"Everyone's favorite Mariners prospect is mashing again. Lazaro Montes is making some real noise down in AA this month, and I know all of you are taking notice. As a 21-year-old in AA, Laz had his typical adjustments to start this 20-26 season, where he was hitting for a little bit of power but was struggling to be his past self in previous levels, being about 15% above league average as a hitter. But now that June's over, Laz has transformed a season with how well he hit in June. Laz almost hit 300 for the month of June with a 1,200 OPS, a WRC Plus over 212 home runs, which has transformed his 20-26 season from a solid one to a really good one with a 147 WRC Plus. So does this mean the Mariners are about to promote him, or are they going to leave him down in AA longer? Short answer, yes, he'll probably get promoted here at some point. Long answer, it's complicated. Entering this 20-26 season, we wanted to see some progress in certain areas for Laz. We wanted to see the swing and miss cut down a little bit. We wanted to see him hit lefties as he rose in the minors, and we wanted to see some positive remarks on defense. Now, the defense I can't really speak to, we don't have accurate data for that stuff in the minors. In terms of the swing and miss and hitting lefties, that has been about the same. There is a massive OPS gap this year for Laz, righties versus lefties. And on top of that, in June, despite all those great numbers, he was still striking out almost 30% of the time. Now the difference is when he is actually making contact, he's doing an unbelievable amount of damage. It might get to the point the Mariners just accept Laz won't hit lefties or that he'll swing and miss a ton when he gets to the big league level, and they'll adjust his role accordingly. The Mariners may do with players like this, I mean, Luke Railey exists. Laz is pretty much just Luke Railey, but with a little bit more power in playing at double A right now. But it's really hard to ignore someone with 25 home runs at the halfway point of the minor league season and walking nearly 20% of the time. Because there's one thing we know, Laz is going to be the best in the organization when it comes to walking and when it comes to power. If you're the best at something, you're always going to have value to a team. So what is his actual timeline going to be? Well, since he's 21 years old, I would imagine he gets a little bit longer in double A, but eventually I think he will finish the season in triple A like Colt did last year. And then after three to six months in triple A, I would imagine Laz, if he hits, I'm assuming he's going to hit, would almost be ready for the big leagues. So while it's awesome to see this from Laz this year, I wouldn't quite expect him to be in the big leagues this season. What are you guys' thoughts on this? If you have any, drop it in the comments and let us know."