It’s good to try to win
On Harry Ford, analysis paralysis and moving with intent.
You know you spend too much time in your own head when you have multiple little games and baseball thought exercises to share with other people. In this case, it’s readers of this fine publication and it happening in back-to-back posts.
Anyway, the game. If you can call it that.
With any Mariners prospect—the busts especially but the good and middle-of-the-road ones, too—I wish we could know the answer to the following: who is the best possible player they could’ve at one point headlined a trade for?
For example, say it’s Evan White. The glove-first guy with all the exit velo in the world and none of the launch angle, he was the Mariners’ second-best prospect in 2018 after being drafted in the first round the year prior.
With the M’s solidly in contention in the middle part of the season but fading fast, who’s the very best player they could’ve obtained with White to stop the bleeding and get Seattle to the Postseason four years ahead of schedule?
Leading a package for Zack Wheeler, perhaps? He’s since been one of the game’s very best but at the time he was only just starting to establish himself as a viable Major Leaguer after a series of injuries. Would’ve been nice to be early there, though he ended up staying put and dominating for the Mets before leaving in free agency.
What about Jarred Kelenic?
The Mariners wouldn’t trade away a baseball-wide top five prospect before their first full season post-stepback. Probably not in the middle of it, either. But if they did, say before 2021—you’d love to know who that guy was coming back, probably a good bit better than the 73 wRC+ and -0.5 fWAR in a year the M’s, as always, barely missed the Postseason.
Obviously, it’s easy to look back on the non-performers with the benefit of hindsight. You could do it with, like, George Kirby, too (a couple years of prime Juan Soto, anyone?).
Or, of course, Harry Ford.
In the years immediately following being drafted in the first round in 2021, he rose as high as the top 40 on some prospect lists. Entering this season, he’d dipped to 64th on MLB Pipeline and 79th per Keith Law. Baseball Prospectus didn’t have him in their top 100 at all this year nor last.
Just thinking, who was the best player the Mariners could’ve acquired to bolster their letdown of a 2023 club when Ford was at the peak of his prospect value? Or is there someone who could’ve pushed the 2022 club even deeper, maybe all the way? You’d love to know.
When we talk about the inherent risks in trading prospects, it’s easy to focus on the obvious—the traded-away player blossoming into a Dude you really could’ve used. There’s risk, though, in not trading guys.
Their value may never be higher than it is in the present. They may be able to deliver you a star or above-average regular now for the team you have and you know when, otherwise, they may never sniff providing that presence themselves.
Harry Ford has most likely, with his impressive start to 2025, recouped most or all of his prospect value. So here we are.
Which—what the hell is going on with Harry Ford?
Quick aside for a question to better understand y’all. Back to things in a moment.
Jerry Dipoto did a couple media hits lately and you can see the results, among other places, in this piece on Ford from MLB.com’s Daniel Kramer.
“He has put himself in the discussion that when you need the help, he's the next guy in line,” Dipoto told Kramer, but it sounds like that’s only in the context of Cal Raleigh or Mitch Garver going down.
Ford himself, on the topic of potentially playing another position to get to the Majors sooner:
“They haven't talked about it since last year. So, yeah, I guess catching is the plan. That's my plan. I'm always going to fight to catch. I can play outfield if someone needs me to go out there, but I'm a catcher.”
Barring a tragedy, Harry Ford will never be the full-time starting catcher for the Seattle Mariners.
The Mariners can have him play regularly in the Majors or they can have him play catcher. Not both.
Why the Mariners have abandoned the idea of getting Ford ready to play multiple positions, I don’t know. But I would guess it’s because they’re right back to the same spot they were a couple years ago, though now with their franchise cornerstone catcher under a longterm deal—hoping to move Ford in a trade for impact Major League talent.
This is a post about Ford and also not. It’s about a strategy that’s become emblematic of the Mariners, and that’s waiting for the game to come to them. It’s waiting for the right combination of circumstances to present themselves and then to respond. It’s reactive, not proactive.
It’s paralyzing and it’s costing them not only games, but seasons. We’ve got another one hanging in the balance, as they always are these past few years, and once again, it’s waiting to see how things shake out.
As a writer, you always love when things thematically line up, makes the whole gig easier. So I enjoyed Cal’s response to this recent run of poor play.
“We … can’t wait around,” Raleigh said in a quiet home clubhouse afterward. “That’s the big thing I want to see the next couple games, is creating our own luck, creating our own chaos on the bases, and things like that. Not just waiting for that home run or that one hit. We’ve got to push the envelope, in my mind.”
You can’t wait for the game to come to you. Because it probably won’t. And it applies to the front office as much as the clubhouse.
When we talking about “pushing the envelope” when it comes to prospects, as I’ve done quite a bit lately elsewhere, you often hear “Well that wouldn’t be fair to the player, to rush them, make them uncomfortable” with a new position or whatever.
Two things.
Hey, you know what’s not fair to another guy, your franchise player in the middle of an MVP season? Sitting there with your thumb in your dumper waiting for the right deal for Harry Ford to come to you…now multiple years into the process.
It’s not fair to him or this staff or J.P. or Julio or Randy to, here now in June, have a third of the everyday lineup be guys we wouldn’t count on to produce in the Pacific Coast League.
And second—oh it wouldn’t be fair to someone like Harry Ford to…make what he’s worked for his literal entire life become a reality? It would be so awful to go to this kid and say “Hey, man, you’ve been on fire and not only have you earned the call-up, but we need you. We want you to help us win—to win where it really counts.”?
I have a tough time buying it.
For the second post in a row, I’m going to cite this piece by Jeff Sullivan I really loved, from way back when Mike Zunino got called up from Tacoma. But unlike last time, I’ll grab a specific part because people don’t click on things. Bless a block quote.
The biggest concern folks have with rushing prospects is that they’ll move too quickly, the next level will destroy them, it’ll crush their confidence or create bad habits and they’ll never be the same. Development ruined.
Jeff, on that:
As for the confidence issue, if you have a player whose development might be stunted by experiencing a period of low confidence, that’s bound to come up eventually, whether he’s rushed or whether he’s taken care of cautiously. If these players exist, at some point they’ll slump, and when they slump, they’ll have bigger problems. You can’t leave a player in the minors for so long that he’s just immediately ready for the majors, no problem. There will be challenges, unavoidably.
I think our understanding of “rushed” is probably mistaken. I think the minor leagues, certainly, are important. You can never be fully prepared for the majors without having seen the majors, but you can be more prepared, and the more prepared you are, the smoother the adjustment. But I think adjustments can be made in the majors, and if not the minors remain an open option, and while I’m not closed off to the idea that moving a guy quickly can destroy his career, I’d really like to see some compelling evidence. Some careers are just destined to end up destroyed. I think, probably, there are guys who would be rushed, guys who shouldn’t be, but I don’t think those guys get rushed by their organizations. I think the players who get rushed, according to our definition, are the players who have been judged by their teams to be ready to meet the challenge.
A player like Ford may come up and struggle, absolutely. What I and many others are saying—admittedly, from the low-stakes location of sitting behind a keyboard—is “You have to try something” not “You have to try this and it will work.”
The Mariners are getting below replacement-level play from first base, designated hitter and right field.
For a team that’s found a way to consistently miss the playoffs by the slimmest possible margins, swapping a sub-replacement level player for a one-win guy could be everything.
And so could waiting on the deal that may never come. Or, if it does, could be years too late.
Were it me, Harry Ford would be in Anaheim tonight. I’m not sure where they’re staying when there but the one time I traveled with the team stateside it was for an Angels series and we stayed in a pretty posh spot in Newport Beach. I think his own room there would feel pretty fair to Ford, no?
What probably wouldn’t be fair would be asking him to, while figuring out Major League pitching, learn to play first base or left field.
Though, a realization I had yesterday—wouldn’t hitting in the Majors be easier if you didn’t have to worry, at all, about managing a pitching staff? They always say catchers take longer to develop than other players because of this.
Hell, look at Cal’s rookie stats.
Would it be easier to transition then if he caught less? Maybe just one starter? I wonder.
You can go back a decade and find a semi-similar catcher prospect puzzle with, then, the gold standard for player development—the Chicago Cubs.
In both 2015 and 2016, despite having an everyday guy there already, they promoted two prospects who were, primarily, catchers. That’d be Kyle Schwarber in 2015 and Willson Contreras in 2016.
They’d had the benefit of getting reps at different positions throughout their minor league careers—though far fewer than games catching—and continued that in the Majors.
Schwarber caught in 21 of his 69 games played his rookie year. Contreras, better suited for the position, caught in 57 of his 76 games played. They finished those years with a 131 wRC+ and a 126 wRC+, respectively.
The Cubs won 97 games in 2015. They won 103 and the title in 2016.
Now, it helps when you start your organization’s competitive upswing by signing Jon Lester even before any of the kids are ready, but that’s another data point underscoring the difference between these Mariners and truly great teams.
You have to move with intent in order to win and win big. It doesn’t happen by accident. It doesn’t happen when the game comes to you. It happens when you go out there and try to win.
Cal put it best—they can’t wait around.
They’ve been waiting around for too long. It’s time for action.
It’s time to push the envelope—and their 22-year-old catcher, too.
Go M’s.