Jason Kanzler, I Want to Give You a Chance.

I watched Jason Kanzler's introductory press conference, and I will be honest with you. I am skeptical.

Not angry. Not ready to write him off before he manages a single game. Just skeptical, in the way you get after 33 years of being a Mariners fan.

I have been a Mariners fan since I was 12. I am 45 now. That is 33 years of waiting for a World Series the Mariners still have not reached, in a 50th season that ended with a 76-86 record and a fired manager. I have earned a little skepticism.

Who Jason Kanzler actually is

Kanzler is 36, the second-youngest manager in baseball, and the 22nd manager in Mariners history. He replaces Dan Wilson, who was fired after that 76-86 season, one year after taking the Mariners to Game 7 of the ALCS.

He has never managed at any level. Not in the majors, not in the minors. That is the first thing you need to know, and it is the thing I keep coming back to.

His background is player development, not managing a dugout. He was the Chicago Cubs director of player development from 2024 to 2026. Before that, he was a major league coach for the Houston Astros in 2022 and 2023, including their World Series win in 2022. He started as a minor league hitting coach for Houston in 2019.

As a player, he was a 20th round pick by the Minnesota Twins out of the University at Buffalo in 2013, after walking on in college and winning two Rawlings Gold Gloves there. After his playing career, he taught high school physics and chemistry in Texas. That is not a normal path to a major league dugout, and Kanzler knows it.

Why I am skeptical, and why it is not just about him

Jerry Dipoto said in September that experience as a manager was preferred, but not a prerequisite. Then the Mariners went through as many as 40 candidates and hired a third straight manager with no prior major league managing experience, after Scott Servais and Dan Wilson.

The other reported finalist was Joe Espada, who had actually managed the Astros. I understand why that stings for fans. We just watched a 76-86 team lose its identity and its defense, and the answer is another first time manager who has to learn the job while doing it.

Dipoto said experience was good, but not good enough to dissuade them from everything else Kanzler brings. General manager Justin Hollander said Kanzler dominated the process, and that they would have been foolish to throw all that hard work out the window.

I want to believe that. I just need to see it on the field.

Why I am willing to give him a chance

Here is the other side, because it matters.

Kanzler communicates clearly, and that was the Mariners' biggest problem last year. Players talked about a lack of accountability and no identity. Kanzler talked about accountability starting with clarity, so people understand what they are accountable for before you hold them accountable.

He said he is not here to impose an identity on the team. He wants it to surface organically. The most specific version he gave was "step on their throats," which I liked a lot more than another vague speech about culture.

His definition of culture stuck with me too. He said culture is all the things you do not allow, all the things that do not happen, and doing the little things right all the time. For a team that played some of the worst defense in baseball and made embarrassing baserunning mistakes, that is a useful place to start.

He also has a personality. He joked about the Astros as "the team that shall not be named," said he wants to "ride the lightning" with this team and this city, and said he knows all their secrets after working inside that organization. I will take a manager with some edge over a manager who sounds like a press release.

And his player development background does fit this roster. This is a young group with talent, and Kanzler's job, as he put it, is to help players be the best version of themselves. If he can do that with Cole Young, Colt Emerson, and the rest of the young core, while getting the veterans back on track, the inexperience matters a lot less.

Here is what was missing: us

This is the part I kept waiting for in the press conference, and I mostly did not hear it.

I heard a lot about the organization. I heard a lot about the players, and about building relationships with them, which Kanzler called of the utmost importance. I heard about culture, accountability, and identity.

I did not hear much that was aimed directly at the fans.

To be fair, Kanzler did say it once: "We owe it to the fans, we owe it to the organization, and we owe it to the players themselves." I appreciate that line. But one line is not a pitch to a fan base.

If you are trying to sell this hire to Seattle, you have to talk about Seattle. This is not a casual fan base. This is a fan base that has waited 50 seasons for a World Series, drew nearly 2.9 million fans to T-Mobile Park for a team that went 76-86, and kept showing up through the long drought after 2001, through 2022, through Game 7 last year, and through the collapse this year.

Being a Mariners fan is tough. I have been doing it since I was 12, and I am 45 now. I know what it costs to care about this team, and I know a lot of you know it too.

Kanzler does not need to promise us a World Series in his first press conference. He does need to show he understands who he is managing for. Not just the players in the clubhouse, and not just the front office that hired him, but the people in the stands who have been here longer than he has been a coach.

Tell us you know what T-Mobile Park feels like when it is electric, because you said you remembered that atmosphere from the other dugout. Tell us you know what it feels like to wait. Tell us what you are going to fix first, and how we will know it is fixed.

For me, that starts with defense. Dipoto said every person they interviewed agreed Seattle was a bad defensive team, and that fixing it was the lowest hanging fruit. Good. Start there. Make the routine plays. Stop giving away runs and outs. That is how a new manager earns trust in April, not with slogans.

My verdict, for now

I am skeptical that Jason Kanzler is the right person for the job, because he has never done the job before. I am also willing to give him a chance, because the Mariners did not hire him by accident, and the traits they praised, communication, intensity, and player development, are real needs for this team.

But here is my deal with him, fan to new manager.

Win us over the same way you won over the front office in those interviews. Be clear. Be direct. Hold the line on the little things. And remember who is watching.

We have been here since we were 12, or 20, or 50. We have been here through the good years and the bad ones. We want to ride the lightning with you, Jason. Just give us a reason to believe the lightning is coming back to Seattle.