Seattle, WA
Story of Seattle Mariners drafting Ben Williamson says a lot
Ben Williamson has only been on the Seattle Mariners’ roster for three weeks, but it seems like a lot longer than that.
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That’s owed to how well Williamson has done so far in at the big league level, belying his full pro experience of 166 games – including in the minors – that just recently passed what covers a full MLB season.
The 24-year-old third baseman has fit right in with the Mariners, hitting .242 with a home run and three doubles in 16 games – and that’s only after a few hitless games over the last week drove his average down from .310 through his first 11 contests.
Williamson is also a very capable third baseman defensively, to the point that it’s not rare to read his name and the words “Gold Glove potential” next to each other.
Mariners rookie Ben Williamson makes jaw-dropping catch
Maturity seems to an important element of Williamson’s personality, and his even-keel nature was on display right from the moment that the Mariners picked him in the third round of the 2023 MLB Draft out of Virginia’s College of William and Mary.
On an episode of The Wheelhouse podcast released on Saturday, Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto detailed the humorous conversation that Mariners director of amateur scouting Scott Hunter had on a video call with Williamson to tell him he had been taken with one of the last picks on the first night of that draft.
Here’s a summation of how Dipoto said the conversation went, with Williamson speaking in a hushed tone while sitting in the dark while the Mariners’ draft room was abuzz following three first-round picks.
• Scott Hunter: “Ben, its Scott Hunter with the Seattle Mariners. Congratulations. Have you talked to your agent?”
• Ben Williamson: “No.”
• Hunter: “We just took you in the second round. Are you watching the draft?”
• Williamson: “No.”
• Hunter: “Are you sitting in the dark?”
• Williamson: “Yeah, yeah, I’m at my parents’ – they’re upstairs sleeping.”
• Hunter: “You might want to go wake them up.”
• Williamson: “No, they’ve got work in the morning.”
Well, they do say in sports to act live you’re been there before.
While the Mariners were the team to take Williamson with the 57th overall pick, his status as a college senior who could be signed “under slot” – less than the assigned bonus for their slot in the draft – apparently made him a popular name around the league.
“We got a lot of angry texts after we popped him in the second round,” Dipoto said, “because there were a number of teams that that had their sights set on him in order to do creative things in the draft. … We actually had him in a pretty prominent place on our board, and hopefully time tells us that we had him in the right place, but we had some people in the room arguing that they thought he was a first-round talent on his own (who) just so happened to be a senior.”
At home among the big leaguers
Dipoto pointed to a few other things that speak to why Williamson was able to hit the ground running with the Mariners after getting called up with just 14 games at Triple-A under his belt.
“Since the day he stepped out on a field (after signing with the Mariners)… he has been one of the most consistent people that we’ve had in our organization,” Dipoto said. “He’s thoughtful, he puts in the work. If he’s not out on the field or in the cages, he’s in the weight room. He’s an awesome teammate.
“We saw it in spring training – he had a really good spring, and he just absorbed as much as he could.”
What the Mariners saw from Williamson this spring included him running in a different kind of circle than most players with his level of experience tend to.
“Every minute that he could, he was always hovering around the veteran hitters, trying to pull whatever he could from them,” Dipoto continued. “And more often with guys who are in their first big league camp or they’re coming in (from the minors), they’ll pool up with the other guys who are in their circumstance. And Ben didn’t do that in the spring.
“He spent a lot of time around J.P. (Crawford), he spent a lot of time around the veteran hitters… And it gave him a level of comfort when he got his call up.”
Click here for the full episode of The Wheelhouse with Jerry Dipoto.
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Thanks to Carrie Brown for the westward view of our Saturday night sunset. The high today hit 68 at the airport – eight degrees above normal – but nowhere near the record for this date, which was 89 degrees back in 2016. The forecast suggests two more days of partly sunny, almost-70-degree weather, before the chance of rain returns.
CHICAGO (AP) — The struggling New York Mets placed former Seattle Mariners second baseman/designated hitter Jorge Polanco on the 10-day injured list on Saturday with a right wrist contusion.
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The move was made retroactive to Wednesday, a day after Polanco went 0 for 4 with two strikeouts in a 2-1 loss at the Los Angeles Dodgers. The 32-year-old Polanco is batting .179 (10 for 56) with a homer and two RBIs in his first season with New York, which has lost nine straight.
“When doctors first took a look at him, it looked like he got hit by a pitch when he didn’t,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “In talking to him, it was just a couple of swings that he took that night. … He didn’t think much of it, but just got worse the following day.
“So you just got to let it calm down a little bit and then we’ll go from there. But we don’t have a timetable for how long this is going to last.”
Polanco, who signed a two-year, $40 million contract with the Mets in December, also has been dealing with an ankle issue.
“He was trending in the right direction,” Mendoza said of the ankle injury. “It’s definitely going to help, obviously now with him being shut down. But the biggest thing now is that we’ve got to take care of that wrist.”
Polanco spent the previous two seasons with the Mariners, who acquired him in a February 2024 trade with the Minnesota Twins.
Polanco struggled during his first season with Seattle in 2024, hitting just .213 with 16 homers in 118 games while playing through a knee injury that didn’t become public knowledge until after the season.
But after the Mariners somewhat surprisingly brought him back for a one-year contract in 2025, Polanco rebounded to hit .265 with 26 homers and an .821 OPS in 138 games last season. He then added three homers during Seattle’s playoff run, along with a 15th-inning walkoff single in Game 5 of the American League Division Series that sent the Mariners to their first ALCS in 24 years.
Seattle Sports staff made additions to this post.
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Seattle, WA
Brandon Nimmo hits leadoff homer, Jacob deGrom works 4 scoreless as Rangers beat Seattle Mariners 5-0
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON – APRIL 17: Corey Seager #5 of the Texas Rangers tags out Dominic Canzone #8 of the Seattle Mariners during the fourth inning at T-Mobile Park on April 17, 2026 in Seattle, Washington. (Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
SEATTLE – Brandon Nimmo hit a leadoff home run, Jacob deGrom threw four shutout innings and Gavin Collyer earned his first career win as the Texas Rangers beat the Seattle Mariners 5-0 on Friday night.
Seattle lost its fourth straight game, and was shut out for the fourth time in 21 games, falling to 8-13. The Mariners were shut out six times during the 2025 season. Texas won its third straight game.
Nimmo led off the game with a 372-foot shot to right field off Mariners starter Logan Gilbert (1-3). It was Nimmo’s 16th career leadoff homer and second of the season. He also hit a leadoff home run on April 11 in a 6-3 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
DeGrom effectively maneuvered through Seattle’s lineup, and worked out of a one out, bases-loaded jam in the first inning. The two-time Cy Young Award winner recorded two of his three strikeouts after walking Josh Naylor to load the bases. Randy Arozarena fanned on a curveball, and Luke Raley swung through a fastball.
Texas added to its lead after Nimmo’s homer. Wyatt Langford’s single to left scored Corey Seager, who led off the third inning with a double. The Rangers stretched the lead to 3-0 on an RBI single from Jake Burger in the seventh.
The Mariners’ best scoring chance came in the sixth after Collyer (1-0), who worked 1 1/3 scoreless innings, left the game.
J.P. Crawford singled to left off Tyler Alexander with two out, and Mariners third base coach Carlos Cardoza sent Naylor from second base, but he was thrown out by Langford.
Texas added two more runs in the ninth on a sacrifice fly by Andrew McCutchen and an RBI double by Josh Jung.
Seattle third baseman Brendan Donovan left the game early due to a left hip issue.
Mariners right-hander Bryce Miller, who started the year on the injured list with a left oblique injury, was at T-Mobile Park for the first time this season. He will begin a rehab assignment with Triple-A Tacoma on Saturday.
Up next
Mariners RHP George Kirby (2-2, 3.25) will face Rangers righty Nathan Eovaldi (2-2, 5.40) on Saturday afternoon.
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