Lost and Found: Mariners Prospect Leon Landry
Editor’s note: Lost and Found is this blog’s first offseason series, in which one underrated prospect from each of the 30 MLB clubs will be discussed in a short, snappy post.
Lost: Twelve months after the Los Angeles Dodgers made him its third-round draftee in 2010, lefty-hitting outfielder Leon Landry was hitting in the .220s in what was supposed to be an easier assignment in the Midwest League.
2011: .250/.307/.360 slash line, 36 extra-base hits and 41 RBIs in 500 ABs spanning 125 Gs at Class A Great Lakes
Found: Fast forward another 12 months, and Landry was just about to be traded from LA to Seattle, but not because the Dodgers didn’t want him — the Mariners just wanted him more. Of his uptick in offensive production — while increasing his batting average 91 points, he was +29 in extra-base hits and +35 in RBIs despite playing 21 fewer games — Landry told me by July that his pitch selection had improved.
2012: .341/.371/.584 slash line, 65 extra-base hits and 76 RBIs in 449 ABs spanning 104 Gs at Class A Advanced Rancho Cucamonga/High Desert (full stats here)
So Landry was lost, now he is found. Now, about the Mariners’ returns: Landry may not stay in center field (he was playing left field mostly before the trade), but that’s not all that irrelevant to his increased value as a prospect. He’s being mentioned in this space because of his improvement with the bat. Simply put: He does more things well (make consistent contact, find the gaps, run like mad, etc.) than he does poorly (has more of a “hack” than a fluid swing, not much home-run power). His ceiling is batting first or second at Safeco Field by 2014. His floor, which he’s more likely to top out at, is on the M’s bench as a pinch-hitting outfielder, by 2015.
2013: ??? at Double-A Jackson (he finished 2012 on the DL with strained quadriceps, but he should be ready to go next spring).
Mike Andruski/High Desert Mavericks
