The Mariners have a vacancy to fill after moving on from manager Dan Wilson. They might look to fill the position within the division. Seattle has been granted permission to meet with Astros manager Joe Espada, per a report from Mark Feinsand, Daniel Kramer, and Brian McTaggart of MLB.com.
Houston hasn’t officially moved on from Espada yet, but his contract will be up at the end of the month. Many around the game expect Houston to search for a new skipper. The Astros fired GM Dana Brown in August, though Espada remained in his role for the rest of the year. Houston won the AL West on the final day of the season. The club was swiftly dispatched by the White Sox in the Wild Card round.
Owner Jim Crane isn’t afraid of making sweeping personnel changes; he famously offered former general manager James Click only a one-year extension after his club won the 2022 World Series, which Click rejected. Chandler Rome of The Athletic writes that while Espada said on Sept. 30 that he expected to meet with Crane “in the next day or two,” it’s still unclear in mid-October whether that meeting actually took place.
A second-round pick by the 1996 Athletics, Espada had a nine-year minor league career as a middle infielder before retiring in the mid-2000s and moving to the coaching side of things. He served as a minor league hitting coach and minor league infield coordinator with the Marlins before being named their major league third base coach. He’s since held a special advisor position in the Yankees front office and spent six years as the bench coach in Houston, working under and learning from renowned managers A.J. Hinch and Dusty Baker before being elevated to the manager’s seat himself upon Baker’s retirement in 2023.
Under Espada, the Astros have gone 256-229. Houston tallied 88 wins and won the American League West in 2024, Espada’s first year on the job, before being quickly ousted by Espada’s former skipper A.J. Hinch and his upstart Tigers. The ‘Stros narrowly missed the playoffs in 2025 and only snuck in by default this season, winning a middling AL West with a .500 record — the worst record we’ve ever seen from a postseason qualifier in Major League Baseball.
The recent misses can’t really be attributed to Espada on his own. Houston’s vaunted core that fueled the team’s run of seven straight ALCS appearances has aged and/or departed to other clubs. Alex Bregman has twice signed elsewhere in free agency. Jose Altuve’s output has diminished considerably in his mid-30s. Justin Verlander and Framber Valdez were Tigers in 2026, with the former retiring at season’s end. Kyle Tucker was traded to the Cubs because Crane’s aversion to long-term extensions gave them minimal hope of re-signing him. He landed with the Dodgers in free agency. The Astros still have some stars (Yordan Alvarez, Jeremy Peña, Hunter Brown, Josh Hader), but the pitching staff has been cobbled together in recent years amid myriad injuries and mounting payroll constraints, as Crane typically prefers to avoid paying the luxury tax.
That’s not to say Espada is blameless, of course, but the Astros’ recent tailspin isn’t going to sully the reputation he’s built in two decades since his retirement as a player. If not the Mariners, Espada ought to get interest from other clubs if Crane indeed decides it’s time for a new voice in the dugout. There’s only one other team currently looking for a new manager (Phillies), but clubs looking for an experienced bench coach or another voice in player development or the front office could all look to bring in Espada, who’d be an obvious managerial candidate in future offseasons even if he’s not hired elsewhere in the coming weeks.
As for the Mariners themselves, president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto has said that past managerial experience is preferred for him but not required as he looks for a new skipper. Wilson was hired without prior managing experience, as was predecessor Scott Servais. Those are the only two managers who have worked under Dipoto since the Mariners hired him late in the 2015 season. Manny Acta has been on hand as a third base coach and bench coach since 2016, giving Servais and Wilson a former big league skipper to draw from, but Acta was also cut loose alongside coaches Perry Hill (infield), Kevin Seitzer (hitting) and Eric Young Jr. (first base) following Seattle’s disappointing 2026 campaign.
That house-cleaning seemingly set the stage for an experienced skipper to take the reins and name several key members on the new staff. Pitching coach Pete Woodworth, bullpen coach Austin Nola, assistant pitching coach Danny Farquhar, director of pitching strategy Trent Blank and senior director of hitting strategy Edgar Martinez are all still in place, but the staff is going to need several new faces in 2027.
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