Daniel Kramer of MLB.com reports that the Mariners will host managerial candidates Joe Espada and Jason Kanzler for in-person interviews this week, per multiple sources. While it’s not clear if the choice will be between those two, it has been rumored the Mariners want to have a decision made by the end of this month, and these two candidates have already progressed past the virtual interviews stage.
Kanzler and Espada have something in common: both served on the coaching staff of the 2022 World Champion
Astros under Dusty Baker. They also both share playing experience at smaller colleges, with Kanzler coming out of SUNY-Buffalo and Espada the NAIA University of Mobile, although Espada was drafted in the second round; Espada played professionally about twice as long as Kanzler, although neither ever played in the big leagues.
Post-playing, their careers begin to diverge. After Espada’s playing career was done he went directly into coaching with the Marlins, building a coaching resume that saw him progress through the Marlins system, join the Yankees as a special assistant to the GM, and manage Team Puerto Rico in the WBC; he was added to the Astros’ big-league staff in 2017 and was promoted to manager in 2023.
Kanzler, on the other hand, took a while to settle into his coaching career, working first as a teacher in the Katy School District in Texas (where he won Rookie Teacher of the Year) while building his own performance training business. The Astros were his first big-league job; he came on in 2019 as a minor-league hitting coordinator and worked his way up to the big-league staff in 2022. His big leap forward came in 2024, when the Cubs hired him as director of player development.
Other than experience, the starkest difference between the two is in age: Espada is 51; Kanzler, just 36, which would make him the youngest manager in baseball other than the Nationals’ Blake Butera, who at 34 was the youngest manager in baseball last year by six years. That being said, Butera exceeded expectations in his first year of managing the Nationals, and his staff and players spoke positively about his tenure; on the other hand, one would hope the Seattle Mariners, one year removed from playing in the ALCS, are hopefully in a more secure spot than the current Washington Nationals.
It would behoove the Mariners to have someone in place as quickly as possible, in order that their chosen candidate can begin work on filling the vacancies left at the big-league level after the Mariners parted ways with the vast majority of their coaching staff after the season ended. There’s also a competition element at play here: two teams from within their own division are looking for new managers, and other teams are making their own coaching moves, especially on the hitting coach side. But what’s more important than any artificially self-imposed deadline is getting this choice right as the Mariners restructure essentially their entire big-league coaching staff, and attempt to reshape their organization into something with a more clear identity.
