The selections made by the Seattle Mariners on the third day of Major League Baseball’s first-year player draft split evenly between pitchers and position players.
During the final 30 rounds of the 40-round draft, Seattle selected 15 pitchers and 15 position players — nine infielders, four catchers and two outfielders. That was after the Mariners used their first three picks of the draft on outfielders, then picked six pitchers on the second day during rounds 3-10.
They took 21 pitchers overall, in addition to the nine infielders, five outfielders and five catchers. Thirty-one of the Mariners’ picks were college prospects, though of the nine high-school players they picked, two of them — first-round pick Alex Jackson and 74th overall pick Gareth Morgan — were selected on the first day.
One of those five catchers, Wayne Taylor, the Mariners’ 16th-round pick out of Stanford, hit a walk-off home run on Saturday to lead the Cardinal to a Super Regional victory over Vanderbilt.
Six Seattle draft picks claim hometowns in Florida. Five are from Georgia, and four are from Mississippi.
The Mariners picked four players with local ties — Nick Kiel, a left-handed pitcher from Bellevue College (18th round); left-handed pitcher Andrew Summerville from Lakeside High School in Seattle (34th round); shortstop Taylor Smart, who played college ball at Tennessee and attended Tahoma High School in Covington (26th round); and Sam Lindquist, a right-handed pitcher from Stanford who attended Eastside Catholic School in Sammamish (37th round).
Summerville has signed a national letter of intent to play for Stanford next season. Kiel is signed to play for Missouri. Lindquist, who is from Mercer Island, is the older brother of University of Washington quarterback Jeff Lindquist.
UW had eight players selected — pitcher Jeff Brigham, whom the Dodgers selected in the fourth round; outfielder Robert Pehl, (Kansas City, 11th round); pitcher Jared Fisher (Philadelphia, 15th round); outfielder Brian Wolfe (Dodgers, 20th round); shortstop Erik Forgione (Pirates, 25th round); first baseman, and Shorewood High School alum, Trevor Mitsui (Diamondbacks, 30th round); pitcher Trevor Dunlap (Tampa Bay, 30th round); and second baseman Andrew Ely (Chicago Cubs, 32nd round).
There were four players taken from Washington State University — outfielder Yale Rosen (San Diego, 14th round); infielder Nick Tanielu (Houston, 14th round); pitcher Tanner Chleborad (Baltimore, 16th round); and catcher Collin Slaybaugh (Yankees, 26th round).
Pacific Lutheran was also represented, with Tampa Bay selecting pitcher Trevor Lubking in the 14th round.
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