Seattle Mariners: Why Jarred Kelenic was promoted to Double-A

One of the MiLB’s best teams just got even better.

To meet their self-established competitive timeline in 2021, the Mariners will need to push the envelope a bit. They did just that Friday night, aggressively promoting Jarred Kelenic, one of the game’s top prospects, to Double-A Arkansas.

Kelenic was already promoted once this year, from West Virginia to Modesto, where he initially struggled to adjust to the more advanced pitching of High-A ball. As each day went by, however, Kelenic only got better. From May 30 to June 30, he slashed just .203/.254/.375. Then, in the month of July, he figured things out and posted a .284/.384/.500 line.

With Kelenic’s High-A career abruptly ending last night, his final numbers at the level look like this: .290/.353/.485, six home runs, 22 RBIs, 130 wRC+, 10 stolen bases, 25.8 K%, 8.9 BB%.

The strikeout numbers are a tad bit worrisome, as Kelenic took his lumps against some of the more advanced breaking stuff Cal League pitchers had to offer. It’s going to be interesting to see how he fares against some of the best pitching in the entire MiLB, including the Major League caliber talent that resides on some of these rosters.

It doesn’t seem like he’s necessarily ready, considering he just recently got comfortable in the Cal League, and that’s why this comes as such a shock. So why did the Mariners, and more specifically Jerry Dipoto and Andy McKay, feel that this was the right choice to make in being aggressive on their most prized prospect?

The most simple answer may be that one of Arkansas’ outfielders, most likely Kyle Lewis, is on his way to Triple-A Tacoma following yesterday’s trade of Ian Miller to the Minnesota Twins. Lewis is expected to make his MLB debut at some point in September, so it’s possible they may look to get him closer to the team and see how he does in the much more hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League.

Instead, the Mariners’ main goal with this seems to be to bring Kelenic into the fold that already includes Lewis, Cal Raleigh, Logan Gilbert, Justin Dunn, Justus Sheffield, and Evan White—almost every top prospect Seattle intends to build around over the next few years. In the past, the Mariners have talked about building a culture not just at the Major League level, but throughout the organization, so as to establish a level of comfortability and familiarity for the players once they reach The Show.

The idea is to put a handful of their prospects together in one place for a potential championship run in order to develop a sense of camaraderie and history of winning between them. It’s not an opportunity often afforded to most top prospects, to be so heavily involved with one another so early on in their careers, with a chance to succeed and fail together as a team.

The Mariners are making this decision with full acknowledgement that, yes, Kelenic may struggle to find his footing at such a high level. But even then, the experience he could gain from being around these players, in a high leverage situation, should do wonders for his growth as a professional ball player.

It was practically a given at this point that Kelenic would start his 2020 season in Arkansas, so he’s not losing out on a huge amount of time in the Cal League, which wraps up play in three weeks. It is, however, another offseason worth of work that could have helped better prepare him for life in Double-A. But that’s all irrelevant at this point, as the Mariners think he’s already prepared for it, or that it’s at least a short enough amount of time to not do anything detrimental to his development if he does, in fact, stumble.

So what does this mean for Kelenic’s timeline to the MLB? If he continues to develop accordingly and adjusts to Double-A fairly early on, it’s possible you may see him in the navy and teal by September of next season. At the very least, barring injury, I believe this indicates that Kelenic will have a realistic opportunity of making the team right out of Spring Training in 2021. That may have still been the case even if he did stick in Modesto for the rest of this season, but the recent promotion makes that scenario feel all the more likely.

This is a good reminder that an MiLB.TV subscription is just $29.99 now, so you can watch this exciting Arkansas Travelers ballclub with your own two eyeballs.