The Mariners announced this afternoon that first baseman Evan White has been activated from the 60-day injured list and optioned to Triple-A Tacoma. Left-hander Matthew Boyd seems on the verge of following White in returning from the IL, as Chris McCosky of the Detroit News reports that he’ll be active for the M’s series in Detroit that kicks off tomorrow.
White has yet to play in the majors this season. The former first round pick underwent sports hernia surgery in March, and he’s spent the year on the IL. White initially began a minor league rehab assignment in mid-May, but he suffered a setback and was pulled off the assignment on two separate occasions. It wasn’t until the second week of August that he was able to get back into game action, returning to Tacoma on August 9.
Position players are allotted up to 20 days on rehab stints, so the Mariners had to activate White once that window closed. He still has all three minor league option years remaining, though, so they can keep him in Tacoma even as he reclaims his spot on the 40-man roster. White has struggled in 22 Triple-A games this season, although that’s largely to be expected as he tries to regain his timing after an extended absence. He underwent season-ending surgery on his left hip last July. The 26-year-old hasn’t had a consistent run of playing time since May 2021, so it’s only naturally he’d battle some rust in the early going.
The Mariners signed White to a $24MM guarantee in November 2019, committing to the then top prospect before he’d ever played a major league game. The club clearly believed he’d be their everyday first baseman for an extended stretch, moving to buy out three potential free agent years. That hasn’t transpired, as White has stumbled to a .165/.235/.308 line with a massive 37.6% strikeout rate in 306 MLB plate appearances between 2020-21. Ty France has long since passed him on the depth chart, but White is still guaranteed $18MM over the next three seasons. He’d only appeared in eight Triple-A games before this season, so he figures to be in line for an extended stretch against upper minors pitching now that he’s back to health.
Boyd has also yet to play in the big leagues this season, and his first appearance will be his team debut. The left-hander has spent the bulk of his career with the Tigers. He was a generally durable member of the rotation between 2017-20, starting 25+ games in all three full seasons and taking a full slate of 12 turns during the abbreviated 2020 campaign. Boyd struck out over 30% of opponents in 2019 and emerged as an in-demand trade candidate that summer, but the Tigers never found an offer to their liking and held onto him.
That didn’t pan out, as Boyd was hit hard in 2020. He looked on his way to a bit of a bounceback last year, but he began battling arm discomfort in June. An August return proved short-lived, and Boyd underwent flexor tendon surgery last September. That led Detroit to non-tender him after the season, and the Giants added him on a $5.2MM guarantee over the offseason. San Francisco intended for him to contribute to a playoff push, but the Giants struggled enough they dealt a few veterans at this summer’s trade deadline. Boyd was part of the sell-off, joining Curt Casali in heading to Seattle for a pair of minor leaguers.
While Boyd never suited up in black and orange, he’s now in position to pitch in a pennant race. Boyd has allowed just two runs with 14 strikeouts and no walks in eight innings of relief for Tacoma on a rehab stint in the past few weeks. He’ll step into a Seattle bullpen that skews extremely right-handed, giving manager Scott Servais a southpaw complement. The Washington native will look to help the Mariners snap their two-decade playoff drought while showing well in advance of a return trip to the open market.
The Mariners had a pair of vacancies on the 40-man roster, so no additional move was necessary to accommodate White’s reinstatement. The club will only need to make an active roster transaction to finalize Boyd’s return.
Will probably be added on Thursday when rosters expand? Can’t see any pitcher on the active roster getting optioned or otherwise right now.
Boyd is a high quality player and high character guy.
It is fitting that he is now playing for his home state Mariners
As great as the mariners pitching development is I think their hitting development in the minors has really been quite bad.
Sure julio is great but he would have been great in any org, other than that they don’t have many home grown hitters which worked out. Trammel has been good this year so far but he already was almost mlb ready when they traded for him, same with crawford.
If you look at the guys they drafted or signed or traded for while still in A ball it doesn’t look all that great apart from julio.
Fortunately for them trader jerry made some pretty good trades for mlb ready prospects and young major leaguers.
Either give them credit where due, with Julio, or stop complaining. Its just as easy to say the others would have failed anywhere. They are all products of the same system. Few rookies make an impact their initial call up. Evan White was a bad signing. Give the others more time. They aren’t done yet.
This is silly. They started their rebuild four years ago, had a whole season without minor league games and if you draft a high schooler it takes 5+ years on average to make the majors, if you are a college guy, it takes 3+ years. It takes years to add talent through drafts and international signings, plus the attrition rate of succes is 1 in 3 pitchers who are ranked and considered on a path to the majors actually pan out. Hitters areore like 2 in 5 or maybe asany as 1/2 if you include backup catchers amd role players. Soaround 2 of 5 draft picks should fail and it gets worse as you go deeper into the draft. But they have a GG 1B, ROY OF, two starters in their rotation and the best pitcher in the 2022 futures game.
Once in the majors it takes 1000 PAs to settle in to the player you are and then there are tiers of development after that as well. Like 2000 PAs is pretty much where they max out athletically, 5000 PAs is where they max out strength wise. Which is why around 26-30 are players best seasons. Arpund 3500-4000 PAs is where a player blends athleticism and power. Or around their 6th to 7th MLB season, usually the season before free agency.
Unless a prospect is a super athlete like Julio, there are usually very few free agent years of high performance. Players that reach a certain level of strength or have quick mastery skills (hand-eye coordination, problem solving, abstract skills, or in this case dirt dogs who live and breathe baseball) will acclimate to the league quickly and will in turn reach free agency sooner (Soto, Harper, Machado, Seager, etc.).
I think Kelenic works out too much and needs to work more on speed than strength training, getting ripped doesn’t help in a game of finite motor skill like baseball, just ask Yandy Diaz. Sure you’ll hit the ball hard, but Kelenic doesn’t need to hit it harder, he needs to increase his contact skills. These are things that take time and it should be noted Kelenic comes from a cold-weather state which usually adds time to development.
I still think Kelenic could be a borderline HOF player if things start to line up for him, but I think that contract crap in 2020 has him pressing to prove he belongs because he talked so much trash about being held back in the pandemic shortened season, but then it became clear last year that he really wasn’t ready in 2020. This is why players should air out garbage like this in the social media. It’s also why team executives shouldn’t openly run their mouth about their organization like Kevin Mather.
Point is Evan White in the last two weeks since being activate has a .954 OPS. He’s healthy and his walk to strikeout numbers are much better. He’s not a washed up player yet. We wouldn’t even be discussing this if he wasn’t on a guaranteed contract. One that could still end up very favorable.
6 long paragraphs because someone said they didn’t think the M’s were that great at developing hitters? That’s some solid homering right there. Hard not to acknowledge that Mariner pitchers do seem to excel, much more than position players, in their system.
We don’t really know that though, Chester. Kelenic is really the only one you can point to in order to say the M’s can’t develop bats; they’ve prioritized pitchers (who have stayed healthy outside of Hancock) and the batters they’ve invested in have had trouble staying healthy.
White and Lewis have been injury-riddled. When healthy and not rusty Lewis has hit. White hasn’t, but he also hasn’t had an extended look.
Raleigh has developed quite well for a catcher. He’s rock-solid defensively and all they really need him to be is a masher, which he is. Not bad for a 3rd round pick. He’s a top half starting catcher in the MLB right now.
TBD, but Ford is developing well. We’ll see in 3 years if it translates to the bigs. Edwin Arroyo was developing beyond his draft slot before being traded.
Kelenic is not the only one to point to. The fact that Raleigh and Rodriguez are the only homegrown positional players on the mlb roster smacks of difficulty developing positional players. 2 players, on the heels of a rebuild, in which young prospects were given ample opportunity to play.
…And I never said they couldn’t develop bats… but if we’re going to pretend that Mariner prospect success doesn’t lean heavily towards pitching and lacks in positional players, I’m not sure what else there is to say.
That doesn’t really make sense to me. The rebuild didn’t start until after the 2018 season. How many young, homegrown players in total do you realistically expect them to promote in under 4 full seasons? Kirby, Gilbert, Cal, K. Lew, and Julio all developed during that time (the caveat being Lewis’ progress has been slowed by injuries– remember he was ROY). They weren’t drafted as M’s but JP absolutely developed into a better pro in Seattle while France finally saw consistent PT. Those should be positives, not marks against player development abilities.
Plus, Dipoto favored drafting arms during the rebuilding years while trading for position players. Gilbert, Kirby, and Hancock were 3 consecutive 1st round picks. It seems dumb to displace players like France, JP, or Haniger (the latter two who I would argue grew exponentially on offense under this regime, while France was immediately good) just for the sake of rostering “homegrown” players.
The only young prospects who were given “ample time” (again this rebuild ended after last season, so it was just 2.5 years) and failed have been White and Kelenic, and JK is still just 23.
Evan White is a great kid. Rooting for him big time, can’t imagine it’s easy coming back into the box after hip surgery. Excited to get Boyd in there and see what he’s got these days
I’m sure he’s a great guy but a first baseman who can’t hit holds little value in this sport.
.954 OPS over two weeks with something like a 5 BB to 8 K plate discipline and 4 HRs. The author is roping in numbers from April anday when he was 3 for 27. And battling trough injury. Oh and he’s a GG caliber defender with plus speed and plus arm. Evan White’s power has been as misrepresented as Julio’s speed. Julio is the only player in the Mariners minors besides Cal Raleigh, Kyle Lewis, Jarred Kelenic, and Noelvi Marte with similar or better exit velocities than White. Evan has 110 to 112 mph exit velocities which would be top 50-100 in all of the major leagues. Thats 75-80 percentile. It could be an with sufficient contact improvement, he could be a 30-35 HR hitter. I would take him over almost any 1B prospect in the game, even when considering age.
Evan White hitting 35 HRs in anything other than rec league softball is a laugh.
25 years old, OPS under .600, calm down bud. He’s not good.
Have played “rec league” softball for @25yrs. Most of us are former hs/college athletes who have kept in shape and the play is very competitive. Out of shape guys with their bellies hanging over their pants is more the exception..
Rant aside…over the years we have had our share of aa retirees etc.
Most of those guys settle into lcf/rcf spots, have cannons and hit BOMBS…Honestly, would not want to play 3rd if White came up…very humbling. They usually find their way into men’s baseball leagues…
I play competitive rec league softball too. Probably will until the day I die. It’s one of the joys of my life!
Thank_: He can’t hit. NOTHING in ANY of his stats suggest otherwise. Gold glove defense at first base is useless if you can’t hit. This is baseball 101. He can’t hit. You are trying to judge him based on two weeks? Give me a break. He’ll never hit well enough to play first base. Glove only first baseman don’t exist for a reason.
HOF name Chester Copperpot
@Cosmo- I think they should give him some run in the OF while he’s in Tacoma. He played a bit of LF at Kentucky and their manager always said he had the athleticism to slide over to CF.
He’d have to play gold glove caliber D at CF to be useful at all.
Agreed. I think he’s mostly sunk cost, but it would be worth a try because he’ll likely not bring any value whatsoever by playing 1B.
It always amazes me with guys like White, where some fans can’t allow themselves to just make obvious assessments about players. He’s not good. Move on. Stop trying to put lipstick on a pig.
I mean, he did win a gold glove. I agree that he has never flashed anything at the plate at the major league level, but it’s not like the guy doesn’t or didn’t belong in the majors. I know it’s first base, but dude, he was incredibly good over there, like elite of the elite.
I agree with you that his days as a major leaguer could be numbered, but he really is like a 10/10 guy and incredible defensively, a great damn athlete so it’s easy to root for him. We are loyal up here and probably tend to wear rose colored glasses on these guys.
Gold glove is just an award. Any other position and that’s a big step towards value but great fielding no hitting doesn’t fly at first base. Just not nearly enough defensive impact. Being the highest value doesn’t mean high value. He obviously “belongs” in the majors in the sense that he’s been given a chance by a professional organization but let’s make an assessment: he’s not a worthwhile player. All glove no bat doesn’t fly at first base. There’s a reason no team runs a player like that out there. It’s really pretty simple.
Yes. We like Evan White. You deemed it worthwhile to go out of your way to point out the nativity of our rooting for him, then you doubled down on it. It’s really pretty simple.
What is your completely absurd and nonsensical point here? I’m talking baseball. You personally like a player you’ve never met? Fine. But I’m talking baseball, not whether or not someone I’ll never personally know is a nice person or not. Stats, player viability etc. You got a problem with that? Root for him all you want, but I’m talking baseball here. Sorry if that gets your panties bunched up.