On Tuesday, the Seattle Mariners officially announced Jason Kanzler as the team's newest manager.

On Wednesday at 2 p.m. PT, Kanzler and the Mariners will officially meet with the media.

While there is some true excitement around Kanzler's hiring, there is a high degree of skepticism from M's fans as well. Some are worried about his age (36), while some are also worried about his lack of managerial experience, and some are worried that he's just going to be a puppet of the front office.

I choose to be optimistic about the hiring, but that doesn't mean you have to. With that said, here's five things I want to hear on Wednesday afternoon.

After the disappointing 2026 season ended, Jerry Dipoto told the fanbase that the Mariners were going to have an exhaustive search for the next manager. And while the search took a lot of time (five weeks), we don't know truly just how exhaustive it was.

Don't expect Dipoto to go into specifics on other candidates, but how many people were on their initial list? How many people did they call around on? The fanbase wants to know that every nook and cranny was opened up. This hire, to me, is the biggest decision the M's have made since the step-back of 2018. Fans want to know that it was treated as such.

Again, there are plenty of people that think Kanzler will be a puppet for Dipoto's and Justin Hollander's vision. It's an understandable worry, but I also think we need to acknowledge this: Baseball is full of "collaboration" these days. There are very few, if any, managers that have full autonomy and just do whatever they want.

I expect, everywhere basically, that the manager will be working with the front office. So, how exactly will that be happening? Will the front office meet with Kanzler daily? Will Kanzler have the freedom to read the situations and act accordingly, or will he be managing from a pre-set up script? Will he be able to deviate from that script?

After the season, Dipoto and general manager Justin Hollander referenced the team's poor defense and seemed to indicate that the team wasn't prepared to play on game day.

So, how does Kanzler plan to improve that in 2027? Will they practice harder? What will pregame work look like? How might spring training differ than in years past? What will the culture and standard look like under him and how will he go about holding people accountable to it?

Kanzler is in a challenging spot. There is less than one month until the presumptive MLB lockout. At that time, there will be no communication between managers and players. He doesn't have the ability to reach out to his players during the lockout, so he needs to make the most of the next month. 

When does he reach out to players? What's his message to them? How does he go about the process of culture building, and how does he supercharge it in this condensed time frame?

At 36 years old, how does he gain the respect of people he's barely older than? After three years in player development for the Chicago Cubs, how does he overcome some of the time away from the on-field stuff?

And does he have any idea about his staff yet? Because a first-time manager would seemingly need a good support group around him to help through things. The Mariners are in a position to win next year, so they can't afford to be giving games away because of a manager who is "on-the job training." Who will help him?

One the press conference is over, we'll go live on the "Refuse to Lose Territory" podcast to break down what we heard.