McKay reassumes player development duties

SEATTLE -- Mariners director of player development Emanuel Sifuentes, who was promoted to that post in November, has left the organization for an opportunity outside baseball, the team announced on Thursday.

Andy McKay, who’d held that role for six years, will reassume those duties. McKay was promoted to senior director of player development, a formal title bump after his instrumental efforts with Seattle’s Minor League system, but the real transition he was set to make was joining the Major League coaching staff. While McKay will still contribute to the MLB team when he can, his focus will revert more exclusively back to player development.

The timing of Sifuentes’ departure -- with the onset of Spring Training once the lockout between MLB and the MLB Players Association ends -- left Seattle scrambling some to fill the position. After a meeting with McKay, Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto and assistant GM Justin Hollander, McKay volunteered to reassume his old role.

McKay was slated to be one of nine coaches on manager Scott Servais’ staff, one more than the typical eight that big league staffs carry. The Mariners don’t plan to back-fill that role for 2022, and it’s possible McKay will get that opportunity later once a replacement for Sifuentes is hired, though it’s possible that search could linger into next offseason. McKay, who was head coach at Sacramento City College from 1999-2012, has long had aspirations of coaching -- and managing -- professionally.

McKay was one of Dipoto’s first hires, in October 2015, after spending three years as the Rockies’ peak performance coordinator. Under his watch, particularly over the past three years, the Mariners have developed one of the Majors’ best farm systems, listed No. 2 by MLB Pipeline in its most recent rankings.

Sifuentes spent the past eight seasons in the Mariners’ organization, beginning as an advance scout before slowly rising through the ranks and transitioning to PD. He was the department’s manager from 2019-20 then was promoted to assistant director for ’21, making him an ideal heir apparent to McKay. The Pepperdine University graduate began his MLB career as a baseball operations intern with the Dodgers in ’13.