SEATTLE MARINERS

Former Mariners manager Scott Servais has new gig in MLB

Jan 11, 2025, 6:40 PM | Updated: 7:01 pm

Scott Servais is back in the big leagues just months after his tenure as Seattle Mariners manager came to an end.

And it’s with a team that has an interesting relationship with the M’s.

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The 57-year-old Servais is joining the San Diego Padres as a special assistant in player development, as reported Saturday by The Athletic and confirmed by the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Servais was let go by the Mariners in August, just over a month before the end of what was his ninth season as the team’s manager. He went 680-642 as Seattle’s skipper, finishing with a winning record five times and leading the Mariners in 2022 to their only playoff appearance in the past 23 years. Only Lou Piniella lays claim to a better tenure as manager in Mariners history.

What makes Servais’ new franchise interesting is the fact that the Mariners and Padres share a spring training complex in Peoria, Ariz., and the teams play each other annually as each other’s “natural rival” in interleague play.

Servais is returning to his roots in a sense with his new job, as he worked in player development for the Texas Rangers and Los Angeles Angeles prior to joining the Mariners ahead of the 2016 season.

He was the Rangers’ senior director of player personnel from 2004-10, working in the Texas front office at the same time as current Padres general manager A.J. Preller, farm director Ryley Westman and assistant farm director Mike Daly, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

With the Angels, Servais was assistant general manager under current Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto, who was the Los Angeles GM at the time. Dipoto resigned from the Angels during the 2015 season and took the GM role with the Mariners later that year, and soon after he hired Servais as a first-time manager.

Servais, a Wisconsin native, played 11 MLB seasons from 1991 to 2001 as a catcher with the Houston Astros, Chicago Cubs, San Francisco Giants and Colorado Rockies.

The Mariners replaced Servais last season with another former MLB catcher from the same era and first-time manager, Dan Wilson. Seattle had fallen from a 10-game lead in the AL West in mid-June to a 64-64 record and five games back of a playoff spot at the time of the change. The M’s went 21-13 in the remaining 34 games under Wilson but finished 85-77, which was 3 1/2 games behind Houston for the AL West title and just a game out of making the playoffs in the wild card race.

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