These Mariners prospects are ready to leap forward in '25

This story was excerpted from Daniel Kramer's Mariners Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

SEATTLE -- For the first time in at least three years, the Mariners didn’t quite have a notable wave of graduations from the Minors to the Majors, at least among headlining names like Julio Rodríguez, Logan Gilbert, George Kirby, Bryan Woo, Bryce Miller, et al.

Troy Taylor made a strong impression after debuting Aug. 11 and pitching into a leverage role down the stretch. But Seattle didn’t quite lean on its pipeline as it had in the immediate years emerging from its rebuild.

Part of that is a testament to many among the club’s homegrown talent becoming impact players in The Show, but the more underlying explanation is that restocking the farm has featured a wave of hitters who were further off and in the low-level Minors.

That group is expected to take a significant step forward in 2025, and by all accounts, the state of the farm system is in a solid place: It's ranked No. 9 in baseball by MLB Pipeline and will assuredly climb by Spring Training.

3 players who forced their way onto the radar

2B/SS Michael Arroyo (Mariners’ No. 12 prospect)
The native of Colombia is entering his fourth pro season and finished on a high note after a June 25 promotion to High-A Everett, where he hit .290 with a .916 OPS in 60 games. Arroyo's strikeouts climbed a bit, to a 25.9% clip, but he also tapped into significantly more power, with 23 homers including a stint at Single-A Modesto, which correlated to a rise in slugging percentage, to .509 compared to .400 in 2023. It led to him being named the club’s Edgar Martinez “Dominate The Zone” Tournament Award winner among hitters.

RHP Michael Morales (Mariners’ No. 13 prospect)
There might not be a prospect in the system who’s taken more of a step forward since he was drafted than Morales, who earned the Jamie Moyer Co-Pitcher of the Year Award after making 27 starts between High-A Everett and Double-A Arkansas and going a combined 13-2 with a 3.02 ERA over a career-high 149 innings, nearly 40 more than his previous high. For comparison, in his first full pro season, Morales had a 5.91 ERA and surrendered 10.7 hits per nine innings over 120 1/3 frames.

RHP Logan Evans (Mariners’ No. 10 prospect)
He’s no longer the club’s best-kept secret after being legitimately considered for a bullpen role in the Majors less than one year after he was drafted in the 12th round. Those plans were ultimately quashed when Evans struggled with the transition, but he nonetheless put himself on the front office’s radar, perhaps as the next arm in line for a starting role in the big leagues, following in the footsteps of the success stories of Gilbert, Kirby, Miller and Woo.

Infielder Colt Emerson, the Mariners’ No. 1 prospect and the No. 27 prospect in baseball, could also certainly be included on this list, but given how he’s lived up to lofty expectations so far, he didn’t exactly “force” his way onto the radar -- he was already there.

2 breakout players to watch in 2025

LHP Brandyn Garcia (Mariners’ No. 16 prospect)
Selected one round ahead of Evans in 2023, Garcia also made a rapid rise to Arkansas, where he compiled a 2.83 ERA in 13 starts after blowing away hitters to a 29.5% strikeout rate at High-A Everett. With Morales, Garcia -- who is the club’s top-ranked lefty-pitching prospect -- was also named a Jamie Moyer Co-Pitcher of the Year Award winner.

RHP Ryan Sloan (Mariners’ No. 8 prospect)
Sloan will be among the most fascinating to follow in 2025, given that the Mariners aggressively went over the slot value ($3 million) to sign him after selecting him in the second round in '23, and that because he was a high school arm, he didn’t report to an affiliate.

1 big prospect question for next season

Can any of Seattle's prospects help the Major League team in 2025?
It’ll be interesting to see how much of a look infielder Cole Young (Mariners’ No. 2 prospect, No. 38 overall) gets heading into Spring Training, especially if Seattle doesn't exercise its $12 million option on second baseman Jorge Polanco, who recently underwent left knee surgery. If not, that’d leave a void at a position that the club has been trying to figure out since the Robinson Cano era. As it stands, it wouldn’t be out of the realm to think that if the Mariners move on from Polanco, Ryan Bliss would move up the depth chart and Young could have a clearer path to the Majors, if and when he’s ready.