What’s To Be Done With Jerry Dipoto?

During a Sept. 28 press conference, Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto stated unprompted that if he had been fired following this season, it would have been justified. This is an extremely funny thing to say when you have not lost your job, especially when contextualized by your firings of five of your colleagues in the surrounding 48 hours, all of whom you hired. The difference between having your hypothetical firing rendered justifiable and having your walking papers actually handed to you is, uh, the whole dang thing. This is the sports executive equivalent of If I Did It, an implied admission of guilt issued directly after having gotten away with that shit. Like O.J., Dipoto will not elude fate forever; nobody with his job ever really does. I do find it sort of interesting to consider what he has actually done wrong. While most anyone paying attention to him likely agrees Dipoto has some real bozo moments, I think we may disagree on the specifics. Likewise, we might wish for a different hand at the helm, but for what reason? It's worth considering what, exactly, Jerry Dipoto has done wrong. The 2026 Seattle Mariners dramatically wretched and quivered their way to a third-place finish in a truly dogshit American League West, scoring the fewest runs they have in a full season since 2015. This year’s squad had some injuries and a bit of bad luck, but that isn’t actually much of an excuse. Those 2015 Mariners, who Dipoto took charge of at the end of the season, needed to give Logan Morrison 500 real major-league plate appearances and employ Dustin Ackley in a serious capacity to have an offense that shitty. Anyway, in the 11 years since, Dipoto saw his title bumped to President of Baseball Operations, and rewarded the M’s by winning eight playoff games, total. The day before Dipoto admitted his firing would be justified, the M’s announced that Dan Wilson would be relieved of his duties as on-field manager. The day after, Wilson’s shitcanning was followed by that of his bench coach, Manny Acta, as well as his first base coach, hitting coach, and infield coach. The hitting was obviously quite bad, and the infield was even worse, owing significantly to JP Crawford’s valiant losing battle with the position of shortstop. There are a wonderful variety of advanced defensive metrics out there, with bitterly conflicting philosophies; Baseball Info Solutions has one, FanGraphs has one, and Statcast has two different ones. No matter which one you prefer, if you stack all the 2026 team defenses up against each other, you will find the Mariners DFL.

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