SEATTLE — Whether it was a premeditated dig, understanding the rivalry between the team he now manages and the team he once worked for, or it was a completely spontaneous statement with a little sense of humor mixed in, Jason Kanzler likely won over more than a few skeptical Mariners fans and made even the jaded ones smile with one line early his introductory news conference.

Asked about his impressions of the Mariners over the past few years, Kanzler began his answer: “So I fondly remember coming here when I was with the team that shall not be named …”

The comment drew more than a few chuckles and laughs from the audience and surely resonated with parts of the fan base.

The team that shall not be named is the Houston Astros, who have won the division eight of the last 10 seasons and who he worked for in multiple capacities, including assistant MLB hitting coach from 2019-2023.

From that point on in the news conference, the Astros were referred to as “the team that shall not be named.”

Wearing a dark navy suit with a pristine white shirt and navy tie, Kanzler looked younger than his 36 years. There was an intensity to his personality and a thoughtfulness to his answers.

“Winning the podium” is a concept reserved for these sorts of situations where new hires to positions of leadership say all the right things that fans want to hear in public, providing hope or belief of better days ahead.

Given his personality and his background, Kanzler wasn’t going to lose this introduction to Mariners fans and local media. But his verbose nature and the clarity of his answers to the wide range of questions — some ethereal, some conceptual and some philosophical — was distinctly contrary in comparison to his predecessor.

He openly admitted that becoming an MLB manager wasn’t prominent on his list of career goals until the Mariners reached out about their managerial opening. Seattle had tried unsuccessfully to hire Kanzler away from the team he wouldn’t name in 2021.

“I realized I wanted to manage during this process,” he said. “This came about quickly, and I realized very quickly throughout it that managing a major league club is just the pinnacle of what I was already doing as a farm director, where I had to manage an entire minor league system. This is just at a way higher magnitude with brighter lights with a third deck (in the stadium), but in the end, it’s the same. I want to win. I want to develop people. I want to develop players, and I want to achieve something with a collective and a great group of people around me. And that’s what this is going to be.”

Kanzler was hired as the 22nd manager in club history and the third under the leadership of Jerry Dipoto. Similar to Wilson and Scott Servais before him, Kanzler takes over the Mariners manager job with zero managerial experience.

What makes him the right person to lead the Mariners?

“I bring a unique path, a unique set of skills and experiences,” Kanzler said. “I am not the traditional path toward managing. I’m the right man because I believe that every player and every person can be better, and I think these players so deeply want to be better and to grow and to win as a unit. And I’m excited to get that out of them.”

His path to the big leagues was circuitous. He was cut as a walk-on at Northeastern in 2009, transferred to the University at Buffalo where he played baseball as a walk-on in 2010. He played well enough to earn a Gold Glove in the outfield in 2012 and was named the Mid-American Conference player of the year in 2013. Then he was drafted by the Twins in the 20th round in 2013, playing three seasons of minor league baseball before retiring to become a high school physics and chemistry teacher at Katy High School in Texas.

He joined the Astros as a minor league hitting coach in 2019 and was promoted to the big league club’s assistant hitting coach in 2022. He has spent the last two years overseeing the Cubs minor league system as the director of player development.

“All the experiences that you go through in life prepare you for the next steps,” he said. “I taught physics and chemistry in high school. It is a very small taste of what it’s like to stand in front of a group of players. It is similar to coaching. In fact, coaching is just a different form of teaching, and it is probably the backbone of how I construct the way I approach developing anyone.”

Kanzler addressed two of the biggest philosophies that the Mariners’ front office wanted to change moving forward — culture and accountability.

“Culture is, in my opinion, it’s all the things that you don’t allow,” Kanzler said. “It’s all the things that don’t happen. It’s the things that you hold the line against. It’s doing obviously the big things right. It’s doing all of the little things right all of the time. But most importantly, it is not doing the wrong things as much as humanly possible. What we allow is what we stand for, and so that’s what culture means to me.”

As for accountability, Kanzler’s answer was rooted in communication.

“It requires clarity,” he said. “People need to understand what they’re accountable for before you can hold them to accountability. So it starts with clarity, simplicity. Even when the things we’re talking about might be complex, they need to be understood. It makes the hard conversations much, much easier. And in that respect, holding people accountable and the idea of accountability, period, it somewhat takes care of itself. I’m not saying it’s hands off, but it starts with clarity and understanding what we’re trying to do.”

Kanzler’s days ahead will be filled with trying to reach out to players on the roster for conversations either in person or via video calls. He is working on a compressed timetable with the expected Dec. 1 lockout looming. Once that is enacted, he can’t be in contact with any player on the 40-man roster.

He’s also working with Dipoto and general manager Justin Hollander to fill out the rest of the MLB coaching staff. They will hire at least three more coaches — a bench coach, a first base coach, at least one more assistant hitting coach — and possible two or three more assistant coaches in a support role.

Back to that answer that started out with “the team that shall not be named.”

“What distinctly stands out to me is this atmosphere is electric,” Kanzler said. “I think that ‘electric factory’ was even like a thing that was used. One of the things that excites me, among many things, is that I would like to ride the lightning with this team and this city.”

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