Inbox: Could Draft make Mariners' farm system the best?
As the end of May draws near and we recognize the 2025 Draft is less than two months away, it's hard not to catch Draft fever. We'll be talking about it more and more as the big event draws near. Sometimes, you don't even realize it enters into your thinking. Case in point is this week's MLB Pipeline Inbox. I tried to choose an array of questions covering Draft and Minor League concerns but am realizing the former is creeping into all of my thoughts. So even the question about a top-notch farm system involves how this year's Draft will impact it, and the two seemingly straight-up pro prospect queries are about pitchers taken in last year's Draft.
At the start of the 2025 season, the Mariners were tied with the Cubs with seven members in the Top 100. Then Jurrangelo Cjintje was added once the season started, and Ryan Sloan joined when we tweaked the list in our "market corrections" earlier this month. That total of nine is the most a team has had in quite some time, surpassing the eight the Orioles (preseason 2023) and Rays (preseason 2021) had.
Our record for Top 100 representation is 10, set by the Padres to start the 2019 season. So if that No. 3 pick in the Draft (my last mock on May 15 had them taking Tennessee lefty Liam Doyle, for whatever that's worth) is deemed Top 100-worthy (likely), then they would tie San Diego for the most Top 100 guys. There have been other teams that have had sustained excellence by this measure, with the Braves having between seven to nine from 2017-2019, and the Astros having seven or more four times in seven rankings starting midseason 2013 and running through midseason 2016. And if I want to go way back, I can't help but think about the Royals, who had six prospects on what was just a Top 50 back in 2011, the foundation of the team that won the 2015 World Series. Similarly, the 2014 Cubs system had seven Top 100 guys to start the year, eight at midseason … and the big league club won it all in 2016.
When we did our preseason farm system rankings, the Mariners came in at No. 5, up four spots from our previous ranking, and adding two arms to the seven bats in the Top 100 certainly does look good. Ahead of them are the Tigers, Rays, Red Sox and Dodgers, and with Boston and Los Angeles, at the least, having graduated some top names, there's a chance the Mariners surpass them at midseason, depending on how the nine (and other non-Top 100 guys) are performing. I'm not sure adding just one No. 3 pick would vault them to the top spot, but as you point out, if they use that large bonus pool to bring in several high-end draftees, it's going to make for a very interesting conversation.
The short answer is yes. Bremner looked like he might be one of the best pitching options at the top of the Draft, but he was inconsistent out of the gate and held a 4.24 ERA at the end of March. In his seven starts since, he's reached double-digits in strikeouts six times, including punching out 13 while allowing only three hits and one walk in seven scoreless innings against Cal State Bakersfield last Friday.
The main difference, data-wise, seems to be that he's missing more bats with his fastball. Over the first seven starts of the season, through March, his heater -- averaging 95 mph -- registered a 25 percent miss rate, according to Synergy. Since? It's up to 38 percent, nudging his overall miss rate up from 36 to 42 percent. If that doesn't sound significant, keep in mind that it enabled him, per Synergy, to keep hitters to a .196 batting average after getting touched for a .246 BAA over those first seven starts.
Bremner has a definite up-arrow next to his name, and it wouldn't surprise me to start hearing his name up with the top college right-hander in the class, Kyson Witherspoon, as the Draft approaches. One thing not working in his favor is that prognosticators currently have Santa Barbara on the outside looking in for postseason play, which would keep Bremner from extending the exclamation point of the second half of his season.
We've definitely been keeping an eye on what Jump has been doing so far this season. Currently the A's No. 13 prospect, he's clearly underranked, both on that list and among lefty-throwing prospects. In case you haven't been paying attention, the 2024 draftee (No. 73 overall pick) has been making it look easy during his pro debut. The LSU product now has a combined 1.67 ERA, .192 BAA, 59/8 K/BB rate and 0.88 WHIP across High-A and Double-A. That includes 12 scoreless innings since his promotion. His overall numbers match up with many of the best pitching prospects in baseball, right- or left-handed.
When we tweaked our Top 100 earlier this month, that's really only looking at the main list, so the Top 10 lefty list kept the same names (we added Hunter Barco as a Top 100 replacement ahead of those market corrections) I don't want to speak for my colleagues, but I think we have some consensus that should we need a new lefty for that list -- something that might not happen soon because none of the 10 are even in the big leagues yet -- Jump would be the first one added. And we have been talking about Jump as a potential Top 100 replacement, which would vault him onto the southpaw rankings as well.
In our Draft report on Burns ahead of the '24 Draft, we wrote: "Burns operates at 97-99 mph and reaches 102 with his heater, but it's fairly straight and batters get a good look at it coming out of his high arm slot, so it gets hit harder than it should at times." That wasn't pulled out of thin air. Even though Burns' heater elicited a 36 percent miss rate with Wake Forest in 2024, opposing hitters registered a .286/.386/.597 line against the pitch.
So far in 2025, between High-A Dayton and Double-A Chattanooga, Burns' fastball, which has averaged 96.5 mph and touched triple digits, has a 28 percent miss rate. But professional hitters have not been squaring it up nearly as much: .217/.277/.500. The higher SLG comes from the fact that all five of the homers he's given up this year have come off the heater.
But combine that more effective fastball with his impossible-to-hit slider, plus curve and effective changeup, and it’s no surprise that MLB's No. 11 prospect is among the top Minor League pitchers with 30 or more innings in a host of categories, from leading in xFIP (1.73) to sitting in third in K-BB% (35.3), to cherry-pick two.