Brendan Donovan<\/a> trade), the M\u2019s are toward the bottom of the pack in overall spending power, coming in at 24th overall.<\/p>\nAdvertisement<\/p>\n
The last time the Mariners found themselves in this draft capital position, they opted to swing big on their first two selections, taking RHP Jurrangelo Cijntje for a full-slot amount in the first round and RHP Ryan Sloan for a well above-slot value in the second. This, naturally, tanked the rest of their draft pool and forced them to get more conservative with their subsequent picks, but they still managed to pick up some relief talent in Hunter Cranton, Charlie Beilenson, Brock Moore, and Christian Little in the later rounds. It\u2019s far from a blueprint, but they\u2019ve tended to take their shots early and look for value in the back half of the draft where they can find it.<\/p>\n
This is a strong crop of talent this 2026 cycle. With what\u2019s considered one of the better groups of players this decade, the M\u2019s will have little trouble landing a top talent in the back half of the first round. They\u2019ve leaned on college pitching and high school position players heavily in the past, and fortunately for them, the pocket they draft in should have several different options that fit that prototype. We\u2019re still a few months out from decision days, but with the bulk of the college season completed and high school baseball wrapping up shortly, we have a pretty good idea as to where players will stand come draft day. There\u2019s usually one player every year that vaults their way up during postseason play, but on large, we\u2019re pretty close to dialed in.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll be breaking down players that we feel could be good targets for the Mariners weekly, factoring in team fit, historical trends, and industry rankings as much as possible. Maybe the M\u2019s buck their trend and select a high school arm with their first pick, for example, but because there\u2019s little indication we have (right now) that that\u2019s reasonable, it\u2019s not something we\u2019ll be looking all that much into. It\u2019s impossible to know exactly what they\u2019ll do, but our aim is to provide as best of a guess as we can with the context we have to work with.<\/p>\n
Sound off in the comments on any particular players you\u2019d like to see covered these coming months!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2026 MLB draft cycle is officially under way! When: July 11 \u2013 July 13 Where: Philadelphia, PA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2276],"tags":[5,4492,5634,19,2291,4,1586,65],"class_list":["post-698176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb-draft","tag-baseball","tag-brendan-donovan","tag-kade-anderson","tag-major-league-baseball","tag-major-league-baseball-draft","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-draft","tag-seattle-mariners"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116569367122087045","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}