Seattle Sports host Mike Salk feels like he was able to ask Mariners President of Baseball Operations Jerry Dipoto all the questions he wanted to ask on Thursday when Dipoto made his weekly appearance on Brock & Salk.
The end of the 2023 season for the Seattle Mariners proved to be incredibly frustrating, as the team came up one win short of making consecutive postseason appearances. Salk in a column on Wednesday following a Tuesday end-of-season press conference by Mariners front office leadership took Dipoto, General Manager Justin Hollander, and Manager Scott Servais to task for delivering a message to the media and fans that fell flat.
Salk felt like what Dipoto and Hollander were trying to convey wasn’t what fans wanted to hear at that moment. One quote in particular Salk gave Dipoto an opportunity to clarify was his remark about teams that win 54% of their games over a decade likely having a World Series title in that span.
“While I understand Jerry’s stat that says winning 54% of games in a decade will likely produce a championship, I don’t think that is helpful to say out loud,” Salk wrote. “Certainly not to a fan base suspicious that the team is content with merely being competitive.”
Dipoto did clarify what he said and meant, saying that he was actually kind of embarrassed in the points he tried to make in that press conference.
“I just did a poor job of illustrating the points I was trying to make,” he said. “In one case I chose to try humor to lighten a grave question and obviously that wasn’t what the moment called for.”
With the 54% comment, Dipoto said it was clear what he was saying didn’t make a connection.
“I just completely whiffed in my attempt to trying to paint a big picture baseline of what obviously makes more sense to me than our fans and media,” Dipoto said. “Our goal isn’t to be mediocre. Our goal is to win championships and play at a high level for a long time. And that’s what I was trying to convey. Obviously it didn’t help.”
After the interview, Salk posted a thread of clips and tweets that he was thankful to be able to talk to Jerry and give him the platform.
“I appreciate the opportunity to ask Jerry questions today — we take that seriously and hope we did you proud and asked what you wanted to hear,” wrote Salk.
