Mariners first-round pick Ace Reese looks a lot like a forgotten All-Star slugger

The Seattle Mariners were supposedly considering over a dozen players for the No. 24 pick in the 2026 MLB Draft. That they got to take Ace Reese wasn't totally unforeseen, but you can understand the excitement when you look at him and see Carlos González's shadow.

If it's the basic profile you want, Reese is a 21-year-old out of Plano, Texas who spent the last two years making a name for himself at Mississippi State. He hit 45 home runs in 119 total games, with a .344 batting average to boot.

On that alone, you get how Reese was MLB Pipeline's No. 18 overall prospect in this year's draft class. And to hear it from scouting director Scott Hunter, the Mariners had Reese down as "probably one of the top three hitters in the country."

But if one picture is worth a thousand words, a series of moving images offers a priceless depiction of why Reese is worth hyping:

The swing. The bat drop. The admiration. Put it all together, and you get a spitting image of what Carlos González used to look like during his days as a three-time All-Star for the Colorado Rockies. We tried Googling "Is Ace Reese a CarGo fan?" and came up empty, but we'll keep the suspicion, thank you.

As far as non-aesthetic comps go, there are less-flattering aspects of Reese's profile that inevitably creep into play. He has more swing-and-miss than you want to see from an alleged top-three hitter in the country. And while he is a third baseman by trade, he's probably more of a first baseman down the line. Heck, maybe even a designated hitter.

Yet since Reese also figures to draw his share of walks, there is a mold for him to fit as a productive big leaguer. It's the same one that now-fellow Mariners prospect Lazaro Montes also fits, which is that of the Kyle Schwarbers and Max Muncys of Major League Baseball: defensively limited and prone to strikeouts, but dangerous all the same.

Mariners bucked a larger trend in the MLB Draft to take Ace Reese at No. 24

What was interesting both before and after the Mariners landed on Reese is that power hitters weren't the stars of the show at the draft on Saturday.

As the NBC/MLB Network broadcast hosts eventually realized, there seemed to be a premium on prospects with exceptional bat-to-ball skills. It's not normally what you see in the early rounds of the MLB draft, where teams are typically on the hunt for loud tools.

If the rest of MLB senses a turning of the tide away from the long ball as the go-to weapon on offense, the Mariners may well be exposed as having been behind the times. Home runs will always be valuable, but some of the more notable offensive success stories of 2026 include low-power, high-contact teams like the Milwaukee Brewers, Tampa Bay Rays and Miami Marlins. The Mariners have gotten to see the latter two this week, and to say they've been a pain in the butt would be putting it mildly.

Whatever the case, Daniel Kramer of MLB.com reports that Reese and the Mariners have agreed to a $3.5 million signing bonus. It's a bargain price relative to the slot value for the No. 24 pick, so their last laugh can be extra hard if Reese is everything they hope he can be.

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