He mutters to himself while rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic
Welcome back to FanPost Friday. I have hemmed and hawed in this space for months now about ways to potentially fix the deeply flawed 2024 Seattle Mariners. In brutally inept, insensitive, and honestly rather despicable fashion, the Mariners took the most desperate and cowardly route and fired Manager Scott Servais, who is the second-most winning manager in franchise history and helped lead the team to ending the 21-year-old playoff drought in 2022.
If you’ve been reading LL for a long time, or are just an analytics-savvy baseball fan, you know that managers have a nearly impossible to quantify impact on the outcomes of games in this modern age. Every team has access to the same in-game information, so being a field manager isn’t the expert tactician job it used to be in the pre-internet, pre-advanced stats age. A modern manager’s main role is to provide the backbone of leadership to a team and be someone who at least most of the players like and get along with. From most accounts, Scott Servais was pretty good at this. He was calm most of the time, until it was time to not be calm. He could be wry and funny in press conferences in the most Midwestern Dad ways. When he said he was proud of his players, you never doubted it for a god damn second.
Let me be clear: this team is fucked. This season is fucked. Dan Wilson, a legendary catcher and all-around nice guy with zero managerial experience, is not going to save them. You know that. We all do. So then, what was the point of cutting Servais loose in late August in a complete bumbling fashion while the team has a .500 record? I feel like there is more to the situation than we may ever know, but the public-facing story as it stands right now is downright wretched.
If you lived through the night of Cal Raleigh’s drought-busting home run and witnessed the pure, sincere emotion that poured out Servais throughout that entire night and celebration, then I don’t think there is any way to doubt that the man had a net positive impact on this team as a leader and therefore deserved a more courteous exit from the team.
There’s also an unintentional yet morally repugnant downstream effect of firing Servais yesterday:
— Baseball Images that Precede Unfortunate Events (@UnfortunateMLB) August 23, 2024
While I’m sure Team Okanogan Animal Rescue and the animals they serve will be fine ultimately, this is just added insult to injury on top of being a terrible PR look. If you are inclined, you can support Team Okanogan Animal Rescue here.
While we may never know the inside story of how the firing went down and much it was discussed with Servais beforehand, the fact that he found out about it via social media and not directly from Dipoto or the team is inexcusable and frankly quite shocking since this front office has been historically tight-lipped on team moves.
Scott Servais learned of his firing this morning from a breaking news alert on social media, a couple hours before he was scheduled to meet with Jerry Dipoto.
— Adam Jude (@A_Jude) August 22, 2024
The man deserved better than that.
Thank you, Scott, for being a beacon of leadership since 2016 and for helping guide this team and its many young players through one of its most successful eras.
Enjoy a couple Spotted Cows and a brat tonight. You’re not to blame for the vast, vast majority of this team’s failings.
Let’s hit the polls?
