Commentary: Scott Servais isn’t fully to blame for Mariners’ collapse but something had to be done

SEATTLE – Scott Servais sat in front of a microphone and forecast the future. His Mariners had just expended everything in a 6-hour, 22-minute marathon, allowing 18 innings and 262 pitches to pass without scoring a run. In a 1-0 loss to the rival Houston Astros in Game 3 of the 2022 American League Division Series, 47,690 teal towels waved inside T-Mobile Park for the first time in more than two decades.

The season was over. The drought was dead.

Better days were ahead.

“We were starved to get playoff baseball here. We got it here,” said Servais, the longtime catcher who had just concluded his seventh season as manager in Seattle. “Now we need to take the next step to improve our club in any way we can. We’re still behind the Astros. They won the division, and I’ll keep saying it: The World Series is going to go through Houston, and you have to beat them. So we have to get better in certain areas, and certainly we will address that this offseason.

“But from the fan base to ownership to front office to the players, coaches, manager, everybody, we want to get back here. We will be back here. There’s no question in my mind.”

Now, imagine telling one of the 47,690 fans inside T-Mobile Park on Oct. 15, 2022, about the nearly two seasons since – the parade of underperforming veterans disguised as key additions, the 54% comment that encapsulated a fan base’s frustrations, the historic string of strikeouts, the squandered quality starts, the dreaded plea for “payroll flexibility,” the 10-game lead that disintegrated in 24 games, the gallons of goodwill unceremoniously spilled into Puget Sound.

The firing of Servais on Thursday.

If you told them that story, they’d never believe it.

Or, sadly, they actually might. It’s so very Mariners.

This is a franchise, after all, that has never sniffed a World Series; that lugged the longest postseason drought in North American sports on its blistered back; that asks for loyalty and money and patience and time and pays with promises.

As for Servais? The 57-year-old former Mariners manager – let that fact sink in – is not wholly responsible for the 677 days since he failed to forecast the future. He isn’t to blame for the Mariners’ MLB-most 1,308 strikeouts this season, nor the .216 team batting average that trails even the 31-97 White Sox, somehow burrowing below the basement. He didn’t sign Mitch Garver, Luis Urias, Kolten Wong, AJ Pollock, Tommy La Stella, etc., in the past two offseasons, largely reinforcement retirees. He didn’t blow a hole in his own boat before casting off on a six-month cruise.

But it’s always the manager who’s first to walk the plank.

Consider something else Servais said on Oct. 15, 2022:

“We’ve started something we believe very strongly in. We’ve got a great core of young players. We’ve got an ownership group that’s committed to bringing playoff baseball back here year in and year out, to ultimately win a World Series.”

That ownership group and front office largely failed Servais.

And yet, facts are facts.

Fact is, the Mariners are 12-18 in the second half. They’re 5-17 in their past 22 games against losing teams, excluding the astronomically awful White Sox. They just wrapped a 1-8 road trip, which started with a tie for first in the AL West and ended with a five-game deficit. They’re a .500 club with an exceptional starting staff, an incompetent offense and a bleeding bullpen.

And, same as 677 days ago, they’re behind the hated Astros. Even further than before.

“With where we were in the middle of June and where we (are) today, it’s hard to believe, actually, how quickly it all dissolved for us and the way our team has played,” Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto said in a Zoom call with media members Thursday.

Fact is, MLB managers are paid handsomely to produce – to squeeze every ounce of talent and potential and sustainable success out of their assembled squad. To provide an environment in which every player is best positioned to excel. It’s impossible to conclude, as the Mariners tumble toward mediocrity, that Servais effectively maximized his available resources.

Fact is, this was supposed to be the year to win a weakened AL West, with the surprisingly mortal Astros (68-58) and Rangers (59-69) allowing ample opportunities to dominate the division.

Fact is, something had to be done.

It started Thursday with the dismissal of Servais and hire of former Mariners catcher Dan Wilson, Seattle’s desperation move to save a sinking season. If the Mariners can’t miraculously resurrect their playoff hopes in the final 34 games, Dipoto and general manager Justin Hollander should be the next to go.

“The way our team has played recently … it’s gone beyond just struggling to play offense,” Dipoto said. “I think we just need to get back to believing in who we are as players and who we are as an organization. I don’t want to put that type of pressure on Scott (Servais).

“I’ve said this publicly: Each of us has played our part in the struggles we’ve had as a team this year. Our team is telling us we need to do something differently, and this is that.”

Ultimately, it’s unlikely that inserting a different voice will make a dramatic difference. But given the past few months (and years), it’s a necessary move for a franchise actively wasting its winning window.

Servais, too, deserves credit for all the good he did – for a string of consistently competitive baseball this franchise has rarely seen, for providing consummate professionalism for nearly nine seasons in Seattle. But in a results business, the 18th inning just ended.

Fact is, that 6-hour, 22-minute marathon – in which a pristine pitching performance was foiled by a frail offense – served as a teaser for the nearly two seasons since.

So much for better days.