CHICAGO — Is it too late to manipulate Jarred Kelenic’s service time again?
Ooh.
Or maybe still too soon to joke about it?
Either way, the Seattle Mariners’ young outfielder might be about to have the last laugh when it comes to the way he became a household name among casual fans for all the wrong reasons two years ago — thanks to foot-in-mouth, ex-M’s executive Kevin Mather, who said the quiet parts out loud about several of the team’s young players and prospects, leading to Mather’s resignation.
That included telling a local civic group the club planned to keep the No. 4 prospect in baseball in the minors long enough in 2021 to assure an extra year of club control.
Two years later, Jarred Kelenic is hitting back with enough power that he’s starting to look like a big name in the game for all the right reasons.
Jarred Kelenic’s comparisons to former Mariners legend
The lefty-hitting prospect who got compared to Mariners’ legend Ken Griffey Jr. before hitting more like Kenny G the last two years has followed a strong spring with a stronger start to the season, including a big series at Wrigley Field this week in which he hit 400-plus-foot home runs each game that went successively farther than that last — including the second-longest home run measured at the ballpark during the Statscast era.
“It’s cool to see,” All-Star teammate Ty France said. “It’s hard, man, when you put all that — I shouldn’t say pressure — on a 21-year-old. But he was supposed to be the next Ken Griffey Jr. That’s tough shoes to fill no matter what age you are. I’m excited for him and where he’s at now.”
Jarred Kelenic hit a mammoth home run off the video board in right field in the ninth inning of Monday’s opener against the Chicago Cubs to send the game to extra innings. The next night he hit one a foot farther, and even more impressive for sending the outside pitch the opposite way to left-center.
Then he unloaded in the third game of the series for a 482-foot insurance run into the upper tank in center field — the second-longest home run in the majors so far this season, longest by a Mariner since Statcast began tracking such things in 2015 and second-longest at Wrigley in that time to Willson Contreras’ 491-foot shot in the 2017 playoffs.
“For years we’ve been talking about the talent, the talent, the talent, the potential and all those other things,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said. “Now we’re starting to see it play out.
“He’s stayed with his approach and with his plan, and it’s paying off for him. He looks great, and I’m really excited where he is at, and really probably more excited to see where this goes going forward.”
With more than a dozen family and friends from nearby Wisconsin in attendance, Jarred Kelenic went 5-for-9 in that series with two walks and four extra-base hits, and he takes a .351 average and the 10th-ranked OPS (1.117) in the majors into Friday’s series opener at home against the Colorado Rockies.
“I’m feeling great,” Kelenic said. “I feel really comfortable in the box, and we’re playing some good baseball right now. Obviously, there’s some things that aren’t going our way, but it’s early.”
That last part is especially worth noting — if not for the 5-8 Mariners trying to build off back-to-back 90-win seasons, then certainly for a 23-year-old slugger who has shown flashes of this kind of ability in the past but is still earning his big-league place after hitting .168 with a .589 OPS over 147 games in parts of the last two seasons.
Jarred Kelenic, perhaps understandably, is reluctant these days to talk publicly on the crappy way he was introduced to the national baseball spotlight two years ago — made crappier still by the stutter steps, demotions and increasingly vocal doubters. And Kelenic himself added to the crap when he bemoaned his extended stay in the minors in early 2021, brashly telling USA Today that “I know for a fact I could’ve helped [the 2020 M’s] out.”
“I’m big on looking where I’m going instead of where I’ve been,” he says now. “So I don’t really put too much thought into what has happened in the past. There’s nothing you can do about it now.”
That doesn’t mean it wasn’t tough dealing with the high expectations at 21 and the Mather comments, including the revelation he’d turned down a (team friendly) big-league contract as a minor-leaguer — and the two years of big-league humility that followed.
He expressed frustration at times along the way but admits now it made him stronger to deal with the inevitable lows and adversity involved in making it in such a mentally challenging game.
“For sure,” he said. “It’s definitely a tough game.”
Controversy over service time
The Kelenic-Mather controversy became the latest symbol of MLB teams’ years-long practice of holding down top prospects to manipulate their service time to extend club control or arbitration eligibility and further stirred players’ union animosity on the issue as a prolonged labor battle loomed.
Whether that helped lead to the changes in the new collective bargaining agreement that addressed the problem, he and Rockies outfielder Kris Bryant, whose grievance against the Cubs over the issue also played a role, can talk this weekend about which of them the new rules should be named after.
Jarred Kelenic entered spring training this year without the same expectations he had in recent years, battling for a platoon job after retooling his swing in the offseason and trying to add a trace more patience to his approach.
So if that spring meant anything and this start means anything, then delivering on all that untapped promise this season could have the kind of impact that helps the Mariners deliver on their two years worth of threats and actually challenge the Houston Astros at the top of the division — if not finally get to the World Series for the first time in franchise history.
With all due respect to Julio Rodriguez.
“He’s always had the talent. The talent’s never been a question,” France said of Kelenic. “Just watching how he goes about his work now and just seeing how much he’s matured over these last two years and how he handles situations now, he looks like a true professional now. So I’m happy for him, and I’m very excited to see how far he’s going to go.”
How far can he go? Well, 30 years ago, a guy named Ken Griffey Jr. hit home runs in three straight games for the Mariners — then kept going for five more games to tie the major league record.
Too much?
Too soon?
Servais doesn’t use the word “Griffey,” but he’s been in the game long enough as a player, manager and exec to know star-level talent when he sees it.
“You take a combination of the talent, and now he’s understanding how to play the game,” Servais said. “When it comes together, big things happen. Not little things; big things happen. And those types of players can do that. He’s in a great spot right now.”
Gordon Wittenmyer covers Major League Baseball for Sportsnaut. You can follow him on Twitter.