Mariners’ CEO Kevin Mather resigns after making discriminatory remarks of team’s non-English speaking staff

Seattle Mariners team president Kevin Mather resigned on Monday, one day after the longtime executive’s disparaging and discriminatory remarks about his organization’s players surfaced online.

During a Q&A with the Bellevue Breakfast Rotary Club earlier this year, Mather insulted multiple current and former Mariners, provoking the ire of MLB fans and Mariners players alike, leading to his resignation, which the team announced on Monday.

Mather criticized his immigrant athletes’ English-speaking capacity, from Japanese-born Hisashi Iwakuma, to Dominican top prospect Julio Rodriguez, a 20-year-old that regularly gives interviews and writes on social media in English.

In between griping about paying for Iwakuma’s $75,000 a year translator and the 20-year-old Rodriguez’s command of a second language, and calling veteran third baseman Kyle Seage “overpaid,” Mather also revealed the organization’s methods to suppress the earning potential of their best young minor leaguers.

If the Major League Baseball Player’s Association wasn’t already displeased by Mather’s comments, they certainly were after Mather then insulted the players’ union’s commitment to player safety during their acrimonious negotiation with the league over a season restart.

“I want to apologize to every member of the Seattle Mariners organization, especially our players and to our fans. There is no excuse for my behavior, and I take full responsibility for my terrible lapse in judgment,” Mather said in a statement released Sunday night.

“My comments were my own,” Mather continued. “They do not reflect the views and strategy of the Mariners baseball leadership who are responsible for decisions about the development and status of the players at all levels of the organization. I’ve been on the phone most of the day today apologizing to the many people I have insulted, hurt, or disappointed in speaking at a recent online event.”

“I am committed to make amends for the things I said that were personally hurtful and I will do whatever it takes to repair the damage I have caused to the Seattle Mariners organization.”

Though Mather joined the organization in 1996, he will have to do that work from the outside.