Reacting to the Mariners firing of manager Scott Servais

Unless you live under a rock and missed yesterday's massive news, the Mariners fired their long-time manager Scott Servais. Scott was the manager for 9+ years and was a key figure in ending the long 21-year playoff drought. The Mariners had a 10-game lead in the division on June 19, and are now currently 5-1/2 games behind the Houston Astros.

While the losing streak and offensive woes are not all Scott's fault, somebody had to pay for this historic collapse. Scott was the one chosen to pay that price. The Mariners also fired hitting coach Jarret DeHart, something I have been asking for for months. The Mariners will turn to former Mariners backstop and part-time broadcaster Dan Wilson to take over for Scott. Wilson is the new full-time manager.

If you don't follow us on Twitter... I mean "X", then please do so. We put out a few polls yesterday for fans to vote on, and today I am going to go over the results.

The first question we posed was simply "How are you feeling about the Mariners firing Scott Servais?" We ended up with 500 votes on the nose, and 42% voted that they were happy, while there was a close battle for the second spot. "Meh, it's fine" and "Should've been others first" came in at 27.2% and 26.4%, while only 4.4% of the voters voted that it was a dumb move.

Personally, I voted that others should have lost their job first. That "other" being hitting coach Jarret DeHart. This offense is historically bad, and I am not exaggerating. They will break the record for most strikeouts in a season. That will happen. They are minimal percentage points ahead of the worst batting average since the end of segregation (1968 New York Yankees - .214).

We watch this offense struggle day in and day out. Often I thought to myself that if the Mariners went down 3-0 early, the game was over. And I was right most of the time. I just don't think Scott is the biggest blame for this offense. He is not out there swinging a bat, he is not giving hitting instructions, he is the overall manager. DeHart should have been fired a long time ago.

The next poll was asking about how you are feeling about Dan Wilson becoming the new full time manager. With a total of 621 votes cast, we had 58.1% of voters vote for the "New voice, I like it" option. 23.5% of voters voted for the "Dumb move and dumb team" option, while 18.4% voted that Kristopher Negron should have gotten the nod.

I voted for the "Dumb move / dumb team" option. Normally, I would have taken some time to decide and probably would have voted more neutral. I hope I'm wrong, but I am not happy about this hire. Hiring Wilson as an interim manager? Sure, I could get behind that. But to make him the full-time manager, when Wilson has not ever managed even a Little League game before? Give me a break.

I also cast my vote after the news of how Scott found out he was fired went public. If you didn't know, Scott found out he was fired on social media at the same time we all found out. That is beyond shady. Couple that with the fact that Ken Rosenthal, who broke the news, interviewed Jerry Dipoto literally the day before, asking about Scott. Jerry did not give a definitive answer, and clearly painted the picture that Scott was going to be gone. Shady, and outright disgusting.

The Mariners can't seem to help themselves with this out of pocket stuff. Remember the Bellevue Rotary Club? How about the accusations against the front office? The drama from Kyle Seager and Jarred Kelenic? Teoscar Hernandez during this year's All-Star Game saying how terrible it is to hit in Seattle? Now this? Yuck.

Finally, we made it to the last question. Should Scott Servais have been the one fired? Out of 415 votes, 59.3% believe that yes, he should have been the one fired. 19.8% felt unsure, 12.8% blamed DeHart, and just 8.2% wanted the front office to keep everyone through the 2024 season.

I voted that DeHart should have been the one to be fired, as I mentioned before. I did think that Scott was going to be let go in the offseason. I thought that ownership would clean house, and they still might. But I doubt that Jerry Dipoto and Justin Hollander are going anywhere now. Usually, when a GM and President of Baseball Operations are let go, the new staff would want to hire their own manager. But with Wilson being hired on without the interim tag, that closes the book on that.

If I were in charge of the Mariners (Thank goodness I am not), I probably would have fired Servais and hired Wilson to finish out the year. Then in the offseason, decided on who I wanted to take the reigns of this franchise, and it would have been an outside hire. This job would have been a very popular one, especially with the players the Mariners already have in place.

Maybe Jerry and the rest of the front office know more than I do, at least I hope they do. Hopefully, Dan Wilson will come in and lead this team to the promised land. I, for one, will miss Scott Servais. I had the pleasure of sitting in on numerous interviews with him, and he was always polite and gracious with his time. He is a good coach, and I think he will have success wherever he goes from here.

As always, Go Mariners.