Mariners' compensatory draft pick just put this top prospect on the trade block

Harry Ford is no longer the most recent case of the Seattle Mariners using an early draft pick on a catcher. They selected a catcher in the compensatory round of the 2025 MLB Draft on Sunday, using the No. 35 pick on Luke Stevenson out of North Carolina.

Ranked by MLB Pipeline as the No. 33 talent in this year's draft class, Stevenson is regarded as a power-hitting backstop with a strong arm and above average defensive skills. His hit tool is his biggest question mark, as he notably hit only .251 for the Tar Heels this past season.

Even still, the big question is not what kind of player Stevenson will become, but whether his arrival in the Seattle organization will further hasten Ford's exit from it.

Harry Ford was a Mariners trade chip even before the MLB Draft

If Ford was in basically any other major league organization, he would probably already be in the big leagues by now.

The Mariners drafted him 12th overall back in 2021, which constituted something of a risk given that he represented the most beguiling of all prospect types: a high school catcher. Yet he's been a regular in top-100 lists over the last couple of years, and he's in the middle of his finest minor league season yet in 2025.

In 69 games for Triple-A Tacoma, the 22-year-old Ford has gotten on base at a .409 clip with nine home runs. He's been on a major heater with a .920 OPS and eight homers since the start of May, helping him earn a spot on the American League roster for Saturday's Futures Game.

Yet while the Mariners did briefly tease Ford's promotion in June, the fact remains that he's looking up at Cal Raleigh on the organizational depth chart. That will only change if Raleigh gets injured or if Ford changes positions, and one seems as unlikely as the other.

Hence the steady current of trade speculation concerning Ford, who ranks at No. 2 in Jim Bowden of The Athletic's list of prospects most likely to get traded this summer. He is an attractive trade chip just in theory, and all the signs point toward the Mariners making some noise ahead of the July 31 trade deadline.

Ford himself isn't sweating all the trade buzz, telling Bob Nightengale of USA Today: “I'm just like, you know what, my career is in in God's hands and I just let it let it be where he decides it will go."

It's an admirable mindset, and it would be bittersweet if Mariners fans never got to see Ford in Seattle after he put in four years' worth of hard work moving up through the system. Yet if he wasn't already, he sure seems capital-E Expendable after the front office added yet another catching prospect to its ranks.