Mariners To Promote Kade Anderson
August 20th, 2026 at 7:24pm CST • By Anthony Franco
The Mariners are calling up Kade Anderson to make his MLB debut on Saturday against the Cubs, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN. Bryan Woo had been slated to start that game and will be presumably be pushed back to Sunday.
Anderson is viewed by most evaluators as the best pitching prospect in the game. Keith Law of The Athletic ranked him the #1 overall prospect in his most recent update shortly before the trade deadline. Seattle nabbed the 6’2″ southpaw with the third overall pick in the 2025 draft. He didn’t pitch professionally last year after throwing 119 innings in his sophomore season at LSU. The M’s assigned him to Double-A Arkansas this year and, as Dipoto mentioned, he has completely dominated the level.
In 18 starts, Anderson sports a 1.06 earned run average with a 41% strikeout rate. He has the best strikeout rate and ERA among all minor league pitchers with at least 80 innings. He’s coming off four consecutive scoreless outings while holding opposing batters to a laughable .147/.183/.216 slash line in 333 plate appearances.