What stands out most about Mariners’ Colt Emerson

Top prospect Colt Emerson has put together an impressive start to what is expected to be a lengthy big league career.

4 teams Seattle Mariners could turn to for bullpen help at trade deadline

The 20 year old has produced a .242 batting average and .867 OPS with four homers, five doubles and one triple through his first 19 games. He already has a four-hit game under his belt, which included hitting three doubles to become just the fifth player in the past 50 years to have four hits and three extra-base hits in a single game at age 20 or younger.

What’s stood out most about Emerson thus far? Baseball America editor-in-chief J.J. Cooper was posed that question when he joined host Curtis Rogers for the latest edition of Extra Innings on Seattle Sports.

“The fact that he’s doing this at that age,” Cooper said. “We’re talking about someone who has not yet turned 21 and he does not look out of place on a big league diamond. That’s very hard to do.”

Cooper expects the league to start making adjustments towards Emerson, and he wouldn’t be surprised if that led to some ups and downs for 2023 first-round pick as this season goes on. But the fact that he’ll be experiencing that in his age-20 campaign is an important factor to Cooper.

“If you can hold your own and be a real contributor, which he is right now, to a big league club as a 20 year old, that means that the game just moves a little bit slower for you than it does for everyone else, everything seems to make a little bit more sense,” Cooper said. “It gives you more kind of fair capacity that down the road when your contemporaries at age 22, 23, 24 are settling into the big leagues and going through what you’re going through this year as a 20 year old – soon to be 21 year old – the big league game is going to be something that you’re already used to, that you’ve already seen for multiple years.

“What that means is – and again, it’s not a guarantee – but a lot of times what you see is that a player who holds their own at 20, at 21, takes another step forward at 22,” Cooper added. “Even if they’re small steps, (they) just build on one another and you turn around and here they are (as) 24 and 25 year olds and they’re middle-of-the-lineup hitters who are impactful players, both offensive and defensively. And part of that is because they’ve gotten acclimated, they’ve cleared some of the toughest hurdles at such a young age that there just is more ceiling there.”

Cooper warned that there are some examples of players who come up and succeed at a young age but never develop into stars, like former Texas Ranger Rougned Odor, who had two 2-plus bWAR seasons by 22 years old and only one more over his remaining seven big leagues seasons.

“So I don’t want to make it sound like it’s universal, but there are a whole lot of many-time All-Stars, there are a whole lot of best players in the game, there are a whole lot of players you look back and say, ‘Wow, look at who those are,’ and they’re the ones who often could get to the big leagues and perform at an age younger than almost all their contemporaries,” Cooper said.

Hear the full conversation at this link or in the audio player in this story. Catch Extra Innings from 7-9 p.m. on Mariners off days throughout the season. 

Seattle Mariners news and more

• Passan: Kade Anderson dominating minors at rare level
• Seattle Mariners make bullpen moves, including a reported trade
• Seattle Mariners’ depth could mean a different kind of trade deadline

Related

A closer look at Mariners’ haul from Luis Castillo trade‘He was loved here’: M’s pitchers reflect on Luis Castillo’s impactRecap: Mariners beat Twins 7-6 for series winColt Emerson’s first career walkoff lifts Mariners over TwinsMLB Trade Deadline: Dodgers land Tarik Skubal, Rays get Freddy PeraltaWatch: Drayer breaks down Mariners’ Luis Castillo trade