Logan Evans Looks Like Mariners’ Latest Pitching Find
Image credit: (Photo by Bill Mitchell)
The first time you watch Logan Evans, the dissonance between who he is now and what he’s always been seems hard to explain.
Evans was a 12th-round pick of the Mariners in 2023 as a fourth-year junior out of Pittsburgh. Considering his college career, the fact that he was even picked seems to be an impressive find by area scout Jackson Laumann and the Mariners’ scouting department.
In college, Evans struggled. Over his four years at Penn State and Pittsburgh, the righthander allowed 8.35 runs per nine innings while giving up 174 hits in 138 innings. While his draft year was better, a 5-3, 5.88 season with 55 hits allowed in 49 innings didn’t seem to indicate that greatness was right around the corner.
But that’s what’s been happening during Mariners’ spring training. Evans is one of the surprise standouts of the back fields in Arizona. The righty has shown increased stuff to go with his feel for pitching.
Evans went 1-0, 0.60 in 15 innings with a 15-2 strikeout-to-walk ratio between the Arizona Complex and California League last season after signing. Evan that was a level of dominance he’d never shown in college. But that was before he added three to four mph to his repertoire.
Much like George Kirby, who went from sitting in the low 90s in college to the high 90s as a front-of-the-rotation ace, Evans has seen everything he throws get crisper as a Mariner. Last year he sat at 92 mph with Pitt. Now he sits at 95-97 mph and has touched 99.
Evans is quickly showing that he’s turning into one of the Mariners’ best pitching prospects. Seattle has produced a number of quality pitchers in recent years. At the moment, the Mariners’ system is very heavy with position players. Evans’ surge is a healthy development for the organization.
“I definitely made a velo jump for sure. I hope to hit 100 (mph) soon,” Evans said. “The organization is perfect. They don’t preach too much about mechanics. It’s go out there and throw hard, and then throw a sweeper.”
The sweeper is the other big change to Evans’ arsenal. It has more horizontal movement than the slider he threw in college. He’s also now supplementing it with a bigger curveball.
“I’m definitely taking the next steps to have my slider really go east to west but have my curveball feel out of my hand like a 12-to-6 (pitch). I’m always going to have arm-side run because of my slot, but I’m trying to get depth on my curveball to give them two different looks,” Evans said.
Evans is now a six-pitch pitcher. He seems to have a way to get to every part of the strike zone.
“I like to use my fastball and my sweeper. Having two different fastballs, a cutter, a sweeper, a curveball and a changeup never hurts,” Evans said. “I like to put myself in the box, like if I was trying to hit. If a pitcher has six pitches, I probably won’t have a lot of success. The key is just trying to control all of them.”
That control is what got him in trouble in the rescheduled Mariners-Padres spring breakout game. Evans started for the Mariners, which is a sign of how quickly he’s blossomed.
He had an impressive first inning of work. After hitting a batter to start the game, he recorded three straight strikeouts. But he gave up a home run and walked three batters in an ugly second inning, leaving after recording two outs. An error didn’t help, and did explain why only two of the six runs he allowed were earned.
It was a blip in what’s been an impressive spring, and one that makes Evans a pitcher to watch closely once the MiLB regular season begins,.
