Jerry Dipoto called Thursday one of the most difficult days of his professional life.
With the performance of his Seattle Mariners crumbling, with pressure mounting and increasing scrutiny coming his way, Dipoto fired manager Scott Servais and director of hitting strategy Jarret DeHart.
The Athletic broke news of Servais’ firing Thursday, still morning on the West Coast. Dipoto had not yet met with Servais or DeHart.
“The worst part of it was the fact that Scott and JD found out about this over the crawl of a news channel,” Dipoto said on a video call. “It crushes me. I know it hurts them a great deal.”
Dipoto has spent nearly half of his career in baseball working alongside Servais. The two were teammates with the Colorado Rockies, Servais a catcher and Dipoto a right-handed pitcher. They worked together in the Los Angeles Angels front office, Dipoto the general manager and Servais an assistant. For the past nine seasons, Servais managed the Mariners through good times and bad.
But after losing eight of their past nine games and falling behind the Houston Astros by five games in the American League West standings, Dipoto and the Mariners are at a crisis point. Servais and DeHart were the first to take the fall.
“It was a very difficult decision to make, but one I thought our team was in need of,” Dipoto said. “We need a different voice and a different direction.”
The man Dipoto chose to lead them forward is Dan Wilson, a Mariners catcher from 1994 to 2005 who has spent the past 11 years in an advisory role with the Mariners.
Dan Wilson, left, pictured with Jamie Moyer before a game in July, has been a familiar face around the Mariners. (Steven Bisig / USA Today)
Friday, Wilson will dress in uniform as the Mariners’ manager, and there is no interim tag. This is his job, Dipoto said, as the Mariners move into the future.
“Walking in the door as an interim anything doesn’t really allow you to lay the appropriate groundwork or get the trust and the (buy-in) that’s required to be a good leader in the major-league space,” Dipoto said. “We can’t know a person better than we know Dan Wilson. I believe in both his baseball and who he is as a person, and I think that will resonate very well with our players.”
Wilson takes over as a popular figure within the organization. He played on some of the best teams in franchise history. He caught Randy Johnson and played in the same lineups as Ken Griffey Jr., Edgar Martinez, Alex Rodriguez, Ichiro and so many others.
A member of the team’s Hall of Fame, Wilson has never formally worked on a coaching staff, but he has remained involved as a special assistant for player development and also as an occasional broadcaster. Wilson has made brief cameos as a fill-in manager at Triple-A Tacoma and High-A Everett. His other work with minor leaguers gives him familiarity with homegrown players, particularly catcher Cal Raleigh.
“Dan is about as clear and easy of a conversation as you’re gonna have,” Dipoto said. “Especially over the last few days, but over the last nine years, I’ve learned he’s an incredibly patient person, kindhearted. As soon as he walks into a room, you know he’s there to help you. That is inviting to any player, whether it’s the guy who pitches the eighth inning or the guy who hits cleanup. “
Wilson, though, inherits all the same issues that led to Servais’ dismissal. The Mariners have an elite pitching staff. Their starters lead baseball with a 3.32 ERA. Their offensive production, however, has been abysmal all year. Seattle ranks 28th in OPS and leads the majors in strikeouts. Trade deadline additions in Randy Arozarena and Justin Turner have not been enough to turn the tide. Seattle has gotten so desperate that franchise cornerstone Julio Rodríguez made an early return from the injured list. He is playing designated hitter but is not yet cleared to return to center field.
“I don’t know all of the answers,” Dipoto said. “I do know we’re asking questions and hopefully we’re asking the right questions. We’ll get to the right answer in time. If we had a magic potion, we would have sprinkled it some time back. We don’t.
“The best we can do is sit with our players and try to meet them where they are and try to use the next five or six weeks to build a more productive foundation with a different language than we’ve been using with our hitting programs.”
Dipoto praised the work Servais did over nine years at the helm. He had a .514 winning percentage in his tenure and led the Mariners to their first playoff berth in 21 years two seasons ago. But the club’s ascent has never quite come to fruition. The Astros bounced Seattle in the American League Division Series in 2022. Last summer, a red-hot summer turned to a sluggish finish, and the Mariners missed the postseason by one game.
On June 18 of this season, the Mariners led the division by 10 games. They watched over the past two months as that lead slipped away. It was a gradual slide that led to a sudden collapse, and Seattle’s latest road trip was a house of baseball horrors.
All summer, strikeouts have piled up and flaws in roster construction have revealed themselves. Losses turned to gut punches, and a once-hopeful season turned to disappointment.
“Where we were in the middle of June and where we were today, it’s hard to believe, actually, how quickly it all dissolved for us and the way our team has played,” Dipoto said.
There are likely more staff changes on the horizon. The Mariners began the year with three hitting coaches. They dismissed offensive coordinator Brant Brown on May 31. Now with DeHart gone, they are down to one hitting coach in Tommy Joseph.
The Seattle Times reported Edgar Martinez is expected to join Wilson’s staff for the remainder of the year. Dipoto said Wilson will address any further staff changes Friday, when his tenure begins with a three-game series against the San Francisco Giants.
“I appreciate the faith that Jerry, Justin (Hollander) and the Mariners organization have placed in me,” Wilson said in a statement, “and I’m eager to get to work. I believe this team is capable of playing great baseball this season and look forward to the opportunity to work with this group of players and coaches.”
Multiple times Thursday, Dipoto said he still believes in his current team. He hopes a turnaround is coming in the weeks ahead. But with Thursday’s news, a cratering summer has reached a new low.
“We’ve fallen short in many ways,” Dipoto said. “It’s why we’re sitting here today. We have not met our own expectations. Not the expectations that come from prognosticators or the fan base. Our own. And that’s when you really take a hard look in the mirror, and we are.”
(Top photo of Jerry Dipoto and Scott Servais: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
