BY DAN GLICKMAN
A graduate of Penfield High School is the new manager of the Seattle Mariners: Jason Kanzler.
The 36-year-old was named Seattle’s 22nd all-time manager on Tuesday, beating out other candidates including former Houston Astros manager Joe Espada. He’d previously served three years as the Director of Player Development for the Chicago Cubs. This will be his first full-time managerial job.
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Kanzler takes over a club that is looking to bounce back after going from finishing a win away from the World Series in 2025 to missing the playoffs in 2026, a result that led to the firing of Dan Wilson.
“Our goal in this process was finding a manager with the ability to challenge all of us to improve,” Mariners President of Baseball Operations Jerry Dipoto said in a press release. “Jason has the mindset, expertise, communication skills, and intensity to help create a championship standard here in Seattle.”
“I am thrilled to join the Mariners organization and I’m looking forward to hitting the ground running,” Kanzler said in the press release. “This team has an immense amount of talent in all facets of the game, and my coaching staff and I are excited to access and unlock this team’s full potential.”
After his time in Penfield, Kanzer went on to play baseball at the University at Buffalo, where he won the school’s Male Athlete of the Year award in 2013 and took home two NCAA Rawlings Gold Glove Awards. He was drafted by the Minnesota Twins in the 20th round of the 2013 First-Year Player Draft and played parts of three seasons in the minors, reaching as high as High-A Fort Myers. His professional coaching career began in 2019 in the Astros organization, reaching the major leagues in 2022 as one of the hitting coaches on Dusty Baker‘s World Series-winning squad.
It is believed that Kanzler is the first person born and raised in the Rochester region to become a permanent manager in Major League Baseball, although there have been others with ties to the region who have skippered in the big leagues.
The most notable, of course, is Rochester’s “Mr. Baseball” himself, Joe Altobelli. Although initially from Detroit, the 1983 World Series champion lived in the area for decades until his passing in 2021. Other managers with Rochester ties include former Orioles skipper Dave Tremblay (who graduated from SUNY Brockport), Kaiser Wilhelm (who spent much of his post-playing career in Rochester, including coaching the University of Rochester), and Red Dooin (who retired to Rochester).
Heinie Groh was born and raised in Rochester, but he merely filled in as an interim player/manager for the Cincinnati Reds in 1918 after Christy Mathewson left to join the war effort. Harvey Watkins, who for a time managed the New York Giants during a tumultuous 1895 season, was born in Seneca Falls, but according to the Society of American Baseball Research, little is known about his early life and so it is unknown if he was raised in the region.
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