SEATTLE — The ejection seat in the manager’s office tossed another victim Monday when the Seattle Mariners fired Don Wakamatsu along with three of his coaches.
Also fired were bench coach Ty Van Burkleo, pitching coach Rick Adair and performance coach Steve Hecht, who worked with players on the mental side of the game.
The Mariners named Daren Brown, manager of the Class AAA Tacoma Rainiers the past four years, as interim manager and said he would be considered for the job next year. Also moved into the dugout were minor league catching coordinator Roger Hansen as bench coach and minor league pitching coordinator Carl Willis as pitching coach.
Hansen, who managed the Class A Everett AquaSox in 1996, lives in Stanwood.
Pedro Grifol, the organization’s minor league director, also will be in uniform as a coach the rest of this season.
Brown becomes the Mariners’ sixth manager since Lou Piniella led the team from 1993-2002.
The question for General Manager Jack Zduriencik on Monday wasn’t so much why Wakamatsu was fired. The Mariners, after all, were 42-70 and headed toward their second 100-loss season in a three-year period.
But why now?
Wakamatsu had guided the team through the controversial retirement of Ken Griffey in June, a near fight in the dugout with Chone Figgins in July, injuries that depleted the roster and the trade of All-Star Cliff Lee from the pitching staff.
The team seemed to have settled into a portion of the season when expectations were based on the development of young players for next year as much as the need to win. Ten of the 25 players on the current roster started the season with the Rainiers and three others weren’t in the organization when the season began.
“What’s happened, I can’t control that,” Zduriencik said. “Why some of the things went on the way they went on and why some of the disappointments existed, everyone has their speculation. This is about where we’re headed. I arrived at that decision based on a lot of factors.”
Zduriencik wouldn’t be more specific.
He said the decision to fire Wakamatsu and the coaches was his, with no influence from team officials above him.
“The truth of the matter is, I had lost confidence in Don, Ty and Rick as the best fit for us this season and as we move forward,” Zduriencik said. “New leadership is needed and it is needed now.”
Zduriencik made the changes even though the Mariners had just completed their most successful series in a month, winning two of three games over the weekend from the Kansas City Royals. One week ago, after the Mariners had lost all seven games on a road trip, Zduriencik said repeatedly that, “Don is our manager.”
“I wasn’t prepared to make a decision at that time,” Zduriencik said. “There was a lot written and a lot said, but I hadn’t settled that myself. I think you get to a point where it’s time to make a call and I thought it was necessary to make a call today.”
There were indications in recent weeks that Wakamatsu’s job was in jeopardy.
In mid-May, when two young players were quoted anonymously in the Tacoma News Tribune that Griffey was sleeping in the clubhouse during a game, some players believed Wakamatsu had leaked the information.
With Griffey’s batting average below .200, Wakamatsu cut his playing time in late May, and on June 2 the Mariners’ greatest star decided to retire. Again, Wakamatsu was seen in some quarters of the clubhouse as being responsible for driving Griffey away.
Wakamatsu removed Chone Figgins from a game July 23, saying the second baseman didn’t hustle after a throw from the outfield. Figgins argued with Wakamatsu in the dugout and, when several players, coaches and team personnel intervened, the pushing and shoving was captured on video and became a national story.
Through it all, there was no public show of support for Wakamatsu from the front office.
In fact, on the day last month when the Mariners traded Cliff Lee to the Texas Rangers for Justin Smoak and three minor leaguers, Wakamatsu learned of the trade while watching TV. The coaches weren’t informed of the trade before it happened, even though several of them had worked in the Rangers’ organization and were familiar with the prospects the Mariners had obtained.
Wakamatsu, the first Japanese-American manager in major league history, was fired on the day the Mariners celebrated “Japanese Heritage Night” at Safeco Field.
“I am surprised,” Mariners right fielder Ichiro Suzuki said. “It’s frustrating because when he came in as manager last year everything worked so well. We haven’t been able to do that this year. It’s the whole club that’s responsible. It’s not fair to say the manager has to take the blame. I’m just saying as a group we are all to blame.”
Wakamatsu led the Mariners to an 85-77 record last year that made them the 13th team since 1901 to post a winning record one year after it had lost at least 100 games. The Mariners lost 101 games in 2008, which cost the jobs of two managers, John McLaren and Jim Riggleman.
“My single biggest disappointment is that we were not able to finish what we wanted to finish here, bringing a championship club to the fans,” Wakamatsu said in a statement. “I cannot tell you how great the fans were to me, and to my family. The support I received here will always mean a great deal to me.”
Zduriencik hired Wakamatsu on Nov. 19, 2008, with the idea that he would be an important piece of an organization that had fallen upon hard times at every level. The major league team had finished with losing records in four of the previous five seasons and the minor league system had been decimated of big-league prospects through trades.
Wakamatsu’s successful 2009 season, however, was undermined by four months of losing and controversy this year and Zduriencik said a change needed to be made.
“Sometimes when you get from A to Z, there’s not always a straight line,” Zduriencik said. “To take an organization from here to here, sometimes you’re going to have those bumps in the road, things that interfere. There were some things that needed to be changed, and today I made the decision to change them.”
Read Kirby Arnold’s blog on the Mariners at www. heraldnet.com/marinersblog.3643A5703643A778
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