According to a new report from Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, the Seattle Mariners have hired CJ Gillman as their next hitting coach.

Gillman is taking over for Kevin Seitzer, who was fired at the end of a disappointing 76-86 campaign that saw the M's miss the playoffs in 2026. Edgar Martinez, who served as the organization's Director of Hitting, is expected to stay in the organization in some capacity, though it's unclear just yet how he'll be involved.

Gillman spent the 2026 season with the Washington Nationals as their director of hitting. Before that, he was with the Mariners from 2022-25 as a minor league hitting coordinator. He had been with the Cincinnati Reds before that.

As noted by Rosenthal:

In one season, the Nationals’ farm system went from 29th to eighth in wRC+ and 29th to seventh in home run rate. Gillman also had a hand in the Nationals’ big-league offense, which heeded his mantra to “crush strikes in the air” and, accordingly, scored the third-most runs in MLB last year.

Well, there's a lot to like:

1) Gillman has worked with both major leaguers and minor leaguers, so he clearly knows how to communicate with players at varying degrees of their career arcs. Communication was cited as a real problem for the 2026 M's.

2) He has specific knowledge and relationships with several critical members of the Mariners, including Lazaro Montes, Michael Arroyo, Colt Emerson, and Cole Young. Furthermore, he's crossed paths with Dominic Canzone, who got to the M's system in 2023. The same could be said for Ryan Bliss and other pieces of the roster that might contribute in 2027.

For a team that seemed to lack a cohesion in 2026, bringing back guys who have familiar relationships is a good thing. Furthermore, Jerry Dipoto referenced the Mariners learning systems in the minor leagues and then losing sight of them in the majors at his end of season press conference.

Well, if Gillman helped build those systems and implemented them in the minors, perhaps he can help reinforce them at the big league level in a way that hasn't been done recently. Perhaps that means the Mariners can get back to the basic building blocks that they established in the minors. That would seem to be a good thing.

The Mariners are about to hire a new manager, and it appears like it's going to be Joe Espada or Jason Kanzler.

Well: The Mariners retained pitching coach Pete Woodworth at the end of the season, and will not allow the new manager to pick his own pitching coach.

And now, they've hired a hitting coach before hiring a new manager, leaving the new manager without a full ability to hire that position either. Managers tend to like "their guys," and this new manager isn't being given a full ability to have "his guys."

That said: I think it's fair to assume that the Mariners told the managerial candidates that they were getting close to a hitting coach hire. I have to imagine that whoever takes this job is doing so with an understanding that Gillman was coming in, and they will be OK with that.