What to expect from Mariners prospect Young in the big leagues

When the Mariners took high school hitters in the first round of three straight Drafts, no one would have been shocked to learn that Cole Young -- taken in the middle of the three, after Harry Ford and before Colt Emerson -- would be the first to reach Seattle. That's no disrespect to Ford, who until Friday was a Triple-A teammate of Young's. You just have to figure it takes a little longer for a catcher, given all of the extra responsibilities, to get there, and Emerson was a year behind.

But even as a high schooler in Pittsburgh, as he was establishing himself as a first-round pick in 2022, he clearly was not the typical prep player -- even one from a cold-weather area. There was a steadiness about him, with humble confidence, a maturity that belied his teenage years. When the Mariners took him, and throughout his climb up the organizational ladder, there was always a sense that even if he wasn't a superstar or an elite player, he was going to be a sure-thing solid big leaguer.

Now, we're going to find out what kind of Major League player Young, MLB's No. 43 prospect, will be as the Mariners call him up to join them in Seattle this weekend. The second-base job is his for the foreseeable future, and the Mariners are banking on the 21-year-old to, at the very least, be the dependable, low-heart-rate player he's always been. That's a player who'll make all the plays in the field and someone who'll see pitches, draw walks and make a lot of contact. And when we say a lot, we mean a lot.

"His senior year of high school, we charted everything," said Andrew Heck, Young's coach at North Allegheny High School, where he's been the head coach since 2016. "He swung and missed three times for all of his senior season. I looked at that stat and thought, 'That can't be right.' That shows who he is. It hasn't changed."

That's what the Mariners, starting with then-area scout Jackson Laumann, saw in 2022, and he's been doing it ever since. Young gets to Seattle with a career 14.5 percent strikeout rate and almost identical 13.2 percent walk rate. The surface numbers may not jump off the page, like his .279/.388/.432 slash line, but the Mariners know, at the very least, that he's going to take good at-bats and get on base, just like he did during his amateur days.

"He's a professional baseball player every single day," Heck said. "He's going to play the game the right way. He's not going to be flashy, he's a humble kid, always has been. You'll see it come out of him in big situations. He wants to win, at all costs, whatever it takes. He's just an unbelievable person; that's what makes you root for a kid like that. He's a better person off the field than he is on the field. I think a lot of kids need to watch how he does it."

Heck has taken advantage of his former player being on the West Coast, watching his games regularly as part of his late-night TV viewing. And he's been amazed that, while Young is still very much the same guy he had in high school, he's managed to adjust defensively with each level he's reached.

"I'm amazed the speed he's playing at defensively," Heck said. "I know that's a hard transition, especially for northern kids who are middle infielders. The speed and timing of the game can be hard to get. You don't see a lot of middle infielders from here. He's been able to pick up and get that down as the speed of the game in the infield has increased. The plays he makes blows my mind sometimes."

So there's confidence the Mariners' No. 3 prospect is going to provide professional at-bats and play outstanding defense up the middle. But might there be more in the tank at the plate? The left-handed-hitting Young is still very young -- he'd be a Draft pick this year after his junior year had he gone on to Duke instead of signing. And if his May in Triple-A is any indication, he's just starting to unlock things at the plate that could move him from solid to exceptional.

First, the surface numbers. Young hit .366/.467/.673 in May at the time of his callup. Over 26 games and 120 plate appearances, he had 18 extra-base hits, including five homers. He shook off what was a rough start to his 2025, both in Spring Training and his first month with Tacoma. He's not one to make excuses, but an injury to his throwing arm that slowed him in the spring clearly didn't help. But again a testament to his steadiness, Young didn't change anything to get to those more impactful numbers. The swing is the same, the setup is the same, the approach hasn't wavered. He walked 16 times and struck out only eight, so this wasn't a guy who decided to start selling out for power to get to the kinds of numbers that people more readily notice.

If there's been any tweaks, it's that he's been more selectively aggressive. He's not letting good pitches to drive go by like he had in the past. It's more of a mindset shift than anything. And if the underlying data behind the counting stats last month mean anything, he could be ready to reach a different level as an offensive player. He may never be the kind of player who breaks Statcast, but compared to earlier stages of his career, or even earlier parts of this season, he's cooking with gas.

• Subscribe to the MLB Pipeline Newsletter

Young's 90th percentile exit velocity of 105 mph in May isn't plus compared to all of baseball, but it's considerably higher than his career norms. So is his hard-hit rate of 46.2 percent. He was at 41.7 percent over the season's first month, for contrast. And his loud contact hasn't come at the cost of whiffs -- his in-zone contact rate improved from 86 percent in March/April to 93 percent in May while his chase rate ticked down.

His ability to climb out of the hole he was in (he entered May with a .190/.320/.257 line) is exactly what the Mariners are banking on from him to become a stable regular. It's what Heck saw back in high school, and it's what gives Young the chance to keep building on what he was doing in May -- but now at the highest level.

"Him being humble, never riding too high or low, that's a huge thing for him," Heck said. "He had some bad luck in Spring Training with the [arm] injury that set him back a bit. At the beginning of the Triple-A season, he was hitting the ball hard but just had a little bad luck. It'd be easy to get down on yourself. Him staying with it has been awesome to see."