4 highlights to get Mariners fans hyped for Lazaro Montes' major league debut

It's important to be clear-eyed about what's going on with the Seattle Mariners' promotion of Lazaro Montes. It feels as much like a 2027 audition as it does like a 2026 Hail Mary. The right fielder is also hardly a can't-miss prospect, largely because he misses an awful lot when he swings. So, keep these things in mind before you get too excited.

That said, there's nothing wrong with getting hyped for the 21-year-old's arrival.

He's ranked as a top-100 prospect by outlets like MLB Pipeline, Baseball America and FanGraphs. He's also coming to the Mariners with some legit minor league numbers, including a .928 OPS and 38 home runs in 123 total games at Double-A and Triple-A this year.

These highlights show off Lazaro Montes' power, arm strength and all-out energy

The elevator pitch for Montes as a potential difference-maker is simple. Yes, he swings and misses a lot. And no, he's not much of an athlete. Yet the dude can absolutely mash, and he's a gamer to boot.

He's all about exit velocity

See Laz. See Laz crush one at 115.9 mph off the bat for a home run:

That is somehow only the 10th-hardest home run tracked at Triple-A this year, yet it is typical of the power contained within Montes' 6-foot-5, 210-pound frame. As per Thomas Nestico, Montes ranks in the 100th percentile for average exit velocity and hard-hit rate among his peers.

A separate piece from Eli Ben-Porat of Baseball America highlights how Montes' raw power separates him from other high-whiff slugging prospects. Which is good, because it's otherwise hard to sugarcoat a strikeout rate that has been hovering around 30 percent since he reached the high minors last season.

The opposite-field power is there, too

See this? This is a pretty swing right here:

That's Montes going with the arm-side movement of a pitch from a righty and sending it over the left-center wall. It "only" left the bat at 107.8 mph, and we don't know the official distance. From the eye test, though, that was easily 420-plus feet.

Montes is more of a pull-power guy, but the fact that he's capable of swings like this allow for some hope that he might actually live up to the comps he gets to his fellow Cuban slugger, Yordan Alvarez. Many things make Alvarez one of the great hitters in baseball, and among them is the ability to go the other way. The lefty swinger is a career .323 hitter with a .550 SLG on balls to right field.

He has a cannon, and he doesn't mind hustling

When Baseball America updated its list of the best tools in the minor leagues, Montes actually made two appearances. One, naturally, was for his power. The other was for his arm.

That arm is usually what makes him worth watching in right field. He's down from 14 outfield assists in 2025 to just seven this year, but that's probably because the scouting report on him warns of throws to second base like this one:

Montes otherwise doesn't grade out as a particularly athletic prospect. MLB Pipeline, for example, has him as a 35 runner and a 45 fielder on the 20-to-80 scale, where 50 denotes average.

Yet with the caveat that we haven't watched Montes on a daily basis during his rise up the Mariners' farm system, it isn't uncommon to see him play above his reputation thanks to sheer hustle. He's got some moves on the basepaths, and he's far from a loafer on defense.

To wit, check out how far and hard he went after this fly ball:

Even if the rest of this season is truly an audition for 2027, the Mariners would not have called on Montes if they didn't think he could give them some kind of boost. To this end, they may be surprised by how much he can do even when he doesn't have a bat in his hands.

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Follow