I coached against Andy McKay -- and despised him (to this day). We were arch rivals and there was no love lost.
That aside, the man is a brilliant mental game coach.
Reading this post and the comments, it becomes obvious we are in a realm which fans and pundits profoundly do not comprehend.
Mental game is ABSOLUTELY NOT something every college team teaches. The few coaches who succeed do so because they teach it with more intensity than anything else. As in every interaction with every player on every element of his game today. It is not, as one commenter thought, psychological mumbojumbo. Mental Game begins with the proposition that I am responsible for everthing I do -- failures as well as achievements. The underlying method is to strip away distracting thought so I may focus on the task AT THIS SECOND (throwing a slider, hitting the ball, fielding a ball, etc., etc). And most players -- including most major league players -- do not have this skill. On the other hand, I can tell you that, having coached almost 40 years, teaching mental game is the most fulfilling and most fun experience I've had in the game. It can cause explosive improvement in a team or player. Ask UCLA. Ask Cal State Fullerton. Ask Tampa Bay and on and on and on..
McKay is extremely focused, very organized, and an exceptionally hard worker. It has been said that great coaching is getting a player to accomplish things he never dreamed he could do -- which requires taking that player places he doesn't want to go. McKay knows his players and he knows how to get to them. At the same time, he is tough and he is demanding. He's always been too enamoured with charts and graphs for my liking, but he does create a common understanding of what's expected and the necessary steps to get there. There will be little misunderstanding in his minor-league system.
His greatest challenge will be the minor league coaches and managers -- and those old-style executives Dipoto had not cleared out.
College coaches (and top junior college coaches) are exponentially more skilled than minor league coaches. If you doubt that, consider this: All MLB teams hire minor league coaches who have NO coaching experience. They may have played minor league or Big League ball, but most have not a clue why they succeeded or failed...let alone how to teach 19 and 20 year-olds what they must do. For the most part, they throw the ball out there for 140-150 games and let the players figure it out for themselves College coaches are teachers by profession; virtually no one is a head coach without having coached for one or two decades. They do not enjoy the player turnover MLB does, so they must get the most out of the players they have.
So McKay will be trying to install standards of professionalism among coaches who have little idea what that is. Unskilled coaches are usually rigid because they fear facing or exposing their lack of ability. Consequently, they retreat into team politics. McKay is prodigious at developing esprit de corps; his college assistants were worshipfully loyal to him. He has what it takes to turn in his direction a staff which is in any way willing. Part of the question will be how many people he'll have to fire, in order to find willing coaches, and whether the MLB Good Ol' Boy network can bring him down before he does.
Personal feelings aside, I very much hope he succeeds. The more Mental Game discipline he can instill, the better it is for our Game -- and Seattle won't get back to post-season without it.