New report on Mariners’ Jason Kanzler process upends the inexperience narrative

Jerry Dipoto never made any promises that players would be involved in the Seattle Mariners' search for a new manager. Heck, he referred to the idea as "a danger zone" in October. Somewhere along the way, though, he apparently changed his mind.

According to a Monday report from Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, Mariners players were indeed involved in the final stages of the process that led to the hiring of Jason Kanzler as the club's new skipper last week. These were, unsurprisingly, "veterans who are considered clubhouse leaders."

The report does not clarify who these players were. And while we're discussing what's not in the report, there's no explicit confirmation that the veterans who were involved signed off on Kanzler as the right guy. It's possible that one or more preferred Joe Espada, but were overruled by Dipoto.

However, that's hard to square with, you know, reality. It's hard to imagine Dipoto involving players in the hiring process only to reject their input. And for what it's worth, Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez were seen chumming it up with Kanzler at the Seattle Kraken's game last Wednesday, the day he was officially introduced by the team.

Ken Rosenthal's reporting destroys the notion that Jason Kanzler won't mesh with the Mariners' veterans

Dipoto, Justin Hollander and the rest of the front office are definitely enthusiastic about Kanzler. According to Adam Jude of The Seattle Times, they had wanted to hire the 36-year-old as a hitting coach back in 2021, and had kept him in mind ever since. And whereas he was not a favorite for the manager job at the outset, Hollander said that "dominated the process to the degree that I think we would have been foolish to take all the hard work and throw it out the window and not choose him.”

Kanzler's lack of managerial experience at any level of professional baseball is the big strike against him, especially in context of Dipoto's remark in September about preferring to hire someone with experience to take over for Dan Wilson. It did seem like a natural pivot. Neither Wilson nor Scott Servais had experience when they were hired, and both eventually ran into limitations on what they were capable of in the clubhouse and/or dugout.

Moreover, Kanzler's lack of experience specifically seemed to pose a problem with regard to how he would interact with the Mariners' veteran players. A la Blake Butera in Washington, Kanzler was a better on-paper fit for a younger, greener team. As in, not a Mariners team chock-full of respected, battle-tested veterans like Raleigh, Julio, Bryan Woo, Logan Gilbert and others.

Or, as A.J. Piezynski put it on Foul Territory: "You should hire a guy who's ready to win. Not a guy who needs to learn on the job."

Since we also wrung our hands over Kanzler's lack of experience, we don't bring this up for the purpose of retroactively dunking on Pierzynski. It's a major question mark until proven otherwise. There simply isn't a way to simulate being a new guy in the trenches of a 162-game season, much less with guys who have been there and seen it all already.

Yet given the nature of the Mariners' roster and how big of an issue communication was under Wilson in 2026, it makes sense that the Mariners wouldn't hire a guy like Kanzler without first running him by guys whose voices matter in the clubhouse. Even if the real stress test will come later, this hire would have been downright foolish if said guys wanted nothing to do with Kanzler from the beginning.

Whether or not you believe the Mariners got it right with this hire, what they did not do was force Kanzler upon an unwitting group of players. If there's a right way to hire a guy like this, that's it.

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