What went wrong with Alex Jackson and the Mariners?

Published 2:06 pm Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Seattle Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto, in his just-over-a-year tenure, has shown no reluctance to trade. Last week came the blockbuster that brought shortstop Jean Segura to Seattle in a deal that sent former first-round draft pick Taijuan Walker to Arizona, and Monday night he traded away another former first rounder, sending outfielder Alex Jackson to Atlanta in exchange for young pitchers Rob Whalen and Max Povse.

This post isn’t about trying to evaluate the trade. I know next to nothing about the pitchers Seattle acquired, other than that they’re both young, both right-handed, and that Whalen had a cup of coffee in the majors last season. I have no idea whether this was a good deal for the Mariners.

No, this post is about Jackson. Jackson was the sixth-overall pick in the 2014 draft. That year he was considered the best high school hitting prospect in the draft. He was a catcher in high school in Florida, but there were doubts about whether he would remain a catcher in the pros, and the Mariners promptly switched him to right field so that he could focus on his hitting. But after just two full seasons in the minors the Mariners decided to pull the plug on a player who used to be the top-rated prospect in the organization. What happened?

I don’t have the answer to that, but what I do have is some perspective as an individual who spent some time covering Jackson. Jackson spent 2015 with the Everett AquaSox of the Northwest League, and I spent a good part of that season as the Herald’s AquaSox beat writer, so I had the chance to see Jackson play a number of times.

And throughout that season I kept waiting to see signs of the ability that made Jackson such a highly-coveted prospect.

It’s been a while since then, so the details are fuzzy. But here’s some of the things I remember about Jackson. I remember him being pretty much physically mature at 19, so there wasn’t a lot of physical development left to be done. I remember him missing banks of games because of minor injuries. I remember him pulling the occasional mental rock in the field and on the basepaths.

But most importantly, I remember not seeing the ball jump off his bat the way I expected. Many of those who pass through the Northwest League and eventually make it to the majors as hitters have that bounce off the bat, even if their numbers aren’t stellar. Michael Saunders had that when he played for the Sox as an 18-year-old in 2005. Dan Vogelbach had that when he visited as a 19-year-old member of the Boise Hawks in 2012. Even in 2015, Jackson’s same-aged teammate Luis Liberato had more jump off his bat.

Jackson arrived in Everett in 2015 after starting the season a level higher at Clinton in the Midwest League, where he was completely overmatched. Jackson was somewhat better for the Sox, slashing .239/.365/.466. But the power was more sporadic than expected for someone with his reputation (eight homers in 197 plate appearances), and the strikeouts were prodigious (61 in those plate appearances). Jackson returned to the Midwest League in 2016 and continued to produce pedestrian numbers, slashing .243/.332/.408 with 11 homers and 103 strikeouts in 381 plate appearances.

Maybe Jackson needed a change of scenery and some new voices, maybe he needed a shake up. But whatever the situation, things weren’t working in the Mariners’ organization.

It’s unusual for a team to trade away a sixth-overall pick who still hasn’t reached his 21st birthday, no matter how much that player has struggled. After all, 2014 second-round oversign Gareth Morgan remains in the organization despite struggling far worse than Jackson. But as someone who had a chance to see Jackson play, I guess I’d say I’m not shocked the Mariners decided to cash in while Jackson still had some value.