The Seattle Mariners are calling up 22 year old left hander Kade Anderson, the third overall pick in the 2025 draft, to make his major league debut Saturday against the Chicago Cubs at T-Mobile Park. He’ll be the first player from the 2025 draft class to reach the big leagues, taking the spot originally slated for Bryan Woo.
Anderson earned the call with a dominant run at Double-A Arkansas: a 1.06 ERA and a 0.64 WHIP across 93 and a third innings, with 135 strikeouts against just 13 walks in 18 starts, good for a 10-1 record. He led LSU to a national championship and was named Most Outstanding Player of the College World Series before turning pro.
Why Call Him Up Now Instead of Letting Him Develop Further?
The timing lines up with Seattle’s own playoff push, the Mariners are fighting for position in a tight American League wild card race, and a starter performing at Anderson’s level in Double-A is a real, immediate upgrade over letting an established rotation option keep struggling. Modern front offices increasingly treat a pitching prospect’s readiness as a function of results and workload management rather than a fixed number of years in the minors, and Anderson’s numbers make the case for promotion on their own.
What happens next matters more than the excitement around Saturday’s start. Elite pitching prospects face a well documented injury risk once they reach professional velocity demands, and how the Mariners manage Anderson’s innings and pitch counts over his rookie season will say a lot more about the organization’s actual priorities than one highly anticipated debut.
