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.

Wins across the National League and American League aren’t distributed equally. Looking at both current wins and our projected expected wins, the NL has more teams at the extreme ends of the wins spectrum, while the AL is more tightly grouped. The shape of the win distribution is useful because it can create a picture of the league. The AL has 20 more interleague wins than the NL due to the 140-120 AL-NL interleague record, so the AL’s distribution is shifted slightly higher than the NL’s. But the NL’s distribution is more spread out with more teams having either really good records or really poor records. Interestingly enough, one division, the National League Central, has the top three teams, Cardinals, Pirates and Cubs, in its league.

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“Was it Karl Marx,” one might ask drunkenly at a party, “or Baltimore Orioles first baseman Chris Davis who memorably declared that ‘The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people’?”

The answer, technically: Karl Marx, in his text Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.

The answer, metaphorically: Chris Davis, actually, by means of a foul-ball protest against Sweet Baby Ray’s Barbecue Sauce in the first inning of tonight’s game versus Kansas City.

If you frequent these internet pages, you may have seen the announcement last month that we are hosting a Meetup tonight at Mead Hall in Cambridge in advance of this weekend’s Saber Seminar. In case you didn’t, I’m reminding you again so that you’re all out of excuses. Here’s the pertinent paragraph:

We’ll be getting started right at 7 pm, at Mead Hall’s upstairs bar, just in time to watch the first pitch of the Royals v. Red Sox tilt at Fenway Park. Generally, there are all sorts of writers from the FanGraphs family of blogs at the Meetup, and this year should be no different. Dave Cameron, David Laurila, Jeff Zimmerman, Chris Mitchell, Bryan Cole, Peter Bonney and myself will be on the premises for sure, as will Saber Seminar co-organizer Chuck Korb.

There will be plenty of your other favorite baseball analysts there as well. Oh, and beer. Did I mention beer? So much beer. (Reminder: You’re supposed to be 21 to attend.) So come join us tonight, it’s going to be a marvelous time!

The video here depicts the last pitch of Wednesday night’s game between Kansas City and Cincinnati, a contest won 4-3 by the Royals. What else the video depicts is a cutter thrown by Wade Davis at 96 mph — for a swinging strike to one of the major leagues’ most talented hitters. Though the author failed to seek Votto’s opinion of the pitch, the following image might provide some insight:

This is the expression a man makes whilst another man relates an anecdote about the time he suffered some manner of testicular injury. It’s also the expression Joey Votto makes, apparently, when he’s just witnessed a pitch featuring an unusual blend of velocity and movement.

The curious reader — and even the dumb author — are both compelled to ask in such an instance: is Davis’s the fastest sort of cutter? And also: if Davis’s isn’t the fastest, then whose is?

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After 13 productive years in a Phillies uniform, Chase Utley is headed to Los Angeles, where he’ll help solidify the Dodgers’ second-base situation. In exchange for Utley’s services, the Dodgers sent a couple of minor leaguers to the Phillies: utility player Darnell Sweeney and right-handed pitcher John Richy. Here’s my statistical breakdown of these two prospects.

Darnell Sweeney, 2.3 WAR

Sweeney, 24, has spent the 2015 season at a Triple-A Oklahoma City, where he’s hit .271/.332/.409 in 116 games. He also runs very well, as evidenced by his 32 steals this year. Aside from the steals, though, Sweeney has been an average Triple-A hitter across the board. He’s seen action at second base, third base, shortstop, left field and center field in the minor leagues.

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On Tuesday night, the Texas Rangers swung a deal to acquire Will Venable from the San Diego Padres. In return for Venable, the Rangers sent catcher/outfielder Marcus Greene to San Diego, along with a player to be named later. Here’s what my fancy computer math has to say about Greene and his future outlook.

Greene has played exclusively in Low-A Hickory this season, where he logged 25 games before he underwent Tommy John Surgery in June. The 20-year-old hit a strong .218/.365/.500, thanks to an impressive combination of power (.282 ISO) and walks (17% walk rate). On the downside, he struck out in a concerning 24% of his trips to the plate in Hickory. This performance yielded a KATOH forecast of 1.9 WAR through age 28, with a 54% chance of cracking the majors. Due to Greene’s increased strikeout rate, this is a sizable step down from the 4.7 WAR forecast yielded by his 2014 numbers, which primarily took place in the Northwest League.

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On August 4, the Detroit Tigers “released Dave Dombrowski from his contract,” as owner Mike Ilitch decided to promote assistant general manager Al Avila to take the team in a somewhat different direction. While Avila worked closely with Dombrowski, he did make it clear that he intended to modernize the team’s front office a bit more, promoting analyst Sam Menzin to a more prominent role and noting that they’d be expanding the department under him. Dombrowski had a successful run as the Tigers GM, but is one of the more traditional executives still running teams in this age of increasing information.

And now, two weeks later, Dombrowski has landed a new position, taking the title of president of baseball operations with the Boston Red Sox. As part of the transition, GM Ben Cherington will be leaving the organization, and Bob Nightengale reports that former Braves GM Frank Wren is the most likely candidate to replace Cherington. Wren was ousted in Atlanta in part because the team had fallen behind the curve analytically, so a Dombrowski-Wren combination would make for one of the more old-school front office tandems in baseball.

Given that the Red Sox have been among the most aggressive teams in terms of implementing analytics and using data to drive their decision making, this looks like a pretty monumental shift in organizational philosophy. Given that nearly every move Cherington and his staff made last winter has turned out as poorly as possible, it’s not a huge shock that he’s taking the fall for the team’s second consecutive losing season. But it is a bit surprising to see the team apparently change course so aggressively. Dombrowski certainly has a strong track record of building contenders, but it looks like the Red Sox may be pivoting away from data and more towards scouting in response to their recent failures.

One thing’s for sure: This weekend’s Saber Seminar — held in Boston, and with a schedule that was to include a large number of Red Sox front office officials, Cherington included — just got way more interesting.

Position: Baseball Info Solutions, Research & Development Associate

Location: ~ Allentown, Pa.

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The Saber Seminar — my favorite baseball conference of the year — takes place in Boston next weekend. Ticket sales end Monday, so this is your last chance to get in on the action. If you’re on the fence about attending, perhaps this recently released schedule will help:

Saturday:

Presentations by FG/BP writers:

Jonah Pemstein, Bill Petti, Jeff Zimmerman, Bryan Cole, Harry Pavlidis, Rob Arthur, Jonathan Judge, and Dan Brooks.

Four separate Q&As with Red Sox staff:

Ben Cherington, John Farrell, Tom Tippett, Jared Porter

Other neat stuff!

Sunday:

Presentations by cool people:

Wendy Thurm, Alan Nathan, and a series of abstracts that are always really interesting.

Q&As with members of the Royals front office, plus a player development panel with Red Sox personnel.

Media panel with some great writers and myself.

And if you stick around to the bitter end, I take questions and make jokes.

Seriously, it’s a packed schedule, and you won’t regret attending. A ticket is just $140, or $65 if you’re a student, and every dime received goes to The Jimmy Fund, so you’re not only getting a deal, you’re getting a deal and supporting cancer research at the same time.

If you’re in Boston next weekend, this is a no-brainer. If you’re anywhere near Boston, you should strongly consider making the trip in. If you’re nowhere near Boston, it’s probably still worth getting on a plane. If you’re reading FanGraphs, you like baseball, and if you like baseball, you’ll really enjoy this conference. Come hang out with us next weekend.