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# Rainiers Roundup: Arroyo, Montes Still Need Tune-Ups, Criswell Rehabs with M’s Triple-A Affiliate
- URL: https://www.emeraldcityspectrum.com/tacoma-rainiers-michael-arroyo-lazaro-montes-tune-ups-seattle-mariners/
- Published: 2026-08-28T07:01:15.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-08T06:13:44.000Z
- Author: Callaghan Bluechel
- Tags: Features, Analysis, Mariners, Rainiers, Michael Arroyo, Lazaro Montes, Brock Rodden, Ryan Bliss, Cooper Criswell, John Russell

\[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1364"\]

![  Tacoma Rainiers shortstop Ryan Bliss takes a swing during a game in Aug. 2026. Image credit: Tacoma Rainiers/Instagram.  ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1d/f2/1df2f77b-83dd-4bc0-a6d2-6d1bb5df89a3/content/images/2026/10/778274259_18622142893014656_2185279666404351150_n-format-original-1.jpg)

Tacoma Rainiers shortstop Ryan Bliss takes a swing during a game in Aug. 2026\. Image credit: Tacoma Rainiers/Instagram. \[/caption\]

Minor league baseball isn’t the Show and it isn’t college.

With the MLB openly proposing to nix high school eligibility and offload domestic development to NCAA, it’s useful to remember the purpose of the farm leagues. Of course, for the communities these teams inhabit, they provide public events and encourage commerce. On the baseball side of things, their primary purpose is to develop prospects into players.

For the Triple-A Tacoma Rainiers, who are well out of the Pacific Coast League’s playoff picture deep into the season (having already been a middling team in the first half and sitting nine games out of first for the second half playoff spot - the PCL runs on a similar playoff format to Mexican soccer), the objectives are still the same, more or less, as they would have been were they one game back: develop their top prospects into superstars and keep everyone, regardless of prospect pedigree, ready to go in case the big league club needs them.

“At this level, guys are playing for a lot more than just finishing first,” said Rainiers manager John Russell. “Guys are still wanting to stay ready in case they get an opportunity to go to Seattle or maybe another major league club.”

Organizational depth is the term used in the business for players like Patrick Wisdom, Connor Joe, and Stuart Fairchild. Other players, such as Brock Rodden and Charlie Beilenson, are lower or middle-ranked prospects in the organization who might get a bit of runway if circumstances allow.   

The line between these two categories is blurry, as Ryan Bliss can attest. The pipeline from outside prospect to organizational depth typically runs one way in accordance with the will of undefeated Father Time. But the chance to prove oneself at the major league level is motivation enough for plenty of the guys down in Tacoma. If not that, then a sense of duty to his teammates or a hunger to keep playing the game as long as they can. Or all of it.

After top Mariners prospect Colt Emerson went on the IL (though he was also slated to get sent down before he opened up about his injury), Rodden jumped up to the majors. Wisdom is also currently with the M’s, while Joe has spent some time on the big league roster and Fairchild made an appearance in one game for Seattle this year.   

It’s not often an easy fit: Rodden has a .602 OPS in 38 plate appearances with the Mariners, Joe a .597 OPS in 45 plate appearances, and Wisdom has a .367 OPS in 48 plate appearances. Some of these players had been absolutely raking in Triple-A - Wisdom has 32 homers and a 1.109 OPS with the Rainiers this year while Rodden had an .841 OPS with 22 doubles and 19 homers after his callup from Double-A and before his promotion to Seattle - but the skill jump isn’t something everyone can overcome. Teams usually have to see something *exceptional* to trust that a youngster can become an MLB mainstay.

Two men on the Rainiers roster stand out as exceptional: Michael Arroyo and Lazaro Montes. Both are consensus top-100 prospects around the league, but other than the fact they are both hitters, there aren’t many similarities.

Montes is the more majestic of the pair. He has quite literal light-tower power, having clocked the trusses of the fixture in Cheney Stadium’s right center almost immediately upon taking his first batting practice in the ballpark. Every time he is at the plate, there’s a buzzing threat that he might send one to Idaho. Indeed, between Double-A Arkansas and Triple-A Tacoma, Montes has homered 37 times in 529 plate appearances (though one of those was an inside-the-parker), and that’s with about a third of those plate appearances coming in a cavernous home yard with the Travelers.

In his Triple-A stint so far, the left-handed right fielder has hit a ball at 116.3 miles an hour, 10% of his batted balls are over 108.8 miles an hour, and he has a 56.7% hard-hit rate alongside a 42.3% launch angle sweet spot rate.   

The plate discipline metrics aren’t too bad, either: Montes has swung at 71.6% of pitches in the zone and 28.5% of pitches out of the zone, a difference of 43.1 percentage points that would put him in the upper echelons of discipline were he a major leaguer.

That in and of itself is a positive sign, as swing discipline has clearly been a focus for Montes over the years. As he took his batting practice hacks again and again on Tuesday, for instance, he wore a shirt that read the Mariners’ oft-discussed three-word mantra: *domina la zona*. In English, *control the zone*.

> Laz Montes takes some BP hacks in a “domina la zona” (Eng. “control the zone”) t-shirt.  
>  
> According to Rainiers manager John Russell, the players will hear a lot of the same messages at each level, though “it caters differently to each individual” [pic.twitter.com/QN2wJUmLko](https://t.co/QN2wJUmLko?ref=emeraldcityspectrum.com)— Callaghan Bluechel (@CalBluechel) [August 26, 2026](https://x.com/CalBluechel/status/2092402043898171654?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=emeraldcityspectrum.com)

It’s the exact same phrase I heard from [Felnin Celesten in early June](https://www.emeraldcityspectrum.com/content/files/2026/10/seattle-mariners-felnin-celesten-consistency-aggression-elite-ceiling-1.html), two levels below where Montes is now.

“I think it’s important, the terminology; they hear a lot of the same things \[at each level\],” Russell said. “It caters differently to each individual. Certain things, you talk about to one player and talk differently, kind of in the same terms with different language. So, I think it’s great that an organization can have that foundation, and it helps players understand where they’re at and what they need to do to get better.”

Just to sweeten the pot all that more, Montes’ defensive skill has taken a notable hike in right field under the tutelage of Victor Labrada, a 26-year-old marginal prospect in his own right. He already had a good arm, but now he’s beginning to have good range. As for Labrada, Russell sees a process in him that is one of the more common and underrated facts of life: that the best way to learn can often be to teach.

“\[Labrada\] asks a lot of questions to make sure he’s understanding the game and why he does certain things. We talk about it a lot, like one of the things I challenge him with is that the game will tell you what to do if you pay attention,” Russell said. “He’s really kind of grasped onto that … I think he’s passing some of that on to Michael and Laz, his experiences and what he’s gone through, and that he doesn’t know everything, but he is willing to learn and he’s willing to pass it along.”

If Montes even made contact on 70% of his swings, he would probably be the top prospect in baseball. But alas, there is the catch.

Montes’ 39.9% whiff rate is the sixth worst among 505 ballplayers with 100 or more plate appearances in Triple-A. His 36.1% in-zone whiff rate is *the* worst. 

The list of big leaguers with an overall successful 2026 campaign while hovering around a 40% whiff rate contains one name: Munetaka Murakami. Luckily for the M’s, Montes had a 39.9% whiff rate in Double-A, too, perhaps indicating that it might not get any *worse* in the big leagues, and his power profile is the exact kind of thing that he would need to overcome such giant swing and miss tendencies.

As things currently stand, Montes has a .273/.363/.564 slash line with the Rainiers. But if there’s a way to decrease Montes’ whiff without much negative externality, the M’s are going to take it.

Arroyo, on the other hand, has a list of problems where Montes has strengths and a big strength where Montes is struggling. Although he has an .823 OPS in 196 Triple-A plate appearances, this is by and large an overperformance: his 108.5 mile an hour maximum exit velocity is below the Triple-A average, as is his 34.1% hard-hit rate. While his actual weighted on base average (wOBA) - a catch-all offensive stat similar to OPS but more precisely weighted - is 60th percentile among Triple-A batters, his expected wOBA (xwOBA) is only 31st percentile.

There are clear advantages in Arroyo’s game, however: the difference between his 79.5% in-zone swing rate and 33.8% chase rate is 45.7 percentage points, a better figure than Montes’, and he misses only 22.4% of his swings overall and 14.6% in the zone. This has led to a nice low 16.7% strikeout rate.

But Arroyo swings *a lot*. Part of it is just his approach, which the M’s shouldn’t try to *overhaul*, but perhaps a bit of a dial-back - say, swinging 50% of the time instead of 55% - might have the dual effect of helping him avoid some shanked contact and simultaneously raising his currently unremarkable 7.8% walk rate.

Ultimately, though he went out to a strong start and talked about Triple-A being the [same baseball](https://www.emeraldcityspectrum.com/content/files/2026/10/seattle-mariners-tacoma-rainiers-michael-arroyo-same-baseball-1.html) as Double-A, the underlying unease beneath Arroyo’s still-strong top line still remains.

That’s not to mention the defense, where - unlike with Montes’ rapid improvements in right - there are still adjustments Arroyo badly needs to make in left field. On Tuesday, for instance, he let a catchable fly ball fall between him and Labrada in center during the early innings and then dropped one in the sixth.

While both Arroyo and Montes likely need to make the most of the 21 remaining fixtures in the Rainiers schedule, both with tune-ups to do before seeing a big league diamond, so too do others with less sky-high expectations.

Cooper Criswell is one, for instance. Out since early June with a shoulder issue, a reliever who had become a solid guy in the middle of the Mariners bullpen has been throwing some rehab outings with the Rainiers to make sure he’s ready to return to Seattle and relieve some of the *very* stretched relievers of some taxing workloads. Although his first rehab outing with Tacoma was a bit shaky from a results standpoint, he settled in quickly in his most recent appearance on Tuesday, striking out two as he tossed a 1-2-3 inning.

J.P. Crawford had a couple appearances in Tacoma before his return to face the Phillies earlier this week; Matt Brash will probably put in some time nearer the Mountain once he is almost ready to get back to pitching.

No matter who it is in the Tacoma clubhouse, the Triple-A skipper has the same overarching message for all of them.

“What we say is: just stay ready,” Russell said. “The biggest thing is, know what you’re doing, know how to play the game, because they need to be able to trust you when you go up there.”