The Best Pitcher in The '25 Draft Fell to The Mariners at #3 | The Story of Kade Anderson

Kade Anderson recorded a 1.06 ERA in Double-A this year. 135 strikeouts, 13 walks, and 13 shutout starts in 18 tries. He never pitched a single inning above Double-A, and on Saturday afternoon the Mariners handed him a baseball against one of the best teams in MLB.

This is the whole story. Madisonville, Louisiana, and the Tommy John surgery at 17 that could have ended it. 2 seasons at LSU and a 130 pitch shutout to win a national championship. A draft night where the Nationals and the Angels both passed on the consensus best player in the class and Seattle took him 3rd. And then the debut itself, plus one of the strangest individual games a Mariner has ever played, because Randy Arozarena picked that afternoon to hit a home run on the first pitch of the game, rob one at the wall, and end it with a walk-off.

We also get into the thing nobody says out loud about Anderson: the best pitching prospect in baseball throws a fastball that's below the major league average. So why does it miss bats? The answer is in where the ball comes from, and it's the most underrated part of his profile.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro
2:15 Madisonville, and the elbow at seventeen
3:59 LSU, 180 strikeouts, and 130 pitches in Omaha
6:20 Draft night: Dropped to
8:01 Why Seattle had to call him up right now
10:34 The Workload questions
11:52 Average fastball, elite results

THE NUMBERS
Double-A Arkansas, 2026: 18 starts, 93.1 IP, 1.06 ERA, 135 K, 13 BB, 0.64 WHIP, .147 opponent average
MLB debut, August 22, 2026: 5.2 IP, 5 H, 3 ER, 2 BB, 5 K, 81 pitches, no decision
Randy Arozarena: 3 for 4, two home runs, three RBI, one home run robbed, and the seventh leadoff-and-walk-off game in MLB history

SOURCES
Stats pulled from the MLB Stats API and Baseball Savant. Reporting and quotes from MLB.com, the Spokesman-Review, the Everett Herald, Yahoo Sports, FanGraphs, Baseball America and Lookout Landing. Historical home run research from Sarah Langs and the Elias Sports Bureau.

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