​You may have missed it, because MLB does a poor job marketing its own product, but today was the Futures Game, the de facto All-Star showcase for minor leaguers. It also marked the second day of the MLB Draft, churning through sixteen rounds in a single afternoon, and the final leg of the Mariners’ current Road Trip From Hell, all happening at once—bright and early on a Sunday on the West Coast. Think about 9 a.m. on the clock. And it was streamed on Peacock, with a helicopter hovering nearby, buzzing above the field and brushing the on-field mics. So the surprise isn’t that you watched the American League prospects beat the National League prospects 6-1, but that you watched at all.
If you did tune in, I hope you didn’t miss it by too much, because Kade Anderson popped up in the game for a fleeting moment. He was the AL’s starting pitcher and needed a mere ten pitches for his one inning of work. The box score will tell you he threw six of those ten for strikes, but the box score is a liar, because HP umpire Alex Shears played a little nominative determinism and squeezed two pitches at the bottom of the zone that should have been strikes.
Anderson’s outing is likely to be overshadowed by Pirates prospect Seth Hernandez, who might have worn a Mariners’ uniform if the Angels had actually drafted Anderson as everyone expected them to do in 2025, instead of whatever they did that year. Hernandez delivered a clean 1-2-3 inning with two strikeouts, his fastball touching 101 mph. It was big, nasty stuff—though he did receive a fortunate strike call on a pitch just off the outside corner, which you could count if you’re keeping score.
But Anderson operated with a quiet efficiency, slicing through the top of the National League order. He got a weak contact popout from leadoff hitter Eli Willits of the Nationals on the second pitch of Willits’ at-bat, a perfectly located fastball up and in. Anderson briefly fell behind against the Rockies’ Roldy Brito, 2-1, as he couldn’t quite settle into his changeup, yet he snapped back and froze Brito with a slider for a weak comebacker that he fielded cleanly. The Brewers’ Jesús Made stung a 95 mph fastball on the inside corner to draw hits with a 1-1 count, lacing it into right field and watching it drift into no-man’s-land between second base and the right fielder. Yet Anderson steadied himself, then came back to retire Rockies prospect Charlie Condon with a first-pitch flyout on a slider that was effectively the day’s hardest hit ball against him at 97 mph. It felt almost like the ball knew its destination before he turned to field it, as if Dickey-Stephens Park had a sixth sense about outs.
That contrast between Anderson’s performance here and his last national showcase outing—theSpring Breakout game this spring, which drew plenty of national attention for SEO purposes—was striking. The spring training game between the Mariners and Brewers had stoked a lot of national chatter, but today’s Futures Game offered a different spotlight, and Anderson handled it with a measured, understated precision that made his efficiency stand out, even in a moment overshadowed by Hernandez’s velocity and the broader draft pageantry.