SEATTLE -- With the remarkable run that he’s been on at Triple-A Tacoma, and the Mariners’ clear need at his position, what else do the Mariners possibly want to see from second-base prospect Cole Young before calling him up to The Show?
“Nothing,” Jerry Dipoto said on Friday.
And indeed, the club officially called up its No. 3 prospect on Saturday ahead of the Mariners' game against the Twins at T-Mobile Park.
Young was pulled from Tacoma’s game on Friday at Cheney Stadium as the Rainiers took the field in the top of the fourth inning in a non-injury-related substitution, as he was seen on the dugout’s top step after.
“His rest of this season,” Dipoto said before the Mariners’ series opener vs. the Twins on Friday, is that “he'll be playing in the middle infield at the highest levels of the game. ... He’s going to be a big leaguer soon.”
Young, who is also MLB Pipeline’s No. 43 overall prospect, lifted Tacoma to a walk-off win on Thursday night, one day after a career-high five-hit game -- continuing a tear that he’s been on for a full month.
“Obviously it’s in the back of my mind,” Young said Thursday at Cheney Stadium. “You’re just one call away. But the past month, I’ve been focusing on just getting better every day. I just wanted to get out of that struggle I was in. I wasn’t focused on the big leagues. It was like, ‘OK, let’s get out of this; let’s get back to [being] myself.’ When that time happens, it happens.”
Young entered Friday leading all Triple-A players with 37 hits in the month of May -- featuring five homers, three triples and 10 doubles -- and had nearly twice as many walks (15) as strikeouts (eight), good for a slash line of .370/.466/.680 (1.146 OPS) in 118 plate appearances.
He’s also been scorching the ball this month, with a 45.7% hard-hit rate (anything 95 mph or higher), which, for context, is higher than Julio Rodríguez’s for the season (43.8%). And Young has done so with a 5-foot-11, 180-pound frame.
“It just unleashed what I think has been like an all-time heater,” Dipoto said. “He's hitting rockets. It's pole-to-pole. He's barreling everything. He's not striking out. He's taking his walks. And with each passing day, there's three hits, there’s five hits. And when you're that hot, he's finding the cork or blooper. Everything is working. And that is a byproduct of self-confidence.”
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The “struggle” that Young alluded to was a rough stretch he weathered dating back to Spring Training, during which he suffered an injury to his right arm that limited him to just six games at second base and another six at designated hitter. That slow start continued in his first month at Tacoma, where he hit .190 with a .577 OPS over his first 125 plate appearances.
“Honestly, I never struggled that bad in my life before,” Young said. “And at the moment, I didn't know how to deal with it. I was trying to change my swing, like, different approaches and stuff like that. I didn't trust myself.
“And then, I think it just came to a point where I was just so tired of struggling. And then I was like, 'OK, let's just go up, trust myself, and if I don't get hits today, whatever.' So as soon as I went up and just trusted my abilities, things started to turn around.”
That type of mental fortitude is typically the final breakthrough that front offices like to see from a rising prospect before making the MLB leap. Young, Seattle’s first-round Draft pick in 2022 at No. 21 overall, is only 21 years old.
“You can't go this torrid forever. ... That's hard to do,” Dipoto said. “And our expectation is not that he does that. It's just that he doesn't lose his approach. It's still the pitches that you swing at, the quality of your swing, the quality of your contact. And if he does that, then all the good things that have started to happen to him in the month of May will continue to happen to him during July, August, September and October.”
The final month that Dipoto alluded to suggests that once Young is up, the Mariners very much view him in their long-term plans for the remainder of the season. There could be bumps along the way, but for a first-place club that’s looked every bit the part of a contender, its front office clearly believes that Young will be a big part of what it hopes to accomplish the rest of the way.