The Clubhouse DJ: Kade Anderson Walked 13 Hitters in 93 Innings
By Nate Mercer ·
Baseball America named Kade Anderson its 2026 Minor League Pitcher of the Year on Monday, and the headline numbers from his summer at Double-A Arkansas are easy to repeat: 10-1, a 1.06 ERA and a 0.64 WHIP in 18 starts. The Mariners took the left-hander third overall out of LSU in 2025, he didn't pitch after the draft, and this was his first pro season. I'd like to spend this column on a smaller number. Anderson walked 13 hitters in 93 1/3 innings.
Start with the rate. He faced 333 batters in the Texas League, so 13 walks is 3.9 percent of them, or about one every 26 hitters. Texas League pitchers as a group walked 11.2 percent of the batters they faced this year, which comes to 4.48 walks per nine innings. Anderson's figure was 1.25. The league as a whole handed out free passes at nearly three times his rate.
Now put the strikeouts next to it. Anderson struck out 135, which is 40.5 percent of the batters he saw, and that works out to a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 10.4 to 1. The Texas League was at 2.2 to 1. My first stop with any pitcher is K-BB%, which is just strikeout rate minus walk rate, so both skills land on the same scale. Anderson's was 36.6. The league's was 13.0.
I went through MLB's stats for every minor leaguer who threw at least 80 innings this year, 486 pitchers across the four full-season levels. Anderson's ratio was the best of the group. Second, at 8.0, was Ryan Sloan, who started the night after Anderson in the same Arkansas rotation. Of those 486, only two cleared 7.5, and they shared a clubhouse.
The game logs look the same up close. Anderson never walked more than two batters in a start, and in nine of his 18 starts he walked nobody. He threw 69 percent of his pitches for strikes. J.J. Cooper's story on the award notes that only seven hitters all year got him to a 3-0 count, and only one, Ben Ross of Wichita on April 10, walked on four pitches. I checked both against the pitch-by-pitch logs, and they hold up.
Arkansas manager Rich Thompson gave Cooper the view from the dugout. "You should see his face after he walked a guy," Thompson said. When Anderson did miss, Thompson said, "his ability to make the adjustment on the next pitch with four different pitches and put it back in the zone made him so effective."
There was a practical side to this, too. Cooper reported that the Mariners kept Anderson on a 75 to 80 pitch limit at Double-A. He averaged 71 pitches and 13.75 pitches per inning, which is how a pitcher on a short leash still got through five innings in 13 of his 18 starts. Arkansas pitched him on Friday nights in 17 of his 18 starts, and as someone whose favorite level is Double-A, that's a schedule I would have planned a road trip around.
His worst start makes the same point from the other direction. On May 15 at Northwest Arkansas, he gave up five runs in the fourth inning, three of them on a first-pitch homer by Omar Hernandez. He walked nobody that night. The Naturals got there on four hits, a fielder's choice and that home run. He didn't allow a run in any of his next five starts.
"We like to throw strikes and get ahead in counts," Mariners farm director Justin Toole told Cooper. "That's what Kade does."
Seattle called him up on Aug. 22, and he debuted that day at T-Mobile Park against the Cubs. In seven big-league starts he went 2-2 with a 3.79 ERA over 35 2/3 innings. The walk rate went up against better hitters, as you'd expect: nine walks in 146 batters, or 6.2 percent. The major league average this year was 8.9 percent, so he still walked fewer hitters than the typical big-league pitcher. His last two starts were seven scoreless innings with no walks at Coors Field on Sept. 20, then 3 1/3 scoreless innings against the Angels on Sept. 26 before a 103.8-mph comebacker from Christian Moore hit his left forearm and ended his night. Seattle Sports reported the injury doesn't appear to be a long-term concern. He also stays rookie-eligible for 2027, having finished under 50 innings and 45 days on the active roster. 80Grade's prospect rankings have Anderson No. 4 overall and No. 1 in the Mariners system.
The leash got a little longer in Seattle, where he threw 84 pitches at Coors. At his Double-A pace of 13.75 pitches per inning, 100 pitches would be a little more than seven innings. I'll be checking how often he gets there next year, and how many hitters get to ball three along the way.