Edgar Martinez asks for role shift, steps down as Mariners’ hitting coach

Edgar Martinez won’t be the Seattle Mariners’ hitting coach next season.

The Mariners say Martinez, who spent all of his 18 years as a player with the Mariners and more recently the past four as their hitting coach, will still stay in a new role as the franchise’s organizational hitting adviser. That means he’ll be at spring training and throughout the season working with hitters and hitting coaches at all levels.

The move was announced Tuesday morning.

Martinez approached general manager Jerry Dipoto and manager Scott Servais about a transition. He said the grind of coaching and traveling made it difficult to spend time with his family, including his young daughters Tessa and Jacqueline.

“There is one side of me that enjoys it. I enjoy working with the players and we have great guys in the clubhouse and a great coaching staff,” Martinez said. “Once you have a family you don’t see the family much, especially when you have young kids. It can be tough.

“You come home late at night, the whole family is sleeping and in my case I get up early to see the kids and Holly (his wife) and then they’re gone the whole day and I’m back at night and it’s the same thing again. And we also travel. … My situation, I thought at this time in life, I probably would rather choose to be around a little more mainly because the girls are growing.”

Martinez said he’ll also help the Mariners new hitting coach adjust to the team and players once they make their hire. He’ll still be heading to Japan to coach as part of the MLB team set to face the Japanese All-Star team from Nov. 9-15. The Mariners’ Mitch Haniger and Erasmo Ramirez will also be there.

“Edgar came to Scott and me after the season ended and talked to us about his desire to find a position within the organization that would provide more flexibility than the role of major league hitting coach,” Dipoto said in a statement.

“We have spent the past three weeks working with Edgar to design a new position that will allow us to take advantage of his knowledge, passion and teaching skills at both the major and minor league levels, while allowing Edgar flexibility that is unavailable in his current role.”

The Mariners now have openings for their top hitting and pitching coaches. Shortly after the 2018 season ended, they announced Mel Stottlemyre Jr., the Yakima native, would not return.

The change comes after the Mariners’ morphed into one of the worst clubs offensively in the second half of the season.

They entered the year expecting their bats to be their strength, and it was for the first few months. But from July 1 on the Mariners’ offense scored the second-fewest runs in the American League (just ahead of the Tigers) and ranked 26th in runs scored.

It wasn’t just scoring runs. Out of 30 teams their team batting average (.247) was 19th, home runs was 27th, walks 28th and OPS (on-base plus slugging) was 25th (.698).

Martinez said that wasn’t the greatest factor in his decision.

“Obviously I wasn’t happy with the way the offense turned,” he said. “I knew it was tough in the second half, but that wasn’t why I made the decision. I’ve been thinking about doing this since the previous year.

“I understand that sometimes that’s just the way it goes. Teams can do well in one half and struggle the next. It wasn’t the main reason why I decided to take a different role.”

Martinez isn’t the only franchise pillar to earn a new role. So did Ichiro midseason when he transitioned from player to “special assistant to the chairman.”

Except the Mariners plan for Ichiro to participate in spring training as a player, again, and he’ll most assuredly be on their expanded roster for their season opener, as Dipoto has said, against the Oakland Athletics as part of a two-game series in Tokyo, Japan.

This story was originally published October 30, 2018 at 11:26 AM.