One of the most interesting parts of this year’s spring training for the Seattle Mariners is the development of the organization’s top prospects.
Several top 100 Mariners prospects — including Lazaro Montes, Cole Young, Colt Emerson and Michael Arroyo — are present at big league camp. Other highly-regarded minor leaguers , such as Ben Williamson, Brandyn Garcia and Logan Evans, are also present at the Peoria Sports Complex in Peoria, Ariz.
It’s been a strong spring for Seattle’s prospects. And the 20-year-old Montes has been getting a lot of recognition the past several days.
Montes helped lead the Mariners to a 12-8, come-from-behind win against the Milwaukee Brewers on Monday with a three-run home run. His homer accounted for Seattle’s final runs of the games.
Montes also got a massive co-sign from one of the Mariners starting outfielders, Randy Arozarena.
Arozarena and Montes, both international signings out of Cuba, trained together in the offseason in Miami.
Montes also was recognized in a recent story published on MLB.com.
In a collaborative article written by Jim Callis, Jonathan Mayo and Sam Dykstra, Montes was named Seattle’s top power hitting prospect. The article had the following assessment on Montes:
Since signing for $1.375 million at the start of the 2022 international signing period, Montes has posted a .526 SLG and a .940 OPS while getting to High-A as a teenager. There’s some swing-and-miss but he draws a ton of walks and his K’s were actually down a touch in 2024, when he hit 21 homers and drove in 105 runs. As long as he can keep making enough contact, he has about as much raw pop as anyone on this list.
Montes is ranked the No. 42 prospect in baseball, according to MLB Pipeline. He enters Cactus League play on Friday hitting .333 (2-for-6) with three RBIs, all on his home run.
If Montes continues at his current pace, Double-A Arkansas seems the likely starting point for him in 2025.
