Mariners top prospect Jarred Kelenic has strained adductor muscle in left knee
Will the Mariners elevate top prospect Jarred Kelenic to their Opening Day roster in 2021, or will they stick with their plan of getting him more developmental at-bats before bringing him to Seattle?
That question may have been answered Saturday morning, when the club announced the 21-year-old outfielder has been sidelined with an adductor strain in his left knee.
“While disappointed that Jarred will be sidelined, we are relieved that the long-term outlook is positive,” general manager Jerry Dipoto said in a release. “We all look forward to seeing him back on the field in the near future.”
No timetable has been given for Kelenic’s return, but with him working back from what is reportedly a Grade 2 strain, and less than four weeks remaining before the Mariners wrap up camp and head back home for their April 1 opener against the Giants, he will undoubtedly have less opportunity to try to secure the job as the club’s Opening Day left fielder, which has been an open competition in camp.
“I don’t know a time frame, or what that’s going to look like there,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said postgame Saturday. “I feel bad for him. Certainly he needs to play. He needs the developmental time, and these games are so important.
“But, knowing him, he’s a very intense young man, he’s going to do everything he can to get back out on the field as soon as he can.”
Kelenic told reporters from The Seattle Times and The Athletic in Peoria on Saturday afternoon he doesn’t believe the injury is serious, and he expects to be back on the field in a week.
Where Kelenic will land at the end of March has been one of the most heavily discussed subjects surrounding the club this spring in the wake of the controversial comments former president and CEO Kevin Mather made in early February.
During the now infamous Zoom call with the Bellevue Breakfast Rotary Club about two weeks before camp opened, Mather indicated the club had no intention of debuting Kelenic, who is considered the No. 4 prospect in all of baseball by both MLB Pipeline and Baseball America, during the shortened 2020 season, regardless of performance.
Later in the call, he suggested Kelenic would also not make the Opening Day roster out of camp this year, even if his play showed he was ready, and instead would start the 2021 season at Triple-A Tacoma.
Less than a week after the footage of Mather’s comments was made public, Kelenic and his agent Brodie Scoffield outlined their frustrations with the young outfielder’s situation in a story published by USA Today, and implied his service time is being manipulated because he declined to sign a long-term deal with the club last year.
“It was communicated to Jarred that had he signed that contract, he would have debuted last year,’’ Scoffield said in the story. “It was made crystal clear to Jarred — then and now — that his decision not to call him up is based on service time.
“There’s no question that if he signed that contract, he would have been in the big leagues.”
Kelenic said in the story he was “extremely disappointed” he did not debut in 2020.
“I worked extremely hard all offseason,” he said. “And last year, here you have a team that is one game out of the playoffs going into the last weeks of the season. I know for a fact I could have helped that team out. Not just me, but there are other guys who could have helped that team out.
“Not to be given that opportunity was so beyond frustrating.”
The Mariners have maintained throughout Kelenic’s first two years in their system their timeline for bringing him up is based entirely on his development, and wanting to get him meaningful at-bats at the upper levels of the minors. He has 92 career plate appearances above A-ball.
“We will develop Jarred fully before we put him in a big league uniform, and we don’t feel like we’ve achieved that yet for a variety of reasons,” Dipoto said while speaking with 710 ESPN radio last week. “We are not manipulating his service time. We are doing our best to develop him fully.”
The first two weeks of camp, it seemed Kelenic would likely begin the season with Tacoma to get the at-bats the Mariners have sought since 2019. But, when Major League Baseball informed clubs Tuesday the Triple-A season, which was scheduled to begin in April, would be delayed a month, the situation became more complicated.
Would the Mariners keep Kelenic in Arizona for minor league spring training, which is set to begin when the big leaguers head home? Would they assign Kelenic to their alternate training site again to get more intrasquad at-bats? Or would he be in left field on Opening Day?
It now seems the timetable of his return from this knee injury could end up being a deciding factor.
Kelenic tweaked his knee running to first base in his first at-bat of Seattle’s game against the White Sox on Friday afternoon at Camelback Ranch in Glendale. In the replay, he can be seen jogging far down the right field line before walking back to first in some discomfort.
He ultimately stayed in the game, played two more innings in right field and logged another at-bat, but was sent for the MRI after the club’s trainers evaluated him Saturday morning, and the scan revealed the strain.
Kelenic has appeared in four games for the Mariners this spring, in both left and right field, and was hitting 2-for-8 with a home run, two RBI, a walk and a strikeout before the injury.
Beyond Kelenic, other players in the mix for Seattle’s Opening Day job in left field include Jose Marmolejos, who debuted at the spot in the club’s opener last summer, Jake Fraley, Braden Bishop and up-and-coming prospect Taylor Trammell, who has drawn early attention in Cactus League play.
This story was originally published March 6, 2021 at 12:26 PM.
