Sodo Mojo’s Top 40 Mariners Prospects: 30-26

We are finally ready to start to reveal our Top 30 Seattle Mariners prospects, as ranked by us. Today, we continue with the next 5 names to make the list.

A few days ago, you read about a handful of Mariners prospects who just edged their way into the cut of our Top 40. Today, we continue our official countdown, revealing the next 5 prospects to crack our Top 40 list.

But before we do, let’s review our process. First, the rankers consisted of 4 staff writers. All 4 writers produced a list of their top prospects. The average rank of each player is the spot they landed on our list. In this case, the lower the number, the higher the rank.

Our rankers were not given any criteria for their list. Different eyes see different things and unique minds value things differently than others. There are no cookie cutters for prospect scouting and beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Also, take these ranks with a grain of salt. We do not get to see many of these players often and are relying on graining video, scouting reports, and statistics to cover our bases. If you want top-end prospect ranks, I suggest Keith Law of ESPN and Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel.

Without any further delay, let’s get started.

Sneaking into our Top 30 is left-handed reliever, Raymond Kerr. Kerr entered the Mariners system as a starter and found some early success in that role. In 2018, Kerr pitched 111 innings in A-ball and posted an 8.16 K/9 and a 4.28 ERA.

But mid-way through the 2019 season, Kerr was moved to the bullpen for Modesto and his prospect status shot up. Out of the pen, Kerr works in the upper-90s with a solid splitter that flashes plus, and a workable slider.

The slider sometimes looks more like a cutter, so a tightening of that pitch could give Kerr a solid 3rd option. As of now, the fastball-splitter combo could work and allows Kerr to get a lot of groundballs, 49.2% groundball rate to be exact. Perhaps most exciting is his microscopic 1.4% HR/FB rate.

Kerr has some command issues to work out to reach his ceiling. He could be a high-leverage lefty or possibly a multi-inning middle reliever. Both roles are starting to gain traction as a legitimately valuable weapon and Kerr’s upside helps him crack the Top 30.