Young hit the ball 114.1 mph, which places him in the top 10% by max velocity. That\u2019s crucial. As Davy Andrews pointed out for Fangraphs (in a post about a young Victor Robles<\/a>), rookie max exit velocity is one of the strongest predictors of future performance. Here\u2019s how he summarized the results (in a separate post worth reading<\/a>):<\/p>\n \u2026 for rookies with at least 200 balls in play, wRC+ was less predictive of their future performance than max exit velocity. That blew my mind. Knowing just one measurement, the velocity of a player\u2019s hardest-hit ball, was more useful than knowing about their overall performance through their entire rookie season.<\/p>\n I think Young\u2019s blast was a bit anomalous, even for the concept of \u201cmax\u201d exit velocity. His Prospect Savant profile<\/a> shows solid but less spectacular peak power data, and Fangraphs offers a similar report<\/a>. Though it\u2019s worth considering this quote from Director of Player Development Justin Toole in an interview with David Laurila<\/a> where he says all the things you\u2019d expect someone to say about Young and then slips in, \u201cI think Cole\u2019s power at times will surprise you.\u201d So one person wasn\u2019t stunned.<\/p>\n It won\u2019t be necessary for Young to hit the ball that hard all the time. Nearly a quarter of the balls he put in play last year were in the air to pull side, which was solidly above average. Maybe it\u2019s obvious, but its good to hit the ball in the air because that\u2019s a perquisite for getting it over the fence, and its good to the ball to the pull side because that\u2019s where the fence is the closest. Cal Raleigh lead the league by that stat in 2025, if further endorsement is needed.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a tremendously exciting premise. Young\u2019s ascendant tool in the minor leagues wasn\u2019t his power but \u201ccontact and hitability,\u201d in the words of Toole. Basically, he had a strong strikeout-to-walk ratio. That seemed to transfer over in his rookie season , with a 18.3% strikeout rate and a 10.9% walk rate. He whiffed a bit more than expected (just about the median), but his knowledge of the strike zone was as advertised. He looks like a legitimate \u201cguy who would have batted second 30 years ago\u201d \u2026. while still having the modern \u201canybody can hit 20 home runs\u201d dressings. That gives him a few believable paths to success. The industry seems to agree: <\/a>:<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just the Mariners who like Young, either. One rival executive describes Young as \u201cthe league model darling right now,\u201d pointing out that analytically based projection systems value him more highly than scouts do.<\/p>\n I\u2019m curious to see what if any adjustments Young makes this offseason. An 81 wRC+ with interesting peripherals is still an 81 wRC+. Often it seemed he was swinging too big and throwing his timing off because of it. The data potentially supports that theory. He got torched by fastballs<\/a>, swung at pitches very deep in the zone<\/a>, and swung at full strength more often than most (as the plot below shows). Maybe it\u2019s just about telling him to chill. Or maybe the approach is fine and the timing will eventually catch up. I don\u2019t expect major intervention, regardless.<\/p>\n It\u2019s harder to find nice things to say about the glove. It was bad. Terrible, even. He posted -9 OAA in less than half a season, making him one of the worst infielders in MLB on a rate basis. He especially struggled going to his right and throwing back across his body. His arm was the third weakest among second baseman; it lacked accuracy, or maybe conviction. He just looked kinda overwhelmed out there.<\/p>\n The extent to which Young struggled is surprising more than anything. Fangraphs scouted him well above average in the field heading into 2025. While public scouting isn\u2019t fully prescient, OOPSY projection system creator Jordan Rosenblum points out<\/a> Fangraphs is generally pretty good at estimating defensive ability. I just don\u2019t think scouts would have graded him as positively as they did if they were seeing the types of plays in the video above. To me that implies an aberration, or maybe an injury. And conveniently, there were reports that he injured his throwing arm<\/a> early in the season. Maybe his defense will have healed come Spring.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a coincidence Young survived the offseason in Seattle, and I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a coincidence they\u2019ve left some playing time up for grabs. His rookie season did not go well, but he\u2019s tremendously talented with a nearly unlimited ceiling. As the Mariners search for a second baseman approaches a decade, perhaps Young is meant to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cole Young is here for a reason. Young made his MLB debut on May 31, 2025, after a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2392],"tags":[66354,5,620,4,619,65,38419,3235],"class_list":{"0":"post-557499","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-seattle-mariners","8":"tag-40-in-40","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-mariners","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-seattle","13":"tag-seattle-mariners","14":"tag-seattle-mariners-previews","15":"tag-seattlemariners"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116022777243674000","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Screenshot-2026-02-04-at-11.13.16\u202fPM.png\"\/)
<\/a><\/p>\n