention those two other guys who have the control problem.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah. I thought Hunter had mentioned, too, that they want to try him as a starter. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that he said that they want him to log some innings.

Kate Pruser
Yes.

Ryan Seacrest
So I guess take that how you will.

Kate Pruser
I think he goes to Modesto.

Ryan Seacrest
I do, too. I think he'll be. I think he'll be in Modesto.

I don't. I mean, Brockmore is just so interesting. I think. I think Shankman will go to Modesto. I think Brockmore.

Kate Pruser
Brockmore goes to the ACL. I think, to go and work with.

I think just the analytics that they have there, the pitching lab, the. The iPads, the. The way that everything at the complex is set up to give that diagnostic information, I think he'll go through some stuff there. And it's also, I think if they had their choice, most guys would start there, because that's really where just being in the complex, you know, you're there. The walls are full of, like, all the pictures. Mariners of the past. It's like you have the gym, you have all the conditioning stuff. It's an advanced facility as far as that goes. You're really steeped in Mariners culture there in a way that you're not so much at Modesto. Athenae, Everett. Like, those are affiliates. The ACL is.

Is Timo park south. So I think if they could, they would have every guy start there, and I think at least every guy will go do a physical there.

But, yeah, and I mean, you know.

Ryan Seacrest
They might spend a week or, you know, however many. You know, I mean, a bunch of guys last year, they played in Modesto and then, or in the ACL, and then they sent up to Modesto, and they played a handful of games, and then they went up.

Kate Pruser
Yeah, I think we see that for most of the guys who are not those top two polished arms that we were talking about. Um, and obviously, like, they're probably all on planes there right now, it's a really fast process. Like, you don't get to just sit at home and chill with your family for a week. Like, you get drafted and that's it. Like, you pack your bags and you leave. They send you a plane ticket, they send you a flight and you show up and you get on it and you go.

Whether you're a top draft pick and you go to Seattle or feel like you're meet and greet, or you go down to Arizona and you meet the team and, you know, they try to collect as many people, I joke. Ty Holeb, who is the. There are two scouts who I feel like are important to know, two area scouts whose names Mariner fans should know. One of them is Joe Saunders, who's the Midwest scout who scouted Ryan Sloan and is really responsible for that. The other one is Ty Holeb, who is the scout for, like, the Carolinas. I call it the mid atlantic region. I think his just says Virginia and South Carolina or something. But he tie. Holla. Picks are heavily over represented, I think, in any draft.

And I mean, I guess we could take a second away from, from talking about the arms to maybe talk about Brandon Icke from VCU, who is quote unquote Tyler Locklear light.

And we could also talk about D'Onofrio, too.

Ryan Seacrest
I like him. He reminds me a lot of like Carson Jones type.

Kate Pruser
Yeah.

Big power.

Let's chunk these three guys together. Let's talk about Iki from VCU. D'Onofrio, who's the 19th round pick?

Ryan Seacrest
D'Onofrio was 10th.

Kate Pruser
10Th. Sorry, sorry. Yeah, he's on a sheet, so. D'Onofrio. That's right. He ended day two. That's why I had him stuck in my mind as one of the last D'Onofrio and then Ike and knit Saint Laurent or whatever. Oh, Austin Saint Laurent. He's Appalachia, right?

Yeah, I think.

Where is Appalachia State? Is that West Virginia?

Ryan Seacrest
App state is in North Carolina or South Carolina.

Kate Pruser
Oh, that's. Oh, okay, so that's another one. Another one for.

Ryan Seacrest
He's another hall of guy. Yeah, hall of had like five or six guys.

Kate Pruser
My lord. We were joking on Twitter that he was just gonna like load them all up in a bus and drive the bus over to Arizona.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah.

Kate Pruser
Which is like only partially. Only partially a joke. I'm. It's. I think they could fill that bus up.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah, I mean. I mean, if he is truly the Carolinas in Virginia, that would be.

Bielenson is out of Duke, which is in the Carolinas. Will Riley is out of the Carolinas.

D'Onofrio, Ike and.

Oh, yeah, they took the Campbell kid.

So. Yeah, like six. Yeah, like, that's. Yeah, I mean, at least. At least six players. I'll have to pull it up, but, yeah, I mean, that's an unbelievable haul for one scout.

Kate Pruser
It is. And.

Ryan Seacrest
Oh, Shankman is from East Carolina.

Kate Pruser
Oh, that's right. Yeah, we got a gotta count.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah, so. Oh, yeah, so they got a 1234-5677 at least. Yes, I think seven guys.

Kate Pruser
That's out of 21 areas.

Ryan Seacrest
Out of 20.

Kate Pruser
That is.

I mean, that's an incredible.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah, that's unbelievable.

Kate Pruser
Bless ty holeb and all that he has brought into this organization. Very fun guy. Good follow on Twitter to follow him if you. So you are interested in this. He interacts a lot with the players, funguy and obviously a very good scout and has delivered. I mean, the Tyler locklear I thought was an absolute steal. Now Ryan Knip has said, apparently answered his phone call from Scott Hunter, saying, hello, mister Hunter, thank you for the opportunity. You have just gotten the steal of the draft, which I love. I like, I love that as an opening salvo.

I would say nip is as far as the position players go, if he is even a position player.

I guess we kind of count him as both. But definitely one of my favorite pick the draft, and I know yours, too.

Ryan Seacrest
I mean, how can you not, how can you catch your closer?

Kate Pruser
Closer. His own battery.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah. I mean, that's awesome.

Yeah. He sounds like a very, very fun dude. I watched an interview with him.

He seems very, you know, like, I told the story on the pod yesterday, but he literally was just catching a bullpen, and then he, like, was like, hey, you think I can hit 85?

And then he got on the mound, and because his teammates were like, oh, yeah, you could, or whatever. And his first one, he threw 90, and he didn't even really try. And so then he started trying, and he hit 96. Wow.

Just two days later, he threw a bullpen at the pro day. I mean, it's just like, he's clearly a pretty damn good athlete and has some natural arm talent, and so I'm excited to see what the Mariners can kind of gauge from him in terms of an arm. And because it's obviously about as raw as you can get.

Kate Pruser
It's interesting because it feels like high school. Cool pick, right? Because that's when you have a lot of guys who are combination shortstop pitchers. Like, they haven't really figured out where their place is going to be. It's much rarer, I think, for college guys. Although now that we're talking about this. Oh, Penn Murphy. Penn Murphy was a short stop his first, like, year. I think he went to Vanderbilt and was a short stop there and then made the conversion over pitching. So it does happen sometimes, but generally, I would say it's very much the exception. It's a rarity. Usually guys are, like, locked into one position by this time, and, yeah, it's.

Ryan Seacrest
Like they have the upside of, you know, high octane reliever, but if that doesn't work out, he's still an insane mammoth power hitting.

Kate Pruser
His arms are like treacherous hitter.

Ryan Seacrest
He's just a big dude. Like, he's just a big, big dude.

Kate Pruser
Big, strong, physical.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah. I mean, he's, he's, he's fun.

Kate Pruser
I love, in this draft just being like, hey, you know what? Let's take, let's take this fun player. Like, they could have gone different ways at that pick. They could have gone with another, like, safe college starting pitcher, you know, maybe like a college number three or whatever.

But instead they were like, let's. Let's roll the dice on. On the fun, athletic upside of this player, which I feel like a lot of times is something you do when you're picking a prep player.

You're just banking on future athleticism. You're just doing it with a guy who's kind of older here and so at a discount. Yeah, I love it. I love it as a strategy. Bold strategy. Fun strategy.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah, very fun. I mean, even their 20th rounder, where it's like, yeah, he's got some tools. And then Scott Hunter's like, yeah, but if it doesn't work out, there was like, 95 on the mound, so maybe.

Kate Pruser
We could try that, like the one JJ Piccolo's son. So the Royals GM's son. So now, as somebody pointed out, like, the Mariners and the Royals have drafted each other's sons because the Royals had Joe.

Ryan Seacrest
I mean, different. Yeah, different, like tenure in the Royals, but like, yeah, it's the same team.

Kate Pruser
Yeah. But it sounds to me like Piccolo, Colo. Is kind of more of a maybe. I mean, he strikes out much, and striking out as a ton in college is.

I'm not going to say it's like a death knell, but it's definitely not a great sign. It's something that is a challenge to overcome as part of your professional development.

But just knowing that he's got a great arm, he's a great defender, and knowing that you could potentially, like, put him up on the mound and see how it plays, that might be as a 20th rounder. I love that. I love, once again, like, just rolling the dice on athleticism.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah. I mean, that was clearly their plan of attack, and I think they, especially for how constricted they were monetarily, they. They did it very admirably. So.

Kate Pruser
Yeah.

Ryan Seacrest
Very happy, even. It's not gonna, it's not gonna be like a blow you away draft.

Kate Pruser
No.

Ryan Seacrest
Right. You're not gonna look back on this draft like last year's draft, and you're like, wow, this really altered the future of the franchise. But, you know, it's. It's a good. It's for what they had. It's a good draft. It's like a. It's like a bee draft. Right? You're like, that's a, that's a good draft.

Kate Pruser
It's a solid.

I think it's an adraft. Given what they were working with, like, given the financial concerns they were working with, constraints, given what this draft had, I mean, it's definitely, it's a boomer bust kind of draft, and so far as you need your first two to pan out.

But I think the creativity and just kind of like a few kind of gutsy picks, like, even your polished college relievers are, like, with more and more.

Ryan Seacrest
Is the one I'm very excited to see, really, because, well, I mean, it's like, obviously, I like, I don't like him as much as, you know, like, Shankman's slider and curveball are just, like, amazing. Like, I know he's probably going to be something.

Kate Pruser
Yeah.

Ryan Seacrest
But, like, if they can dial more in and he's a good. It's, you know, he doesn't look awkward moving, right? Like, he's got a fluid motion and he is absolutely massive. So, like, you know, we could have another, you know, like, ernie day situation where he's walking 15 batters per nine or something and he. That would be really bad and he would not be a big leaguer. But, you know, if they can just, like, refine that just a little bit and they've shown they've been able to do it, I don't know if they can. You know, it's no guarantee, but, like, sitting upper nineties with, like, that kind of stuff is something that intrigues me, especially out of that frame. And, you know, his relative athleticism, it intrigues me. I like, I'm not as. I'm not confident that he'll just be like, you know, this massive 8th inning, 9th inning guy. But if he is, that's an awesome.

Kate Pruser
Development win out of that draft slot. That's a huge win and a huge development win. I agree.

I'd like to talk about someone who I think is the biggest upside play outside of those first two, the closest to that in my mind, which is weird when you're talking about a guy who's like a junior college guy, but Aiden Butler, which Scott Hunter called the scouting pick.

As far as somebody whose development trajectory is probably going to take a couple of years, it's not going to be somebody who they. Again, even though he's had stops at various, like, junior colleges, he's currently playing on the national Juco world, like us national team, which I didn't even know we had one of those, but he's over in the Netherlands or has been playing for because I saw Team USA in his Twitter bio and I was like, what? What are we talking about? But it's the juco.

And another one who apparently, according to Scott Hunter, knows everything about the Mariners, is excited to be a mariner who's happy to. Had a commitment to FSU. FSU, FSU to go on and, you know, maybe improve his draft stock some, but they're buying him out of that, which I think is smart, especially as kind of an older player who, you know, it's the ceiling of what he could get would be pretty limited to begin with, I think. So I'm excited. I think that he's very raw. He's so tall. Again, he's one of those things where you're looking at just athleticism. You're looking at raw tools. We had him listed at six six. Scott Hunter reportedly called repeatedly, said he was six eight, which is fascinating, like big, long levers and yet has a very, like, clean arm action. And as somebody who they just looked at and they were like, we feel like we can tweak this. We feel like we can develop this and make something really exciting about it. He's like 89 to 92 right now. So again, he feels very much like this is what you draft when you draft a high school arm in the later rounds. Like, these are a lot of things that you're looking at. You're looking at somebody who's not producing a ton of that, of velocity right now, but you feel like they have a frame where they can add it on, where they can get bigger and stronger, go through the gas camp, whatever.

Ryan Seacrest
Well, he can definitely add some. Some strength. I mean, he is, you know, he's obviously lifts it at six six, but if he is six eight, right, he's less than 200 pounds. I mean, he's 190.

He's listed at 193 on his page. Like, that is skinny blender, blade of grass.

Like, if he's. If he can put on some way, he's never gonna be, like, a massive dude, but, like, you know, if he can just get up to a weight where he can be in the, you know, 92, right. I think he's. I think he's touched 94 is where he's at right now. So it's like, if he's like, 92 to 94 touching 96, then he's already got his good command and control profile with, I assume, massive extension. Yeah, like, that's interesting. And for a 9th round guy, he's still 20 years old.

Kate Pruser
Like, Logan Gilbert Light. Logan Gilbert light. Logan Gilbert Light. Maybe.

Ryan Seacrest
I mean. I mean, who know? I don't know. He's obviously like, I'm not gonna. I hate. I hate putting comps on players.

Kate Pruser
I know you do, but the people love comparable. The people love comp.

Ryan Seacrest
People love comps.

Kate Pruser
Well, I mean, I don't think it is insane to call Brandon Ike from VCU Tyler Locklear light because specifically, that is exactly how Scott Hunter described him.

Ryan Seacrest
So I think, like, he replaced Brand or Tyler lock. Yes. Like, on.

Kate Pruser
I mean, he is literally in every way, shape.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah, that one I'm fine with.

Kate Pruser
But, you know, when you look at a Paul lanky, slender player with huge extension, I feel like it's very hard not to see Logan Gilbert in that.

Ryan Seacrest
And, yeah, I mean, he's obviously a lot, lot less refined than Gilbert was, but, yeah, I mean, I can see the vision. I can see the vision in terms of build. I mean, he's just. He's just a couple years behind what Gilbert was as pitcher. Whether or not he is able to ascend to the heights that Gilbert is. Is obviously very far away, so. But, yeah, he is essentially like a glorified. Yeah, he's a glorified high school pick, essentially.

Kate Pruser
Yeah, exactly.

Ryan Seacrest
They're probably gonna have to pay him a little bit of money, and he's very unrefined, but he's got good. He's got a good build, and there's upside there.

Kate Pruser
Yeah.

Ryan Seacrest
You know, he won't be. He won't be 21 until late September, so that's like, he will pitch all of next year at 21 years old.

Kate Pruser
I love it. He is my favorite pick in the draft outside of. You're right. He is my guy. I love christian little. I'm super excited for christian little. I'm excited. Like, I love that pick. But Butler is the one that kind of speaks to my heart because it's. And this is sheer. This is just pure, like, flair type. I love that type of player. I love that. I love a pitcher with, like, crazy height, crazy long limbs, crazy extension. Like, that is just what speaks to me. So I think that is. I believe that's my guy in this draft.

Ryan Seacrest
I like it. Yeah, that's not a bad one to have.

I go back and forth as to who my actual guy is. I mean, I get very attached to all of these players very quickly. Yes.

Kate Pruser
You have to be.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah, I mean, if he were to sign, Brian Walters would be my guy.

Kate Pruser
Okay. We should probably talk about him just a little bit.

Ryan Seacrest
He's so good. He's legit.

Kate Pruser
Yeah. So the deal with Bryan Walters is he was a 19th rounder, and he is way, way, way better than being a 19th rounder, he had some injury and didn't pitch a lot this year. So I do feel like this was kind of like in case something goes wrong with one of their other picks, in case there was money freed up somehow. They took him to have a chance to, but it's sort of like a holding place.

They're probably not going to sign him. He's probably going to go back to Miami and, you know, try to get.

Ryan Seacrest
Which is honestly probably the right move.

Kate Pruser
Yeah, he. I mean, if you're picked in the first in the top ten rounds, you can just. It's such a. The drop off between one through ten and eleven through 20 is so big money wise, and unless you, like, really wanted to get your pro career started and really wanted to just bet on yourself and felt like you were going to go through. But it's hard, too, as a pitcher, and especially as a pitcher who's had injury, because, like, what if you leave school, you take this small amount of money, you get to the pros and you get hurt, and then that's your career and you, you wish that you had held out for something better. So I don't fault him at all. If he decides to go back, I will be sad because you and I have talked about whether or not he signs does kind of change the complexion of this day. Three draft, which was, um, more boring. It was boring.

Ryan Seacrest
Mundane. Yeah.

Kate Pruser
There were, there were pics that really, really bored us as we were writing them up. And, you know, it's always nice to get to speak with Scott Hunter and hear about, like, why some of these pit. I became much more interested in Matt Tiberia after he said, like, tiberia was really, really choked up, really felt like he. It was such an honor for him to, you know, is so happy to join. And as Scott Hunter said, like, sometimes a guy like that, a guy who didn't think he has a shot and is given a shot, makes the most out of that opportunity. And he did directly link him to pen Murphy in that way. Although he said Penn Murphy shouted at him and swore at him, he said.

Ryan Seacrest
It was like, yeah, like shouting expletives and going crazy with all his friends.

Kate Pruser
Yeah. Which is very much that, that very much tracked with Penn Murphy. His personality, I think. But, yeah, he is. I put a little star next to him in my notes. I put a little star next to Harrison crying because I think he's more interesting than his numbers. Look, are those my only. But yeah, a lot of them. And we didn't even get them on the call, really, because they were just, it's, I'm not sure what to make of them. There was limited information online and what there was was not, it doesn't exactly jump off the page. So you and I have both.

Ryan Seacrest
I do want to throw in, too.

Kate Pruser
Go ahead.

Ryan Seacrest
Oh, I just want to say, like Scott said, that they had Brian Walters as like a late day one, early day two player.

Kate Pruser
Yeah.

Ryan Seacrest
Which is like, that's a big swing. So, I mean, if, if there, if I were a pitcher that is coming off TJ, I, if there's an organization I could pick to go to, it would probably be Seattle for sure. But, you know, to some degree, you know, they can, they can sell you on developing and becoming a professional, but, you know, even, there's so much that can go wrong for a pitcher, especially one that has, you know, his brother obviously went, was a second rounder last year in a really good draft class and he's seen how much, you know, of that money that you can get as a true relief profile.

I just think he'll more than likely head back to school. So I'd love to have him, but I would be very surprised if he ends up in the 2024 draft class signing pool.

Kate Pruser
Yeah. He's not one of these guys whose MLB future is in doubt. He pretty much knows he's going to go, he's going to perform, he's going to get drafted, which I think is a safer thing to bet on when you are a hard throwing reliever than it is, you know, for almost any other kind of profile because your ceiling isn't that high, but your floor isn't that low. So you, you're operating.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah. I could totally see this being like a, hey, I want to reach out, establish a connection.

Kate Pruser
That's what I mean.

Ryan Seacrest
And then next year rolls around and they, you know, they take him earlier or whatever. Yeah, I could totally see that happening because, I mean, they did it with Troy Taylor.

Kate Pruser
Oh, yeah.

Ryan Seacrest
And, yeah. So I could totally see that being kind of what's going on here. But yeah, he's, he's legit. I kind of.

He's way too good to be a 19th rounder.

Kate Pruser
Right.

Ryan Seacrest
He just has to prove it on the field.

Kate Pruser
I feel like now that we've had a couple days away from it, I have let go of the idea that they're going to sign him. It feels very unlikely.

And now that we are not in the process of having to write up all of these day three picks and try to get excited about like, dull reliever after dull reliever. It is easier for me to feel less like that whole day hinges on whether he signs or not.

Christian Little was such a big win for that day. Wyatt Langsford, Lunsford Shenkman is a huge win. I'm interested in crying. I'm interested in Tiberi, like, I'm interested in Iki, like, there are, there are names in that day, three that I'll be interested to follow their careers for sure. And one of these guys might pop up out of nowhere, too. You don't. I don't know anything about Austin Saint Laurent.

Ryan Seacrest
Like, yeah, I mean, he could totally just be, like a guy that hits enough and I, you know, makes his way up like a. Like a Donnie Walton, you know, like, just like a. Hits enough to be relevant and plays a bunch of positions and becomes a utility guy that bounces around triple A in the majors and, you know, a.

Kate Pruser
Utility guy in the 15th round or whatever.

Yeah, like, that's.

Those are the profiles you're looking at from this at this point. So overall, like, I think it was a good draft given what they were able to, given what they were working with. I will also say that even though draft grades don't matter, as I was looking at draft grades most, as far as the AL west went, it was pretty unanimously agreed that the Astros had a good draft.

Of course they did. The Mariners had a good draft, depending on how teams felt about or how analysts felt about their strategy, and the Rangers and Angels had bad drafts. Was that your.

Ryan Seacrest
I don't know if I would say bad. I think to some extent, I don't trust LA to develop a player, period.

Kate Pruser
Wow. Hitter or pitcher? Because, I mean, pitching, I would say for sure.

Ryan Seacrest
No, but I mean, just like, like, who have they hit on in the last five years?

Like, Netto has been fine, but they took him top ten. Shanuel's been okay at best.

Kate Pruser
Adele is starting to show signs of life.

I was very annoyed. I was very annoyed at his play. I was very annoyed at his play in this past series.

Ryan Seacrest
So maybe, yeah, like, they're, I, I don't have a ton of confidence in them, but I do think I like the players they drafted. Like, they took Chris Cortez, who is at his floor. He's going to be like an 8th inning guy. He's going to be annoying for the Mariners to face, right. If he does end up there, like, Rian Johnson throws, you know, super hard, he's got great command. It's unorthodox, but, you know, he's good.

Christian Moore, I really liked. You know, they got some guys later, they took Trey Gregory Alford in the 11th. You know, he's a flamethrower, high school guy. Like, I don't think it was bad. I don't think it was bad at all. But it's going to hinge a lot on what they can extract from these players to some extent because I think they kind of went a little safer in the beginning rounds and then kind of ramped up some. I mean, the, the Gregory Alford pick in the 11th is obviously, they went way overslot for that, but, you know, he is.

Kate Pruser
So they kind of took the opposite position to the Mariners where they went, say, and lower slot in order to be able to access some of that prep.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah, like, they, they, I think they had a fine draft. I wouldn't say they had a bad draft. Texas I know less about. I would say they probably had the worst of the AL west, but I mean, they, like, they got some players right? Like Walker Yonick I really liked.

I remember they took, they took, they took a guy that's, I think he was a draft elbow sophomore. I could be wrong, but at a UNC that played well in Omaha, you know, like, yeah, there's some guys like the draft to, by and large, like, everybody's going to do pretty good right after the draft happens.

Kate Pruser
Right. I think the Mariners with the development.

Ryan Seacrest
Exactly right. So, you know, Houston had a good draft, which is always very annoying about that. They didn't even have it. Like, I don't think they had a second round pick either, which is incredibly annoying.

But, yeah, I mean, like, the Mariners did nothing.

They didn't gain on anybody, but they really didn't lose a ton of ground, especially if the top hits, they probably, if everybody's top two picks hit, the Mariners come out big winners. So.

Kate Pruser
Okay.

Ryan Seacrest
I mean, well, I mean, Oakland had the fourth all pick, so I did not.

Kate Pruser
It's so upsetting that I didn't even think of Oakland. I was like, oh, the four teams of the AOA, I don't. Oakland ceased to exist in my brain. They have ceased to exist as a threat, which is.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah, I mean, like, Nick Kurtz is sweet, and they got some, they got some, like, tommy White, they took in the second, which I thought was interesting with the double first base strategy, but maybe they put Tommy White at third. I don't know, but, like, everybody had fine drafts. I don't think. I don't think anybody was like, you look at the draft and you just can't understand what's going on, and I don't think anybody in the division had a draft that was like, blow me away. Holy crap. How did they get these guys there type of a thing?

Kate Pruser
Because you just can't unless you have a ton of picks and a ton of draft cap and everyone was kind of on equal footing as far as that went.

I do think the Mariners got, I.

Ryan Seacrest
Mean, Oakland had a lot of picks.

Kate Pruser
I think the Mariners got one of the biggest impact players in Ryan Sloan. I think that when we look at this draft class a few years down the road, I feel fairly confident that Sloan, assuming a normal developmental trajectory, is going to be the best player out of that group. He's just so good.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah. I mean, he is.

He's an exceptional talent. They'll just need to refine him and make him into the pitcher that he can be. Yeah, but, you know, he's just shown so much like I, for a high school guy, I have.

I do have some confidence in him being, you know, a legit.

I feel like he has somewhat of a higher floor for a high school pitcher, which is still a very, very low floor.

Kate Pruser
Right.

Ryan Seacrest
But just his physicality, his mentality, and his kind of like, his ability to.

What is, what does Scott service say with, like, tinker smart or something?

I don't think he's just gonna try stuff. Yeah, I do. Like, I do.

I'm very, very intrigued and looking forward to seeing how he progresses because, like, I mean, obviously we've been beating this drum a lot, but I. The separators are the first two picks. If they hit, this is an outstanding draft. If they don't, it's probably going to be a little underwhelming. So, I mean, that's.

Kate Pruser
Which honestly. But they can afford because they built themselves a cushion by drafting really well last year, last year's draft, they had awesome.

Ryan Seacrest
I don't think you can hope for more out of a draft than what the Mariners got right in the 2023.

Kate Pruser
Draft, and as much can't. As much as I whine about the fact that they had their best draft position in a draft year, that was awful for everyone.

Although somehow the Rangers came out with Evan Carter, which is perpetually annoying. But they.

Ryan Seacrest
The Rangers had a, like, really good draft in 2020. So annoying, which is so annoying.

Kate Pruser
And I have whined about that and felt cursed and shook my fist at the heavens about that. But for them to have last year's super deep draft class line up with a year where they had essentially three first year picks, it just created, I think, a ton of separation. I really hope they hold on to a lot of those players and don't trade them off at the deadline here for who knows what. But we'll see. And they've again built something where they can afford some blows on the trade deadline front. I really don't want to empty out the farm system, though, especially when you look at how kind of thin this draft was.

So we'll see.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah, I mean, they, they've obviously got room to work with in the farm system. I don't know if I want to even go down the whole trade deadline talk because we're going to be doing that soon.

Kate Pruser
That's. Let's not. Let's not borrow trouble.

Ryan Seacrest
We'll do it.

Kate Pruser
We'll button this up for today, then with the conclusion of the 2024 MLB draft. Thank you, Max, so much for all of your help and all of the work that you put into this before, during, after the draft.

It was laborious for sure. And I hope some of these players reward you by becoming really good mariners.

Ryan Seacrest
I really hope so, too. I hope to see all of these guys pitching in the big league, so that would be a wonderful outcome.

Kate Pruser
Yeah, hopefully we see some of those fast movers get in and make an impact pretty soon. It's a nice balance between guys who should, we should see pretty soon and then guys who will have a lot of fun following their developmental track, like Sloan.

Ryan Seacrest
Yeah.

Kate Pruser
All right. Thank you so much, everybody, for listening. And we will be back with another episode of they might be Mariners, perhaps a little deeper, maybe after trades have happened and we're re examining the state of the farm system or hopefully maybe looking forward to some playoff pushes. So we will talk then. Thanks, Max. Thanks, Evan, for audio engineering this all, and thank you for listening. And thanks to our sponsors, McDougal bats, and we will talk to you all next time. Bye.

They Might Be Mariners: 2024 Draft Review - Meet at the Mitt Podcast

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1: Introduction to the Draft Review

2: Player Analysis

3: Strategy and Team Needs

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