Jerry Dipoto shed a little light on his relationship with manager Mike Scioscia, with whom he had a falling-out sufficient to prompt his resignation in July as Angels general manager. Dipoto was hired in late September by the Mariners to succeed the fired Jack Zduriencik as GM.Dipoto has been circumspect in his time in Seattle about what happened in Anaheim. But during an interview with MLB Radio Network Friday, Dipoto explained some of what happened when he disagreed on player development methods with old-school Scioscia, who enters his 16th season as Angels manager.
When Angels owner Arte Moreno sided with Scioscia, Dipoto knew he was done:
“The four years that I spent in Anaheim, and I appreciate those four years, and for much of that time I had a great time . . . But there were times where it was very difficult to do the job that I was asked to do because I was caught in between, perhaps two different dynamics. And I would say the same of them. I had some different ideas that maybe they weren’t as comfortable with, therefore we end up where we are four years from (then) . . .
Since I’ve come over here to the Mariners I’ve been fortunate enough to really, I believe, develop a very nice relationship with our ownership group, including Howard Lincoln, our chairman, and Kevin Mather, our president. They’ve been nothing but good to me since the day I got here. And they’ve been on board with a lot of the ideas that I’ve had through the course of time, and the collective ideas that we’ve come up with just in the months since I’ve been here, and given us the resources to do what we need to do . . .
As importantly, I have a manager now in Scott Servais who I do see eye-to-eye with, and we have discussed every move. We’ve disagreed on many ideas, as we’ve gone through this off-season, but in a really productive way. And fair or unfair, that was not always the case with Mike.”
For his part, Sciosia, responding to a question from MLB.com about Dipoto’s remarks, took the high road.
“I can only speak for myself, ” he said. “There are certainly times when you’re not going to agree on everything. There were times when the communication was there, maybe times where it wasn’t what it could have been. But I’m not looking back.”
Unsurprisingly when it comes to human nature and bad experiences, Dipoto chose as his manager in Seattle Scott Servais, who is completely opposite in profile from Scioscia: He has no managerial experience at any level.
There figures to be little confusion as to who is boss.
21 Comments
On one hand, the M’s hired a proven GM who knows the AL West and is highly motivated to win the division. On both a professional and personal level. That’s better than what any contract can offer.
On the other hand, from a certain point of view M’s fans have seen all this before. The pattern has been that management gives the new GM their full support for 2-3 years, then afterwards they rein the GM in, either by tightening the budget or vetoing any significant personnel moves. Pat Gillick resigned in frustration. Bill Bavasi, limited in free agency signings after initially bringing in Adrian Beltre and Richie Sexson, took his frustration out on the club. Jack Zduriencik, in response to also being reined in on free agents, brought up player and after player from the farm system as he desperately hoped he’d hit the next Junior or A-Rod but never did. Sure, Dipoto sees eye to eye with Servais, but Bavasi and Zduriencik said the same about their own managers. Even Woody Woodward hit the wall later in his career as Mariners GM.
Maybe now that the club has controlling interest in ROOT Sports Northwest this will change things. After all, the MSG Network supported the Yankees for years to great benefit for them and now the YES Network does the same. Maybe that changes the playing field for the M’s, especially with long time team president Chuck Armstrong retired. But when Howard Lincoln is still the CEO and being the CEO in change of the previous 3 GM’s, all of whom had their own frustrations, it’s difficult to fully jump on the bandwagon at this time. Time will tell.
very well put. Yes Armstrong is gone but Lincoln is still there. so only time will tell.
If Dipoto is gone after four years…well, we’ve seen that song and dance before.
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You’re entitled to your skepticism. But I think Kevin Mather has enough experience with the bad times to tell Howard that it’s best he leave baseball ops alone.
So you’re saying Howard is no longer allowed in the Baseball Department?
We can only hope that Howie will follow the Beast into retirement.
When do the Hawks start OTAs?
I knew that was coming . . .
We’re all looking to get a fast start coming out of Spring Training.
Well all I see with the new stat geek is he traded away a bunch of guys who haven’t done anything for a bunch of other guys who haven’t done anything
Well, then, that it’s for you. See you in ’17.
Here’s reality no one is telling Lincoln hands off. He is the single consistent thread to Mariner mediocrity. On the other hand Jack may have been the least qualified GM in baseball history, he was basically clueless, which Dipoto is not. The unfortunate reality is that Dipoto has been handed an untenable situation with the Cano contract; and anyone who believes that ownership will give him adequate $ to compensate for Cano’s contract has been smoking too much of our now legal weed.
All teams that offer a long term deal similar to Cano’s know they won’t get full value. Typically they’re hoping for 3 years at an All-Star level. At some point the contract will become an albatross on the club however I do like the players that Dipoto has put around Cano. But I highly doubt Cano will be here for the life of the contract. Good chance he goes to a larger market team in 3-5 years who is willing to take it on.
Nobody will take that contract now. Age and injuries. See in five years Cano will be a DH with lack of power for 3 years at 75 million dollar contract left to be paid. Lincoln gave Z money to spend. It is how he spent it and the trades he made that showed his philosophy for this ballpark and the talent he wanted to put in it was flawed.
I agree with Jamo about the prevalence in the game of Cano-size contracts. But I don’t think there will be a market for Cano at age 38 to hit .240 for $24M.
All teams that offer a long term deal similar to Cano’s know they won’t get full value. Typically they’re hoping for 3 years at an All-Star level. At some point the contract will become an albatross on the club however I do like the players that Dipoto has put around Cano. But I highly doubt Cano will be here for the life of the contract.
Ummm…Art? I don’t mean to seem impertinent or anything, but are we going to get to read anything about the Feb. 11 Sports Salon meetup with Jerry D?
You hadda show up, grey. Besides, I wasn’t taking notes.
Actually, he did have a key point that is worth a column. Maybe as soon as Monday,
Translation scoscia wasn’t about to put up with a stat geek sticking his nose in on field decisions. With a puppet like servais, dipoto won’t have that problem. Servais is nothing more than a fall guy for Dipoto when dipotos meddling goes badly
What if stat geek is right? Or do you know better?