We are baseball nuts. Watched 159/162 games LIVE this year. Our team is the Seattle Mariners. Here is our take on the 2023 season – especially after the season end press conference. When you Google the phrase “Seattle Mariners 2023 Season End Press Conference” – I received 733,000 results in 0.57 seconds. WOW!!!! Why?
Hear the reaction from Hugh Millen, Jim Moore and Jason Puckett from KJR 93.3 FM Here:
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This is a LINK to the Seattle Mariners season ending press conference on October 3, 2023 (from Sports Illustrated). The tone deaf, condescending, insulting presser will be a constant in the curriculum of Communications, Journalism, PR, Sports Management, and Marketing programs at universities everywhere. It is concrete lesson on how NOT to communicate with any audience, in any industry, at any time.
Jacki and I are every day listeners to the Seattle sports talk radio shows ( KJR 93.3 FM in Seattle – Mollywhop – Stove etc.). We are baseball nuts who watched 159/162 games this season on television live. Mariners fans since the first game in 1977. We are retired and reside in the highlands of central Mexico. We subscribe to MLB.TV. In regard to the Dipoto disaster, sometimes, in our age of bits and bytes, text messages and voicemails, there are unfortunate limitations to this type of communication vehicles. We have decided to write our thoughts down and share with you to consider. These are heartfelt comments from us. We have given this some thought.
We truly enjoyed your discussion of the Dipoto debacle (Chuck Powell – KJR). We appreciated Chuck’s analysis of “this is what he (Jerry Dipoto) was trying to say.” We agree that Chuck’s analysis was spot on. However, the question Chuck posed; “Is he the guy to Finish The Job?” remains an open question. Here is our point of view that we hope you will consider in response to Chuck’s question, that remains unaddressed…for the moment.
Here is an excerpt from the Chuck & Buck Show on KJR 93.3 FM:
1. If this was a publicly traded company (and I have been a senior executive/SVP in several Fortune 100 companies in my former business career) Dipoto’s employment would have been terminated before he returned to his office. Dipoto MUST BE TERMINATED IMMEDIATELY. Why?
Here is KJR’s Ian Furness’s take on all this:
2. A senior executive with a public facing role in an organization MUST be held to a higher standard. Dipoto has caused IRREPARABLE HARM to the franchise, the game, the current players, prospective players (including potential international acquisitions), the fans – the entire stakeholder community. This is not a situation that can be adequately addressed by apologies, explanations, time, or any similar sort of nuance. This situation is unequivocally not a “snafu” that can be addressed by some PR stunt, or an after the fact explanation or apology. Mariners ownership – that publicly states is an organization that cherishes accountability and integrity must now ACT upon what these standards require: “You’re done. Thanks for assembling a core of players for us.”
3. Dipoto has caused irreparable harm that will endure – at least for a decade. The harm includes the integrity of the franchise, trust from the fan base, confidence in the executive management currently guiding the team, and the MLB universe. He embarrassed and shamed his employer, the fans, the players etc.. Trust, confidence, hope and integrity are fragile. They take years to establish and moments to destroy. Jerry Dipoto destroyed just that…right when the franchise requires just that.
4. We’ve heard Jerry’s mantra now for 8 years. He has had a number of snafus regarding “human relations” in his tenure. The price to pay is termination…immediate termination. You simply cannot allow somebody in your executive team to behave the way he has. “Finish the job?” NO WAY do we trust Jerry (and Justin) to do that. His failures the last 2 years to add essential talent at the trade deadline, are, at his own admission, “my fault.” Well, after his public presser this week, as Chuck said, “there will be a price to pay.” That ‘price’ is well beyond the boundaries of the outrage he has spawned and received from fans, local, national and international media, etc. He MUST be terminated.
5. It’s not just the tradeline miscues. This is the guy who decided we needed Dominic Leone, Flexen, LaStella, Pollock, Wong etc…the list goes on and on. Honestly, he rationalized and “sold” the fan base that his acquisitions were “difference makers” to productively supplement the existing roster. He failed.
6. Imagine how the current players feel about this guy? (It was not swell to begin with). What about prospective talent (in the minors, the draft, free agency, trades and international talent) the franchise desires to pursue in the near term and the future? Imagine what agents are telling their MLB clients today about the Seattle Mariners? Inspiration, motivation and trust have been deeply and irreparably damaged by this guy. You simply cannot “blow this off” and allow those angered by his statements this week to “cool off.” NOPE! There are consequences for the depth and breadth of the damage this executive has rained on our team, the fan base, the region, current and prospective players, the current coaching staff, and the game.
7. Jerry is done in Seattle. The “NO CONFIDENCE” vote is in; He’s out! Terminating Jerry tomorrow will likely include Hollander and Servais – as these guys seem to roll as a package deal. We’re good with that! THIS is the action the Seattle Mariners must now complete. If you desire accountability and integrity as an organization – this is what you MUST DO NOW! Unfortunately (or fortunately) the opportunity has unfolded to take this essential action now.
Well, the Wall Street Journal’s Scott Patterson wrote a book a decade ago entitled, “THE QUANTS – How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It.”
Patterson states his case bluntly: “In other words, there is no single truth in the chaotic world of finance, where panics, manias, and chaotic crowd behavior can overwhelm all expectations of rationality. Models designed on the premise that the market (or baseball – my comment) is predictable and rational are doomed to fail. When hundreds of billions of highly leveraged dollars are riding on those models, catastrophe is looming.” (P. 294). “To quants, unprecedented is perhaps the dirtiest word in the English language. Their models are by necessity backward-looking, based on decades of data about how markets operate in all kinds of conditions. When something is unprecedented, it falls outside the parameters of the models. In other words, the models don’t work anymore.” (Pp. 271-272).
Jerry and Justin and Servais are representative of the Quants that now inhabit professional baseball today. These guys are clearly not qualified to move this franchise to the stated destination they have touted for 8 VERY LONG years.
What Dipoto destroyed in 75 minutes this week (including his pathetic responses to the “softball” questions lobbed by Brock and Salk on KIRO) cannot be restored by him or with him as part of this franchise. He MUST be replaced. NOW.
The “opportunity” is now squarely in front of the ownership group of the Seattle Mariners. John Stanton must also be removed from his current position as the Managing General Partner for the Mariners ownership group – and replaced with somebody who has a spine – versus the coward that Stanton has demonstrated he is. We don’t want an interview with John Stanton. We want him gone – along with the other three knuckleheads.
Dipoto has firmly disqualified himself, and those associated closely with him (Hollander and Servais and Stanton) from handling the helm of the good ship Mariner any longer. He has irreparably disparaged the current crew and their families, along with those cheering the voyage onward. The integrity of the hull is now legitimately questionable after running into this week’s reef. The mutiny he has inspired is not reversible. When sports media in Mexico is laughing at Jerry Dipoto, it’s over. Imagine what they are saying in Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Republica de Dominica, Venezuela, Argentina, Columbia, Japan, Europe – Jerry’s idiocy is ricocheting around the globe.
It’s time to restructure, re-engineer, reorganize and replace the current executive management of the Seattle Mariners. The only way out of this mess is for the admirals to make the decision that Dipoto et al have earned their opportunity to “walk the plank” – so others who are vastly more experienced and astute may guide this ship off the reef these guys have so irretrievably and precariously positioned this franchise on.
SEE ALSO:
Nathan Bishop’s take (DomeandBedlam.com) on this press conference. Nathan is spot on: Here is the LINK:
Bishop is frank, honest and to the point when he writes:
I have never been more personally insulted by anything the Seattle Mariners have said. My fandom does not continue despite decades of ineptitude by millionaires and billionaires because I have hope for perpetual above-averageness. I did not spend my entire life rooting year after year after year to be told that a season like 2023 is exactly the goal, and I just need to wait until a pair of jacks is the best hand at the table. I have not signed up for this. I reject it. It is a failure of concept and vision. It is a small view of baseball and life created by small, miserly men.
See our favorite baseball (Mariners) analyst Chris Crawford‘s commentary HERE: Subscribe to Chris’s YouTube community (MyOhWhy) for superb insights on Major (and minor) League Baseball.
The LOCKED ON MARINERS take on all this is HERE.
The MARINERS MOJO take is HERE:
Foul Territory is joined by Ken Rosenthal of MLB to discuss Dipoto and the 2023 season ending press conference HERE:
Finish the job? That’s exactly what the Seattle Mariners ownership group must do! This is NOT difficult. It is obvious and fundamentally essential what action must be taken at this time. NOW!
