M’s prospect Lazaro Montes goes inside-the-park for career-high 33rd HR

Seattle Mariners prospect Lazaro Montes rounds the bases regularly, but he usually leaves the park when he does.

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On Wednesday night, though, Montes set a personal milestone with his 33rd home run of the season, and the homer came in a different fashion than usual.

Montes hit an inside-the-park homer in the ninth inning of the Triple-A Tacoma Rainiers’ game against the Reno Aces (watch here), with the burly 6-foot-5 outfielder showing he’s got some wheels in addition to prodigious power.

To be fair, Montes’ inside-the-parker was still plenty crushed. He blasted an 87 mph sweeper from former Mariners reliever Juan Burgos, sending it 423 feet with an exit velocity of 106.5 mph. But the lefty-swinging Montes just happened to hit it to the deepest part of Tacoma’s Cheney Stadium, where it banged off the wall in right-center field and headed the opposite direction. By the time Aces center fielder Kristian Robinson got to the ball, Montes was already on his way to third base. He then got the sign to go for home and slid headfirst into the plate well in front of a relay throw that was off target anyway.

Lazaro Montes has hit plenty of homers OVER the fence.

This one stays in the yard, but the @Mariners' No. 4 prospect finds his way home on an inside-the-parker for Triple-A @RainiersLand: pic.twitter.com/2X1EH3ht7K

— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) August 13, 2026

The 21-year-old Montes is the No. 38 overall prospect and No. 4 Mariners prospect as ranked by MLB Pipeline, and he’s been enjoying his time with Tacoma since receiving a promotion from Double-A Arkansas just over a month ago. In 28 games with the Rainiers, Montes is slashing .293/.376/.586 for a .962 OPS with eight home runs, 10 doubles, 18 RBIs and 15 walks to 43 strikeouts.

In 107 games combined between Double-A and Triple-A this year, Montes has a .251/.371/.561 slash line for a .932 OPS with 33 homers, 21 doubles, a triple and 69 walks to 146 strikeouts.

How prospect expert views Seattle Mariners’ Lazaro Montes

Montes has now topped 30 homers in two straight minor league campaigns. He hit 32 homers over 131 combined games between Arkansas and High-A Everett in 2025.

This is Montes’ fifth pro season after he signed as an international free agent with the Mariners out of Cuba in January 2022.

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