Mariners fire Scott Servais | Redmond Reporter

Yogi Berra once said, “It’s not over until it’s over.”

For the 2024 Seattle Mariners, however, it seems just as over without officially ending.

It was good of them to keep the fans somewhat interested until the football is in, dare I say: in full swing.

The M’s are not mathematically removed. There’s still time for a magical run in 1995. Hitters could start hitting and relievers could help themselves more effectively.

But, they just look like toast, don’t they?

I’m not a big “fire the coach” guy. Most organizations that turn and burn coaches over and over again never seem to warm up.

But, it was time to fire Scott Servais. Jerry Dipoto, the team’s vice president of baseball operations, made the move Thursday morning, according to multiple reports. Dan Wilson, a Mariner catcher from 1994-2006, will manage the team for the rest of the season.

Will it help?

Probably not.

There’s no other move to make at this point, though, to breathe life into a largely dead offense and take advantage of the best starting rotation in franchise history.

Seattle ranks in the bottom five in most offensive categories, including last in MLB with a .216 batting average. The Mariners lead the team in one category – strikeouts. M’s hitters are averaging over 10 strikeouts per game.

Meanwhile, the pitching staff leads the league in ERA and strikeouts. If the offense could find a way to be just meh instead of a disaster, this team could contend for a World Series title.

Servais probably wasn’t entirely to blame for one of the great collapses in modern baseball history — the Mariners were 10 games up in the American League West on June 18. 8 road trip –puts them five games behind Houston in the division and 7.5 back in the wild-card race after Wednesday’s games.

It’s been nine years, though, and sometimes people stop buying what you’re selling after a while. Dan Wilson will provide a different voice, but time will tell if that is any help to an offense that is historically poor this year.

Can’t the M’s start winning?

A five-game deficit with 34 games remaining seems insurmountable in most cases. But for this team? It just doesn’t feel like it.

There is a lot of blame.

The ownership group seems to put profit above pride. Dipoto has proven to be good at building the minor league system and evaluating pitching, but his offensive moves at the major league level have often failed. The players themselves are responsible.

Some blame the pitch, but that’s the one thing that can’t be fired or changed anytime soon. The organization must find a way to work with the bullpen, the seabed and everything else that has contributed to one of the worst offenses in baseball.

At this point in the season, there are no better players to be found. The stadium and the owners are not going anywhere. Dipoto’s dismissal accomplishes nothing for the 2024 season.

The only odds that this year’s team would finally reach the franchise’s first World Series in 48 seasons were:

– At least a few players remember how to hit baseballs.

– A new voice in the clubhouse is shaking things up and, well, it’s making a few players remember how to hit.

Big move for Dipoto

Dipoto and Servais were seen as somewhat of a package. Both began their tenure with the Mariners in 2015 (for the 2016 season) and both signed extensions in the fall of 2021 for an amount of time that was never made public. If the M’s fail to make the postseason for the eighth time in nine seasons under Dipoto, it’s possible that the John Stanton-led ownership group will clean house this offseason.

If Wilson, a Mariners staple as the starting catcher in four of the franchise’s five playoff berths, leads Seattle into the postseason, that likely saves Dipoto’s job.

Is 2024 too late to give up?

Is it worth trying one last big hack with what feels like an 0-2 count – firing Servais?

Since taking a 10-game lead, the Mariners are 20-33 overall and have lost 14 of 18 series. The change is unlikely to make things worse.

Dipoto chose Wilson over M’s third base coach Manny Acta, who previously managed Washington and Cleveland — albeit with a career .418 hitting percentage. First base coach Kristopher Negron, who led AAA Tacoma to a division title in 2021, would also have been a viable candidate.

Given how late in the season it is and facing a potential buyout for Servais’ contract, I thought Stanton and Dipoto would shoulder their bats instead of making a managerial change.

Apparently they decided there was a chance to save the season. We will see.

The Mariners kept it interesting until August, but football beckons. It seems unlikely that the attention of area sports fans will be shared by the Mariners this fall.