Who Is The Player To Be Named Later?

Piecing together all the info that is out there on the PTBNL from the Doug Fister deal hasn’t been easy. League rules don’t allow for the Mariners to directly comment on players in another team’s system, and whatever player is joining the M’s from that deal is officially in the Tiger system still, so we wont get anything official for some time.

We do know 2 things though. The first come directly from Jack Zduneincik, who said that it is a “significant prospect,” that it will be one of 3 players that the Mariners will choose from within the next couple weeks. The second thing we know comes from Shannon Drayer:

If we assume that Shannon Drayer is correct, which is a very safe bet, then we now know who’s on the list of 3 players the M’s can choose from:

Ruffin is the closest to helping the Mariners, but he’s a reliever and thus has a lot less value in my opinion. Castellanos is the Tiger’s version of Nick Franklin. Getting him would be steal, but he’s a long way from “the bigs” and the Mariners got their 3B of the future in Martinez in this same trade. With that in mind, Castellanos seems redundant, though you can never have enough prospects of that caliber. Smyly has been really impressive in high A ball, and will undoubtedly start in AA next season. He profiles out very similarly to James Paxton from what I’ve read , though I think Harrison would be more knowledgeable on this. Perhaps we should ask him.

All 3 officially signed on August 16th, 2010, meaning they can’t be traded until the same date in 2011. League rules don’t allow prospect to be traded until 1 year after they sign their first contract.