Arizona Fall League AL West Threat Assessment

Photo by Jill Weisleder/MLB Photos via Getty Images Julio fraternizing with the enemyAs you might have noticed, I’ve been mostly absent from the site for the past couple weeks. The reason for that is I was recently in Arizona for two weeks: the first week was Mariners-focused, conducting interviews with prospects and scouting out the Mariners playing in the Fall League, and the second week was mostly spent at a scouting school for women, learning about the art of scouting baseball. The fruits of these labors will start to emerge over the coming weeks—site editor John Trupin was also in attendance for the first week, so he’ll have some stuff for you too—but one thing I wanted to do early was a general overview of the AL West prospects we saw at the Fall League. Later on this off-season we’ll be doing a series on AL West Threat Assessments for the 2021 season and beyond, doing our best to peer into our crystal balls and envision what the AL West might look like when the Mariners are theoretically ready to round back into competitive form. High Threat players are those with an excellent chance of being everyday above-average players; Medium are those who stand a good chance of being everyday players or high-upside players with some risk; and Low means their MLB futures are fringy, limited to a bench role, or nonexistent. Here’s a sneak preview of some of the names that might come up in that series:

…