Dan Wilson is the Mariners man “moving forward”

SEATTLE — The Mariners have their fall guy for their stunning fall.

The team that has blown a 10-game division lead and is now five games out of the American League West lead with 34 games remaining in the regular season fired manager Scott Servais. The Mariners made it official in an announcement Thursday afternoon.

The Mariners and president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto are hiring former M’s catcher Dan Wilson as their full-time manager — not just for the rest of this season but “moving forward,” Dipoto said.

He no managerial experience, other than a few days as a minor-league fill-in.

Asked on a Zoom call with reporters online Thursday afternoon if Wilson was the interim or the franchise’s 18th full-time manager moving forward, Dipoto said: “He is the manager moving forward.

“We’ve known Dan. For almost his entire professional career he has been a part of the Mariners family. We have known him here, this group, for nine years. And he embodies the traits that I think will go a long toward paving the road, the next stage in our journey.

“I also believe that walking in the door as an interim anything — and I’ve done that in life — walking in the door as an interim anything doesn’t really allow you to lay the appropriate groundwork or get the trust and the build-in that’s required to be a good leader in the major-league space.

“So, I trust those things in Dan. We can’t know a person better than Dan Wilson, and I believe in both his baseball and who he is as a person. And I think that will resonate very well with our players.

Dipoto said he “spoke with Dan in the last three or four days in the process of making this decision.”

“A wonderful human being, who has a natural way of communicating,” Dipoto said of Wilson. “He has relationships with a lot of the players and staff who (he will lead beginning Friday).”

The Mariners also fired hitting coach Jarret DeHart. Seattle is last in the major leagues in batting average and first in strikeouts.

“Clearly we need a change in the way we look at offense,” Dipoto said.

The Mariners are 64-64, five games behind the first-place Houston Astros in the division. They open a six-game homestand on Friday with three against San Francisco followed by a three-game series against Tampa Bay.

“We believe that we need a new voice in the clubhouse,” Dipoto said in a team statement. “Dan knows our team and has been a key member of our organization working with players at every level over the past 11 years. He is well respected within and outside of our clubhouse and we are confident he will do a great job in leading our group over the final six weeks of the season and moving forward.

“I do want to thank Scott for all his efforts here in Seattle over the past nine seasons,” Dipoto said. “He has poured his passion into the team and our community and I know I speak for the entire Mariners organization in thanking him for his hard work.”

Dipoto said on the Zoom call with reporters he was “not particularly thrilled” with how Servais and DeHart learned they were fired Thursday morning.

“The worst part of it was the fact that Scott and J.D. found out about this over the crawl of a news channel,” Dipoto said. “It crushes me, and I know it hurt them a great deal.”

On June 19, Servais’ Mariners were 13 games over .500 with a 10-game lead over Houston atop the American League West. They seemed well on their way to their first division title since the 2001 Mariners, who won a league-record 116 games.

Then, a summer from Hades.

Mariners’ rapid fall from first

In year nine with Servais as their manager they were 20-33 since that apex day of their season in mid-June. The only major-league team worse since then: the 30-97 Chicago White Sox, who are on their way to the worst season in a generation of MLB play.

The Mariners have the league’s best starting pitching rotation, a World Series-quality staff that leads the majors in ERA. Yet they have the worst batting lineup and worst offensive statistics in the game. That’s how they’ve blown series to lowly Detroit, Pittsburgh and the Los Angeles Angels while sinking back to .500, 64-64. That dropped to that mark Wednesday after finishing getting swept in three games by the Dodgers in Los Angeles.

So ended a disastrous, 1-8 Mariners road trip.

Team chairman John Stanton and Dipoto are firing Servais on a team off day. Seattle hosts San Francisco in a three-game series at T-Mobile Park that began Friday night.

It’s sing-along Fireworks Night.

The Mariners are the only major-league team to not play in a World Series.

Servais, 57, ends his nine-year run as Dipoto’s and Stanton’s manager of the Mariners with a 680-642 career record. He managed Seattle to its only postseason appearance in the last 23 years at the end of the 2022 season. As a wild card in the American League, those Mariners lost in three straight games to Houston to exit the postseason in the first round.

Servais’ Mariners missed the playoffs by one game last season. They were in contention for the postseason in 2021 until the final day of the regular season.

Dan Wilson ‘eager to get to work’

Wilson, 55, played 12 of his 14 seasons in the major league for the Mariners. He retired following the 2005 season. In May 2022, during a COVID minor-league season, Wilson was a fill-in manager for Seattle’s Triple-A team, the Tacoma Rainiers.

“I appreciate the faith that Jerry, Justin and the Mariners organization have placed in me, and I’m eager to get to work,” Wilson said in the team release. “I believe this team is capable of playing great baseball this season and look forward to the opportunity to work with this group of players and coaches.”

The team release specified the 2024 season was Wilson’s 11th working in an on-field capacity in the Mariners’ baseball operations group, his seventh as a special assistant for player development. Wilson has worked in spring trainings with Mariners catchers, and as a roving instructor through the organization’s minor leagues.

Multiple reports following the news on Servais said Hall-of-Famer Edgar Martinez will be joining his friend Wilson’s coaching staff as DeHart’s replacement as hitting coach for the remainder of this Mariners season. Martinez, Seattle’s legendary designated hitter for the 1990s into 2000s teams, including the one that made the Mariners’ first playoff series in 1995, was the team’s hitting coach from 2015-18. He has been an adviser to the M’s since the last several seasons.

Dipoto said Wilson was to address who is replacing DeHart as well as other coaching issues Friday before his first game as Mariners manager.