Mariners Fire Jack Zduriencik
The culling of General Managers continues. Today, the Mariners announced that Jack Zduriencik is joining the ranks of Doug Melvin, Dave Dombrowski, and Ben Cherington as executives who lost their jobs because of their team’s 2015 struggles. Coming off an 87 win season and significant off-season expenditures the last few years, the Mariners expected to win this year, and another disappointing season proved too much for Zduriencik to outlast. With five losing seasons in seven years and no playoff berths in either of his two winning years, plus a farm system that looks like one of the worst in the game and a history of mishandling the young talent they did get to the big leagues, the Mariners have decided it’s time for a change in direction.
Zduriencik took over after the 2008 season, bringing now-FanGraphs author Tony Blengino with him from Milwaukee to form a front office that looked like it would attempt to blend scouting and statistical analysis. The first year was a wild success, taking the team from 61 to 85 wins, but it was almost all entirely downhill from there. After the 2010 team flopped, the front office fractured, and the organization pivoted away from valuing defense and began a multi-year obsession with trying to stack the line-up with power hitters. Not surprisingly, that plan never worked particularly well.
The Mariners finally got back to the winning side of things last year, after spending $240 million to lure Robinson Cano away from the Yankees, but down years from Cano, Kyle Seager, and Felix Hernandez this year exposed a group of role players that still weren’t up to contention-level, and the team’s inability to put reasonable backup plans in place for the predictable struggles of guys like Logan Morrison forced the team to deal with replacement level production at a large number of positions.
So now the Mariners will search for a new leader, but like in Boston, it seems more likely that they’ll be looking for someone to turn the ship around quickly rather than lead another rebuild. With Hernandez, Cano, and Nelson Cruz all declining assets, there is likely to still be pressure to try and win with this core before those contracts go south and a rebuild is necessary. Bob Nightengale reported that the team may have interest in White Sox president Kenny Williams, while Ken Rosenthal notes on Twitter that they’ve reached out to former Rockies GM Dan O’Dowd. While the team would likely do better to hire a younger, more forward-thinking GM rather than go with another old-school scout, it seems more likely that the team will hire an experienced executive who will promise to turn this ship around fast.
It’s an organization in an awkward position, not setup well to either win next year or long-term, so the new guy will have their work cut out for them. But the fact that the team is struggling and the farm system is in shambles is why the job is open in the first place.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
Darn, they might actually get someone competent now.
Did you miss this part of the article?
“Bob Nightengale reported that the team may have interest in White Sox president Kenny Williams, while Ken Rosenthal notes on Twitter that they’ve reached out to former Rockies GM Dan O’Dowd.”
FFS. you couldn’t get a more uninspired list of potentials. Why not reach out to Bavasi again, i’m sure he’d love to come home. Christ.
If I’m coming back early, it’s not to clean up Jack Z’s mess lol.
hey guys…Hey Guys…HEY GUYS! I feel like I’m getting ignored here. I’m an experienced GM with a . I’d be perfect for this job.
And let me just save some of you guys the trouble:
#6org!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You’re welcome.
I’m disappointed this wasn’t the first comment.
Is that really Dave commenting there?
It sure sounds like him. Of your identity I am less sure…
Greatest Fangraphs comment ever.
Let no one ever claim that Dave does not have a sense of humor.
Blink once if you agree!
The saddest thing about the Zduriencik regime is what it did to your Mariner fandom, Dave. That’s what I miss the most.
I knew putting the Mariners at #6 would generate a significant amount of backlash and claims of bias. But, in my estimation, when you actually look at their chances of winning in 2010, the group of young talent they can build around going forward, the quality of the decision making in the front office, and their financial resources, this is where they belong. After years of being a joke, the Mariners have made one of the most impressive turnarounds in recent history.
Before man reaches the moon, your mail will be delivered within hours from New York to Australia by guided missiles. We stand on the threshold of rocket mail.
Arthur Summerfield, U.S. Postmaster General, 1959.
RIP #6Org
Heroes get remembered, but legends never die
The clear answer here is JP Ricciardi.
Did Dombrowski really lose his job because of the Tigers’ struggles? Or was it mostly due to his interest in the vacancy in the Red Sox front office?
Dombrowski was tipped for the Jays presidency way before he actually left. I think there was internal tension in Detroit.
He left while the getting was good and the stain of a failing Detroit team landed on him.
The timing of the trade of Price and the firing are hard to ignore. I think the owner was outraged that he was pulling the plug on a season so early. And yet, I think he got great value, two major league ready starting pitchers for two months of Price.
And Dombrowski sure landed on his feet!
Prediction: Jack Z switches places with Royals assistant GM JJ Piccolo
Seattle: where baseball careers go to die. Wonder what terrible choice the organization will make next?
If they’re all terrible choices, then it’s “Where baseball careers go to deservedly die.” If they’re actually good choices that subsequently become infected by whatever loserish miasma drifts in off Puget Sound (or down out of the M’s executive suite), then they’re not terrible choices.
How about DiPoto?
wouldn’t mind that.
I was hoping for another Jeff Luhnow method man, but i’ll take Dipoto.
Just no no no to O’Dowd.
“While the team would likely do better to hire a younger, more forward-thinking GM rather than go with another old-school scout…”
Can you prove this statement?
Empirical evidence suggests as much. It’s not just one person at the top that makes every move, but that one person puts all those other people in place to make those decisions.
There are precious few “old school” GMs these days who have a track record of success. Brian Sabean maybe? Who else? Dayton Moore has a lot to prove, still. The biggest turnarounds in the last 10 years, especially among mid-market teams, have come from franchises that expanded their horizons.
What empirical evidence? Can you post some?
Dave Dombrowski would like a word.
So would Dan Duquette.
DiPoto and Cherington might have something to say about that, too.
It’s not about getting a GM who’s sabermetrically pure. It’s about getting a good GM.
Oh, and Pat Gillick!
And Brian Sabean embraced advanced metrics by the time he started winning world series every even year.
The few old-school GMs who create winning teams are not available. The old-school GMs who are available do not create winning teams. Therefore any old-school GM the Mariners hire will not make them winners.
The only route they have to getting a winning GM is by taking a chance on a younger guy who has no track record, and then getting lucky with pick, and those guys generally are more forward-thinking. However, I wouldn’t count on them getting lucky, precisely because the M’s executives are so bad at evaluating talent. You could give them a short-list of 10 GMs in which nine are destined to craft World Series-winning teams, and they’d pick the one dud. The 2005 Draft is the perfect microcosm of this ability to avoid even lucking their way into a winner.
Go for Epstein’s assistant, whoever that is. I think that is the blue print to follow.
I don’t find the few reasonable talents present to be sufficient evidence that a few vets will turn it around.
The big contracts can be traded before they become absolute albatroses.
Haha, right. Because Jed Hoyer, Josh Byrnes and Ben Cherington have such sterling bodies of work without Theo telling them what to do.
What does Dan O’Dowd have to do to prove he shouldn’t be running a baseball team?
No kidding. I can’t envision how this guy could get an interview, let alone a job running one of the 30 MLB teams.
If he gets hired, there’s proof that the good-ol’-boy system is alive and well in MLB.
He’s the Chris Polian of the MLB.
He’s a safe white guy, who appeals to anti-innovation clubs.
Yeah I am sure his whiteness has tons to do with it…
So someone with a scouting background is “old school”?
And young = new school and “forward thinking”?
Experience = not forward thinking?
When did Brian Kenney start writing for Fangraphs? This need to paint everything in an us vs them, extreme bucketing of skills and attributes has apparently taken hold.
Yep. Laughable assumption for such a “forward thinking” website.
Well said, Hank. Very well said.
Classic Mariners, a day late and a dollar short. If they’d acted earlier they might have had a shot at Dombrowski. (Well, probably not: Dombrowski, like any of the best GMs, probably wouldn’t take the job. Which means they are likely to end up with a muddling re-tread like Williams or O’Dowd. They might get lucky if they grabbed an assistant GM willing to take on this toxic org in exchange for a first shot at the big chair and ended up catching lightning in a bottle, but I wouldn’t count on this executive team even lucking into competence)
Look on the bright side joser. Like Dombrowski, I might soon be given the chance to “pursue other opportunities”
Yeah, if they’re determined for a retread…I mean, “an experienced GM,” they should try to get Gillick to come out of semi-retirement and out to Seattle.
I guess Nintendo’s going to look at Pikachu now? Maybe Mew?
Snivy!
Snorlax is my guess, if they decide to hire a Pokemon-American.
As someone who’s had to deal directly with four different sociopaths in my life, I say a loud and long good riddance to Jack Z. May he never find employment again — in baseball or anywhere else. His kind make the world a much poorer place, leaving a trail of poison and vile slime wherever they tread.
And those are his good points.
Tony? That you?
It’s hard to quantify leadership and character in a General Manager, but those are clearly important qualities. People have to want to work for your organization.
One of Z’s biggest mistakes was one of his early decisions. Bavasi had drafted Josh Fields with the No. 1 pick the previous year, but hadn’t signed him. The pick was generally regarded as a wild overdraft – Bavasi drafting for misguided need (presumed need for bullpen depth and an almost MLB ready “closer”).
It was getting close to the last day to sign picks before Z’s first draft, and Fields still hadn’t signed. The speculation – and hope – was that he wouldn’t sign Fields, giving the Mariners a compensatory pick in the first round, one slot below where Fields had been drafted. Alas and he did sign Fields.
Later at a USS Mariner event at Safeco Field, Scouting Director Tom MacNamara was asked if the Mariners had been scouting Mike Trout (who was in that first draft of Z’s tenure). MacNamara said the Mariners had been very interested in Trout, and had him pegged as a high first-rounder, though they had Ackley on the board as their number one pick. He intimated that if they would have had a second first round pick, they likely would have taken Trout (who would still have been available when the Mariners would have made the compensatory pick).
Fortunately for baseball, the Mariners did not get their mitts on Trout. One shudders to think what they might have done to the poor lad…
I think Trout needed the right development, too. I can’t think of a worse place for a prospect to land than Seattle.
It seems to be a reasonably good place for pitching prospects to land (not up to maybe St Louis or Atlanta in the heyday of their best pitching coaches, maybe, but still pretty good). For a position player prospect, the best thing that can be said about the Mariners is they trade the good ones away before they break them.
For those of you who want to read Dave’s reaction when the M’s hired Jack Z:
http://www.ussmariner.com/2008/10/22/welcome-to-the-zduriencik-era/
For those of who of want to read the ongoing saga of who the M’s should/would hire after Bill Bavasi:
http://www.ussmariner.com/page/2/?s=antonetti&searchbutton=Go!
Dave, it’d be interesting to read what/how the other candidates for the M’s GM position back in 2008 are doing now, as well as who the ideal candidates are now (from your perspective) for not only the M’s GM opening, but the other GM openings.
The thing to remember about the initial reaction to the Zduriencik hiring is that he misrepresented himself as a guy with saber leanings, which we now know was all Tony Blengino ginning up things on his behalf.
Some of his trades were praised by the Sabermetric community (getting Smoak, for example) and some were panned (acquiring a series of slow, power-hitters who couldn’t field), but the thing that was Jack Z’s bane was how bad player development was. The M’s had a bunch of promising prospects, but most didn’t pan out.
That said, I’m not optimistic about who the M’s will hire next, as it sounds like they’re stuck in the Stone Age, though they might have progressed to the Bronze. (Though Bill Bavasi, as nice a guy as he reportedly was, came from an Age before the wheel.)
Meant that to be a reply to Joser, but technology issue. Or user error.