McKay hired to be player personnel director

SEATTLE -- Andy McKay, who spent the past three years as the peak performance director in the Rockies organization, has been hired to be player personnel director of the Mariners.

The Mariners announced the hire on Wednesday. McKay replaces Chris Gwynn, who resigned as the Mariners' farm director on Oct. 8.

McKay is an interesting hire for Dipoto, who replaced Jack Zduriencik as Seattle's GM a month ago. The early assumption was that Dipoto would bring Scott Servais, the current Angels player personnel director, up from Anaheim to fill the role, but indications are that Servais could come to Seattle as an assistant to the GM instead.

McKay was with the Rockies the past three years as their sports psychologist after working for 13 seasons as the head baseball coach at Sacramento City College. He also has coached in the Cape Cod and Northwoods summer baseball leagues. With the Rockies, he worked at various times with the Major League squad, as well as with all the club's Minor League teams.

Dipoto is in the process of hiring a new manager to replace Lloyd McClendon, as well as filling several front-office positions. In addition to Gwynn's resignation, Dipoto chose not to renew the contracts of three special assistants to Zduriencik -- Ted Simmons, Joe McIlvaine and Pete Vuckovich.

The Mariners have retained assistant GM Jeff Kingston, special assistants to the GM Roger Hansen and Ken Madeia, pro scouting director Tom Allison, amateur scouting director Tom McNamara, and international operations director Tim Kissner.