The Friday Spring Breakout Game between the Seattle Mariners and the Milwaukee Brewers — one of two Spring Breakout Games Milwaukee will play — looked like the marquee prospect matchup of the Cactus League, with the No. 1 farm system (Brewers) playing the No. 3 system and 12 of the top 100 prospects in baseball appearing in the game. It didn’t disappoint for the first six innings, although it went off the rails after that when the JV squads got involved.
The Brewers won 7-3, so it’s a little amusing that the two standouts in the game were both Mariners.
Right-hander Ryan Sloan, the No. 21 prospect in baseball, started for Seattle and retired all nine batters he faced in ruthless fashion. He hit 99 mph three times, sitting 95-99, with a plus cutter at 93-94, an above-average slider at 83-85 and an average splitter at 90-92, going right after hitters with the first two pitches. He wasn’t particularly efficient, going to three-ball counts on three hitters, but hitters just couldn’t do anything with what he served them.
The star hitter in the game batted ninth for Seattle: 18-year-old Yorger Bautista, who homered, doubled and smoked a flyball to the warning track in center, all of which were hit at least 100 mph off the bat, with the double at 110.2. He also walked on five pitches his first time up and showed really good feel for the zone for a kid so young facing pitchers all older than he is. He was already a prospect, No. 13 on the Mariners’ list coming into this spring. He had a so-so season last year in the Dominican Summer League, but if this is any indication of his progress at the plate, he might be a top 100 prospect next winter.
Lefty Kade Anderson, the No. 3 pick in the 2025 MLB Draft, relieved Sloan, but he didn’t have his best stuff or command in this game, giving up five runs (four earned) in two innings with four walks and just two strikeouts. He was 91-94 with a 50/55 slider* in the mid-80s and a curveball that flashed plus but wasn’t consistent at all. His changeup was his best pitch last spring at LSU, but on Friday it didn’t have much tumble and hitters weren’t fooled. He was also very north-south, coming from a higher slot but not so high that he should have this much trouble pitching laterally.
(* Scouting grades are on the 20-80 scouting scale.)
Jesús Made spent some of spring training in big-league camp. (Mark J. Rebilas / Imagn Images)
Brewers infielder Jesús Made, the No. 3 prospect in baseball, played second base in this game, with superior defender Cooper Pratt at shortstop, although I wonder if some of the position choice was a reaction to Made getting quite a bit bigger this offseason. He’s now listed at 221 pounds, more than 30 pounds up from last year, and it’s not all “good” weight — he’s thicker around the middle and I suspect he’s going to be slower on both sides of the ball. It hasn’t hurt his bat speed, at least, based on this look, where he had a hit (a 105-mph ground ball) and a walk in three plate appearances.
Right-hander Bishop Letson started the game for Milwaukee and was 95-97 on his high-spin four-seamer, showing four pitches in his 1 1/3 innings, including a cutter up to 92, a mid-80s slider with good tilt and a couple of changeups with some fading action. He showed very little command, unfortunately, missing up consistently throughout the outing, even with pitches that are supposed to finish down, like the slider and changeup. He didn’t give up much hard contact, but it was clear early in the outing he wasn’t right given his inability to get anything down.
Brewers right-hander Bryce Meccage came in later in the game and also struggled with command, in his case giving up some hard contact as a result. He was 91-95 with three pitches, going heavy on the curveball at 77-80, and of the 10 balls he allowed in play, seven had exit velos of 94 mph or higher. He threw too many non-competitive pitches — ones that were well out of the zone and very unlikely to get a chase swing, with only one, a curveball to Jonny Farmelo, inducing a hitter to swing. I’ve seen Meccage three times in three calendar years now, and he’s always had good stuff without command; at some point he’s going to have to make an adjustment to work in the zone more consistently.
Speaking of Farmelo, the Mariners center fielder and No. 90 MLB prospect, is still running plus despite an ACL tear in 2024 and shows bat speed without a whole lot of selectivity. He led off the game with a line-drive single that proved the hardest-hit ball of the day at 112 mph, taking a 91-mph four-seamer in the heart of the zone and pulling it to right-center.
Mariners shortstop Felnin Celesten, the No. 77 prospect in baseball, played exceptional defense at shortstop, moving well in both directions with a quick first step and a 70 arm that he showed off when making a difficult play in the hole. He was 1 for 2 with a walk and a strikeout looking, then grounded into a 3-6-3 double play that he probably would have beaten out if he’d gone hard out of the box. I noted this winter that scouts voiced concerns about his effort level, so seeing him play aggressive defense was a positive before he jogged on that last groundout.
Lazaro Montes was 3 for 3 with three singles, two very softly hit, and he saw just seven pitches on the day. We didn’t get to see his prodigious power, but the Mariners’ hulking right fielder did show he could keep his hands inside when he connected on a 95-mph pitch on the inner third of the strike zone, and even stole a base in the game.
Mariners’ prospects Colt Emerson (No. 4 prospect in baseball) and Michael Arroyo (No. 49 prospect in baseball) didn’t do much on the day, going 1 for 6 between them, with the “hit” the result of some generous scoring, although each of them had one hard-hit ball.
Catcher Luke Stevenson, the Mariners’ second pick (No. 35) in the 2025 draft, had a rough time of it, bouncing multiple throws to second and hitting two balls almost straight up in the air, with launch angles of 47 and 51 degrees, so even though he hit them hard, they were easy outs. Stevenson seemed overly aggressive at the time, but looking at the pitch locations after the game, I don’t think he got a whole lot to hit, and he didn’t chase any pitches out of the zone.
With the pick after Stevenson, the Mariners took shortstop Nick Becker — the younger brother of Eric Becker, a top prospect in this year’s draft — out of a New Jersey prep school. Becker came into the game for the second shift, bounced a throw on his first opportunity in the field, then turned enough on a 92-mph fastball to line a single off the glove of Brewers’ third baseman Andrew Fischer.
Luis Peña DH’d in the Spring Breakout Game, but the infielder impressed with a home run. (Marison Bilagody / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
Moving to the Brewers’ hitters, infielder Luis Peña was the DH and went 1 for 4 with a loud homer the other way to right-center. Anderson left a slider in the heart of the zone, and Peña stayed on it, hitting it out at 104.7 mph. None of Peña’s three other outs had an exit velocity below 88 mph.
Newly acquired infielder Jett Williams played third base, making a poor throw that was somehow ruled a hit. At the plate, he saw 19 pitches across four plate appearances. He doubled at 109 mph, also on a slider Anderson left out over the plate, and struck out on 96.5 middle-in from Sloan. This is a good encapsulation of who Williams is as a hitter, but I was already skeptical that he could handle third and I don’t see anything new here to change that.
Pratt was 1 for 3, all ground balls, and made one of the highlight plays of the game defensively in the first inning, going way into the hole and making a perfect throw to first to nail the runner. He’s got to get the ball off the ground at the plate, though.
I wish I had some positive news on catcher Jeferson Quero, but he struck out twice and his one throw to second was short of the bag and to the shortstop side, allowing the Incredible Hulk — er, Montes — to steal a base.
Fischer, the Brewers’ 2025 first-round pick and a recent contributor to Team Italy in the WBC, came into the game late and had one at-bat where he got ahead 3-0, tried to pull the next pitch 1,000 feet but whiffed because it was a heater middle-away, then got 94 close to the inside corner and pulled it down the right field line for a double.
I’ll end with one more positive note for Brewers fans: Eric Bitonti, whose contact issues have pushed him to the brink of prospect status, faced a pitch that was 93 down and in, pulled it to left for a base hit and hustled right out of the box to ensure it was a double after the right fielder bobbled it. He then stole third base entirely off the pitcher — a great read and a heads-up play by the 20-year-old. It doesn’t materially change his outlook, but I will always give a little extra time and grace to a player who shows both this kind of effort level and instincts.