Jarred Kelenic confirms every fan’s worries about Jerry Dipoto losing Mariners clubhouse

Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto puts his foot in his mouth. A lot. Baseball executives aren't exactly known for their way with words — we can look all over the league to the Yankees' Brian Cashman, the Giants' Farhan Zaidi, and the Red Sox' Tom Werner, just to name a few front office men who had some bad faux pas this offseason — but Dipoto seems to have an especially hard time at choosing his words carefully.

Last year, he came under fire for two choice remarks on the state of his team, first when he said that the team "could go out and acquire prime Babe Ruth and it's not going to help us" in June, and then in October, when he said that the Mariners were "doing the fan base a favor in asking for their patience to win the World Series," as if fans haven't been waiting for the team to win the World Series since 1977.

Former Mariner and early offseason trade piece Jarred Kelenic had some thoughts on those comments. He appeared on Foul Territory to all but confirm long-standing worries about tensions between management and Mariners players.

Jarred Kelenic confirms every fan’s worries about Jerry Dipoto losing Mariners clubhouse

Kelenic referred to the "prime Babe Ruth" comment and Dipoto's long-term strategy for the team to win "54 percent" of the time when speaking with some frustration about issues with the Mariners' front office. He said that they brought "unwanted, unneeded attention to the team," and only served to kick the players when they were down at the beginning of the season, disrupting a positive clubhouse environment. Kelenic said that it distracted Mariners players from their individual goals to improve.

Dipoto has been with the Mariners since the start of the 2016 season. In that time, they have only managed to make it into the postseason once, otherwise having to settle for second, third, or fifth. Even though they did manage to win over 54% of their regular season games in 2023 and made an optimistic run toward a Wild Card spot in the expanded playoffs, they still came up short. Clearly, Dipoto's penchant for poorly judged comments isn't sitting well with players or fans, so they might need to change tacks here if they want to finally snap the losing streak and prove that they can make it deep into a postseason.