Seattle Mariners president Kevin Mather has resigned from his position following controversial comments he made during an interview with the Bellevue Rotary Club.

Chairman and managing partner John Stanton released a statement Monday notifying the public Mather was resigning as president and CEO. Stanton said Mather's comments do not reflect the views held by the organization, adding there was ā€œno excuseā€ for what Kevin Mather said in the interview.

Mather had a number of eye-opening comments during the interviewā€“which occurred last monthā€“regarding service-time manipulation and the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the team's offseason.

But Mather's most jarring comments came when he seemed to posit frustration with respect to non-English speakers. Kevin Mather made a note about the English of top prospect Julio Rodriguez, later garnering a response from Rodriguez himself.

Mather also made disturbing remarks alluding to the idea foreign players should be forced to speak English without an interpreter:

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ā€œFor instance, we justĀ rehired (Hisashi) Iwakuma (as a special-assignment coach), he was a pitcher with us for a number of years, Mather said, via Ryan Divish of theĀ Seattle Times. ā€œWonderful human being, his English was terrible. He wanted to get back into the game, he came to us, we quite frankly want him as our Asian scout/interpreter, whatā€™s going on with the Japanese league. Heā€™s coming to spring training.

ā€œAnd Iā€™m going to say, Iā€™m tired of paying his interpreter. When he was a player, weā€™d pay Iwakuma ā€˜X,ā€™ but weā€™d also have to pay $75,000 a year to have an interpreter with him. His English suddenly got better. His English got better when we told him that.ā€

The remarks sparked plenty of outrage around the game. Kevin Mather issued an apology, but it seemed there was never going to be an end game other than his leaving the team.

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