UPDATE: It’s official. Dipoto is the Mariners’ new GM, with a press conference scheduled for Tuesday.
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Jerry Dipoto stepped down as Angels general manager on July 1 after losing an ongoing power struggle against manager Mike Scioscia, but it apparently won’t take him long to find another GM gig in the same division.
Amid numerous reports that Seattle is close to naming a new general manager, Jim Bowden of ESPN says the Mariners are expected to offer the job to Dipoto. He’s expected to accept, leaving his current gig as an assistant within the Red Sox front office to replace Jack Zduriencik.
Dipoto took over as the Angels’ general manager in October of 2011, replacing Tony Reagins. As a longtime big-league reliever who also believed in the value of analytics he was praised as a strong mix of old and new school, but the Angels experienced only modest success during his run and several of the team’s biggest moves--including the ill-fated signing of Josh Hamilton for $125 million--were pushed on Dipoto by owner Arte Moreno.
It’s possible that Dipoto’s time running the Angels doesn’t fully convey how effective he’s capable of being as a GM, in part because it’s debatable how much he was truly running the Angels with Moreno and Scioscia around. By immediately snagging another GM job and landing within the AL West division it’s a great opportunity for Dipoto to bounce back from an ugly divorce with the Angels while he’s still just 47 years old.
