As we’re just about a week now from Seattle Mariners opening day, one of the big storylines we were following and tracking throughout all of spring training was the development and the potential for Colt Emerson to be on the opening day roster.

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As we sit here today, we still don’t know. He is the only young player who hasn’t been returned to minor league camp, so there’s still a possibility that he could end up on the major league team. And obviously that would grow if J.P. Crawford were truly hurt. It doesn’t look like that’s the case. J.P. is either gonna be ready on opening day or soon afterwards, so my guess is they would go with the Leo Rivas for a short time if they needed to before J.P. was ready to return.

If he’s not going to be your everyday shortstop, it’s really difficult for me to see how you are going to squeeze Colt Emerson onto the roster. If he had been unbelievable, if he had the same spring training that Julio Rodríguez did in 2022 where you just say you can’t keep this guy off the roster, he’s just clearly a major league player, then I guess you would find a way. You would move some people around and you might take some of at-bats away even from Cole Young and just say this kid’s too good.

Heating Up: Colt Emerson hits second HR of spring

But there are some major differences from when that happened with Julio. One of them, this team is expected to contend in a way that Julio team was not necessarily at the beginning of the year. And secondly, they just don’t have as much open space on the everyday roster.

If you wanted to throw Julio in center field that year, you could. It’s not like he was taking the job from somebody who was so good that you couldn’t move him out of there. Brendan Donovan should be playing every day. Cole Young, you want to see if he can play every single day. They have guys in their infield that they want to play every day, and I know J.P. can cause some polarization among fans, but the guy was a 3.8 bWAR player last year. He’s a pretty good player and is exactly what you want on a contending team as opposed to a young kid who has only played 40 games above the Single-A level.

I like Colt Emerson. He’s gonna play this year. I can’t wait to see him at the big league level. I don’t think it’s going to be on opening day.

This post is a transcript of the video at the top of the post. It is edited for clarity. Catch Mike Salk weekdays from 6-10 a.m. on Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk.

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