More upside? Mariners go with speed-power combo in Louisville outfielder

TJ Cotterill

The News Tribune

He’s not Dee Gordon fast.

“I think Dee would be off the scale, running wise,” said Scott Hunter, the Seattle Mariners’ director of amateur scouting.

But the Mariners’ second pick of the Monday draft, center fielder Josh Stowers, certainly possesses more power. A lot more.

The Mariners picked Stowers out of the University of Louisville with the No. 54 overall pick in the second round, after taking right-hander Logan Gilbert from Stetson University with their No. 14 overall pick in the first round.

The draft will continue with rounds 3-10 on Tuesday and 11-40 on Wednesday.

Both of them are 21 years old.

The worry with Stowers is he got off to a slow start this season. The Mariners preach controlling the strike zone and Hunter said Stowers had maybe started taking a few too many pitches, until a change in his swing helped things.

Baseball America’s scouting report included that Stowers projects more as a left fielder with a below-average arm in pro ball, but Hunter said they see him as a for-sure center fielder, who stole 31 bases in 37 attempts this season.

“He’s going out to center field and play there as long as he can,” Hunter said.

“Any time you get a tool package like this, especially in the second round, you can’t help but be excited. Top of the scale run tool and power. A long-time scouting director who is a mentor of mine said never walk away from power and speed. It’s a hard combination to find an this is a true center fielder who fits that mold.”

Stowers is another player, like Gilbert, whom some scouts and teams started to drop down their draft boards. Hunter said they watched him, like Gilbert, in the summer Cape Cod League. Then two scouts, Devitt Moore and Jackson Laumann brought Hunter back on Stowers.

“They said, ‘Hey, Stowers is a little different,’” Hunter said. “We looked at some swing adjustments and looked at some video and then trust in those guys and I went and said, ‘Something is different.’ You look at the second half of the season — it was quite impressive.

“Figuring out that one little swing adjustment got him back into his legs and his athleticism working and not being so mechanical and it really took off in the second half.”

Stowers, a native of Chicago, hit .336 with a .477 on-base percentage and nine home runs in 62 games.

Hunter said Stowers will likely start his pro-ball career with short-season Single-A Everett.

They wanted upside and tool-based players on the first day of the draft.

Is that what the Mariners got?

“Both guys I felt like were in our mix the whole time,” Hunter said. “But at the end of the day you never know.

“When you get two players who, I wouldn’t want to say were having rough years because you look at their performances and great numbers and stats, but they both feel like they have upside left. They aren’t polished high school players who are what they are. We feel Logan Gilbert has a lot of stuff still coming and as well as Stowers — just a pure athlete who went to Louisville and continually gotten better over the past three years.

“Having these types of athletes and this type of upside in college players who are both on the younger side of the college age — hopefully they can start pushing our Evan White (2017 first-round pick) and Kyle Lewis (2016 first-round pick) and we can start building waves of talent that every year we have guys coming who eventually help our major league team.”