Lookout Landing’s 2025 Prospect Ratings: #20, Ashton Izzi

Whether he goes by Ashton or AJ, this cold-weather prep arm is heating up in the lower minors

After leaning heavily on the tried-and-true formula of college pitching over the first half-decade of Jerry Dipoto’s tenure, the Mariners have been more willing to play some jazz in recent years, using some higher-round picks on the riskier demographic of prep players. In 2022, they gave an overslot deal to Ashton or “AJ” Izzi, a cold-weather prep arm from Oswego, IL, using their third-round pick on the 6’3” righty.

Izzi has so far followed what’s become the industry standard for developing young pitchers: he didn’t pitch in his draft year, instead spending time working out at the complex in Arizona and learning the ropes of professional baseball from a distance. He made his professional debut in the Complex League in 2023, again with a highly limited workload, appearing in just nine games from June – August and pitching only a few innings at a time. 2024 marked his full-season debut with the Modesto Nuts, and it’s easy to see why the Mariners are internally very excited about the newly-minted 21-year-old’s potential.

Izzi was Modesto’s workhorse, pitching a team-high 110.2 innings; his 26 games started was tied for highest in the league, while he was fourth in innings pitched. He and teammate Elijah Dale had the two lowest averages against in the inflated offensive environment of the California League, with hitters mustering just .230 against Izzi, who also posted an ERA almost two runs lower than the next qualified pitcher, a minuscule 2.85. That number captures how well Izzi was able to limit hard contact; he allowed a league low of just four home runs all year. He’s not a strikeout machine, but he will elicit weak contact, a majority of that on the ground, allowing him to work efficiently deep into games. And when he dominates the zone and gets ahead in counts, he can dial up his swing and miss stuff to mow through hitters even more quickly, as he demonstrates in this immaculate inning he tossed on June 8:

Izzi’s challenge as he moves forward will to be to harness that command of the zone more consistently; for as much of a strike-throwing machine as he is in that clip, his walk rate falls just outside the realm of acceptable, especially without dominant strikeout numbers. That’s all pretty typical of a young pitcher still mastering his arsenal.

As for that arsenal, it’s already taken steps forward since he’s begun his professional career. Izzi now throws two separate fastballs with different grips and different movement profiles, one with more riding action, and another with more of a downward trajectory that he can dial up to 97 at times.

He also throws two sliders: a traditional gyro slider and a sweeper that developed out of his old curveball. The sweeper has been the most recent development, as he told the podcast To The Show We Go his focus this season was on trying to get more horizontal movement out of his sweeper without making it too “big.”

The next challenge for Izzi, in addition to continuing to attack the zone with regularity, is developing his changeup, currently a fringe offering. At its best, it generates swing-and-miss with late break and drop, although the pitch could use more consistency both in shape and location.

The mythical third pitch is a well-worn challenge for high school pitchers, especially because that pitch is usually the fiddly changeup, in delineating the difference between a potential starter and reliever. The Mariners seem pretty sold on Izzi as a starter, which is where his more contact-manager profile will play best; he and Tyler Gough have both been name-dropped multiple times as part of the future of young pitching in the organization by both Scott Hunter and Justin Hollander, and he earned an invite to the annual pre-spring training minicamp this off-season. Northwest-based fans will have an opportunity to see Izzi’s development up close next season, as he heads to colder climes in Everett with the AquaSox.