Mariners AGM McKay leaving for role with Guardians (sources)

SEATTLE -- Andy McKay has for years dreamed of being in a big league dugout in a coaching capacity, and the longtime member of the Mariners’ front office will finally get that opportunity.

McKay is leaving the organization after 10 years, including the past three as assistant general manager, to become the field coordinator for the Guardians, sources told MLB.com on Tuesday. Neither club has publicly confirmed the move, but in Seattle, it will leave a high-ranking void for president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto and GM Justin Hollander.

While, at a glance, McKay’s transition might look surprising -- essentially, a third-in-command to a baseball operations department leaving for a much different role and in coaching -- it appears to be the ripe opportunity for McKay to achieve a longtime personal goal.

After all, McKay began his career trajectory as the head baseball coach at Sacramento City College for 14 seasons from 1999-2012 before transitioning to pro baseball -- first, with the Rockies as a peak performance coordinator for Colorado’s Minor League system from 2012-15, then with the Mariners, as one of Dipoto’s first hires after he took over in October 2015.

McKay began his Mariners tenure as director of player development, in which he was responsible for overseeing all aspects of the Mariners’ Minor League system, including roster management and skills development.

He was one of the key cogs behind the scenes of the Mariners’ rebuild from 2019-20 that led to the club developing homegrown talent such as Cal Raleigh, Julio Rodríguez, Logan Gilbert, George Kirby, Bryan Woo and many more. And in his current role, he remained instrumental on the development and Minors side, especially the MLB Draft.

But his past three years were actually a pivot from the trajectory that he was initially slated for.

McKay was set to join former manager Scott Servais’ coaching staff for the 2022 season, but McKay’s replacement in player development, Emmanuel Sifuentes, left the organization at the same time for an opportunity outside baseball. That created a pressing need to immediately backfill his position, as Sifuentes departed at the onset of that year’s Spring Training.

So, McKay resumed many of his previous duties, later receiving title bumps to assistant GM and then VP leading into the 2025 season.

In Cleveland, McKay will rejoin Stephen Vogt, who has been the Guardians' manager for the past two seasons following a one-year stint as Seattle’s bullpen coach in 2023. And he’ll replace Kai Correa, their field coordinator and director of defense, baserunning and game strategy, who was hired as the Mets' bench coach last month. Guardians associate manager Craig Albernaz also left to become the Orioles' manager last week.

It’s unclear how or if the Mariners will backfill McKay’s role, but that figures to be a prominent topic of discussion for Dipoto and Hollander at this weeks’ General Managers Meetings in Las Vegas.