Mariners can't have it both ways with young infielders amid offseason inactivity

Justin Hollander didn’t say anything outrageous in a long interview on The Hot Stove. In fact, it was pretty much the exact kind of calm you’d expect in mid-January.

He laid out the current infield picture like this: some combination of Cole Young, Leo Rivas, and Ben Williamson, with Colt Emerson and Michael Arroyo as potential midseason (or spring) factors. He emphasized wanting to “provide runway” for young players to show what they can do.

Totally reasonable…kind of.

But the Mariners aren’t operating in a vacuum. They’re operating as a team that’s been close enough to taste October for multiple seasons — and was one win from the World Series in 2025. The fanbase has watched this front office treat “internal solutions” like a personality trait. And that’s where the problem lives: you can’t sell “runway” as a competitive plan if you’ve already seen the plane struggle to take off.

Mariners can’t keep selling patience while chasing the playoffs

“Runway” sounds nice, until you remember 2025 happened. The soft pitch here is that Williamson and Young are still “young,” still developing, still getting their feet under them. But at some point, development stops being a cute storyline and starts being a roster risk.

Young already got a real taste of the majors in 2025: 257 plate appearances, hitting .211/.302/.305. By no means is he cooked. But it does mean you don’t pencil him in like he’s already the answer.

Williamson, meanwhile, played 85 MLB games and gave you one home run in 277 plate appearances. Again, not a permanent verdict. But it’s also not the kind of production that earns a long, cozy leash on a team claiming it wants to win now. 

So when Hollander says “runway,” what a lot of fans hear is: we’d like to do the cheap part first, and then see if we still need the expensive part later.

Which brings us to a familiar problem. Seattle talking like a contender, but behaving like a team that can afford to “see what happens.”

The public confidence in Young hits weird right now even if it might be real because it also lines up perfectly with the path of least spending. That’s why it reads like a smokescreen to people who’ve watched this movie before. The whole “we’re high on him” messaging has been floating around while the club sits on its hands, and it sure starts to sound like an explanation being built in advance instead of a plan being executed in real time. 

The Mariners don’t need to choose between Young’s development and a real MLB infield. They just need to stop pretending it has to be either/or. If you want the cleanest fix — the one that protects your floor and keeps the prospect upside — it’s the trade that has already been referenced: Brendan Donovan.

Donovan is the antidote to the exact flaw in Hollander’s “runway” pitch. He gives you optionality. Because if you trade for Donovan, you don’t block anyone. You simply stop depending on perfect-case scenarios.

• If Young shows up to spring training looking like a different hitter, cool. Donovan can move around.
• If Williamson actually grabs third base and holds it, great. Donovan fits elsewhere.
• If Emerson forces the issue, perfect. Now you’re making good problems instead of praying away bad ones.

As things stand, Hollander’s quote basically confirms what fans have been worried about all winter: the Mariners are hoping for the best without planning for the worst. And that’s the part they can’t have both ways.

You can’t tell the market you’re one bat away, tell fans you’re serious, then turn around and present an infield plan that relies on multiple young players simultaneously making the leap — especially after you already watched two of them struggle in the majors last year.

If the Mariners want “runway,” fine. But contenders don’t build runways with no emergency plan. They build rosters with a safety net — and Donovan is sitting there like a flashing neon sign that says stop flirting with risk and just fix it.