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# Hot Corner Glove, Uncertain Bat: Can Ben Williamson Become M’s Everyday Third Baseman?
- URL: https://www.emeraldcityspectrum.com/can-ben-williamson-become-mariners-everyday-third-baseman/
- Published: 2025-11-23T23:33:01.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-08T05:36:11.000Z
- Author: Callaghan Bluechel
- Tags: Analysis, Mariners, Ben Williamson, Colt Emerson

[Embed from Getty Images](https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/2239249033?ref=emeraldcityspectrum.com)

Although the Mariners made their first big move of the offseason, scooping up Josh Naylor for five more years, the status of the rest of the infield is still unclear. Once and future Seattle legend Eugenio Suárez came up with heroics on both sides of the ball in the postseason, but the 34-year-old third baseman’s streaky profile and months-long slump with Seattle during the regular season offer a reminder of the stark possibility of decline. Jorge Polanco, who spent much of the final stretch at second base, has a higher floor at the plate, but his lackluster arm doesn’t project well onto the hot corner.

Before Suárez’ arrival, the Mariners had relied on rookie Ben Williamson to fill out the third baseman role. Drafted in the second round of the 2023 MLB Draft, scouts graded Williamson as a solid defense-first player with potential ability as a contact hitter.

That profile has looked to be mostly accurate. While his hitting didn’t quite coalesce at any point during Williamson’s time with the big-league club - as he slashed .253/.294/.310, not putting up very many walks or extra base hits - he flashed some shiny leather in his 85 appearances on the hot corner, [all but single-handedly saving the team a win in his antepenultimate big-league appearance](https://www.emeraldcityspectrum.com/ben-williamson-aces-hot-corner-steals-athletics-rbis-as-mariners-triumph-3-1/). 

His defense is very good on the eye test, with an ability to react quickly and reach a lot of batted balls. Williamson had the sixth highest defensive runs saved (DRS) with eight, and his 14 DRS full-season pace would have been second in baseball. While all defensive metrics are noticeably flawed, DRS is often directionally correct for infielders, and with the good eye test, it’s pretty clear that Williamson is a stalwart defender. Although his arm strength wasn’t especially remarkable, his top-end fielding ability more than made up for it.

This means, essentially, that Williamson could very well be a good everyday player if he even swings a league average bat. The top line numbers in 2025, however, weren’t super impressive. His .604 OPS and 76 OPS+ would have been third worst and fifth worst, respectively, among qualified batters in 2025, while his .310 slugging percentage would have been second worst.

One of the few guys below him in these categories offers an interesting comparison to Williamson: Ke’Bryan Hayes. The Pirate-turned-Red third baseman has been one of the best defensive corner infielders in the game for several years, but his overall production has varied from serviceable to quite a bit above average due to fluctuations in his offense. Hayes, who, like Williamson, doesn’t have a whole lot of walks or raw power, topped out at a .762 OPS in 2023 but was unable to even reach .600 in 2024 or 2025\. 

With little raw power, Williamson opts for a contact-heavy approach, with a respectably low 21.9 percent whiff rate in the majors. However, with Eugenio Suárez returning to the team at the trade deadline and Williamson needing reps at the plate, he found himself playing with the Triple-A Tacoma Rainiers. There, the team helped him readjust his swing, and he had a strong go of it in the last few weeks of Tacoma’s season.

“I worked with the hitting coach Shawn O’Malley down in Triple-A and changed a couple things, helped me generate a little bit more loft, a little bit more power,” Williamson said in an [interview on MLB Network Radio](https://x.com/MLBNetworkRadio/status/1991604870474875129?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=emeraldcityspectrum.com). “My mentality going into it was to work on stuff that I struggled with up there and not really seeing it like a demotion or anything like that.”

Video footage of Williamson shows one of the key differences in his swing between the majors and Triple-A: the timing of his leg kick. Williamson often displayed a downward, chopping swing in the bigs, especially against fastballs, and this limited his ability to make solid contact against pitches - the reason being that as his swing went through the zone, its perpendicular angle to the trajectory of the pitch meant that the space where the bat could make contact with the ball shrunk. In the majors, Williamson would wait until the ball [had nearly left the pitcher’s hand](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=19f345a5-faed-3c4f-acd8-8c3db2116827&ref=emeraldcityspectrum.com) to begin his leg kick, whereas he mostly did so [much earlier in the wind-up](https://x.com/MiLBMariners/status/1956189011795697709?ref=emeraldcityspectrum.com) with the Rainiers. 

The late leg kick often limited his timing and forced him into an awkward chop, whereas the earlier kick allowed better timing and a more thorough slight uppercut that allowed him a better chance to square up the ball. Both of the pitches linked above were balls a little bit above the zone that Williamson swung at; but a foul ball in the Show and a line drive home run in Triple-A were two very different outcomes.

This adjustment wasn’t always applied, however. Here we see a [similarly late leg kick followed by a choppy swing](https://x.com/MiLBMariners/status/1971044505995669815?ref=emeraldcityspectrum.com) with the Rainiers, though Williamson happened to ground the ball through the middle for an RBI anyway. A failure in process but a success in result: more often an occurrence in the farm leagues than in the majors. Williamson will have to continue cleaning that up in 2026, but the good sign is that the process of improvement has seemingly already begun.

Williamson slashed .314/.392/.462 in 52 games for the Rainiers, though that line came out to a 113 OPS+ in the context of the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League. Still, he built on his bat-to-ball approach that he had shown glimpses of in the majors, attacking the outer third of the zone and driving the ball the other way. His isolated power increased from .057 to .148, a factor of the extra base hits generated by his greater line drive percentage, up from 19.5 percent in Seattle to 30.6 percent in Tacoma.

\[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2000"\]

![  Here we see Williamson’s batted balls in 2025 by exit velocity and launch angle. The average launch angle slightly increased from three degrees in MLB to five degrees in Triple-A, but greater concentration around the line drive sweet spot is what gave Williamson more results.   ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1d/f2/1df2f77b-83dd-4bc0-a6d2-6d1bb5df89a3/content/images/2026/10/ben-williamson-radial-chart-format-original.png)

Here we see Williamson’s batted balls in 2025 by exit velocity and launch angle. The average launch angle slightly increased from three degrees in MLB to five degrees in Triple-A, but greater concentration around the line drive sweet spot is what gave Williamson more results. \[/caption\] \[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1406"\]

![  During his time in Triple-A, the right-handed Williamson thrived on pitches out over the plate that he could drive the other way. Images sourced from    Prospect Savant    and edited for easier readability.  ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1d/f2/1df2f77b-83dd-4bc0-a6d2-6d1bb5df89a3/content/images/2026/10/ben-williamson-spray-chart-format-original.png)

During his time in Triple-A, the right-handed Williamson thrived on pitches out over the plate that he could drive the other way. Images sourced from Prospect Savant and edited for easier readability. \[/caption\]

It stands to reason that Williamson’s production will likely fall from his 113 OPS+ in Tacoma once he returns to the majors, but as noted before, even a league average bat from Williamson would make him an everyday player in a valued position for Seattle.

But for Williamson, everyday caliber might not be enough. Colt Emerson, the ninth-highest rated prospect in baseball and the best in the Mariners’ system, is likely to be called up for the 2026 season. Emerson is billed as a shortstop and probably still has a future at the position, but he would fill in a third base or second base role for 2026 - and if he’s at third and producing like the Mariners expect out of a guy with a 60-grade hit tool, that might leave Williamson out in the cold. 

Still, having little space for an improved Ben Williamson because of someone better would be a good problem to have, and some of the best teams in the sport are powered by depth at every position. Williamson, for his part, has to continue the hitting trend he started in Tacoma; if nearly a third of his batted balls are line drives in 2026 as they were with the Rainiers in 2025, he will be getting on base more than most on this team.

Williamson’s defense means that even if he doesn’t take much of a step forward offensively in 2026, he can still find a roster spot as a late-inning defensive replacement. But for the Mariners to go the distance and complete their unfinished business, they need a guy to step up in a big way at the hot corner, whether that’s Williamson, Emerson, or someone else entirely.