@thesportsontap: Jason Kanzler was teaching high school chemistry in Katy, Texas. On Tuesday the Seattle Mariners made him their manager. He is 36. He has never managed a baseball team at any level. Go back to Buffalo. He played three seasons for the University at Buffalo, and in 2013 he was named Mid-American Conference Player of the Year. The school named him its male athlete of the year. He made the nine man ABCA Rawlings Gold Glove team. The Minnesota Twins drafted him that June in the 20th round. He played three professional seasons. The Gulf Coast League, then Cedar Rapids, then Fort Myers twice. 255 games, a .249 average, 23 home runs. He never got above High-A. After 2015 he was out of professional baseball, so he took a job teaching chemistry and physics in a Texas public high school. In April of 2017 he was in that classroom when Buffalo announced it was eliminating four of its athletic programs. Baseball was one of them. The team that produced the best player in the conference four years earlier was finished. In 2019 the Houston Astros hired him as a minor league hitting coach. By 2022 he was on the big league staff, one of three hitting coaches on the Houston team that won the World Series that fall. In 2024 the Chicago Cubs handed him their entire farm system. He ran it for three years. Now Seattle. He replaces Dan Wilson, who was let go in September after the Mariners finished 76-86. Nine years ago his job was explaining molecules to 16 year olds. On Tuesday he was handed a major league baseball team. #MLB #mariners #seattlemariners #baseball #marinersbaseball

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Tuesday 03 November 2026 20:50:18 GMT