For the past nine seasons, the leadership of the Seattle Mariners has been an inseparable duo.
Until they weren’t.
Scott Servais and Jerry DiPoto joined the team in the 2015 offseason, pledging to get the moribund franchise back to the playoffs and contend for division titles.
On Thursday, they went through a highly visible breakup. DiPoto fired Servais following a 1-8 road trip that dropped the Mariners to 64-64 on the season and saw them fall further behind the Houston Astros in the American League playoff chase. The Mariners had a 10-game lead in the division in June. They now trail in the division standings by five games.
To be clear, very little of the current situation is Servais’ fault. A manager can only play the roster he has been given. And the roster Servais was shown at the start of the season, which was already full of holes on a good day. Add to that a star center fielder missing chunks of the season due to injury, your starting shortstop missing large chunks of the season due to injury, and basically every other position player forgetting how to hit a major-league level, and you have a recipe for disaster. He mashed every button that Servais could push, and he yanked on every lever he could pull until it broke off. Nothing worked. You could certainly point to some flaws in his bullpen usage or pinch-hitting strategy, but when you are missing several of your best bullpen pieces, and your options for hitters are a guy who is hitting .175 who strikes out a ton and a guy hitting .168 who strikes out a ton, there is not much you can do.
Still, it was obvious for weeks that something needed to be done. The Mariners have spent most of August in a free fall, arresting it only briefly with a three-game sweep of the Mets. They capped off that series with a 12-1 blowout of the New York squad on Sunday night baseball on August 11- providing hope that maybe they had figured things out. However, two days later, they were obliterated 15-1 by the Detroit Tigers, and things haven’t improved since. The team has looked utterly lifeless, and when the clubhouse has been lost, it’s likely the manager’s departure is not far behind.
To replace Servais, the team dipped into the nostalgia well, promoting former catcher Dan Wilson to manager and hiring fellow team icon Edgar Martinez as hitting coach. Wilson has served as a minor league instructor for the team for several years and as a temporary fill-in as a minor league manager at several levels. Notably, he was also the starting catcher on the most iconic Mariners team of all time, the 1995 squad that was the Mariners team to reach the playoffs. Martinez will be on his second stint as hitting coach, filling the role from 2015-18. He is also a Hall of Famer and a member of that 1995 team with “The Double,” possibly the most iconic hit in team history.
For a team that routinely reminds fans of how awesome 1995 was while hoping they ignore its current ineptitude, the promotion of Wilson and Martinez to the dugout smacks of a pr stunt. The upcoming six-game homestand was likely to be ugly. With the playoffs becoming increasingly out of reach, empty seats and a smattering of boos were likely. Fans may have booed Servais and the team when they managed two hits against the San Francisco Giants, but they probably won’t boo Wilson or Martinez. The only thing more craven would have been to hire Joey Cora, who was an infield coach, and ask him to cry on the bench every time a hitter strikes out to end an inning with runners in scoring position.
The team has a pair of coaches, Kristopher Negron and Manny Acta, who have both managed at the major league level and would have been perfectly capable of steering a sinking ship to the bottom over the rest of the season. Still, in going for nostalgia, the team is clearly hoping to keep butts in seats even if the team drifts further out of the playoff chase.
To be fair to Wilson and Martinez, they are walking into a tough job and probably have zero expectations. If they turn the team around, they will only burnish their legacies, and both will probably be back on the bench next year. If the team continues to fade, it’s likely DiPoto will be out of a job at the end of the season anyway. A new general manager will be hired and bring in their own staff, while the Mariners legends will go back to their day jobs.
Servais ends his Mariners career as the second longest-tenured and second-winningest manager behind Lou Pinella. He also holds the distinction with Pinella of being the only two managers in team history to get the team to the playoffs. He’ll probably get another chance somewhere else in the next few years, maybe taking over another troubled club where his “baseball dad” image and calm demeanor can help steady troubled waters. He deserved more than what he was given to work with over his final few seasons in Seattle and left no options on the table when trying to inspire a turnaround.
Now we’ll see if Wilson can pull a miracle out of his cap by trying to turn the same lineup into major league hitters before the season slips further away. As the team showed in its mediocre performance over Servais’ final month on the job, he’ll need all the luck he can get.
