Landon Vodka

Top 10 Free Agent Center Fielders for 2027, via @BaseballAmerica 1 - Trent Grisham 2 - Daulton Varsho 3 - Luis Robert 4 - Cedric Mullins 5 - Tyrone Taylor 6 - Myles Straw 7 - TJ Friedl 8 - Lane Thomas 9 - Victor Robles 10 - Alek Thomas

Jason Kanzler was teaching chemistry and physics to teenagers at Katy High School in suburban Houston, Texas. That was nine years ago. On Tuesday the Seattle Mariners made him their manager. He is 36 years old. He has never managed a baseball team at any level, major leagues or minor leagues. Start in Penfield, New York, outside Rochester. He lettered three years at Penfield High School as an outfielder and a pitcher, and he landed at the University at Buffalo, where he played three seasons and became the best player in his conference. In 2013 he was named Mid-American Conference Player of the Year. Buffalo named him its male athlete of the year. He made the nine man ABCA Rawlings Gold Glove team. Then the draft came, and the Minnesota Twins took him in the 20th round. The 20th round is a long way down the board. He played three professional seasons. Rookie ball in the Gulf Coast League, then Cedar Rapids, then two stints at Fort Myers. 255 games, a .249 average, 23 home runs. He never got above High-A. After the 2015 season he was out of professional baseball. So he took a job teaching science in a Texas public high school. In April of 2017 he was in that classroom when the University at Buffalo announced it was eliminating four of its athletic programs. Baseball was one of them. The team that produced the best player in the Mid-American Conference four years earlier was finished. UB president Satish Tripathi said the school no longer had the resources to support 20 competitive Division I athletic teams. His own playing career had already ended. Now the program he starred for was gone too, and he was still in Katy, grading chemistry tests. He kept a foot in the game where he could. Two summers went to coaching in the Cape Cod League, the college circuit where scouts go in July. He got himself certified as a strength and conditioning specialist. In 2019 the Houston Astros hired him as a minor league hitting coach. He moved up to minor league hitting coordinator. By 2022 he was on the major league staff in Houston, one of three hitting coaches on the team that won the World Series that fall. In 2024 the Chicago Cubs handed him their entire farm system as director of player development. He ran it for three years. Now Seattle. He replaces Dan Wilson, who was let go in September after the Mariners finished 76-86, one season removed from Game 7 of the American League Championship Series. Jerry Dipoto, who runs baseball operations for the Mariners, said the club set out to find "a manager with the ability to challenge all of us to improve." General manager Justin Hollander went further. "We all believe Jason is the right person to lead our organization back to the postseason." Nine years ago his job was explaining molecules to 16 year olds in Katy, Texas. On Tuesday he was handed a major league baseball team.

Get ready for two years of political theatrics. They have no interest in getting anything productive done. As you can see, it was never about “affordability.” Here come the subpoenas and investigations and impeachments. All theater.