Yorger Bautista — Mariners Prospect Profile
Mariners center fielder, No. 10 in the September 2026 rankings. Scouting reports, development notes and level-by-level analysis from Jason A. Churchill.
Bautista has improved his ability to make contact this season, and has done so without sacrificing power or walks. The whiff in his game, however, remains too high, but he's just 18, and the twitch and electricity in his movements and swing make him one of the more exciting prospects in the lower minors. The bat speed alone would get him on my watch list, but there's hitting ability here.
The most interesting number in Bautista's file is where he hits the ball. In the Dominican Summer League in 2025 he pulled 62.3% of his batted balls, which is the profile of a teenager trying to yank everything. In 2026 that fell to 43.0%. Hitters do not drift nineteen points in one offseason; that is a swing or an approach that got rebuilt, and it is the mechanism behind the contact gains you're describing.
Those gains are real at the complex. His strikeout rate went from 29.8% in the DSL to 24.5% at the Arizona Complex League, and the power came with it rather than in spite of it — a .206 isolated slugging against .181 the year before, nine home runs in 249 plate appearances, and a .283/.345/.489 line.
Jason A. Churchill
Single-A was a different story, and it was brief: 21 games, 98 plate appearances, .228/.265/.304 with a 44 wRC+, one home run, five extra-base hits total, and a 31.6% strikeout rate against a 23.6% swinging-strike rate.
The walks thinned out after the jump. They held at the complex, 9.2% against 9.3% in the DSL, but he drew four in 98 trips following the August 11 promotion — 4.1%, with 17 of his 21 games producing none at all. Across the full season that lands at 7.8%, a point and a half off the year before in a season he climbed two levels.
He did close well despite the surrounding numbers. From August 25 through September 2 he put together an eight-game hitting streak, his longest of the year, in the middle of the Single-A stint.
One usage note: the complex club played him in center field in 37 of 40 games. Single-A moved him around — 10 in right, seven in center.
