The best pitcher in the minor leagues this season makes his major league debut this afternoon in Seattle.
How to watch Kade Anderson's MLB debut
Matchup: Chicago Cubs (74-55) at Seattle Mariners (61-67)
First pitch: 4:15 p.m. PT / 7:15 p.m. ET, Saturday, Aug. 22
Venue: T-Mobile Park, Seattle
Probables: Kade Anderson, LHP (MLB debut) vs. David Peterson, LHP (7-7, 5.29)
TV: FOX
Check your FOX affiliate before you settle in
FOX Saturday Baseball is regional, and three games start in the same 7:15 p.m. ET window: Cubs-Mariners, Pirates at Dodgers, and Giants at Red Sox.
Turning on FOX does not guarantee you get Anderson. Your market decides which of the three you receive. If your affiliate has Pirates-Dodgers, you get Tarik Skubal. If it has Giants-Red Sox, you get Anthony Tidwell against Patrick Sandoval.
If Cubs-Mariners is not your market's game, the FOX Sports app with a TV provider login will carry it, as will a streaming service that includes your local FOX affiliate. Seattle-area viewers face no blackout on the local broadcast. Mariners radio has the call, and the MLB app lets you keep the video while swapping to the local radio feed.
Worth noting for the same window: Quinn Mathews makes his third major league start for St. Louis at Philadelphia on the regional networks. His first two came on the road, and he has still not pitched at Busch Stadium.
Who is Kade Anderson
Anderson was born July 6, 2004, in Slidell, Louisiana, and grew up in Madisonville, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. He is 22 years old, 6-foot-2, 179 pounds, and throws left-handed.
He pitched at St. Paul's School in Covington, where he went 28-1 with a 0.22 ERA and 212 strikeouts, and then his career stopped. Anderson underwent Tommy John surgery on April 21, 2022, during his junior season. It cost him his senior year and any chance of being drafted out of high school.
He went to LSU instead, which is where he had always wanted to go.
"Growing up, I always wanted to be an LSU guy," Anderson said after the draft. "I've been wearing LSU clothes since I was a baby."
The season that made him the No. 3 pick
Anderson was eased in as a freshman in 2024 — 38⅓ innings, a 3.99 ERA, 59 strikeouts across 18 appearances.
The sophomore year was different. He went 12-1 with a 3.18 ERA and 180 strikeouts in 119 innings, led the nation in strikeouts and the SEC in innings, walked 35, and held hitters to a .211 average. Baseball America named him the inaugural winner of its College Pitcher of the Year award. His 180 strikeouts rank third on LSU's single-season list, behind only Paul Skenes (209 in 2023) and Ben McDonald (202 in 1989).
Then came Omaha.
Anderson opened the College World Series with seven innings of one-run ball against Arkansas. In Game 1 of the finals, against a Coastal Carolina team carrying a 26-game winning streak, he threw a complete-game shutout — three hits, 10 strikeouts, 130 pitches, a 1-0 win. It was only the second complete-game shutout in LSU's College World Series history, and it made him the third pitcher to throw one in the finals since the best-of-three format began in 2003, joining Arizona's JC Cloney in 2016 and Oregon State's Kevin Abel in 2018.
He finished the CWS 2-0 with a 0.56 ERA — one run on six hits in 16 innings, 17 strikeouts — and was named Most Outstanding Player as LSU won its eighth national championship.
"He's the best player in the country," LSU coach Jay Johnson said at the time. "There's nobody closer to the major leagues than that right now."
Seattle took him No. 3 overall on July 13, 2025. He signed nine days later.
The LSU pipeline
Anderson becomes the 94th major leaguer in LSU baseball history and the seventh produced under Johnson in five seasons, after Skenes, Dylan Crews, Grant Taylor, Paul Gervase, Gage Jump and Tommy White. LSU has had at least one former player debut in the majors in 32 of the past 36 seasons.
He is also the program's second top-three draft pick in three years. Again, after Skenes.
The two met before Anderson's freshman year.
"I got to be around Skenes a little bit, so that was a really cool experience," Anderson said at the Futures Game in July.
The best pitcher in the minor leagues
Anderson has made 18 starts at Double-A Arkansas in his first professional season and gone 10-1.
The line: a 1.06 ERA, a 0.64 WHIP, 135 strikeouts and 13 walks in 93⅓ innings, 47 hits allowed, four home runs. Among the 229 minor league pitchers with at least 90 innings this year, he ranks first in ERA, first in WHIP and first in opponents' OPS at .399. He has struck out 40.5 percent of the hitters he has faced and walked 3.9 percent.
At the Futures Game in Philadelphia on July 12, he started for the American League and threw a 10-pitch scoreless inning, averaging 94.3 mph on his fastball and topping out at 95.4.
He is Seattle's No. 1 prospect and MLB Pipeline's No. 5 overall. Keith Law of The Athletic has ranked him the No. 1 prospect in baseball.
Why today
Bryan Woo felt discomfort in his right shoulder during last Sunday's start in Houston and was pushed back from this weekend's series entirely. Seattle does not expect an injured list stint and has not sent him for imaging; manager Dan Wilson said the club anticipates he will skip one start at most. Bryce Miller stays on turn for Sunday. The Mariners plan to run a six-man rotation for now — a departure for a club that has long preferred five, and part of why they were comfortable dealing Luis Castillo to the White Sox at the deadline.
The club also reinstated Carlos Vargas from the 60-day injured list, optioned Nick Davila to Triple-A Tacoma, and transferred Matt Brash to the 60-day IL to clear the 40-man spot. One more move is needed to add Anderson to both the 26- and 40-man rosters.
There is a calendar element too. Under the current collective bargaining agreement, a pitcher keeps rookie status into the following season as long as he stays under 50 major league innings and under 45 days on the active roster before Sept. 1. Anderson arrives with fewer than 45 days left in the season, which preserves his 2027 rookie eligibility and the award and service incentives attached to it.
Wilson framed it as a decision about the rest of this season.
"Where we're at with this season, and how we feel like this last month-plus of baseball shapes up — I think Kade is a guy that can really help us in that department," Wilson said. "And I'm excited to get him out there tomorrow to get that started."
MLB.com's Daniel Kramer wrote that it is not a stretch to call this the most anticipated pitching debut in Mariners history since Félix Hernández in 2005.
The wait
The argument over when to call Anderson up ran all summer, and the loudest voice in it belonged to someone with no rooting interest in Seattle at all. Bill Simmons posted about Anderson four times between late July and mid-August. Writing for SoDo Mojo on Aug. 12, Zachary Rymer noted the enthusiasm and suggested it had something to do with Simmons having Anderson stashed in a keeper fantasy league. Simmons is a Boston fan.
Seattle is 61-67 and effectively out of the Wild Card race, which is part of why this is happening now rather than in a pennant chase.
It also means Anderson gets something most debuting pitchers do not: a home start, in his own ballpark, in front of his own crowd, with nothing riding on it but himself.
Baseball Without Borders
Anderson's route to the majors runs entirely through southeastern Louisiana. Born in Slidell, raised in Madisonville, schooled in Covington, developed in Baton Rouge — four towns within an hour of one another, ringing Lake Pontchartrain.
That is not unusual for a top American college arm. The internationalization that has reshaped major league rosters has barely touched Division I baseball, where the pipeline still runs through domestic high schools and travel programs. The country's best amateur pitchers still tend to come from one state, one parish, one high school field.
Anderson has worn his country's uniform. He represented the United States on the 18U national team, and in July he started for the American League at the Futures Game.
He does it today for a franchise that has never played in a World Series.
That is the part Seattle fans carry. Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson, Alex Rodriguez and Ichiro Suzuki all came through this organization, and none of them won a title here. The 2001 club won 116 games, tied for the most in major league history, and did not reach the World Series. Last October, Seattle got within reach of one and lost to Toronto in the American League Championship Series. World Baseball Network was at Feile on West 33rd Street in Manhattan, the Mariners' New York bar, when that ended.
Anderson is 22 and did not know where Seattle was when they drafted him.
"I knew, kind of, a little bit of where it was, but had to really make sure," he said last summer. "It's really shocked me how nice it is here. Super excited to get to learn the area."