Kevin Mather’s departure from the Seattle Mariners was absolutely necessary

Ear­li­er today, Seat­tle Mariners prin­ci­pal own­er John Stan­ton announced that Kevin Math­er had resigned as the orga­ni­za­tion’s Pres­i­dent & CEO after mak­ing a series of inde­fen­si­ble com­ments — many about his col­leagues in the Mariners orga­ni­za­tion — at a recent meet­ing of the Belle­vue Rotary club.

The com­ments includ­ed pet­ty, deroga­to­ry remarks about Mariners play­ers, includ­ing some of the orga­ni­za­tion’s strongest prospects, which own­er­ship is count­ing on get­ting the team back into the play­offs after a two decade absence.

After Math­er’s appear­ance at the Rotary club made the news, Math­er issued an apol­o­gy and pledged to “make amends,” vow­ing to be bet­ter in the future.

But it was appar­ent to Mariners fans that Math­er had to go — imme­di­ate­ly — a posi­tion also echoed by sports colum­nists, both local and national.

“Straight to the point: Kevin Mather’s employ­ment with the Mariners should be fin­ished. Every minute he’s still on the job is a fur­ther indict­ment of the orga­ni­za­tion and what it stands for,” the Seat­tle Times’ Lar­ry Stone wrote.

“It was­n’t just that Math­er said what he did. It’s that he thinks it in the first place,” observed ESP­N’s Jeff Pas­san. “And that he believed a group of Rotar­i­ans rep­re­sent­ed the right audi­ence to tell his warped ver­sion of the truth.”

“And that in an apol­o­gy, he deemed the episode a ‘lapse in judg­ment,’ as if big­otry is a one-time thing you try out on a call with strangers, or telling fake sto­ries about the peo­ple who are the heart of the busi­ness you’re sup­posed to be run­ning con­sti­tutes good management.”

“Kevin Math­er should have been gone by now,” said The Ath­let­ic’s Ken Rosen­thal. “The Mariners should have dis­missed him the moment they act­ed upon what the Seat­tle Times report­ed in 2018 – that before Math­er became team pres­i­dent and CEO, he was one of three club exec­u­tives accused by women of inap­pro­pri­ate work­place con­duct, result­ing in finan­cial set­tle­ments for the complainants.”

“It is time for the Mariners to do what should have been done a decade ago. Either you care about inclu­sion and equal­i­ty, or you don’t. Fire Kevin Math­er,” Col­by Patn­ode declared in an edi­to­r­i­al for True to the Tri­dent.

Math­er belat­ed­ly real­ized his posi­tion was unten­able and decid­ed to offer his res­ig­na­tion, accord­ing to Stan­ton, which Stan­ton then accepted.

“Like all of you, I was extreme­ly dis­ap­point­ed when I learned of Kevin Mather’s recent com­ments,” said Stan­ton. “His com­ments were inap­pro­pri­ate and do not rep­re­sent our organization’s feel­ings about our play­ers, staff, and fans.”

“There is no excuse for what was said, and I won’t try to make one,” Stan­ton con­tin­ued. “I offer my sin­cere apol­o­gy on behalf of the club and my part­ners to our play­ers and fans. We must be, and do, better.

“Kevin Math­er has resigned his posi­tion effec­tive imme­di­ate­ly. I want to thank Kevin for his twen­ty-five years of ser­vice to our franchise.”

“I will serve as act­ing Pres­i­dent and CEO until a suc­ces­sor can be chosen.”

Stan­ton also pushed back against ques­tions about hav­ing to rebuild destroyed trust by argu­ing that the orga­ni­za­tion remains guid­ed in base­ball mat­ters by Mariners gen­er­al man­ag­er Jer­ry Dipo­to and man­ag­er Scott Servais.

“I believe that Jer­ry is high­ly respect­ed. I believe that Scott is high­ly respect­ed,” Stan­ton told reporters. “And in the club­house those are the two peo­ple, Scott in par­tic­u­lar that the play­ers look at. I think that that’s who many of the fans look to as well. In terms of build­ing trust going for­ward, you build trust over time, and you build that rela­tion­ship by com­mu­ni­cat­ing hon­est­ly, con­sis­tent­ly. We will do every­thing we can as an orga­ni­za­tion to con­tin­ue to build that trust.”

Math­er was already dis­liked by many fans, owing in part to the afore­men­tioned sex­u­al harass­ment com­plaints pre­vi­ous­ly made against him that were set­tled out of court, but unfor­tu­nate­ly, he was kept in his posi­tion when John Stan­ton’s own­er­ship group bought the Seat­tle Mariners from Nin­ten­do of America.

“John Stan­ton said pub­licly he was “Kevin Mather’s biggest fan” at the time Stan­ton ascend­ed to lead the own­er­ship group, which gives you an idea of the rela­tion­ship between the two,” Look­out Land­ing’s Kate Preuss­er observed after Math­er’s depar­ture had been announced by Stan­ton.

“He was a long-tenured employ­ee with an own­er­ship stake in the club who was pro­mot­ed mul­ti­ple times before receiv­ing the title of team pres­i­dent and CEO. He appeared on-field every time an impor­tant award was being giv­en out — I know, because I’ve cropped him out of all those shots when we pub­lished them.”

Stan­ton had an oppor­tu­ni­ty today to com­plete­ly renounce Math­er and own the deci­sion to keep Math­er in a lead­er­ship posi­tion despite the evi­dence that he was­n’t lead­er­ship mate­r­i­al. Dis­ap­point­ing­ly, he did­n’t take it.

Asked if Math­er would have been ter­mi­nat­ed had he not hand­ed in his res­ig­na­tion this morn­ing, Stan­ton opt­ed to side­step the ques­tion. He could have instead said Yes, I would have fired him. That state­ment should have come easily.

League brass issued a state­ment of their own fol­low­ing Math­er’s res­ig­na­tion which was less def­er­en­tial to Math­er than Stan­ton’s statements.

It said:

“We con­demn Kevin Mather’s offen­sive and dis­re­spect­ful com­ments about sev­er­al play­ers. We are proud of the inter­na­tion­al play­ers who have made base­ball bet­ter through their out­stand­ing exam­ples of courage and deter­mi­na­tion, and our glob­al game is far bet­ter because of their con­tri­bu­tions. His mis­guid­ed remarks do not rep­re­sent the val­ues of our game and have no place in our sport.”

I’m guess­ing oth­er clubs won’t be inter­est­ed in hir­ing Math­er. And that’s a good thing. He has proved, repeat­ed­ly, that he does­n’t have the qual­i­ties need­ed in a leader. It was absolute­ly nec­es­sary that the Mariners sev­er ties with him.

Now that that has hap­pened, the own­ers must select a new Pres­i­dent and CEO who will val­ue account­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, and respon­sive­ness and mod­el those val­ues for every­one in the Mariners orga­ni­za­tion — includ­ing the owners.