Seattle Mariners: Setting expectations for Jarred Kelenic in 2022
Joe Swenson
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Before the 2021 MLB season, expectations were high for Seattle Mariners prospect Jarred Kelenic. After some early struggles, he started to turn it around. What about 2022?
Jarred Kelenic opened 2021 as one of the top prospects in all of baseball (fourth), and the Seattle Mariners‘ top prospect. Unfortunately, once he got his call to the Majors, Kelenic struggled mightily.
In his first 21 games as a Major Leaguer, he batted .096 with 26 strikeouts in 83 at bats (31.3 percent strikeout rate) and while he carried a decent 10 percent walk ratio, it wasn’t enough for him to be an effective bat in the line-up. The poor performance earned a demotion back to Triple-A.
Finding his swing
At AAA Tacoma, he hit the cover off of the baseball, though he’s clearly wasn’t the only player to hit well for the Rainiers last season. In both stints with Tacoma, Kelenic proved that he could hit at Triple-A in a manner that would earn promotions to the big leagues. The future star hit .320 in 30 AAA games last season with a 1.016 OPS. The other key stat is that Kelenic struck out only 25 times in 143 plate appearances at the highest levels of Minor League baseball.
What do the Seattle Mariners do with a ballplayer that has all of the tools of a big-league player but none of the results? The answer is they had to keep giving him repetitions. Kelenic needs a constant flow of at bats, especially if his ego is as fragile as it seemed at times in 2021.
The heir-apparent is on his way to the M’s at some point in 2022, and with that comes additional internal competition to be the face of the franchise. Kelenic’s Triple-A numbers demonstrated that he could get there, but the MLB numbers mostly said he wasn’t ready.
Kelenic blasts off for Tacoma! pic.twitter.com/D0qmfz631f
— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) June 13, 2021