PEORIA, Ariz. — The cramped and windowless office was filled with people, cameras and recording devices, all pointed toward the immaculate desk of manager Scott Servais.
Going into his 35th spring training in professional baseball, this has become his favorite day of the annual baseball rite — the first official workout for the full squad of players.
“It is,” he said early Tuesday morning. “Everybody in baseball looks forward to day one when the full squad is in, and today’s that day.”
It’s on this day that Servais gets to deliver his season-opening speech to the assembled players in the daily morning meeting.
“For me, this is always special,” he said. “We’ve got some things to address and get out on the table. We have some new players that never been a part of this before.”
The message is a mix of about what is expected and the mantra of getting better every day, including the standards of daily work and preparation that have been set and held by players past and current, personal accountability on and off the field to those standards and the overall goals of the team.
“It’s the only message,” Servais said. “That doesn’t change. And I think one thing I’ve learned over time is how valuable consistency is, just being consistent throughout the course of season. So when things are going bad, you don’t panic. I think one of the reasons we turned around last year has been panic. We stayed consistent to our beliefs, knowing eventually we were going to get better.”
That speech for Servais has gotten a little easier with each year at the helm and players coming up through the system knowing, “That plan ain’t changing as long as I’m here.”
Admittedly, the message hasn’t always been embraced immediately and has been met with resistance at times. But he remains steadfast in refusing to budge. It helps that the players who return from last season believe in it.
“You can’t just roll out of bed and come do this,” Ty France said. “This is baseball. It’s one of the hardest games in the world. So if you just roll out of bed and expect to be good, it’s gonna come back and bite you. Every single person in this clubhouse takes a lot of pride in their preparation and their work. It should never be a question with this team, this organization from top to bottom.”
Said J.P. Crawford: “The message should always be getting better. Any time you are on that field, you are giving 100%. And if you aren’t, if you are slacking, you are going to get called out and you should. Everyone holds each other accountable here. It’s made us a better team.”
They’ve seen the results that come with their singular focus on daily preparation to win.
“And even some of them took a little while to buy in,” Servais said. “Standards are established when your core players see the value in it. Our young guys, they’re doing a lot of similar stuff at the minor-league level. You’re going to have new players every year. That’s never gonna change us. Hopefully you bring in the right guys that understand the value in it and they assimilate into it very quickly. Some of them don’t, and they’re no longer here.”
But this year’s speech was missing something, not by choice but accomplishment. For the first time since becoming the Mariners manager in 2016, Servais did not have to reference or remind players of the team’s infamous postseason drought.
That ended last season when the team earned a spot in the playoffs as the second wild card following a 90-72 season, ending a 21-year absence.
“It’s beautiful,” Servais said. “I haven’t even gotten one question about it. Along with that are expectations. They get a little bit higher. I’ve said it early on and I’ll keep saying it, ‘That’s a good thing.’ We broke through the playoff drought in Seattle so the expectations are naturally much higher, which is a great thing. They should be higher. We have a very good team. We now have a team that has some postseason experience. We’ve got some young players that are continuing to get better. We’ve acquired some new players that are going to help us along the way. There’s a lot going in the right direction.”
But making the playoffs in 2022 doesn’t guarantee a postseason spot in 2023. The Mariners had postseason expectations in 2022 based on their unexpected 90-win season in 2021. But last year’s team, which was more talented on paper than the 2021 team, struggled to find an identity early in the season and was 10 games below .500 June 19.
“This is a whole new year,” Servais said. “One thing that I did learn coming off of the 2021 season, when we had a great finish to the end of the season: There was a lot of excitement. A year ago at this time, I thought there would be carry-over. Then we looked up and in early June there wasn’t a whole lot of carry-over. Every team is different. You have to start from ground zero, which we will do today.”