The Mariners Fired the Wrong Guy

The Seattle Mariners were finally, mercifully eliminated from MLB playoff contention mid-afternoon last Friday, Sept. 25, due to a Texas Rangers win.

This 2026 edition of the historically beleaguered Mariners deserved it. They struggled to give fans even a semblance of hope or belief down the stretch, despite residing in a historically winnable division and having been three innings away from a — yes, I’ll say the line — first ever World Series appearance in 2025.

All there is left to do now is play the blame game, a tradition fans of loser franchises (myself included) know all too well.

I’ve written extensively about why the Mariners coaching and upper management needs to change. I guess someone out there was listening, probably not to me, but to one of the many, many Mariners fans asking for the same (each and every one never having known the true bliss of a World Series win), because the Mariners decided to part ways with manager Dan Wilson this Sunday.

Great, that was the bare minimum. Here’s who should actually step down. Can you tell I’m bitter?

Mariners Jerry Dipoto On the Hot Seat

As I said, the Mariners parted ways with their manager Dan Wilson this Sunday. Of course, being the Mariners, doing it the right way would be too easy.

Instead, upper management forced Wilson, a franchise legend for his career as a catcher in Seattle (and by all counts, a great person), to announce his own retirement following the game. I am not kidding:

Want to guess who is responsible for Dan’s firing (which I agree with) AND, more tellingly, the embarrassing rollout of the decision?

That would be Jerry Dipoto, Mariners president of baseball operations. But you probably guessed that because you read the heading for this section. I’d throw in Dipoto’s partner in crime, Mariners general manager Justin Hollander, for good measure.

Despite his mistakes over the last season or two — which I have enumerated extensively in my Mariners coverage — Dan Wilson deserved better. Making Dan announce his own departure, rather than waiting and announcing it themselves, is a weasel move by Dipoto and Hollander.

Dan deserved to focus on his bond with his players. He deserved to reflect on this, admittedly horrific season, uncompromised by the emotions of dismissal. Don’t just take it from me.

“Mariners, if you guys don’t fire Dipoto for the classless way of pushing this on the manager and not manning up and doing it himself, you deserve the mediocrity you create,” a response to Dan’s self-announced firing reads. “That’s the type of ownership & front office leadership that organization has. Any wonder why they don’t have a championship?

“Who the hell is going to want to work here after this?” another user added.

I couldn’t have said it better myself (which is why I didn’t). It’s a classless, spineless move by Dipoto and Hollander, both upper-management stalwarts who think they are above responsibility or retribution.

Unfortunately for them, the media are starting to take notice, albeit subtly.

Mariners Management Draws Fire From Media

It’s much more difficult to criticize a general manager or president of a baseball team than it is to criticize the on-field manager. As I’ve previously observed, the on-field manager is the perfect scapegoat by nature. He’s there on TV for the games, addressing the media, and otherwise representing the team in the public eye day in and day out.

But, ultimately, the on-field manager reports to the GM and president. It’s their macro strategy that he is implementing. Furthermore, their roster moves and lineup recommendations they make dictate the tools the on-field manager has to play with.

Finally, and most critically, said on-field manager’s hiring was the GM and president’s responsibility. Thus, his performance is their burden.

The Seattle Times keenly clocked this in their firing coverage, noting, “Mariners president of baseball Jerry Dipoto will now hire his third manager since being hired in September of 2015,”

Now, when Dipoto decided to move on from Scott Servais, Dan Wilson’s predecessor, it was famously because he wanted a player’s coach instead of a tinkerer. He got that, but, in the end, Dipoto and Hollander themselves couldn’t resist tinkering, which contributed to the 2026 team’s downfall (and possibly the Mariners heartbreaking 2025 exit).

What Servais and Wilson have in common, though, is that they are both former Mariners. Hilariously, it appears that this factor will be Dipoto and Hollander’s new focus.

“We will go outside to hire our manager,” Dipoto said in his End of Season comments. “We need fresh thought. We need something new. It could be a shift in programming. It could be a shift in messaging. It could be a shift in language.”

That’s… not the point. Servais and Wilson had philosophical differences as managers, but ill-advised tinkering and a lack of impactful free-agent signings before or during this season is what sunk the Mariners, not that both coaches were former players.

You can watch Dipoto’s remarks here. It’s not confident stuff: