John Blanchette: New Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto must reignite fans’ hopes

So Tuesday’s big development from the Seattle Mariners was the revelation that after each losing season, CEO Howard Lincoln dons a hair shirt, mixes a castor oil highball and docks himself an unspecified portion of his considerable salary.

Oh, and the M’s introduced their general manager, too.

The new guy, Jerry Dipoto, lost a power struggle with his field manager on his last job, so you can understand why even the baseball wasteland of Seattle looks like a refuge to him. At Safeco Field, the rope for GMs is long – if not quite the bungee cord issued Lincoln – while managers wear uniforms with bus tread on the back instead of a number.

Sputtering to another playoff-less finish line, the Mariners mashed the gas pedal to deliver before season’s end yet another architect with new blueprints for hope. Of course, their audience has already moved on to fretting over Marshawn Lynch’s bad hamstring and such, so the haste seems pointless.

That didn’t prevent a little sun from peeking through at Dipoto’s introductory. And, no, not necessarily because of this pronouncement from the man himself:

“You’ve got too many good players to believe you’re far away from winning,” Dipoto insisted.

Hmm. This was the theory back in the spring, remember, when far too many otherwise reasonable folks got lathered up over Seattle’s respectable 2014 season and declared them playoff bound in 2015. Old statistical trends were ignored or dismissed; optimum years were presumed across the roster. The Mariners did a pratfall out of the gate, and manager Lloyd McClendon seemed offended that anyone might head for the life rafts.

“This team is fine,” McClendon said on April 17. “This is a real good team and they’re built for it. Trust me when I tell you they’re built for it. They have the character. They have the makeup and they got the talent. We’ll win our share of games.”

How did that trust thing treat you, M’s fan?

Now it’s McClendon who must trust Dipoto when he says he’s made no predetermination on the manager’s future. Apparently, he’ll have some daily chats to win over the new boss and buy himself the final year that’s on his contract. He might want to leave an old dog-eared copy of “Moneyball” and some old computer spreadsheets on his desk where Dipoto can see them.

“We’re going to get along fine personally,” Dipoto insisted. “It’s just about our baseball.”

“Our baseball” is what eventually came between Dipoto and Mike Scioscia after three-plus years with the Los Angeles Angels. When it reached the breaking point and owner Arte Moreno’s allegiances were with his manager, Dipoto fired himself this past July. The Angels made the playoffs once during his time there.

“Sometimes,” he acknowledged, “personalities get in the way.”

But McClendon is every bit as old school as Scioscia, whose reluctance to embrace what Dipoto furnished him in the way of statistical analytics was said to be an issue (though also firing the batting coach over Scioscia’s objections didn’t help).

Dipoto is no stat wonk, but he knows his way around those numbers – going back to the time he was the only major leaguer in the Society for American Baseball Research. But he’s also pulled time as a scout, and his philosophy of meshing baseball’s algebra and eye tests helped sell club president Kevin Mather, who ran the search.

“You need balance,” Mather said. “A four-legged stool, if you will.”

What might help sell the alienated fan base are Dipoto’s candid assessments, starting with the fact that the Mariners have been fielding a team that’s a bad fit for its ballpark. Zduriencik stubbornly kept acquiring power-hitting galumphs whose drives died on Safeco’s warning track. The M’s have been consistently at the bottom of the American League in on-base percentage; run creation might as well have been quantum physics to Jack Z. Worse, it became an organizational virus.

“I was a little disheartened at the overall strikeout rate in the minors,” Dipoto told reporters Tuesday. “Now, it’s a lot of very talented players with a lot of upside potential to tap into. That’s only going to happen if we can somehow develop more contact.”

There’s more.

“We have to create depth in the roster, specifically on the pitching staff,” he said. “And we have to get more athletic and cover more ground, to help us prevent runs.”

Of course, there are many who insist another change must occur for the M’s to pull themselves out of this franchise funk. There was no hope on that front Tuesday, however, even after the CEO revealed his self-imposed fines for a job badly done.

“I don’t have any plans to retire,” Lincoln told reporters. “I’d sure like to retire after we go to the World Series or make the playoffs.”

If that isn’t incentive for the new guy, nothing is.