When the Seattle Mariners were in desperate need of help at third base early last season, rookie Ben Williamson ended up making a surprisingly quick jump to the big leagues to hold down the hot corner.
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The 2023 second-round pick had played just 150 games in the minor leagues, with just 14 of those coming in Triple-A. Yet Williamson’s glove and Seattle’s lack of third base depth made William & Mary product the top candidate for the job.
Like many young players, there were ups and downs for third baseman. Many of the ups came on the defensive side where Williamson wowed with his glove and posted the sixth-best mark with eight defensive runs saved at third base, despite playing far less innings than most of the others near the top of the leaderboard. The downs mostly came at the plate where Williamson posted a respectable .253 batting average but just a .294 on-base percentage and lacked the power most teams look for at the hot corner, slugging only one home run and producing a 76 wRC+ in 295 plate appearances.
Eventually, the Mariners made a trade to reunite third baseman Eugenio Suárez just before the trade deadline, which resulted in Williamson finishing out the final two months of the season with Triple-A Tacoma. With Suárez now a free agent, Williamson could be in line for a prominent role in 2026 with the expectation that he and top prospect Colt Emerson will be battling for the spot at third base, unless the M’s make an addition there before spring training starts.
During Tuesday’s edition of Seattle Sports’ Wyman and Bob, co-host Dave Wyman and producer Mike Lefko discussed the possibility of Williamson being Seattle’s starting third baseman in 2026.
“The Mariners now are in this position where they have a couple of almost pivots they could make either at third or second,” Lefko said. “It’s the question of, ‘Are you gonna get two veterans to play these infield spots? Are you gonna get one veteran at third and go with the young guys at second? Or vice versa, go with the young guys at third and try to get a veteran at second?”
If the Mariners do end up going with a younger player at second or third, which seems likely to will be the case at one of the positions, if not both, Wyman has the most confidence in Williamson due to his defensive capabilities.
“That’s where you want power. I get that, but he’s a proven commodity defensively,” Wyman said. “So to me, if you’re gonna go young at one of those spots, I would say Williamson.”
Wyman made the point that Williamson’s lack of offensive production can be made up elsewhere on the roster where the M’s get more offensively than the typical team does. For the M’s, those spots would be at catcher with Cal Raleigh and center field with Julio Rodríguez.
Lefko added that if the M’s were to make a trade for Diamondbacks second baseman Kete Marte or Cardinals utilityman Brendan Donovan, two bats Seattle has been linked to, playing Williamson at third base becomes more plausible from an offensive standpoint.
“Perhaps you feel better about a Ben Williamson starting at third, kind of like you said, if you get that production from elsewhere,” Lefko said. “The home runs come from somewhere else, the big bat comes from somewhere else, like a trade at second base. So if you do get that swing and get Ketel Marte or if it’s Brendan Donovan, you’re like, OK, now we have veterans around the rest of the infield with (J.P.) Crawford (at shortstop) and whoever’s at second and (Josh) Naylor at first. Third base will go with the future.
“But if you didn’t get that name at second, now it adds a little more urgency to bring a veteran back at third. So I think it’s the question that still looms to the Mariners.”
While Lefko can see a scenario where Williamson makes sense as the everyday third baseman, he still thinks finding a way to bring back Suárez could be the best option for the team.
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“I’ve still been along the lines of there doesn’t seem to be a downside, at least early on, to bringing Geno Suárez back and letting Williamson still develop,” Lefko said. “There’s not a downside to having your bench be better than what it was last year, where some of these guys you put them in (and) you weren’t sure what you getting. You had to put Dylan Moore in there and he really struggled.
“So if Ben Williamson is the guy that’s getting every third day if Geno takes a day off or you put him as the DH early on, that’s not an issue. And then you get towards the end of the season, you get to the middle of the season, the trade deadline, you say, look, are we ready to go with Williamson?”
Hear the full conversation at this link or in the audio player near the top of this story. Listen to Wyman and Bob weekdays from 2-7 p.m. or find the podcast on the Seattle Sports app.
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