The ‘huge ceiling’ of M’s prospect Lazaro Montes is about more than his power

At 6 foot 5 and already with a couple of 30-homer seasons under his belt in the minor leagues, highly-ranked Seattle Mariners prospect Lazaro Montes’ power has garnered a lot of attention.

But that’s not all that the 21-year-old Montes brings to the table.

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Steven Davis, the voice of the Double-A Arkansas Travelers, has seen a lot of Montes in the last year. Montes played a combined 143 games for Arkansas over 2025 and 2026, crushing 39 homers and driving in 105 runs for the Travs. Though he hit just .224 in Double-A, he had a strong .842 OPS.

And now that Montes has been up with the Triple-A Tacoma Rainiers for 32 games, he’s showing even more hitting ability with a .288/.367/.598 slash line for a .965 OPS with 10 homers, 11 doubles, 21 RBIs and 15 walks to 48 strikeouts. That includes a homer in three straight games last week, bringing his career-high total for this season between Double-A and Triple-A to 35 homers.

Davis joined Seattle Sports’ Extra Innings with Curtis Rogers and shared that in Montes, who is the No. 56 prospect in baseball per MLB Pipeline, he sees a player that wants to be much more than just a slugger.

Read below what Davis said about Montes, and be sure to catch the full conversation Monday night. Extra Innings airs from 7-9 p.m. on Seattle Sports 710 AM and the Seattle Sports app on weeknights when the Mariners have a day off, with podcasts of the full show going online right after.

Lazaro Montes aims to be a “complete” player

Lazaro is not intimidated. He goes out and does what he does, and when he hits the ball, it’s going to leave any ballpark. He hits the ball with so much authority. The amount of 100-plus mph balls he hit (with Arkansas) is pretty staggering – not just fly balls, not just line drives, but even ground balls. When he hits it on the ground, it’s still coming out firm. He’s an incredible hitter from the fact of how hard he can strike the baseball, and some of it just has to do with his size.

But for me, as impressive as that is, my favorite part about Laz is the energy he brings every day and how hard he works, and the fact he wants to be as complete of a baseball player as he can be. And it’s not anything anybody ever talks about with him. All they want to talk about is the home runs and the power and the RBIs, which he will have and he’ll do that, but he wants to be a more complete hitter. A guy who can make more contact and have a good at-bat and put the ball in play with two strikes. Not always going to happen, but he’s working on that, and he’s getting so much better and it’s so much fun to watch him develop.

And he works so hard defensively. I’m not a scout, (but) I think he’s pretty good in right field. He can go get it, he hustles, he’s got a great arm, he runs the bases well, and he’s a guy who cares. And I think that those factors all combined with the fact that he has that natural power and ability to be the fearsome guy in the middle of a lineup and enjoys that role, give him a huge ceiling.

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