Welcome to Yikesville, USA – what now?

Some thoughts on Scott Servais, Jerry Dipoto and your 2024 Seattle Mariners.

This is my least favorite Mariners season of all time. I can understand why it might not be yours, but it’s definitely mine. This has been miserable.

I don’t care to look for exactly when but there was a night when I thought this was one of the best Mariners teams of all time. Now, their playoff odds are approaching single digits and it isn’t even September yet.

The old adage holds: there is no floor.

It’s reached the point now though, a three-city one-win road trip culminating with an 8-4 conking at the hands of the Dodgers, where it brushes up against humorous.

We’ve been plummeting into a damp and inky-black abyss for a full two minutes now. How are we still falling? This is absurd. Are we dead? We gotta be dead. This is death? Hysterical.

Instead of hitting you with another feeeeelingz post, we’ll be a little less abstract and talk about the flavor of the week/day/hour, the job status of Jerry Dipoto and Scott Servais.

I’m going to maintain my position of not saying “I think this should happen” or “I think that should happen” about two good dudes who I enjoyed having as colleagues.

But I’ve been thinking a lot about 2015 lately, mostly because if this season isn’t my all-time least favorite, then it’d be that one. It’s also the one Jerry Dipoto was hired during; if you’ll recall, the Mariners fired Jack Zduriencik nine years ago next week and had Jerry in as GM while the doomed 2015 M’s still had a homestand to play.

I remember going to a season ticket holder Q&A that week. In the weeks ahead, I wrote posts for Lookout Landing about Jerry and about Scott and even Andy McKay.

And now—now we’re here.

Something feels…up. For those who missed it, besides a suspiciously short and different postgame show, there was this quote—among a few others—from Dipoto in a national story from Ken Rosenthal this morning, when asked about his skipper and whether there’d be a move:

“It definitely has to be a consideration for us, to talk through everything. That’s just reality,” Dipoto said. “We’ve underperformed and there is some discussion for each of us to have about the part we have played in coming up as short as we have to this point…”

Servais offered an abbreviated response in is pregame media availability.

I have a habit of looking for something where there may be nothing but—and this may be bias/respect for a fellow University of Montana School of Journalism grad—when Divish writes about something, it’s a thing.

Whole situation stinks, though.

I know it comes with the gig but right now, as I write this after midnight in a basement in Butte, America, there is a real-life dude—a good dude and good manager—on a plane back to Seattle who’s having what’s probably one of the worst days of his life.

And there are a lot of very real people—dads, moms, kids—who are wondering what the next two or three years of their lives are gonna look like because the Mariners lineup hits worse than prime Brendan Ryan.

There are also very real people who are actively working, maybe right now, on how this all shakes out. Setting aside what, if anything, is about to go down—I’m fascinated first by how that determination is made in the first place.

Like, is there a group chat? Email? Is there a broad conversation with the full ownership group…and then a smaller one for the heavy-hitters? Or do get a quick meeting link for a video call on Microsoft Teams? What other perspectives do the owners trust, inside and outside the organization?

The focus right now, obviously, is on Scott Servais. I am not saying it should be. I’d probably say it shouldn’t be, but that’s beside the point.

To make a decision on the future of Scott Servais, you have to make a decision—some kind of decision—on the future of Jerry Dipoto.

Is Jerry for-sure here next year? Okay well maybe they play out the string, maybe the owners feel a move on a manager looks and is desperate. Or maybe they (and Jerry) feel the opposite.

Is Jerry’s fate for 2025 up in the air? If so…is he more likely chuck a Hail Mary, hoping the kick in the pants from a managerial firing ignites the ball club just as the Astros hit a tough stretch? I could see it.

Or…do you take the plunge on both now and get going with a major overhaul?

Again, I’m not going to say here what they should do, but lay out my thoughts here on what they might do. Importantly, I don’t have any insider information. (Though, folks are welcome to change that if you feel so obliged. Reach me wherever.)

Going back, this predicament feels so much like 2015. The big difference is they have a whisper of a prayer of a chance to save their season. They’re probably cooked. But…? No.

In the broader context of their window of contention, they are…solid? I wouldn’t say “good not great” when they’re only .500 now, but they’re in a spot where leadership can talk themselves into being about where they were, competitively, after 2021, 2022 and 2023.

And 2015. They’re younger now than they were then, which helps—but don’t let that delude you on how fast a window can close. They have their vaunted starting pitching, but there’s a reason why what they have is so rare.

I can see them thinking there’s a needle to thread, that you need to capitalize on this window and you need some continuity to do so. Plus, they gave Jack Z three managers. Plus they already have to hire another President.

It’d be the easy way out to stick with Jerry for at least one more year and, whether he was game or not, plug in a manager with a track record and perhaps even a championship pedigree.

In 2015, they moved quickly to hire Dipoto in similar fashion. When Zduriencik was fired, it was an open secret the Mariners had their eye on Jerry. It’s fair to say “proven track record” would be a bit generous in describing his GM experience prior to joining the Mariners but it was experience all the same. And the Mariners valued that.

Could they do the same with the manager position?

I don’t know if they move on from Servais later today or in October but barring a miracle surge, it’s tough to envision him returning in 2025. Again, whole situation sucks.

If it is today or sometime soon, interim candidates would include all of Kristopher Negrón, Manny Acta, Carson Vitale and Andy McKay.

If Dipoto is still here and the Mariners don’t have the “He’s gotta hire his own guy.” requirement of almost any new head of baseball ops, is there a big-time Dude they could lure here to, bear with me, manage a contender?

First things first, get any talk of Joe Maddon out of here. That Angels tenure was a disaster. But there are guys who have gotten the job done across multiple stops, one even in the division.

It’s just…doesn’t retirement sound awesome? God it sounds awesome.

Maybe managing a contending ball club sounds even better to a baseball lifer like Terry Francona, should his health allow it.

Or, if he has one more run left in his 75-year-old soul, perhaps the manager of the 2023 World Series Champions wants a crack at another ring before his likely trip to Cooperstown?

This note from venerable ballwriter emeritus Larry Stone should catch everyone’s attention:

I’m not saying it will happen, I’m not saying it should happen—but it could.

These are the things I’m thinking about, so I figured I’d share them with y’all, since that’s what this whole thing is for.

As I often have, I liked Scott’s perspective, that today’s off day may be a good time for us all to “get away from baseball.”

We’ll see if the Mariners will let us.