Dave Dombrowski has a managerial decision to make, and his own clubhouse has already made it for him. Trea Turner, J.T. Realmuto and Kyle Schwarber all went public this week in support of Don Mattingly, the 65-year-old bench coach who ran the Phillies for five months and went 79-55.
“We love Donnie,” Realmuto said, calling Mattingly a great manager while acknowledging the call is not his to make. Turner said Mattingly was easy to talk to about hitting. Schwarber credited him with steadying a team that had fallen apart in April.
The Record Is Not Close to Ambiguous
Rob Thomson was fired on April 28 with the Phillies 9-19. Mattingly took over that day, and from that point forward Philadelphia posted the fourth-best record in baseball. A team that looked finished in the first month finished with a wild card spot.
It was not a clean ending. The Phillies went 9-14 down the stretch and did not clinch until the final day of the regular season, then lost a winner-take-all Wild Card Series game to the Braves 6-2. That is five straight years of October disappointment in Philadelphia, and Mattingly caught real criticism for his bullpen and rotation choices in that series.
Fine. Now weigh that against the alternative. Dombrowski went back to Alex Cora after the elimination and Cora turned the job down for the second time in six months, telling him he does not plan to manage in 2027. Cora has 9-year-old twins and $7.25 million still coming from Boston through next year, which is a short conversation.
The Replacement List Is Thin
What is left is a mix of retreads and first-timers. Rocco Baldelli won a Manager of the Year award in Minnesota in 2019 and was let go after 2025. Brad Ausmus last managed in the majors in 2019 and was hired by Dombrowski in Detroit more than a decade ago. David Ross has been out of a dugout since the Cubs dismissed him after 2023. Omar Lopez, Rodney Linares and George Lombard are respected bench coaches who have never managed a big league game.
None of them knows this roster. Mattingly does, and he is under contract through next season regardless. He also said back in July that he would take the job if Dombrowski wanted him to.
Timing matters here too. The collective bargaining agreement expires December 1, and a work stoppage would cut off contact between staff and players for however long it lasts. Dropping a brand new manager into that, with no spring to build relationships, is a real cost that does not show up on a resume comparison.
Dombrowski Has Not Said Anything
No decision has been announced. Dombrowski has not taken questions since the Braves eliminated his team, and the Phillies have not yet held their end-of-season press conference. Owner John Middleton’s only public comment on the search was that it is “Dave’s decision,” which is the same vote of confidence Dombrowski has gotten for years.
The easy read is that keeping the interim guy looks like settling. The harder read is that a 79-55 stretch, three star players vouching for him and a lockout on the calendar add up to the obvious answer. Give Mattingly the job and spend the winter fixing the roster instead.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
