With the Mariners winning three straight series under the tutelage of interim manager Daren Brown, there’s a growing movement among the fanbase to remove the “interim” tag and make Brown the M’s full-time manager.  This isn’t something I’m necessarily opposed to, but I’d rather the team took their time and had a proper interview process first.  Before that happens, however, let’s take a look at Brown’s history and some reasons why he would, or would not, make a good fit for the M’s as a manger.

Brown  has been a manager since 1999, getting his start with the Amarillo Dillas, an independent league team.  He had actually pitched for the same team for four years prior after failing to ever make the Major Leagues (he was drafted by Toronto in the 29th round of the 1989 draft).  He managed in Amarillo, where he still lives today, for two years before the Mariners hired him to coach in their minor league system.  First assigned as the manager of the single-A San Bernardino Stampede in 2001, he took his team to the playoffs for two straight years before the M’s changed their affiliates.  Re-tasked to manage the low-A Wisconsin Timber Rattlers in 2003, Brown’s team again earned a playoff spot after finishing the first half of their season with the best record in their league, and finishing the year just over .500 on a whole.

In 2004, Brown was promoted to lead the high-A Inland Empire club, and would once again earn a playoff berth (noticing a pattern yet?).  In fact, Brown earned a distinction that year as the only manager in the whole of the Mariner organization to do so.  He would stay with Inland Empire for one more season before moving onwards and upwards to AA Stan Antonio to manager the Missions in what would be a miserable season across the M’s system as the system had been slowly gutted over the years, and the new talent coming in generally wasn’t up to the same snuff as the prospects they were replacing.

That didn’t hold Brown back, however, as the organization was still impressed enough with him to assign him to the Tacoma Rainiers starting in 2007, where he lead some impressive teams up until his summons to be the interim manager in Seattle just over a week and a half ago.  Probably the highlight of Brown’s tenure with the Rainiers was leading the club to a dramatic late season surge that lead to a division championship and post-season birth in 2009, with it literally coming down to the final inning of the final game before before their playoff spot was secured.

All in all, Brown has had a very solid resume.  For those who just care about results, he has won virtually everywhere he’s gone, which is impressive given the ever-shifting talent landscape of minor league baseball, where a team can look completely different from one month to the next.  For people who are concerned with chemistry, Brown is also your man.  His clubhouses have always been described as loose environments with well-bonded team-mates, and notable issues have been few and far between.

Tactically, he’s always shown a remarkable ability to shift gears to fit whatever fits his current roster best, and is very flexible with his lineups depending on the pitcher and team being faced.  Those are more important traits for a minor league manager than one in the majors, but they are certainly not without merit at the highest level of the game.  Brown has also coached a remarkably large number of the M’s top prospects, so his familiarity with the players, especially their strengths and weaknesses, can only serve to help him.

The biggest drawback with Brown is one of experience at the highest level.  Yes, he’s been a manager for over ten years, and yes, he’s been at AAA since 2007, but until he was named the interim manager of the Mariners, he hadn’t spent one day in the major leagues, as a player or otherwise.  Not one.  How important that factor is to how well Brown can succeed is one of some debate; there have certainly been other managers who succeeded in spite of never being a major league player.  Jim Leyland, Fredi Gonzalez, and Joe Maddon are all managers that have had varying amounts of success despite never having been on a big-league roster.  It is, however, certainly something to at least think about as the process goes on.

The argument could also be made that because of Brown’s significant experience as a player-developing manager, his value would be higher to the organization by returning to Tacoma in 2011.  I’m not sure how much merit such an argument holds, but it’s certainly something worth considering.

Most importantly at the moment, however, is to not put too much stock into Brown winning three series to start his career as a major league manager.  Three series is a ridiculously tiny sample size, especially for something as subjective as managerial performance.  If you want to judge Brown’s managerial candidacy, to it based on the merits of his career prior to his promotion, not based on what he does as the interim manager.  That doesn’t mean that you should totally ignore what he does the rest of the year, but it shouldn’t be at the top of your list by a long shot.

While Brown certainly seems to, at least on the surface, be a viable candidate to manage the M’s in 2011 and beyond, there have been a few others identified as potential candidates.  Let’s take a quick moment and look at some of them:

• Bobby Valentine has been at the top of most people’s lists since Don Wakamatsu was fired.  Believed to be a candidate for the Mariners’ job before Wak was originally hired, Valentine spent the last several years managing the Chiba Lotte Marines of the Japanese League to fairly significant success.  He’s had two prior stints as an MLB manager, leading the New York Mets from 1996 to 2002, and the Texas Rangers from 1985-1992.  He had mixed success in those days, taking the Mets to the World Series in 2000 before falling to the Yankees among several other playoff berths, but also lead several teams that melted down and at times had contentious relations with his front offices, most notably while with the Mets.  Valentine’s Japanese experience certainly should give him a leg up with the primarily Japanese ownership group in Seattle (if that even matters in the end), and the fact that he actually ended his playing career as a Mariner in 1979 is also something that probably won’t hurt him.
• Fredi Gonzalez is another name that gets bandied about some, and could be a very interesting candidate.  His tenure with the Marlins was certainly a rocky one at times, but you certainly cannot deny that he got a lot more out of that club than anyone expected him to.  Given that the M’s are largely expected to be in some sort of rebuilding phase in 2011, that certainly makes him an attractive target.  However, Gonzalez is commonly being attached to the Atlanta Braves as Bobby Cox’s successor after this season, so it’s debatable whether or not the M’s would even have a shot at him.
• Buried in the middle of this story is an interesting name starting to be attached to the M’s search.  Ted Simmons is currently the bench coach of the San Diego Padres, and only has three seasons of coaching experience despite being 61 years old, but has a long history of working with Jack Zduriencik with both the Pirates and Brewers.  He is also apparently being talked about as a major part of why the Padres have met with so much more success than anyone had anticipated they could.  I don’t know much about Simmons myself, but it certainly sounds as though his is a name to keep tucked away as this process rolls on.