Former Mariners manager Lou Piniella praises Dan Wilson, the team’s new skipper

NEW YORK – Lou Piniella was back in a New York Yankees uniform Saturday, wearing pinstripes and the number 14 for Old-Timers’ Day at Yankee Stadium. Piniella, who turns 81 next week, earned his fame in the Bronx as a two-time World Series champion but spent much of his managing career in a feisty rivalry with the Yankees.

That was in Seattle, of course, where Piniella led the Mariners for 10 seasons, including the first four playoff appearances in franchise history. His starting catcher for all of those teams was Dan Wilson, who became a successor of Piniella’s when the Mariners named him manager last Thursday.

It’s been a trying summer for the Mariners, who lost a 10-game lead in the AL West and fell to .500 last Wednesday, leading to the firing of longtime manager Scott Servais. But entering Monday’s game against Tampa Bay, they’ve won two of three under Wilson, and Piniella is thrilled with the choice.

“I love it,” Piniella said. “I think he’ll be good. He’s well-liked, he’s going to be respected, and I think he’s got a good head for it.”

Wilson was Cincinnati‘s first-round pick in 1990, the year Piniella led the Reds to their last World Series title. After the 1993 season, Piniella’s first in Seattle, the Mariners traded Bret Boone and Erik Hanson to Cincinnati for Bobby Ayala and Wilson, giving the team a foundational piece for the most successful run in franchise history.

Piniella and Wilson are among the 11 people in the Mariners’ team Hall of Fame. Piniella said he has long advocated that the organization give prominent roles to players from the glory years.

“I told the Mariner organization eight years ago, ‘If I owned the team and I had anything to do with it, Danny Wilson would be my manager,” he said. “And Edgar Martinez would be my hitting coach, and Jay Buhner would be my bench coach or my third base coach.”

Now he has his wish – two-thirds of it, anyway. Besides Wilson, the Mariners named Martinez as hitting coach, a role he filled from mid-2015 through 2018. Wilson, Martinez and Buhner were the only Mariners to play for all of Piniella’s postseason teams, in 1995, 1997, 2000 and 2001.

Martinez, who will serve as hitting coach through the end of this season, is the Mariners’ third primary hitting instructor this season, after Brant Brown, who was fired on May 31, and Jarret DeHart, who was let go with Servais. Seattle hitters lead the majors in strikeouts with 1,322 and have the majors’ lowest batting average at .216.

“There is no one I trust more with hitters than Edgar,” Wilson told reporters in Seattle on Friday. “The thing about Edgar that I think a lot of people don’t understand is that he was a tremendous hitter. He just had tremendous talent. But that’s not all he had. He studies hitting. He’s a student of hitting, and he can break it down better than anybody.”

Piniella, who had a famously volcanic temper, was surely a different style of manager than the more cerebral Wilson will be. But he said that Wilson – who spent 12 seasons with Seattle and ranks sixth on the franchise list in games played – was essential to the chemistry of Piniella’s teams.

“He’s a smart guy, and in his way, he was one of the leaders of the team,” Piniella said. “Real quiet leader, but a leader. Good guy.”

Alex Rodriguez, who reached the majors under Piniella in 1994 and played for Seattle through 2000, took a moment to salute Piniella when he spoke at the Old-Timers’ Day ceremonies. Rodriguez said Piniella belongs in the Hall of Fame, an honor that eluded him by one vote in the era committee election in December.

“I love him,” Rodriguez said. “There should be more Lou Piniellas.”

There’s only one Piniella, of course, and while Servais won 681 games in the Mariners’ dugout, he couldn’t catch Piniella, who has a record 840 managerial wins for the franchise. Even the Yankee Stadium organist – almost surely unknowingly – referenced Piniella’s Mariners history with the song that accompanied his introduction Saturday.

It was “Louie Louie,” a staple of the seventh-inning stretch at Mariners home games through 2021. The team retired the song in 2022, the year the franchise snapped a 21-year postseason drought that dated to Piniella’s 116-win team in 2001.

But the Mariners have not built on their 2022 success, and now a prominent alumnus has his chance to try. The franchise’s greatest manager approves.

“Bring back the old Mariners,” Piniella said. “That’s what you need. These people won there. The fans love them. I think it’s a great choice.”