First 2026 AL Rookie of the Year poll buries an obvious Mariners candidate

After a 90-win season in which a handful of players had career years, it doesn't take an excessive amount of confidence to predict that the Seattle Mariners are going to have some major award contenders in 2026.

Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez (maybe especially him) for AL MVP are the obvious ones, and Bryan Woo, Logan Gilbert and George Kirby have each gotten Cy Young Award votes in the last three years. And lest anyone forget, Dan Wilson was a finalist for the AL Manager of the Year in 2025.

First 2026 AL Rookie of the Year poll buries Mariners shortstop Colt Emerson

The AL Rookie of the Year will be the interesting one. The Mariners have already captured the award twice this decade, with Kyle Lewis winning it in 2020 and Julio taking it home two years later. These two wins alone are solid evidence that Jerry Dipoto knows how to maintain a farm system, and there's still a lot more coming through the pipeline.

Which leads us to a question: What's wrong with the graphic below?

Per Jonathan Mayo of MLB Pipeline, this is how front offices stack the favorites for the 2026 AL Rookie of the Year. There's not a Mariner in sight, which is at once defensible and also borderline insulting to one prospect in particular: Colt Emerson.

He checks the major boxes for a Rookie of the Year contender, in that he's very talented and potentially in line for ample major league playing time in 2026. Emerson flashed a plus bat, developing power and impressive defense across three levels of the minors in 2025, and the Mariners have not been shy about wanting to give him a shot to earn a job in spring training.

Granted, said shot will be at third base instead of his natural shortstop. He's an unknown at the hot corner, and there is room to dispute whether he has the right offensive profile for the job. Third base is traditionally where power bats go, and the Mariners will live up to that if they end up bringing back Eugenio Suárez as their everyday third baseman.

Even so, the Mariners would be making a relatively safe bet if they were to tab Emerson as their Opening Day third baseman. He's only 20 years old, yet he's already one of the more notable high-floor types in the minors. As Brendan Gawlowski of FanGraphs put it: "He lights up just about everything a model tends to like."

This is nothing against Trey Yesavage, Samuel Basallo, Carter Jensen, Payton Tolle and Connelly Early, who have already gotten exciting first looks in the majors — especially Yesavage, who looks like a pretty bad draft whiff on Seattle's part.

But Kevin McGonigle? He's definitely a prodigy who ranks as MLB Pipeline's No. 2 overall prospect, but he has yet to rise above Double-A. There are no serious discussions about him cracking the Detroit Tigers' Opening Day lineup.

To be sure, all this could age poorly if Emerson doesn't make the Mariners out of spring training in his own right. But if he does, the AL Rookie of the Year will be squarely in his sights.