The newfound lightness of being Emerson Hancock
Emerson Hancock took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and fired in the pitch, which snapped into the catcher’s glove, right on target. “Hell yeah!” cheered Justin Novak, his catcher for the day at the spring training complex in Peoria.
With every pitch Hancock threw, Novak increased his enthusiasm: “Atta boy!” “G’ahead!” “NICE ONE!” And—far from the cameras or fans milling about the late-afternoon bullpen session— “Oh f—- yeah!”
Novak’s cheerleading was echoed—albeit in more restrained fashion—by the assorted Mariners pitching staff watching the bullpen. Call it cheesy. Eyewash. Whatever. Hancock got stronger as the bullpen went along, spotting up sinkers, dropping in changeups, and even showing off his new cutter. Unlike his spot starts replacing injured members of the starting rotation in 2024, when he was often fighting his own command, traffic on the bases, or just fighting, period, this Emerson Hancock looked free and easy on the mound. Relaxed. Happy, even.
A nice bullpen on the backfields in spring training is one thing, but Hancock was able to carry that over to the mound in games this spring. Over five games, he struck out 14 hitters in 13.2 innings, and issued just three walks—less than one per start. Most excitingly, he debuted a retooled sweeping slider (slower, and with some more horizontal movement) and a cutter. As Jake noted in a spring writeup of Hancock’s arsenal, secondaries with more horizontal movement could help Hancock’s more vertically-oriented sinker/changeup combo, giving hitters more to worry about.
“His offspeed has looked really, really good,” said Dan Wilson about Hancock’s outings this spring. “He’s really had a good camp. I think he’s really taken a step forward here, and really has gotten comfortable with the stuff he has and how he’s going to use it.”
Getting comfortable in the higher levels of the game has been a challenge for Hancock, who was taken sixth overall by the Mariners in the shortened 2020 draft but hasn’t yet found the success the rest of the starting rotation, all drafted later, has found in the big leagues. Hancock has had to transition from a strikeout artist, as he was when headlining Georgia’s starting rotation, to a pitcher who elicits weak contact in the air or on the ground. Like any hero’s journey, there have been rough patches. But Hancock seems to be leaning into the mantle of worm-burner—or just burner, period.
“I like to get the ball and go,” said Hancock after a particularly strong outing this spring. “I like to attack and be fast. I know the guys behind me, they don’t want to be waiting around a lot. If I can get the ball, throw a lot of strikes, maybe we get some quick outs.”
This is the new Emerson Hancock—assured in who he is, not on the outside of the roster looking in, but confident in his talent and skills, able to subsume himself enough to think of the infield working behind him first and foremost; no diva starter here. This Hancock has stared failure in the face and embraced it. The running joke is that Hancock, currently sixth starter for the Mariners, would easily be a fifth, or fourth, or even third starter elsewhere. If the Mariners can’t find a place for him, someone will. This version of Hancock is able to shut out that noise and focus on the fun.
“I’m just being myself a little bit more,” said Hancock earlier this spring. “I think for a while, I was trying to be so serious, and at the end of the day, it’s so much more fun when you’re just out there and enjoying it, and you have freedom in what you’re doing.”
That freedom was on display on the mound in spring training, but even more saliently on the spring training bullpen mound. Not only did Hancock throw his own ‘pens light and easy, he drew up an overturned bucket as a stool to watch Bryce Miller throw his with a similar carefree-yet-intense attitude.
“It’s such a long process and a long season,” reflected Hancock. “The more you can keep it light and enjoy things and realize that it really is supposed to be fun, that can really help you and give you a different perspective.”
“We’re not exactly curing cancer here,” deadpanned Novak, his bullpen catcher. “Let’s have some fun.”
Hancock will take over for George Kirby and make the final start of the Mariners’ vaunted rotation’s opening salvo today. A previous version of Hancock, coming up from Triple-A, might have gotten wrapped up in the significance of this moment, making his case for a spot in the starting rotation or as trade bait. But the Hancock who stacked strong spring start after strong spring start, who laughed and joked with his fellow starters this spring, who is armed with a new slate of pitches—that’s Hancock 2025, Emerson’s version.
“He’s done everything we’ve asked him to do,” said Wilson. “He’s done everything that it takes to be successful. And it’s been really fun to watch him.”
There’s that word again—fun.