How top prospect Colt Emerson is influencing Mariners’ offseason plans
Going into the 2022 season, the Seattle Mariners were convinced they had an emerging star in 21-year-old top prospect Julio Rodríguez. They just needed to be convinced he was ready right then for an everyday major league role.
Rodríguez left little doubt during spring training, earning the opening-day job as the Mariners’ center fielder and, soon enough, becoming the face of the franchise.
Four years later, the Mariners are now taking the same tact with another precocious prospect, 20-year-old Colt Emerson.
The Mariners are convinced Emerson is that good, and they want to give him the chance in spring training to convince them he’s ready for an everyday role with the big-league club in 2026.
“Colt Emerson will play a part in our season. I’m certain of that,” team president Jerry Dipoto said.
Long term, Emerson is widely viewed as J.P. Crawford’s successor at shortstop. Emerson is the Mariners’ No. 1 prospect and generally ranked as a top-10 prospect in the sport, drawing comparisons to Texas All-Star shortstop Corey Seager from some in the scouting community.
Short term, the Mariners are open to the idea of Emerson starting 2026 as their third baseman, potentially succeeding veteran free-agent Eugenio Suárez and supplanting 25-year-old defensive wizard Ben Williamson.
Emerson could also be in the mix at second base, along with 22-year-old Cole Young and the switch-hitting Leo Rivas (and any other expected roster additions this winter).
During a breakthrough 2025 season, Emerson effectively earned three promotions over a six-week stretch to close out the season – going from High-A Everett to Double-A Arkansas to Triple-A Tacoma and, finally, to Seattle’s big-league clubhouse in early October as part of the Mariners’ initial taxi squad for the playoffs.
A left-handed hitter, Emerson appeared in six Triple-A games in September, hitting .364 (8 for 22) with a 1.171 OPS in 27 plate appearances.
He belted two home runs in his one week in Triple-A – both of which came off left-handed pitchers. And in a scrimmage with the Mariners in early October, Emerson nearly hit another one off a lefty in his first game at T-Mobile Park, an opposite-field blast that Rhylan Thomas caught as he crashed into the wall in left field.
Rodríguez had bypassed Triple-A entirely when he arrived on the scene in 2022. Emerson is following a similar path, and his September stop in Tacoma could wind up being merely a brief cameo.
Beyond his on-field talent, Mariners executives have raved about Emerson’s maturity and makeup since the day they drafted him in the first round in 2023.
“Players who are as talented as he is, who are wired the way he is, often move very quickly, and we don’t want to artificially hold him back,” Mariners general manager Justin Hollander said earlier this month. “I would expect that at some point next year he’ll be on the radar. And if that’s April 1, that’s great. That’s awesome. That means he came out and showed us that he was ready to go do it. And if it’s July or August, that’s OK, too. We don’t want to force him to the big leagues before he’s ready. We certainly don’t want to hold him back from impacting our team.
“We have a really good team right now, and if we have a chance to add a young impact player to the big leagues, it would be silly not to consider that a real alternative for us on opening day.”
Re-signing Suárez or Jorge Polanco remains a possibility for the Mariners, who made what will almost certainly end up as their biggest splash of the offseason earlier this week when they re-signed first baseman Josh Naylor to a five-year, $92.5-million deal.
It appears unlikely the Mariners would sign both Suárez and Polanco, but the club would prefer at least one more veteran presence on the infield to complement Emerson and Young.
Young, a 2022 first-round pick, made his major league debut as a 21-year-old on May 31 and showed flashes of his upside at times this summer. But he fell into a deep slump late in the season and was left off the playoff roster, though the Mariners have said repeatedly that they remain bullish on his future.
For a team with designs on a World Series run in 2026, handing over two infield positions to two unproven young players is a risk.
But it is one the Mariners are considering.
“We will always remain rooted in being an organization that relies on player development,” Dipoto said. “And right now, we have so many (prospects) who are so close to helping, and some of them have a chance to be real impact players. And along the way, you have to create space for those guys to get their reps.”
As things stand, Williamson and Emerson are the two main candidates to take over at third base.
As a rookie, Williamson posted a 1.3 bWAR in 85 games this season, the majority of his value coming with his Gold Glove-caliber defense.
When the Mariners reacquired Suárez at the trade deadline, Williamson was optioned to Tacoma, and the club was pleased with some of the swing changes Williamson made in the last two months of the season, during which he hit .327 with five homers and as many walks (23) as strikeouts (23) in 157 plate appearances in the Pacific Coast League.
“Ben Williamson did a lot of good things in the big leagues,” Hollander said. “He’s a uniquely good defender, someone who we believe has a chance to be an impact defender who separates himself from the rest of the impact defenders at his position … with contact skills, with the ability to hit the ball hard. He made some adjustments in Triple-A and did big things after we sent him down. We really believe in Ben.”