Spiralling Mariners cut loose GM Zduriencik

SEATTLE — A year to the day after praising Jack Zduriencik as he was rewarded with a contract extension, Seattle Mariners president Kevin Mather found himself speaking with ownership this week on all the areas he believed the club was lacking.

It was clear to Mather that Zduriencik’s time as Seattle’s general manager was at an end and his regret was not making a change sooner.

“I was so optimistic about 2015 at the major-league level that I waited too long to start asking myself and others the tough questions about what is going on here,” Mather said. “Why aren’t we having more success here? What’s going wrong, here?”

Zduriencik was fired Friday after seven disappointing seasons where the club failed to end its playoff drought under his watch. Zduriencik came to Seattle before the 2009 season, arriving from Milwaukee as one of the top talent evaluators in baseball and with the task of rebuilding a thin farm system while putting a winning product on the field at the major league level.

But Seattle missed too often both in player development through the draft and in free agency.

“I really enjoyed my seven years here. There is not anything I could say in a negative vibe about anything that went on in Seattle,” Zduriencik told reporters in Chicago on Friday. “It was a great experience and we’ll move on.”