the M\u2019s have climbed back to .500<\/a> as they head home for a six-game series starting Friday against Kansas City, and Young is a key figure in their resurgence.<\/p>\nWhen he debuted with the Mariners in late May 2025, Young was one of the three youngest players in the majors. He had a solid stretch of productivity in June and July, but by September he was relegated to a bench role, and he was included on the Mariners\u2019 playoff rosters.<\/p>\n
Young later acknowledged he had felt worn down physically in his first big-league season.<\/p>\n
After some blunt encouragement from Julio Rodr\u00edguez at the end of last season, Young refined his diet over the winter and reshaped his body, reporting to spring camp noticeably stronger and more athletic.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s quiet in the way he goes about his business,\u201d Dipoto said. \u201cHe knows he\u2019s good, but he’s humble in how he approaches it.\u201d<\/p>\n
A 22-year-old left-handed hitter, Young has a .286\/.357\/.420 slash line (. 777 OPS) with three homers, four doubles, one triple and a team-leading 19 RBI in his first 126 plate appearances of the season.<\/p>\n
Notably, two of Young\u2019s three homers have come vs. left-handed pitchers, against whom he\u2019s hitting .324 with a .940 OPS in 37 plate appearances.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe’s always raked,\u201d Dipoto said. \u201cHe doesn’t swing and miss a ton. He gets on base. He’s now showing you some of the power that you’ve seen in flashes \u2014\u00a0and power that plays in our ballpark as a left-handed hitter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Young\u2019s most dramatic transformation has come with his glove.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 621 innings on defense as a rookie, Young was rated as one of the league\u2019s worst second baseman by advanced metrics, credited with a minus-7 Fielding Run Value and a minus-9 in Outs Above Average. \u00a0<\/p>\n
In his first 32 games this season, Young ranks No. 1 at his position in the Defensive Runs Saved metric, with eight runs saved.<\/p>\n
\u201cVery impressed,\u201d M\u2019s first baseman Josh Naylor said this week. \u201cBut it’s a credit to his work on and off the field. He grew a lot this spring. He asked a lot of questions. He gained a lot of knowledge. He worked his butt off in early work, pregame stuff, postgame. I mean, he’s doing phenomenal because he’s putting in the work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Most impressive of all, Young also ranks No. 1 among all position players in Baseball Reference\u2019s defensive WAR rating, at 1.0.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe defense looks considerably easier for him \u2014 better range, more arm strength,\u201d Dipoto said. \u201cHe’s just doing things that at the tail end of last year looked like it was a little bit more laborious. Now, it’s explosive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Young worked closely with infield coach Perry Hill throughout the spring on all aspect of defense, but one particular area of focus was on ground balls going to Young\u2019s right.<\/p>\n
That extra work is showing up in a big way. Young has made several highlight-reel diving stops on grounders to his right, on top of a handful of backhanded plays up the middle, punctuated by an accurate and intentional one-hop throw to first base.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest thing is just making every routine play and taking pride in that,\u201d Young said. \u201cIf I can get to some of the tough balls to get to, that\u2019s great. But the main goal is just to make all the routine ones.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yakimaherald.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto presented a historical perspective around the development of second baseman Cole Young. \u201cTo get to the level he did at the age he did \u2026 those players generally stay around a long time,\u201d Dipoto said recently. \u201cThose are guys that you look up and they had 10-, 12-, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2396183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[21741],"class_list":["post-2396182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Baseballs-best-second-baseman-Mariners-Cole-Young-makes-his-case.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2396182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2396182"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2396182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2396184,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2396182\/revisions\/2396184"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2396183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2396182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2396182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2396182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}