When Scott Servais’ cell phone rang Thursday morning, he couldn’t believe what he saw.
Servais was fired as Mariners manager on Thursday with the team struggling and its playoff hopes in jeopardy, but less than 90 minutes before he was scheduled to meet with Seattle team president Jerry Dipoto, he got a notification on his phone announcing the news on Twitter from Ken Rosenthal.
For the 57-year-old Servais, it didn’t make sense that he and his three children and father, who called him after the news of his dismissal was broken, found out about it in that way.
“Finding out about it through an alert on my phone was obviously one of the hardest things,” Servais said Friday. From the Seattle Times“It was a reality that could have happened in the next few hours. When you’re part of an organization for nine years, you feel like you’re part of family. It was shocking to find out that way, but it happened. I’m not going to say it didn’t happen. It definitely happened that way.”
Dipoto expressed regret over how Servais found out about the news.
“This was one of the worst days of my professional career, but the worst part is that Scott and (hitting coach Jarrett DeHart) found out through the news channel crawl,” Dipoto told reporters on Thursday. “It’s tough for me and I know it’s tough for them.”
Rosenthal said on “Foul Territory” on Friday that it was “unpleasant” that Servais found out about his firing through his own reporting.
Servais is in his ninth season at the helm with the Mariners and led them to consecutive 90-win seasons in 2021 and 2022, after going 88-74 last year.
During his tenure, the team has only made the postseason once, losing in five games to the Astros in the AL Series two years ago.
At the time of his firing, the Mariners, who were once 10 games up in first place in the American League West this season, were 64-64 and had just come off a tough 1-8 road trip.
Seattle enters new manager Dan Wilson’s final game against the Giants on Sunday, 4.5 games behind the Astros for the division lead and 7.5 games out of the final wild-card spot.
Servais was prepared for change if the Mariners missed the playoffs again, but he never imagined he would lose his job before the season was over.
“I knew that even if we didn’t make the playoffs, at the end of the year it would be a time to reflect on where we were and where I was going forward,” Servais told The Seattle Times. “I was hopeful that we would have a chance to finish the year. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.”
