Lazaro Montes is Chasing History, So Why Isn't He Up with Seattle Mariners?
The M's power-hitting outfielder has been excellent this season across Double-A and Triple-A.
Video Transcript
Pretty far consider your Mariners on Roundtable Sports publisher and or Refuse to Lose Territory podcast host.
Laz Montes is off on Monday at AAA Tacoma.
He'll be back at it again on Tuesday.
And when he takes the field for the Rainiers, 37 home runs for Laz Montes this season.
As noted by the great at MILB Mariners account on social media, Montes has 37 home runs.
Well, he's closing in on the all-time Mariners minor league record.
That's 43 from Danny Tartabull back in 1985.
The question a lot of people have is, well, why is Montes still at the minor league level, and why is he not in a position to help the Mariners at the major league level?
There's a couple of things going on here.
One, the strikeout rate, right?
Laz Montes has a strikeout rate of more than 30% this year at double A and triple A.
Just ask Colt Emerson, if you're striking out there, what's it gonna look like for you in the big league?
So while, yes, Montes could probably run into a few homers that would be good for the Mariners, it could help them.
How much of a disservice are you doing to him and the rest of the team by putting out a guy who's gonna strike out maybe 40% or more, once you get to the big leagues?
Then you could throw in the fact that also positional redundancy, right?
He's not seen as a great outfielder, so he's a- an outfielder/DH.
Well, the Mariners already have that in Dom Canzone.
They already have Canzone, Julio Rodriguez, and Randy Arozarena in the outfield.
As far as the DH spot goes, now it's not quite as clunky as it would've been a couple of weeks ago because of injuries to JP Crawford, and now Colt Emerson, and now also in there is Brendan Donovan.
But presuming you get Crawford back this week, it becomes clunky again.
And Donovan might be back as early as Saturday from the concussion injured list.
We just don't know yet.
So again, the, the numbers game can snowball on you very, very quickly.
What we do know is this.
Montes has had an excellent season.
He flashes a ton of power.
He's exciting to follow.
But you can understand why the Mariners might be hesitant in bringing him up at this point.
