Don Mattingly was in the right place at the right time when he got his job as manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Now he’s in the wrong place at the wrong time when he will very possibly lose his job as manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Mattingly, the former New York Yankees first baseman, is the first manager in the coast-to-coast history of the Dodgers to win three consecutive division (Los Angeles) or league (Brooklyn) championships. His potentially fatal shortcoming, however, could be his failure to manage the Los Angeles version of the franchise deeper into the post-season.
The Dodgers beat Atlanta in the division series in 2013 but lost to St. Louis in the league series. The following season the Dodgers lost to the Cardinals in the division series. Last week the third time was not the charm for Mattingly, whose team lost to the New York Mets in the division series.
The team’s new owners, principally Mark Walter of Guggenheim Capital, LLC, spent a major league record $2 billion to buy the Dodgers in 2012 and in Mattingly’s three division-championship seasons paid their players a major league high $767 million.
Might Walter and his partners be sufficiently disturbed for Walter to thank Mattingly for his service and send him on his way? It would not come as a surprise.
Stan Kasten is the Dodgers’ president and chief executive officer. He held the same position with the Braves, who won 12 consecutive division titles during his tenure. He is very familiar with success and knows what the Dodgers have done under Mattingly is not the definition of success.
Neither Kasten nor any other Dodgers executive has said anything about Mattingly’s status, but Kasten clearly was not happy when he answered his cell phone Friday.
“I don’t feel like talking a lot,” Kasten said gruffly.
I called Kasten specifically to ask about the manager and forged ahead and asked despite Kasten’s tone and words.
“Don’t ask me anything about that,” he said in the same brusque tone.
Will you talk about anything? I asked. “I don’t want to talk about anything,” he said. “My season ended about 10 hours ago.”
It was 12 hours and 40 minutes ago, to be exact, but I got the point and opted not to ask anything else.
Mattingly, I suspect, is in jeopardy not only because he has failed to produce a pennant or a World Series championship with that ultra-expensive payroll but also because he was not the choice of anybody in the current Dodgers’ hierarchy to be the team’s manager.
Ned Colletti was the general manager who gave Mattingly his job. Mattingly succeeded Joe Torre when Torre retired after the 2010 season.
Mattingly worked as a coach with the Yankees under Torre from 2004 through 2007. When Torre left the Yankees after the 2007 season, Mattingly and Joe Girardi were the finalists to succeed him. When Girardi got the job, Mattingly left the Yankees and followed Torre to Los Angeles, where he was in place to succeed Torre.
Managing the Dodgers was no great challenge for someone without managerial experience. I always felt the same about Torre with the Yankees, but he managed the Mets, Atlanta and St. Louis before he landed the Yankees’ job and inherited payrolls that were far bigger than the competition’s.
Mattingly has managed the Dodgers for five years. It’s unlikely that he would have survived more than three years under some owners, George Steinbrenner, for example. Walter, the Dodgers’ principal owner, sounded like Steinbrenner after the Dodgers lost to the Mets in the division series.
“We had 54 pitches with runners in scoring position, 54 pitches,” Walter said. “It’s so frustrating.”
Steinbrenner counted at-bats, not pitches, but the meaning is the same. The players didn’t do their job, and that means the manager didn’t do his.
Mattingly has worked his way through two years of a three-year contract extension that he, in effect, conned out of the Dodgers.
It was after the Dodgers won the division title and series in 2013 that Mattingly, not the club, announced that an option in his contract for 2014 became guaranteed when the team won the division series. But Mattingly didn’t seem to be satisfied with one year
At the same news conference where he announced the guarantee of his option, Mattingly said he didn’t know if he would manage in 2014. In effect, he said the Dodgers should sign him to a multi-year contract or not expect him back. It was bad enough working this year as a lame-duck manager, Mattingly said; don’t expect him to do it again.
“This has been a frustrating, tough year, honestly,” he said. “With the payroll and the guys that you have, it puts you in a tough spot in the clubhouse. We dealt with that all year long. Really what it does, it puts me in a spot where everything that I do is questioned because I’m basically trying out or auditioning to say, ‘Can he manage or can he not manage?’
“To me, it’s at that point where three years in, you either know or you don’t.”
In other words, Mattingly seemed to be saying, you’ve seen enough of me so if you want me to manage your team, give me a multi-year contract, If not, I’ll be on my way.”
Implying they had intended to do it all along, the Dodgers gave Mattingly a three-year contract. Under that contract, Mattingly has won two more division titles but has neither matched the division series win nor exceeded it.
Mattingly wasn’t the only one who inherited an outsized payroll. Andrew Friedman, who was named president of baseball operations a year ago, and Farhan Zaidi, whom Friedman appointed general manager, both came from teams whose payrolls were among MLB’s lowest.
While they couldn’t be expected to produce a World Series winner with a wave of their magic wand, they made some moves that raised questions and didn’t make others that might have helped get the team to the World Series.
Friedman didn’t return a call for comment on the Dodgers’ situation and Mattingly’s status, but then, he never returns my calls. He was offended several years ago when I wrote that he didn’t return a call.
Based on his first-year performance, Friedman has hardly earned his first-year salary from his reported 5-year, $37.5 million contract.
The Dodgers, for example, have a terrific one-two pitching punch in Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke, but they had nowhere to go after them.
Could the Dodgers have used another hitter or two who could have helped them win games when their league-leading home-run hitters weren’t hitting home runs?
These days two teams have to be built – one to run the marathon that is the season and another to win the spring that is the playoffs. The Dodgers had the first under Colletti, but they didn’t produce the second under Friedman despite a $273 million payroll.
Should Mattingly be excused because Friedman didn’t provide him with enough ammunition, or should a $273 million roster be enough for a manager to go farther than the division series? I’m not the one to answer those questions. I’ll leave the answers to Mark Walter and Stan Kasten when they get over the disappointment and frustration of their latest failure.
SNUBBED SCHWARBER SIZZLES IN POST-SEASON
Kyle Schwarber’s name first showed up in major league box scores in mid-June, appeared there for six games, then disappeared until July 17. He missed just enough time to fail to qualify for salary arbitration in two years as a Super Two.
A 22-year-old catcher-outfielder, who was the fourth player chosen in the 2014 draft, Schwarber was called up to serve as the Cubs’ designated hitter in six inter-league games and hit .364 with a .391 on-base percentage and a 591 slugging percentage. But the Cubs sent him back to the minors, presumably feeling he needed additional time in the minors before he could help them win a post-season spot.
The Cubs have a lot of good young players who have helped them advance to the National League Championship Series. Kris Bryant, Addison Russell, Javier Baez, Jorge Soler and Schwarber, all with less than a year of major league service time, are the most prominent.
But Schwarber wasn’t good enough to come up to the majors earlier or stay in the majors for those 25 missed days. On the other hand, when service time doesn’t accrue, he’s good enough to play for the Cubs in the post-season. In six games through Saturday night, he was hitting .471 with 4 home runs in 17 at-bats, 6 runs batted in, a .526 on-base percentage and a 1.176 slugging percentage.