New manager Jason Kanzler has been on Mariners’ radar for a long time

New Seattle Mariners manager Jason Kanzler arrives in town as a bit of mystery, but at a news conference Wednesday at T-Mobile Park to introduce him, it was revealed that he’s someone the Mariners have had their eye on for some time.

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Mariners general manager Justin Hollander said the team first talked to Kanzler as a hitting coach candidate in 2021, which would have been after he served one year as the minor league hitting coordinator for the AL West rival Houston Astros. Kanzler would join the Astros major league coaching staff for their World Series-winning 2022 team, but Hollander said he left quite the impression on Seattle’s front office back then.

“We could not pry him away from the organization that shall not be named, but it was one of the most, if not the most, impressive interviews that I think all of us had ever been a part of,” Hollander said of Seattle’s new 36-year-old skipper. “And when you have someone that’s like your white whale, someone that you’re really excited to get to work with someday, you don’t just end the process and throw their name out the window and never think about them again.”

The Mariners got another shot at their “white whale” over the past month as they underwent a search for their next manager after parting ways with Dan Wilson when the season ended in late September. Kanzler, who has been the Chicago Cubs director of player development since 2024, once again stood out in the process for Seattle, to a point that it was perhaps even surprising to the Mariners brass.

“His name had come up over the years in different contexts. ‘How can we find a way to get to work with Kanz at some point?’ And when we started this process, it was just a name that got added to the pool, really with no expectation that we would lead to this point,” Hollander said. “And to Jason’s credit, I think he left us no choice throughout the process. It was just round after round, conversation after conversation, he dominated the process to the degree that I think we would have been foolish to take all the hard work and throw it out the window and not choose him.”

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