Brock & Salk: Have Seattle Mariners made big shift with manager role?

For the first time in almost a decade, the Seattle Mariners have started spring training with a new manager.

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Former Mariners All-Star catcher Dan Wilson took over late last year for Scott Servais, who was let go less than two months before completing his ninth season as Seattle’s skipper. Now Wilson is entering his first full season at the helm, and while the roster doesn’t look all that different from last season, some things pertaining to the manager position do. At least that’s what Seattle Sports’ Mike Salk said after reading an article published Thursday by Daniel Kramer, the Mariners reporter for MLB.com.

A line in that article about Wilson’s offseason in particular jumped out to Salk.

“(Wilson) spent most weekdays at T-Mobile Park working and/or interacting with the front office to get up to speed on process, function and philosophy, and, when time allowed, he visited with players in their environments away from Seattle,” Kramer wrote.

Salk’s reaction?

“Basically my question was who was doing the talking, who was doing the listening?” Salk asked during Friday’s edition of Brock and Salk. “‘Interacting with the front office to get up to speed on process, function and philosophy.’ Well, whose process, function and philosophy? Because until Dan got here, the process, function and especially philosophy of this organization was about 180 degrees the opposite of what it appeared to be during the final five or six weeks of this last season. So who’s updating whom?”

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The Mariners notably hit better in September 2024 after the team brought in Wilson and interim hitting coach Edgar Martinez, the latter of whom has since been named the team’s senior director of hitting strategy. The Mariners went 16-7 to end the season, and while it wasn’t enough to reach the playoffs (it came on the heels of them dipping a game below .500 on Sept. 3), it’s clear the M’s are now all-in on the offensive philosophies that were implemented at the time by Wilson and Martinez.

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Salk added that he texted with Kramer for an answer to his question about whether it was Wilson or the front office who was getting “up to speed” on the process, function and philosophy for 2025, and the response was to the effect of “probably a little of both.”

“That yeah, Dan’s philosophy needs to be explained to the group because it’s new to this group,” Salk said, “but also probably the other side of that, understanding the analytic approach and how they bring it in and ways they can use it. You know, he’s got to learn some of that because he wasn’t doing it on a day-to-day basis. I find that a little interesting. Not necessarily bad, just interesting, because again, they don’t seem to be doing the same thing (as before).”

Salk’s long-time co-host, Brock Huard, then took the conversation in an interesting direction. If it seems the Mariners are perhaps giving Wilson more input than Servais had, is that a result of the team going with Wilson’s vision or because Servais was so ingrained with the team’s way of doing things under president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto that there wasn’t as much input needed from the manager then?

Here’s how the conversation went from there:

• Huard: “Because (Servais) and Jerry were basically hip to hip for decades, the different spots they had been, and obviously for all the years that he was a manager here, (was there) just a little deeper level of like, ‘This is the way we’re going to do this. We’re going to really do this numbers-driven. We’re really going to do this as a group-think. We’re really gonna work with our analytics team on a nightly basis, so that when we go into a game, here’s the reliever we’re going to, here’s the platoon we’re going to use, here’s the decision we’re going to make if we get into the late innings’? … Is that fair way to characterize it that way?”

• Salk: “(Many in-game decisions) were all thought out ahead of time. I mean, it was all organizational and Scott was the trigger man for it all. He didn’t take orders on a day-to-day basis on the lineup or any of that, but he was the trigger man for what the organization wanted. I don’t get the sense that’s what Dan is doing, unless the organization has completely flipped its ideas of how to run a baseball game.”

• Huard: “Because Dan’s gonna do less platoon, because Dan’s gonna do a little more hit-and-run, because Dan’s gonna play a little more small ball, because Dan’s gonna have a different approach with two strikes?”

• Salk: “That’s how I that’s how I interpret it, don’t you?”

• Huard: “I do going in, but I think that that, again, will be somewhat clarifying through this offseason and those conversations he had. … ‘OK, so you you kind of gave me the reins for the final six weeks here. We kind of did this, we kind of went about it this way with Edgar and all this.’ Now what’s it going to look like for 162 battles?”

• Salk: “But if those six weeks worked so much better than the previous four months, doesn’t he then almost by default kind of have the hammer? Like, ‘OK, this worked. Your thing didn’t work, my thing is working, so we’re gonna do it my way for a little while.’ And that’s not to say that there are warring factions, I don’t mean that at all. Just that Dan seems to be, at least in my view right now, kind of the predominant visionary in the Mariner organization for the direction that they’re going.”

Then again…

Salk wrapped up the conversation stating why he’s ultimately fascinated by the new dynamic.

“I am interested in anything that involves those two sides talking through, as Daniel wrote, process, function and philosophy,” he said. “Yeah, I think that process is probably something new for Dan Wilson. He’s learning what that process is like as a first-time manager. Function, OK. And then philosophy is the one that’s most interesting because it seems like they’re going with his philosophy more so than what has been the philosophy here for the previous decade. So that to me in and of itself is specifically interesting.”

And then, just for fun, here’s somewhat of a reality check Salk threw in about what may end up being the deciding factor for the 2025 Mariners.

“And you know what? None of it may matter. It’s just whether or not Julio (Rodríguez) is good,” Salk quipped. “That might be the only thing that matters at all as you look towards this upcoming season.”

Hear the full Brock and Salk conversation in the first segment of the podcast at this link or in the audio player near the top of this post. Catch Brock and Salk live from 6-10 a.m. weekdays on Seattle Sports.

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