One of baseball's most highly touted young prospects is apparently on the verge of making his debut at the game's highest level.
Seattle Mariners outfielder Jarred Kelenic will be called up from the minor leagues for the first time on Thursday, according to multiple media reports.
The prized farmhand arrives in the big leagues amid considerable buzz, having demolished minor league competition at virtually every step since the New York Mets drafted him out of a Wisconsin high school in 2018.
The 21-year-old rising star, 22 in July, had posted a .293/.369/.521 line with 31 homers in 786 career plate appearances across three seasons in the minors through Monday.
The Mariners acquired Kelenic as the centerpiece of the December 2018 blockbuster trade that sent star infielder Robinson Cano and closer Edwin Diaz to the Mets.
The deal, orchestrated by then newly hired Mets GM Brodie Van Wagenen, turned heads in the baseball community, given the talent -- and contracts -- on the move. Many observers panned the move for the Mets as shortsighted.
Their concerns have proven largely correct, with Cano turning in decidedly feast-or-famine results before he was suspended for the entirety of the 2021 campaign for a second failed drug test. Diaz, meanwhile, has struggled to regain the form that made him one of the game's best closers in 2018.
Kelenic, if in fact he's called up, would make his debut against the Cleveland Indians at T-Mobile Park in Seattle on Thursday. His arrival in the Majors has been hotly anticipated among prospect hounds -- so much so that a prankster duped several prominent national baseball scribes with a fake report of Kelenic's callup earlier this week.