Scott Servais fired as Mariners manager (report)

SEATTLE — On the heels of a brutal road trip that punctuated their summer-long spiral, the Mariners are expected to make a leadership change on Thursday’s off-day by parting ways with manager Scott Servais, according to a report by The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal. The team has not confirmed the news.

Former Mariners catcher Dan Wilson will take over the role on an interim basis once the announcement is official, according to Rosenthal. Wilson does not have a role on the team’s coaching staff but has served as a special assignment coordinator for the Mariners in Spring Training.

Thursday’s news suggests that anything could be on the table for the long-term scope of the franchise’s leadership, opening the possibility there could be more personnel changes, spanning the rest of the coaching staff and potentially the front office.

Servais departs at a time where Seattle still remains in the postseason race but with fleeting chances — a far cry from where the club stood entering play on June 19, with a 10-game lead atop the American League West. Since then, the Mariners have gone 20-32 for a .385 winning percentage that is MLB’s lowest other than the White Sox, who are on pace for one of the worst seasons in history.

Seattle’s downturn has been steady over the past two months, but it took a steeper nosedive after a 1-7 road trip that featured among the club’s most stinging losses of the season.

With it, the Mariners have fallen to five games behind the Astros in the division race, which is likely their only realistic path to the playoffs, as they are 7 1/2 games back of the final AL Wild Card spot, with the Red Sox and Rays in between.

A fall of such significance — and in the final stretch of a season with expectations — casts a cloud of uncertainty on where the organization goes from here.

The players repeatedly have suggested that they’ve underachieved. The coaching staff, especially on the hitting side, has been burdened with significant blame. The front office, under president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto and general manager Justin Hollander, faces the reality that the roster’s shortcomings fall within their scouting and construction.

The Mariners have an all-world rotation that features three All-Stars (Luis Castillo, Logan Gilbert and George Kirby) and two blossoming youngsters (Bryce Miller and Bryan Woo). But that group has been handcuffed by an offense that’s been so inconsistent — a drastic disparity that was repeatedly exposed on the recent road trip.

Mathematics and their tumbling trends don’t play in the Mariners’ favor, but they do still have 34 games remaining. And now, the organization’s brain trust will instead rely on a new voice to pull them out of this slide — because if they ultimately don’t reach October, Servais could be just the first casualty ahead of what will be a long and defining offseason.

In his ninth season with Seattle, Servais was MLB’s second-longest-tenured manager with the same team, along with the Dodgers’ Dave Roberts and behind only the Rays’ Kevin Cash, who began with Tampa Bay one year earlier.

Servais’ time here ends after compiling a 680-642 record, making him the second-longest-tenured and second-winningest manager in team history, behind only Lou Piniella in each category. Servais’ greatest achievement in Seattle is leading the club to the 2022 postseason, which ended an agonizing drought that spanned more than two decades.

Servais was hired by Dipoto one month after Dipoto was brought on, in October 2015, and has 35 years of experience in pro baseball. He played in the Majors for 11 seasons then transitioned to front-office roles after his final season in 2001. He was a roving catcher then a scout and worked all the way up to being a director of player development for the Rangers and assistant GM for the Angels.

The Mariners’ gig was his first as a manager at any level, fulfilling a lifelong dream that he expressed to Dipoto when they were towards the end of their playing careers in the Rockies’ organization in 2000.