The Futures Game landed in a messy little window on Sunday morning, buried under the MLB Draft, the Mariners’ final stop on the Road Trip From Hell, and a Peacock stream with a helicopter buzzing near the on-field mics. So if you missed American League prospects beating National League prospects, 6-1, you were hardly alone.
The Mariners still managed to leave the day with two pitchers making a strong case for why their names keep coming up in prospect conversations. Kade Anderson started for the AL and needed only ten pitches to get through his lone inning. The box score says he threw six strikes, but that undersells the inning a bit, because HP umpire Alex Shears clipped him on two pitches at the bottom of the zone that looked like strikes.
Anderson’s line may get lost next to Pirates prospect Seth Hernandez, who fired a clean 1-2-3 inning with two strikeouts and reached 101 mph with his fastball. But Anderson was plenty sharp in his own right, working through the top of the NL lineup with efficiency and control.
He got Nationals leadoff hitter Eli Willits to pop out on the second pitch of the at-bat, a fastball up and in that was exactly where it needed to be. He then fell behind Rockies prospect Roldy Brito 2-1 after not quite finding the feel for his changeup, but came back with a slider Brito rolled into a weak comebacker that Anderson handled himself.
The only real blemish came against Brewers prospect Jesús Made, who should have been in a tougher count after a pitch that looked like it belonged in the strike zone. Instead, Made managed to poke a 95 mph fastball into right field for a soft single.
Anderson still finished the inning by getting Rockies prospect Charlie Condon to fly out on the first pitch, a slider that was actually the hardest-hit ball against him all day at 97 mph. Even then, it felt like Anderson knew where it was headed before the ball left the bat.
That outing stood in sharp contrast to his last big national stage appearance, the Mariners-Brewers Spring Breakout game this spring. In that one, Anderson walked four hitters in two-plus innings, had trouble locating his fastball, and left a hanging slider in the zone that got hammered for a three-run homer. The performance dinged his stock enough that some national prospect watchers were quick to crown Ryan Sloan as the true ace in Seattle’s system after Sloan opened that game with three perfect innings.
Anderson has spent the rest of this season answering that with his arm. He’s been mowing through Double-A hitters, missing bats with the same stuff while trimming the walk issues that showed up in college.
That Spring Breakout clunker can now be easier to dismiss as a bad day in triple-digit Arizona heat, especially since Anderson was not the day’s starter. His Futures Game inning was another clean stamp on what has been a huge first pro season and another reminder that he belongs in the conversation among the best pitching prospects in baseball.
Sloan followed later, entering in the fifth with the AL already up 6-1 in the seven-inning game. His inning was a little less tidy than Anderson’s, but it still gave a useful look at where he is now.
This time, it was Sloan who had some trouble locating his fastball. The velocity was there - he reached 100 mph - but he was missing out of the zone more than he wanted.
He had to work against Cubs top prospect Josiah Hartshorn for seven pitches before finishing him off with a cutter for a groundout. The cutter came through again against Giants prospect Gavin Kilen, who rolled over on the first pitch.
Sloan then tried to go back to an off-speed pitch against another Giants hitter, Dakota Johnson, who had come in hot after a three-homer game for Eugene on Friday. Johnson got a sweeper that leaked over the plate and lined it down the left-field line for a double.
Sloan still escaped the inning, but not before Brewers prospect Jesús Made made him work for six pitches and then lifted a sweeper on his hands for the final out.
It wasn’t Sloan’s cleanest inning, but it was a useful one. In the spring breakout game, he leaned heavily on his fastball and used it to overwhelm Brewers hitters. This time, with the heater not quite as precise, he had to show more of the rest of the bag: cutter, sweeper, and changeup, with Gameday listing the changeup as a splitter.
Sloan’s Double-A season has been more uneven than Anderson’s, which is exactly what you’d expect for a pitcher this young facing that level. Even so, he’s still building innings, sharpening efficiency, and learning how to navigate more advanced hitters. The Futures Game gave him another chance to do that in front of some of the same opponents he had already seen up close this spring.
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