Welcome to the Roadwire Prospect podcast, brought to you by Sling.

I'm your host, James Anderson, and we've got a great episode this week.

We've got a bit of a tradition going here where Sam Dykstra of MLB Pipeline comes on

first or second week of April, and we discuss all the most notable minor league assignments. We've got four levels in

action currently, single A, high, A, AA, AAA, AAA, and we know a lot of the assignments for

the rookie levels as well. So a lot to cover. Sam, thanks so much for joining me again. How are you doing,

man? I'm good. I'm good. Yeah.

I mean, belated, happy opening day to you and all the listeners out there, but I always look forward to doing this. It feels like we go into spring training, spring breakout. We get rosters, and then you and I get to do this show every year. I love it. I know. It's so fun. There's so much to cover.

And like in past years, you and I are just going to kind of go back and forth.

We're going to nominate a player who got either a aggressive assignment or maybe like a soft assignment or just something that we think is notable.

It's something that could sort of set the stage for how their value trends in the coming months.

And without further ado, I'll toss it over to you for the first nomination.

Yeah, this one, I was doing the other day, I did a story on top 10 most loaded rosters,

at least from a prospect perspective in the minor leagues.

And I put AA Arkansas and the Seattle Mariners organization at the top of that list.

They have four of our top 100 prospects on that team. And the one that I think that surprised me

most in terms of assignment was Ryan Sloan. Only 20 years old. He's going to be 20 for all of this

season. He only got three high A starts

all of last year. Never went more than five innings anywhere in any of his starts between single

A or high A. But there was a lot of momentum with Ryan Sloan. Obviously, they used him a little bit

in the Cactus League. I think he pitched in the spring breakout game, both him and Kate Anderson.

Those guys are paired together now. I mean, Kate Anderson, going to AA doesn't shock me.

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