Mariners top prospect just dropped the mic with comment on Futures Game

The All-Star Futures Game is next month in Philadelphia, and Kade Anderson wants nothing to do with it. It's not the invite he's waiting for, which would be an overstep from confidence to cockiness for most prospect who have been pros for less than a year.

But let's be real. If you were Kade Anderson, you'd be eyeing a call to the Seattle Mariners, too. He doesn't need no stinking Futures Game, as he made clear on Thursday:

OK, fine. If you distract yourself from the pull quote and listen to what Anderson said, you'll hear a guy who understands that patience is part of the prospect journey — yes, even for ones rated by MLB Pipeline at No. 6 in the sport.

Even so, that pull quote does match the "What the hell is he still doing there?" energy of his experience through 10 starts with Double-A Arkansas. The 21-year-old lefty has faced 176 batters over 49.0 innings, and those have yielded just 27 hits, seven walks and 76 strikeouts. His ERA is 1.29.

“I don’t know what else he could do at Double-A,” ESPN's Jeff Passan said of Anderson in his latest interview with Brock and Salk of Seattle Sports. “It’s been one of the more dominant stretches of minor league pitching that I’ve seen. Not like this year, like period.”

Coming into this year, there was always going to be a point when Anderson proved he was too good for Double-A. The question now is whether that point has already passed, which leads to another question of when he could make it to the big leagues.

The Mariners need to make room for Kade Anderson, because they can't deny he's coming

It's true that the Mariners aren't even 12 months removed from drafting Anderson out of LSU with the No. 3 pick. It's also true that he still has Triple-A standing between him and the big leagues, and that the Mariners shouldn't simply skip that step.

However, yet another true thing is that prospects have started getting to the majors faster than ever. It's not a shift with a 100-percent success rate, but polished college pitchers with dominant minor league numbers have tended to be safer bets. We've brought up Paul Skenes, Chase Burns and Trey Yesavage in conjunction with Anderson, and his trajectory increasingly looks similar to that of Burns.

After sitting out the rest of the 2024 MiLB season after going No. 2 to the Cincinnati Reds in the 2024 draft, Burns completely overwhelmed hitters in 11 outings at the High-A and Double-A levels. He then needed just two starts at Triple-A before he got the call to the majors. He debuted on June 24, 2025.

Anderson probably won't make it to Seattle quite that fast, and a lot depends on how and when the Mariners can make room for him in their rotation. They have too many qualified starting pitchers as it is, and it'll take an injury or a trade to clear that up.

All the same, Anderson pitching for the Mariners in 2026 no longer feels like a best-case scenario. It feels like an inevitable reality, and one that's coming soon.

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