Dan Haren, Scott Hairston, Jeff Keppinger, Josh Barfield, Ryan Howard, C.J. Wilson, Edwin Jackson, Chad Tracy, Kevin Youkilis, Dennis Sarfate, Luke Scott, Dan Uggla and Geovany Soto. A baker’s dozen worth of big leaguers selected after the M’s second round pick in 2001.

The Mariners drafted Michael Wilson, an athlete, known for his football heroics at Booker T, Washington High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with the 67th overall pick.

While the above 13 players were making their way to the majors, Wilson was developing at a snail’s pace, repeating the short-season leagues his first three years before besetting on a better pace in 2005.

Wilson stands 6-feet-2 and weighs over 240 pounds and is full of physical tools, including plus raw power and a strong throwing arm. He also runs well for a player that has tilted the scales at over 250 pounds on more than one weigh-in.

Wilson was a switch hitter as an amateur, but is a full-time right-handed batter and outfielder, now playing right field for the Double-A West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx.

After those three years in the short-season leagues, Wilson broke through with Wisconsin in ‘05, smacking 19 homers and posting a solid .824 OPS that included a .360 OBP and a .460 slugging percentage in a pitcher’s league. But he was already 22 at the time, rendering his numbers much less impressive.

Wilson split 2006 between High-A Inland Empire and Double-A San Antonio, posting strong offensive rates in A ball before putting up a strong showing with the Missions in the pitcher-friendly Texas League.

With the exception of some injuries and the way his pro career began, Wilson has hit at every level and proven he’s ready to take the next step. If it wasn’t for an injured shoulder in 2007 that limited him to 55 games at West Tenn, the 24-year-old might be in Tacoma this summer pushing for a late-season cup of java.

Wilson has never been a complete hitter, swinging and missing at relatively high levels without drawing the walks you’d prefer in any bat, particularly one with higher strikeout rates.

His career .262 average in the minors suggests he might have problems sustaining success in the big leagues, but he does have power, has shown it at every level and is doing it again in his second stint with the Diamond Jaxx.

Wilson hit his 14 home run of the season tonight, and is slugging .545 thanks to a monstrous month of June where he’s hitting .354/.446/.667 with four long balls, a double, a triple and 17 RBI in 13 games.

He’s only hitting .270, but his OBP is satisfactory at .356 and the league allows for very few cheap home runs. As DJaxx catcher Adam Moore put it, “there are no cheap ones in this place.”

Wilson has fanned 58 times in 217 plate appearances ( 26.7%), which is far too much, but after studying the issue, it seems to me that a promotion to Triple-A might actually help Wilson’s contact rates.

The Pacific Coast League has always been a good league with good, solid talent with a strong mix of top prospects and polished veterans, particularly in the pitching department. This year the league might lean a little more toward the veteran arm than in year’s past, which is why Wilson might fare better in the PCL than he is in the Southern League.

The average age of the starting pitchers in the Southern League is 23.98 while in the PCL that number climbs to 26.91. That three-year separation means a lot of things, but most relevantly the differential in the control and command in the more advanced circuit.

With relief pitchers, the gap is even bigger. The Southern League’s current relief pitchers average 24.56 years of age while the PCL’s relievers are almost 29 years old, on average.

While the walks rates aren’t much better, the pitchers in Triple-A are much more consistent in throwing strikes and are often around the plate, even when outside the zone.

While Wilson would be facing better pitchers and would have to make adjustments to continue hitting for the average and power he’s currently putting up in West Tenn, he might get a boost in those areas by a more-than slight bump in contact rate.

It’s just a theory, but one with teeth for a veteran like Wilson, who will be 25 later this month. He might continue to struggle with the strikeout and could very well see his power numbers dissipate to the levels of a backup middle infielder.

But he’s not doing the organization much good in Double-A, is a six-year free agent at season’s end and the Mariners should find out whether he has a chance to help them in a reserve role anytime in the near future.

His power profiles well in the big leagues, and he crushed left-handed pitching. And while the M’s have a better version of Wilson in Tacoma right now in Victor Diaz, Wilson can actually play a passable right field while Diaz is a DH.

The M’s need to start thinking in this direction as they attempt to put together a real big-league club. No, Wilson isn’t likely to make any kind of large impact in the major leagues, but he could prove to be a valuable bench bat who can handle a position.

And we know the M’s don’t have any of those on the 25-man roster right now.

This week’s Seattle P-I Farm Report is on the best athlete in the California League, center fielder Gregory Halman.

Here’s one excerpt, the lede that I was just happy the editors kept:

Pedro Cerrano, the power-hitting outfielder for the Cleveland Indians in the 1989 movie “Major League,” tried everything to break the curse of the breaking ball, including voodoo rituals, the occasional spiritual séance and even “hats for bats” to “keep bats warm.”

And another from an AL scout :

“Thirty homers or more is not out of the question with him,” said an AL Central scout. “If he makes average contact, he might hit .260, too, and that’s a pretty darned good player.”

Nineteen seasons ago the Seattle Mariners opened the 1989 campaign in Oakland versus the defending American League Champion Oakland Athletics.

In the first inning of that game, A’s ace Dave Stewart served up a long, line-drive double to a snot-nosed kid named George.

George Kenneth Griffey, Jr.

Griffey would hit his first homer a week later off Chicago White Sox starter Eric King, an opposite field shot in the Kingdome.

Nineteen years and a few months later, Griffey hits his 600th career blast, a two-run bomb in the first inning off Florida Marlins left-hander Mark Hendrickson.

Griffey hit 398 home runs as a member of the Mariners and now has 202 in a reds uniform. But I mention this here today because the M’s suck and it’s much more fun to look back to better days.

ESPN’s Tim Kirkjian (Timmay!) wrote a sensational piece on Junior, and this was my favorite quote from that column.

“When he came to camp in 1989, he had no chance to make the team,” Bradley said. “But he got a lot of at-bats early that spring because a lot of veterans don’t like to play a lot early. After 20 games, he wasn’t just the best player on our team, he was the best player in the league that spring. The Mariners basically said, ‘We don’t want this to happen, we don’t want to rush him, we don’t want him to make the team.’ So they started running him out there against every elite pitcher, against all the nastiest left-handers they could find in hopes that he would stop hitting, and they could send him out.

“It never happened.”

Awesome.

A cyber standing ovation to “The Kid” who did it naturally.

I’ll be on with Softy on KJR at about 12:35 this afternoon to talk about the draft and any other curve balls Mahler throws my way. Click Here to Listen Live

I’ll try not to rip the Mariners too much, as it looks like they have had a decent second day so far, but the only pick that really matters is No. 20.

By the way, for about $2.7 m, or $2 million more than slot, the M’s could have drafted Christian Friedrich and Tim Melville, and had one of the best drafts in baseball.

It’s got to be hard gosh darn work being that inept.

Also, the second half of This Piece Here is my scouting report on Josh Fields.