Why Baseball America ranks Sloan as M’s top pitching prospect

The Seattle Mariners are known for their ability to develop pitching, and right now they have two of MLB’s brightest prospects taking the mound for at the Double-A level.

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Right-hander Ryan Sloan and left-hander Kade Anderson give the Mariners a pitching prospect duo that is considered by some as the best in baseball. However, both have had different years pitching for the Arkansas Travelers this season.

The 20-year-old Sloan, a second-round pick in 2024, has run into some troubles in his 10 starts with Arkansas, posting a 5.09 ERA over 40 2/3 innings. He’s also allowed more home runs (six) than he did across Single-A and High-A last year (five) in almost exactly half the amount of innings.

Anderson, on the other hand, has been mostly untouchable in his first 10 pro starts. The No. 3 overall pick in the 2025 draft leads the Texas League with a 1.29 ERA over 49 innings, which includes six starts without allowing a run.

Yet Sloan is slightly higher-rated prospect by Baseball America, coming in as the top-ranked pitcher and sixth-ranked prospect overall in its top 100. Anderson is Baseball America’s third-ranked pitcher and eighth-ranked overall prospect.

Why is that the case? Baseball America editor-in-chief J.J. Cooper shared his insight with host Curtis Rogers during the latest edition of Extra Innings.

Age and the quality of each pitchers’ stuff were the two factors Cooper pointed to.

“You’re talking about a 20-year-old pitcher in Double-A. That’s very good in a lot of ways,” Cooper said of Sloan. “At the same time, he is young enough that I would say when you have pitchers who are this young and throw this hard, you want to get them through kind of the injury nexus of their late teens (and) their early 20s healthy. But if you look at that, if you kind of just spell it out, it’s like as good as Kade Anderson is – and Kade Anderson is very good – I would say that Ryan Sloan’s stuff is just better.”

Sloan is the harder-thrower of the two with a fastball that touches the high 90s and sits at 95-96 mph. Baseball America ranks his fastball, changeup and sweeper as 60-grade pitches.

The right-hander showcased just how dominant his stuff can be two weeks ago, pitching six perfect innings with a career-high 11 strikeouts on May 30.

“Anderson is performing better at that level, but at the same time, he’s also a year and a half older,” Cooper said. “But I would say more than anything (that) these are two of the top, we basically have them slotted as two of the top three pitching prospects in the game at this moment. So we’re talking about excellent in both cases.

“But I would say that Sloan has more chance to be that front-of-the-rotation monster when it’s all said and done than maybe Anderson does, even though we also think Anderson has a chance to be one of the more productive starting pitchers in the game, and that’s why (Sloan) ranks where he ranks.”

Hear the full conversation at this link or in the audio player in this story. Catch Extra Innings from 7-9 p.m. on Mariners off days throughout the season. 

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