Cole Young is threatening to turn Mariners' biggest offseason loss into a huge win

The Seattle Mariners are pretty much all-in on Cole Young. This only became clearer throughout the offseason, during which they balked at trading Young for Ketel Marte even after they had lost Jorge Polanco to the New York Mets.

It's a lot of pressure to put on a 22-year-old, much less one who was thoroughly humbled as a rookie in 2025. Even now, it's still possible that the Mariners' confidence in Young will prove to be misplaced.

But when a guy is wrapping up spring training with a 1.016 OPS and six (mostly crushed) home runs, doomsday scenarios aren't exactly welcome.

Cole Young has sent confidence skyrocketing with his Mariners performance during spring training

For the sake of leveling with everyone, yes, we did have our doubts about Young as recently as a couple weeks ago.

He got off to a slow start in the Cactus League, and even his booming first homer felt like a distraction. What we wanted was to see him hitting fastballs, against which he was 1-for-10 through play on March 9.

Since then, though, he's a more reasonable 4-for-16 against heaters. That includes a long homer for the first of two on the day on Friday, and it came in a left-on-left matchup to boot.

Whereas only one of the four homers Young hit as a rookie showcased next-level power, all six he's hit this spring have done the trick. His second of the day on Friday was even purported to have traveled 478 feet — though that distance seems to have been scrubbed from the official record.

It's stuff like this makes one want to take the over on Young's home run projections, which tend to fall in the single digits. Those might be rooted in how he was not known for power as a prospect, but that was before he showed up to camp looking "chiseled."

Granted, it'll take 26 homers and a 134 OPS+ for Young to match the offensive production the Mariners got from Polanco last year. But the caveat is that Polanco did the bulk of that damage as a DH. It was only at the end of the year that he was playing second base full-time, yet he still managed to land in the red for Defensive Runs Saved and Outs Above Average.

Though defense was yet another flaw in Young's game last year, he's looked like a different defender to the naked eye this spring. That's no accident. Alongside getting in better shape, improved footwork was an offseason priority for him.

Perhaps all of this will prove to be a classic spring training mirage, but there's a certain level of belief required whenever a talented young player plays like… well, a talented young player. And if it does translate to a breakout, we'll all be left knowing that Polanco had to walk so that Young could run.