Because not even the off-day can come without some bummer Mariners news, Adam Jude of the Seattle Times reports that the Mariners are parting ways with assistant hitting coach Bobby Magallenes.
Magallanes joined the staff prior to the 2025 season along with hitting coach Kevin Seitzer, both of whom had been unceremoniously fired by Atlanta after the 2024 season when the Braves finished the season 89-73. That mark was good for second place in the AL East, but broke the Braves’ streak of six consecutive division titles, even though Atlanta still qualified for the playoffs, where they were swept by the Padres in the Wild Card series. It was a surprising move at the time, and looked on with consternation by many Atlanta fans as Seitzer and Magallanes went on to help the 2025 Mariners get deeper into the playoffs than any other Mariners team in history, making it all the way to the ALCS.
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But baseball is often a sport of what-have-you-done-for-me-lately, and the Mariners, floundering after a 3-3 homestand against two of the worst teams in the NL, opted to make a move to try to spark some offense. While bold staffing changes is a common mid-season move among teams that are dramatically failing to live up to expectations, it’s curious that Seitzer and Magallanes – long regarded as a package deal and sharing a similar hitting philosophy – weren’t both let go. The ineptitude of the Mariners offense, last or near the bottom of the list in most offensive categories, is obvious, but like the 2024 Braves, Seattle’s lineup has been wracked by injuries that have affected, at least temporarily, basically every member of the Opening Day roster except second baseman Cole Young [knocks on wood, pours salt circle, extends giant protective umbrella over Cole]. Furthermore, the bilingual Magallanes was a popular figure in the clubhouse, known for his “heck yeah, shoot yeah!” exclamation after wins or offensive outbursts; the deeply religious Magallanes was also a faith leader on the staff, something that resonated with hitters and pitchers alike.
While Seitzer preached an overall hitting mindset and approach, Magallanes’s role on staff was to be responsible for more of the nuts-and-bolts mechanical adjustments, something Director of Hitting Edgar Martinez (who remains on staff) also focuses on, so the team might be looking for a new voice to fill that particular role and hopefully create some better on-field results.
To do that, they’ve promoted Ed Paparella, the Mariners’ minor-league hitting coordinator, to a major-league role. The Mariners actually signed Paparella back in 2021 as a free agent out of South Alabama, and while he never played professionally, he quickly ascended the ranks of the minor leagues. At 31, Paparella is more than two decades younger than the 56-year-old Magallanes, and three decades younger than Martinez or Seitzer, perhaps providing more of a peer-adjacent perspective for the Mariners and creating some age diversity on the hitting staff. Paparella is young, but he’s also deeply rooted in the Mariners team culture and the mental skills side of hitting – on his Twitter account (paps_swings) he references The Mental Game of Tennis, a popular tome among Mariners mental skills coaches, and studies coaches from across the sports world to glean insights, similar to former Mariners farm director Andy McKay.
The firing of Magallanes recalls the firing of hitting coordinator Jarret DeHart in August of 2024, in the midst of another disappointing season for the Mariners; the 31-year-old DeHart, who was with the Mariners from 2021 to 2024, is now the hitting coordinator for the Yankees, who currently rank sixth in baseball (second in the AL) in team wRC+.
The team has not yet officially commented on Magallanes’s dismissal; this story will be updated with any and all relevant quotes.
