{"id":638136,"date":"2026-04-30T07:46:41","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T07:46:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/638136\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T07:46:41","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T07:46:41","slug":"mariners-cole-young-has-remarkable-case-as-2nd-best-hitter-in-mlb-this-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/638136\/","title":{"rendered":"Mariners&#8217; Cole Young has remarkable case as 2nd-best hitter in MLB this season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Cole Young sits right behind Mike Trout on an impressive MLB leaderboard.<\/p>\n<p>And if you just use this one stat, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/ca\/mlb\/seattle-mariners\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Seattle Mariners<\/a>&#8216; young second baseman has been the second-best hitter in baseball this season.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t believe it? Well, here it is.<\/p>\n<p>Young has the second-best Win Probability Added so far in the 2026 season behind just Trout.<\/p>\n<p>WPA is a stat that doesn&#8217;t just take into account a hitter&#8217;s outcomes, but specifically what point in a game they happen in and how it impacts the chances of winning.<\/p>\n<p>For example, a home run with your team leading 14-0 doesn&#8217;t add essentially any win probability. The chances of winning are already too high.<\/p>\n<p>A walk-off home run when trailing that turns a game into a win adds a ton of win probability.<\/p>\n<p>MORE:\u00a0<a target=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/ca\/mlb\/chicago-white-sox\/news\/how-diamondbacks-ball-boy-gifted-white-sox-sam-antonacci-inside-park-hr\/c1d4f03cd2dd796561effa25\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">This might be the weirdest way to get an inside-the-park HR<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Every action has some amount of WPA, and Young has been second-best to Trout, with the leaderboard via MLB.com&#8217;s Daniel Kramer:<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Highest Win Probability Added, 2026<\/p>\n<p>1) Mike Trout: 1.72<br \/>\u27a1\ufe0f2) Cole Young: 1.64<br \/>3) James Wood: 1.59<br \/>4) Nick Kurtz: 1.46<br \/>5) Ben Rice: 1.39<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Daniel Kramer (@DKramer_) <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DKramer_\/status\/2049613703306211501?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">April 29, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>That top-five is four of the very best hitters on the planet, with Young mixed in.<\/p>\n<p>WPA certainly requires a game to break in a certain way to get a chance at accumulating it, but then a hitter has to deliver, too.<\/p>\n<p>So far, Young has delivered for the Mariners, over and over. It&#8217;s been key for a lineup that took a while to get rolling around him.<\/p>\n<p>And for Young, it&#8217;s huge. After a slow start to his MLB career prior to this season, he&#8217;s found his stride and is looking like a long-term starter, with a knack for coming through when it really matters.<\/p>\n<p>More MLB news:<\/p>\n<p>                            <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cole Young sits right behind Mike Trout on an impressive MLB leaderboard. And if you just use this&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":638137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-638136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/638137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}