Seattle Mariners fire manager Don Wakamatsu

According to sources close to Brock and Salk of 710 ESPN, the Seattle Mariners have fired manager Don Wakamatsu. They add that Ty van Berkleo and Rick Adair were also let go. Kriby Arnold of The Herald says Darin Brown will be the interim manager, and Roger Hansen will be the bench coach.

Just last week, GM Jack Zduriencik gave Wakamatsu his vote of confidence.

“Don is our manager,” Zduriencik said. “Don and I, and his son went out to dinner last night. We had a very nice evening, spent like three or four hours together and talked about a lot of things. We talked where we’re headed with the club, about Don and Don is our manager.”

At the time, there had been speculation that the team had already quit on Wakamatsu.

The last Seattle manager to be fired in-season was John McLaren. He managed the Mariners from July 1, 2007 to June 19, 2008. After he was fired, Jim Riggleman was promoted from bench coach to interim manager, but Riggleman was not retained after the 2008 season. Rigglemen is currently the manager of the Washington Nationals, and coincidentally his former boss, McLaren, is now his bench coach.

In two seasons with the Mariners, Wakamatsu, 47, was 127-147.

Information from the Wikipedia was used in this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McLaren_%28baseball%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Riggleman