Pitching prospect Logan Gilbert didn’t get a normal season in 2020, but he’s impressing the Mariners this spring
The last time Logan Gilbert took the mound at spring training, he recorded the first Cactus League win of his career.
He pitched two scoreless innings against the Angels, and struck out three — including their top prospect Jo Adell and former American League Rookie of the Year Shohei Ohtani — of the six batters he faced that afternoon in Peoria.
His fastball touched 95 mph. The command of all four of his pitches was there. He was on track to pitch once more in camp, and likely spend a few starts in the minors refining it all before debuting for the Mariners sometime in the summer.
But, that timeline never played out.
That promising outing — Gilbert’s most recent against players wearing uniforms different from his own — was March 10, 2020. The Mariners played one more game the following day against the Padres, but the rest of their spring schedule was suspended as the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and players were sent home not long after.
Nearly a calendar year later, after spending last summer developing at the club’s alternate training site, Seattle’s top pitching prospect is set to resume his path to the majors.
Gilbert will make his first appearance of the spring Sunday afternoon — again against the Angels, but this time at their ballpark in Mesa.
The 23-year-old’s early returns in this camp, paired with the progress he made last summer in Tacoma and his work this winter, have his coaches buzzing.
“It’s been very good,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said last week on his morning video call with reporters. “His bullpens, he threw a live BP the other day, and the ball is coming out really hot. Logan spent a lot of time working on his secondary pitches. The change up was outstanding the other day, along with the slider and the curveball.
“He’s got all four pitches. They’re all very high quality.”
The mound presence is there, too, for the 6-foot-6, 225-pound right-hander. He reminds Servais of a former dominant starter in Seattle’s starting rotation.
“Logan is so different because he’s so tall and lanky, and the thing that really sticks out is he gets down the mound so far — so much farther than the average pitcher — so the ball really feels it’s on top of you,” Servais said.
“For many of you who remember how effective Randy Johnson was back in the day, Randy threw very hard, but it was also how far he got down the mound, and I unfortunately had the opportunity to face Randy Johnson a little bit my career — and it was not comfortable. Let alone he’s so big, tall lanky, (and) the ball is coming out hot, but he’s right on top of you — and Logan has some of those attributes as well.”
Gilbert has been on the fast track to becoming another hard-throwing staple in the Mariners’ rotation since the club drafted him in the first round in 2018. He jumped three levels in his first — and only, so far — season in Seattle’s minor league system, opening 2019 with Low-A West Virginia and ending it by making nine starts at Double-A Arkansas. He has a career ERA of 2.13 across 26 starts, with 165 strikeouts to only 33 walks.
He didn’t get the chance to build on those numbers in 2020, but didn’t let the absence of a minor league season or a delayed big league debut deter him from continuing to progress as a pitcher.
He pitched in T-Mobile Park last season during the Mariners’ summer camp, and did face major league hitters, even if they were the teammates he’s grown familiar with. He chose to embrace the experience, rather than dwelling on the lost opportunity amid the pandemic-shortened season he knew he wouldn’t play in.
“I could let myself keep thinking about it, but it’s really just wasted energy when it comes down to it,” Gilbert said last summer. “It wouldn’t do anything for me to wish that none of this would have happened. This is the situation that I’m in, so the only thing that I can do is try to make the most of it.”
He did while in Tacoma, pitching in about every sixth day to mimic the six-man rotation the Mariners use at the big league level. Reflecting on his two months training at Cheney Stadium during a video call in January, Gilbert acknowledged the thought of debuting in 2020 was in the back of his head — “especially when there’s other guys in the locker room going up, being sent down, all of that stuff, and you know you’re kind of knocking on the door,” he said — but he remained present in his preparation for the future.
“I think it was a unique opportunity,” Gilbert said. “We don’t really get the chance to just focus on developing stuff during a full season, when everything is about competing and winning — and of course that was a big part of it in Tacoma, but at the same time, we were able to develop thing sand work on things that we might not otherwise get the chance to during the season.”
For Gilbert, that meant refining his changeup, experimenting with dropping fastball usage in favor of throwing his three secondary pitches more often and finding different ways to get the same teammates out each four- or five-inning outing.
“We were facing our own teammates over and over again so at some point, I had to figure out different ways to attack people and different ways to try to get people out that might have already seen me a few times before,” he said. “And, of course, in the major leagues when you’re playing against your own division, the four other teams so many times, you’re going to have times where you’re facing the same batters, and having to figure out new ways to get people out, so I think that was a good experience.”
That list of teammates included polished hitters like Mariners top prospect Jarred Kelenic.
“Obviously he’s a really great hitter, and I think the way he competes is even better,” Gilbert said. “That’s just who he is in the box, and it (was) really tough to keep finding new ways to try to show him things I might not have. I think towards the end every time he came up to bat I was showing him all four pitches, just because I didn’t want to keep going back to the same pitch over and over again.
“So that’s just a fun battle right there, just finding a way of challenging each other, to try to get the upper hand. … Sometimes I got the better of him, and sometimes he got the better of me.”
Though the important experience gained in a normal minor league season can’t be replaced, Mariners pitching coach Pete Woodworth saw the benefit of Gilbert having the chance to dive into development last summer.
“(He) has really raised the floor of all of his stuff,” Woodworth said last week. “We would see flashes of plus stuff with some command mixed in, but now the entire floor of his arsenal has risen to a really elite level.
“And Logan’s not going to take a day off. Logan’s not going to waste a day or waste an offseason. He definitely put in a lot of time back home and at the Florida Baseball Ranch (this winter). He came into camp looking better than ever — better than I saw him in 2019 in Little Rock. … The stuff just continues to improve.”
Servais agreed.
“We often talk about the floor and the ceiling for players and you’re not always right, but doing this for a while you kind of have a good feel for where they slot in — whether it’s in a rotation, in a bullpen, in a starting lineup, things like that,” he said. “Logan is very insightful. He’s very sharp. Of all the players here he may have the most deliberate practice, and his training programs are all designed to get him just a little bit better in these different areas, and that’s what we’re seeing. It’s paying off.
“I’m really excited about him and his future. He’s going to be a big part of what we’re doing here.”
SHORT HOPS
The Mariners said Saturday morning in a release Kelenic, considered the No. 4 prospect in baseball by MLB Pipeline and Baseball America, was examined by the club’s training staff Saturday and then sent for an MRI, which revealed an adductor strain in his left knee. Kelenic was injured during Friday’s game against the White Sox. “While disappointed that Jarred will be sidelined, we are relieved that the long-term outlook is positive,” Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto said in the release. “We all look forward to seeing him back on the field in the near future.” A timeline for his return was not given. Kelenic has appeared in four games this spring in both left and right field, and is hitting 2-for-8 with a home run, two RBI, a walk and a strikeout. Whether or not he will be elevated to Seattle’s Opening Day roster at the end of camp has been one of the most widely discussed subjects surrounding the club the past several weeks in the wake of former president and CEO Kevin Mather’s controversial comments in February. ... With extra spots to work with on their spring roster, the Mariners have invited pitching prospects Emerson Hancock and Brandon Williamson to big league camp, though neither are expected to pitch in a Cactus League game, Servais said Saturday. Hancock was Seattle’s top draft pick in 2020, while Williamson was a second-round pick in 2019.
