SEATTLE – Vowing changes to avoid another tumble out of playoff contention, the Seattle Mariners started in an obvious place Monday.
They fired first-year hitting coach Lamar Johnson.
“We just sat down and had an agreement that maybe we needed to make a change,” manager Bob Melvin said of his meeting Monday with Johnson. “He worked very hard. But sometimes, certain places aren’t the right places. He was in agreement.”
Seattle was the wrong place this year.
The Mariners fell out of first place in the American League West Division with a second straight late-season nosedive, and the slumping offense was the biggest reason for it.
They finished fifth in the American League with a .271 team batting average and were third in walks, fourth in on-base percentage and seventh in runs scored, but their second-half numbers diminished significantly.
The Mariners batted .278 before the All-Star break, third in the league, but .262 after (ninth). Runs batted in tumbled from 448 before the break (fifth) to 311 after (10th), and their 1,369 total bases before (sixth) fell to 913 after (13th).
Besides the team’s demise, Johnson wasn’t the answer to Jeff Cirillo’s hitting problems even though the two had worked together when Johnson was the hitting coach for the Milwaukee Brewers. Cirillo, after batting .249 last year, tumbled to .205 this year and rarely left the dugout in the final month of the season.
“I have enjoyed my year in Seattle,” Johnson said in a statement released by the Mariners. “However, there are other professional opportunities that I would like to pursue.”
Before he joined the Mariners, Johnson was the Kansas City Royals’ hitting coach for four years.
Melvin said it was a difficult, but necessary, decision to dismiss Johnson.
“If you know Lamar at all, he’s a very nice man,” Melvin said. “He’s well-respected in baseball. It was a tough thing for me to do. He gave me his best effort this year.”
Melvin said he has no list of candidates to replace Johnson. Before he dives into that, he must determine which of the remaining coaches will return next year.
Pitching coach Bryan Price is the only one whose job is known to be safe. The status of bench coach Rene Lachemann, third-base coach Dave Myers, first-base coach John Moses and bullpen coach Orlando Gomez should be determined by the end of this week, Melvin said.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
