ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports that the Seattle Mariners are expected to call up outfield prospect Jarred Kelenic on Thursday for the team’s home game against the Cleveland Indians.
OF Jarred Kelenic, the No. 3 prospect in baseball, is expected to be called up by the Mariners on Thursday, sources familiar with the situation tell ESPN.
While things can obviously change, the plan is to promote Kelenic for the first game of Seattle's home series vs. Cleveland.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) May 11, 2021
The left-handed hitting and throwing Kelenic is a consensus top-five prospect in baseball (and Seattle’s top prospect), ranking No. 3 by ESPN, and No. 4 by Baseball America, MLB.com, and FanGraphs.
The 6’1″, 190-pound outfielder is a true five-tool prospect that has put up a .294/.370/.523 slash line with 37 stolen bases (caught eight times) in 177 career minor-league games. He’s 8-for-18 with two homers and two stolen bases for Triple-A Tacoma this season. While he may not be elite at any particular skill, he’s likely to be solid-to-good at just about everything in the hitting, fielding, and baserunning departments. That should add up to a very valuable, well-rounded ballplayer.
Kelenic, 21, was the sixth overall pick by the New York Mets in the 2018 MLB Draft. The Mets then sent Kelenic to the Mariners on Dec. 3, 2018 as part of a trade that sent Robinson Cano and Edwin Diaz to New York (a trade the Mets would surely like a do-over with, at least unless Diaz can be the closer on a championship Mets team soon).
Every MLB evaluator on the planet knew that Kelenic was deserving of being on Seattle’s Opening Day roster, and then-president/CEO Kevin Mather even admitted in February that the organization manipulated Kelenic’s service time in order to gain an extra year of team control. But, that time has passed, and now Kelenic is where he belongs with the big-league club. He should quickly be one of the most exciting, impactful players on a rebuilding Seattle squad.
