Houston who? Jason Kanzler, Mariners, reporters avoid naming Astros in manager's press conference
· Yahoo Sports
Jason Kanzler's sole experience in a major league dugout during games as a coach is from the three seasons he spent as a Houston Astros hitting coach, so, clearly, he will be drawing from those lessons as he steps into his role as the Seattle Mariners' new manager. That doesn't mean he has to mention the American League West rivals by name.
At Kanzler's 30-minute introductory press conference Wednesday, the name "Houston Astros" never was uttered, but the team that has dominated the American League West for a decade came up quite a few times. After Kanzler jokingly referred to his former club as "the team that shall not be named," everyone else continued the bit, including general manager Justin Hollander and three different reporters.
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"I fondly remember coming here when I was with the team that shall not be named, and what distinctly stands out to me is this atmosphere is electric," Kanzler said of his initial thoughts of his new home. "I remember, I think, that Electric Factory was even a thing that was used and I think one of the things that excites me among many things is that I would like to ride the lightning with this team and this city."
Electric Factory is what the Mariners started calling T-Mobile Park during their 2022 season when they broke a 20-year playoff drought only to get swept by the Astros in the American League Division Series. That moniker may stand out to Kanzler, because he was in the Astros' clubhouse after winning the World Series a couple weeks later when Lance McCullers Jr. threw it into his celebratory champagne toast, saying "When we started this f- journey, they sent us out West, we f- unplugged the Electric Factory."
Hollander also passed on mentioning the Astros by name when he talked about trying to hire Kanzler as a hitting coach in 2021 when Kanzler was mentoring Astros minor leaguers, a role he held for two years before being promoted to his role with the big-league team.
"We could not pry him away from the organization that shall not be named, but it was one of the most, if not the most, impressive interviews that I think all of us had ever been a part of," Hollander said. "When you have someone that's like your white whale, someone that you're really excited to get to work with someday, you don't just end the process and throw their name out the window and never think about them again. So, his name had come up over the years in different contexts: How can we find a way to get to work with Kanz at some point?"
That might have given Kanzler a leg up on his former co-worker Joe Espada, the former Astros manager who also was a finalist to become the Mariners' manager.
"When we started this process it was just a name that got added to the pool, really with no expectation that we would lead to this point and to Jason's credit, I think he left us no choice throughout the process," Hollander said. "It was just round after round, conversation after conversation, he dominated the process to a degree that I think we would have been foolish to take all of our hard work and throw it out the window and not choose him."
Later, reporters got in on the act by avoiding naming the Astros even when they asked Kanzler about teaching physics and chemistry at Katy High School, what he took away from working under Dusty Baker - "An incredible manager," Kanzler said - as well as what he learned from that 2022 championship team.
"What I'm going to take from THAT team," said Kanzler, adding emphasis to the placeholder word, "is what I learned, which is even the best players want to be better. They want to win. When you rally behind a common goal and a common vision, it doesn't matter what your status is, you will just do the right things and do them often."
Kanzler, who left the Astros after the 2023 season to become the Chicago Cubs' director of player development, had a simple answer for how he plans to overtake that team that has won eight of the last 10 AL West titles.
"I know all their secrets," he said with a big laugh.
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