-
Jeff PassanESPN
During a 45-minute conversation with a local Rotary club in early February, Seattle Mariners CEO Kevin Mather discredited a Japanese player for not learning English, downplayed a star candidate in the Dominican Republic for his language skills and ridiculed another important candidate. admitting to manipulating his length of service. He called the best pitcher on his team “very boring” and embellished the pitcher’s actions in an incident at the clubhouse, told another lie about a highly respected veteran and complained that the best player in the franchise in the past decade was “overpaid” “.
Any of these mistakes is incalculably silly. Together, they expose pathological levels of arrogance, arrogance and myopia. This is one of 30 people charged with running a Major League Baseball franchise.
It wasn’t just because Mather said what he said. Is that he thinks that first. And that he believed that a group of Rotarians represented the right audience to tell his twisted version of the truth. And that, in an apology, he considered the episode a “lapse in judgment”, as if intolerance was something you experience in connection with strangers or telling false stories about the people who are at the heart of your business must be functioning is good management.
Although the organization remains with Mather, the distrust sown by his comments resonated deeply in the ranks of the players on Sunday, sources told ESPN. The range of feelings ranged from “anger” to “sad” and “what [expletive] was he thinking? “
Apparently, Mather emptied his reservoir of openness during the questions and answers, because his statement alternated between hypocritical – he trying to appropriate his comments on baseball operations decisions when they clearly reflected the priorities of the entire organization – and emptiness.
Mather’s statement that he is “committed to making peace” and “will do whatever it takes to repair the damage I caused to the Seattle Mariners organization” sounded very familiar. Perhaps it is because in 2018, after a Seattle Times report exposed two employee complaints against Mather, he said, “I am committed to ensuring that all Mariners employees are comfortable and respected.”
I wonder if Julio Rodriguez feels comfortable and respected. He is 20 and one of the best prospects in baseball, a defender of the Dominican Republic’s right wing. When asked about him, Mather said, “He speaks loudly, his English is not tremendous.” Two years ago, the Mariners thought enough of Rodriguez’s English to post a video of him talking on his YouTube channel. Your English looks very good, and I don’t think it has gotten worse since then.
I wonder if Jarred Kelenic feels comfortable and respected. He is 21 years old and is the Mariners’ other field prospect. The organization thinks a lot about Kelenic, Mather told Rotarians, who offered him a six-year contract with three club options. As Kelenic refused, he said, he will start 2021 in the minor leagues, although the Mariners plan to bring him in mid-April, at which point they will have ensured that he remains under the team’s control for another year. Everyone knows that a fundamental element of comfort and respect is the manipulation of seniority.
I wonder if Marco Gonzales feels comfortable and respected. He’s the star of the Mariners, a 29-year-old who Mather considers “very boring” because … he doesn’t shoot too hard? Anyway, Mather loved telling a story about Gonzales “pushing [former teammate Mike Leake] in the closet “after Leake resisted team rules. The problem, a source familiar with the situation told ESPN, is that the story is false. Although Gonzales confronted Leake, he didn’t get his hands on it.
I wonder if Mitch Haniger feels comfortable and respected. As was the case with most of Mather’s comments, they included praise and, initially, he spoke highly of the 30-year-old who lost the last year and a half due to an injury. After suggesting that Haniger will be an All-Star this season, Mather said, “he gets a little angry when we talk about our prospects and these kids. He’s mentioned more than once: what about me?” According to a source close to Haniger, he did not discuss his position regarding future prospects.
I wonder if Kyle Seager feels comfortable and respected. Since debuting in 2011, Seager has accumulated 32.2 wins over substitution. This is more than Evan Longoria, Anthony Rizzo, Nelson Cruz, Justin Upton, Justin Turner, Michael Brantley and a number of others who have played in the previous 10 seasons. Prior to the 2015 season, Seager signed a $ 100 million contract extension for seven years. In the past six years, according to FanGraphs, it has produced $ 147.7 million in value. But Mather means that he is earning too much.
I wonder, above all, if Hisashi Iwakuma feels comfortable and respected. In January, the Mariners brought back Iwakuma, who shot very well for the team over six seasons after coming from Japan, as a coach on a special mission. After explaining the hiring, Mather’s first words to Rotarians were, “A wonderful human being. His English was terrible.” Mather felt comfortable enough to express a complaint: “I’m tired of paying for your interpreter.” He smiled and laughed when he said that.
Iwakuma is 39 years old. He won almost $ 50 million with the Mariners. He doesn’t need that job. He doesn’t need this organization. He doesn’t need someone to look at his desire to be understood as a weakness. And he certainly doesn’t need to be tried by someone who was promoted, even after he was the subject of complaints of sexual harassment for allegedly rubbing an employee’s back without permission and making inappropriate jokes about women in the office to another employee.
This is how bad culture takes root. More than a decade ago, two women reported Mather to human resources – a department he oversaw at the time. They came out with deals, according to the Seattle Times, totaling more than $ 500,000. He remained employed. Mather then continued to rise – the president and, eventually, CEO. It took a newspaper to expose its past mistakes.
He did it alone this time. And if he was exaggerating to sound like someone important – he confidently spoke of an electronic attack zone being implemented within two years – or he is actually an important person, it doesn’t matter anymore. He’s the CEO of an organization – and the kind of guy who tells stories where people from foreign countries, where they may not have had the opportunity to learn English, are the highlight.
In fact, Mather also did this in the Rotary call. Speaking of the improvements Seattle has made to its Dominican academy and educational programs for players, he said the team would give teenagers in Latin America a $ 30 daily rate.
“Surprise surprise!” Said Mather. “They would be in trouble because they wouldn’t be able to speak the language, make changes or even pay for dinner.”
Surprise surprise. Just like that. Never considering what so many baseball teens need to do: go to a foreign country, one with as many potential dangers as the United States, and pack in a tiny apartment five or six inflatable mattresses on the floor because the sport doesn’t pay its binders smaller enough to get a place with your own room and try to learn how to navigate it all while spending the rest of the day trying to figure out how to hit the 98 painted in the corner.
It is the easiest thing in the world to sit in a tower of privilege and despise others, to denigrate, to act with impunity because history has shown that you could without consequences. That is the lesson here. That is the lesson. I couldn’t help but think about something else after hearing Kevin Mather chatter for 45 minutes.
He is the last person who should talk about others being bad at speaking English.