The Seattle Mariners team has received more bad news: their head coach broke down in tears after four of his elite players decided to end their lucrative contracts.

The Seattle Mariners team has received more bad news: their head coach broke down in tears after four of his elite players decided to end their lucrative contracts.

More bad news for the Seattle Mariners: Their head coach started crying after four of his best players chose to terminate their high-paying contracts.

On Friday, the Seattle Mariners declared their separation from Brant Brown, their offensive coordinator and bench coach. To make up for Brown’s absence, assistant hitting coach Tommy Joseph and director of hitting strategy Jarret DeHart will take on more responsibilities.

The Mariners brought in Brown, an expert in baseball psychology, in November to support DeHart. Additionally, Brown supported manager and sometime teammate Scott Servais as a bench coach. He had previously been a major league hitting coach for the Dodgers and Marlins.

With a 31-27 record as of right now, the Seattle Mariners are generally enjoying their season. Thanks in large part to their potent pitching staff, Seattle leads the American League West by a margin of three games. The Mariners have the ninth-lowest major league ERA (3.58) despite having one of the least effective offenses in the league.

Seattle leads the league in strikeouts with 567, 27 more than second-worst Oakland, and has scored the second-fewest runs (3.6 per game). As a club, the Mariners are hitting.211/.295/.361, which is six percent behind the league average overall.

Last season, Brown, a former minor league coordinator for Seattle, was the hitting coach for the Marlins. In 2023, Brent Brown was successful in getting Miami into the postseason. In 2020, during the pandemic-shortened season, he was the Dodgers’ hitting coach and won the World Series. He was brought on board following the departure of Stephen Vogt, the Bullpen coach at the time, who was set to become a bench coach, from the Guardians managerial role.

The Mariners top office stated in the offseason that they wanted to lessen the team’s tendency for strikeouts. Teoscar Hernández, Mike Ford, Jarred Kelenic, Eugenio Suárez, and Tom Murphy all left as a result of this. Even yet, the Mariners strike out at a rate of 28.3%, which is by far the lowest in the majors. Although Seattle added players with a history of striking out, Brown’s departure might have been influenced by their persistent strikeout issue.

“We are aware of our immense potential,” stated manager Scott Servais.

Servais will remain manager of Seattle while DeHart and Joseph take on more responsibilities with the Mariners hitters. This is the first time Seattle has fired a hitting coach in the middle of a season since Jerry Dipoto and Scott Servais took over.