Amid growing speculation about a possible managerial change, Scott Servais found out he was no longer the manager of the Seattle Mariners from a news alert on television, not from his bosses.
This was an awkward mistake by the Mariners on Thursday. It added to a series of errors over the past two months, during which the team fell from being a strong contender for the division title to being on the edge of playoff contention in the American League.
“In what has been one of my least favorite days in my professional life, the worst part of it was the fact that Scott and hitting coach Jarret DeHart found out about this over the crawl of a news channel,” Mariners executive vice president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto said. “That, it crushes me and I know it hurts them a great deal.”
Servais was dismissed during his ninth season managing the Mariners, after the team lost a 10-game lead in the AL West and now has only five weeks left in the regular season to try to recover.
The Mariners have appointed former Seattle catcher Dan Wilson as the new manager. Wilson will manage the team for the rest of the season, not just as an interim.
“It has been a very difficult two-month stretch, a particularly tough 10 days, but trying to do what we can do with a team that is telling us we need to do something a little different than what we have,” Dipoto said.
The decision to let go of 57-year-old Servais followed a poor 1-8 road trip that dropped the Mariners to 64-64 after they were 13 games over .500 in mid-June.
On Thursday, the Mariners were five games behind Houston in the AL West and 7 1/2 games back in the wild-card standings. Their play since June 18, when they led the division by 10 games, has not shown any signs of improvement for a possible turnaround in the remaining weeks of the season.
“Where we were in the middle of June and where we are today, it’s hard to believe actually how quickly it all dissolved for us and the way our team has played,” Dipoto said.
Servais joined the Mariners before the 2016 season, coming in alongside Dipoto. During his time with Seattle, Servais had a record of 680-642. He went through a major rebuild that made the Mariners competitive, but not good enough.
He was the second-longest-serving manager in franchise history, after Lou Piniella.
Servais released a statement late Thursday through the team, expressing his gratitude to the players, ownership, and fans for his time with the Mariners.
“To the city of Seattle, you embraced my family and me and we are forever grateful for your support. As this chapter closes, I leave with pride in what we’ve accomplished together and excitement for what the future holds,” Servais said.
This season, the Mariners have struggled with a lack of offense, which has been especially frustrating since their pitching staff has been among the best in baseball for most of the season.
Seattle’s pitching ranks first in baseball in ERA, WHIP, and batting average against. Meanwhile, the Mariners are 30th in batting average, 29th in slugging, and have the most strikeouts in the league. The team has scored two runs or fewer in 48 of their 128 games this season and is 6-42 in those games.
The stretch of poor performance since mid-June is what led to the change in manager. On June 19, the Mariners were 44-31 and had a 10-game lead in their division. However, they have gone 20-33 since then, including a 7-15 record against teams like Detroit, Pittsburgh, Miami, and the Los Angeles Angels, all of which have losing records.
The additions of Randy Arozarena and Justin Turner before the trade deadline did not give Seattle the offensive boost they were hoping for, and injuries to Julio Rodríguez and J.P. Crawford have hurt their chances of turning things around.
Dan Wilson, who is 55 years old, will start as the new manager on Friday night when the Mariners begin a series against the San Francisco Giants.
Wilson has worked in various roles for the team, including as a fill-in manager for the Triple-A affiliate and as an analyst for the team’s broadcasts. For the past seven years, he has been a special assistant for player development within the team’s baseball operations.
Wilson is the 21st manager in the franchise’s history and the 18th full-time manager.
“We can’t know a person better than we know Dan Wilson, and I believe in both his baseball and who he is as a person,” Dipoto said. “I think that will resonate very well with our players.”
Servais will be remembered in Seattle as the manager who ended the longest playoff drought in baseball history when the Mariners made the playoffs in 2022. He led the team to a wild-card berth, and the Mariners won the wild-card series against Toronto before losing to Houston in the ALDS.
This was Servais’s first managerial position; before joining the Mariners, he worked in the front office for the Texas Rangers and the Los Angeles Angels.
