The 2019 Major League Baseball season toiled on, and uncertainty was in Don Mattingly’s future.
His four-year contract as the Miami Marlins’ manager expired at the end of the season. A season on its way to 100-plus losses took a toll on him mentally and emotionally, a side effect from being thrust into a rebuild midway through his contract. “That’s not something you want to go through as a manager,” Mattingly said. “Trust me.”
But Mattingly was certain about the direction the franchise was heading and that, if given the opportunity, he wanted to stay.
He was there for the teardown. He was there to see all the big names he had at his disposal shipped away one by one. He was there to see the prospects acquired in return show their potential in the minor leagues while he battled two losing seasons that totaled a collective 120-203 record.
After enduring the pain that comes with starting a rebuild, he wanted to be there to see the results that came from it, good or bad. He wanted a chance to see if the prospects lived up to their billing, a chance to finish what was started on his watch.
“I said it from the beginning. I love young players. I love watching them grow and get better,” Mattingly said. “You also like to see them get to the finish line and not just help them get three-quarters of the way and turn them over to somebody else who gets to enjoy all the fruits of when you were freaking putting all the trees in and digging all the dirt and everything else.”
Fast forward to today, and Mattingly is still digging the dirt, still watching the seeds sprout and looking for the chance to reap what has been sowed.
The Marlins gave Mattingly, 58, a two-year contract extension at the end of the 2019 season with a mutual option that could keep him in Miami through the 2022 season.
More than enough time to know whether the Marlins’ rebuild was going to work out or burst into flames.
Mattingly’s mindset is toward the former. His sense of optimism was evident throughout spring training until ongoing coronavirus pandemic postponed team activities two weeks before Opening Day. He watched the team’s young players, the kids, stake their claim and show they could have a future with the club.
His awareness of the heightened expectations were there, too. Losing seasons need to be a thing of the past sooner rather than later.
He was ready to continue with that challenge.
“It’s challenging,” Mattingly said, “but I think it’s going to be very satisfying as we’re starting to get over the hump and start to get that momentum.”
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Stability plays a part in that improvement, and Mattingly’s extension marks one of the first true signs of managerial continuity in the franchise’s history.
Mattingly, at 646 games and four full seasons, is already the longest-tenured skipper in the club’s 27-year history.
Mattingly is also no stranger to managerial turnover from his playing days.
He played under eight managers during his 14-year career with the New York Yankees, including multiple stints with Billy Martin and Lou Piniella.
Donnie Baseball didn’t have the same manager for more than two consecutive seasons until Buck Showalter managed the Yankees from 1992-1995, Mattingly’s final four years as a player. Mattingly also served as a hitting coach and bench coach for Joe Torre from 2004-2007.
“It was one guy to the next every year,” Mattingly said, “so as a player you kind of got to the point if things were going bad, you were like, This guy’s probably not going to be back. You felt that.”
The positive of that turnover as it pertains to the present? Mattingly picked up traits from each that he uses today.
Martin’s eye for young talent. Yogi Berra’s ability to treat players the same every day regardless of how they performed on the field. Piniella’s “energy and toughness and fire.” Showalter’s organization and preparation. Torre’s calm nature and ability to stop confrontation before it began.
“Anything that I see is good, I’m trying to take that,” Mattingly said. “Things that I see that I don’t like, I kind of discard.”
All of those traits have manifested into the Mattingly who oversaw the Los Angeles Dodgers from 2011-2015 and who oversees the Marlins’ dugout now. It has been almost 25 years since he played his last game on Oct. 1, 1995, as lingering back issues halted his playing career. He was a six-time All-Star, nine-time Gold Glove winner and three-time Silver Slugger. He won the American League batting title in 1984 and was the league’s MVP and RBI leader in 1985.
His experiences as a player, and knowledge obtained by the revolving door of managers during that time, prepared him for what was to come.
“I understand when you’re a young player, you want to have a familiar face in the dugout,” said Derek Jeter, the Marlins’ CEO and part-owner whose rookie season with the Yankees overlapped with Mattingly’s final year as a player. “When you’re a young player and you make mistakes, the first thing you do is you take a look in that dugout. You see how your manager is responding. It could be someone that makes you nervous. It could be someone that calms you. Donnie’s the type that’s going to have that calming influence on young players and you want to have a sense of consistency for the players coming up.”
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It’s also worth remembering that Mattingly didn’t come to Miami with a rebuild on his mind.
The team he inherited ahead of the 2016 season — at least at the MLB level — was filled with talent.
Jose Fernandez as his ace. Speedy Dee Gordon as his ledoff hitter. Giancarlo Stanton for the power. Marcell Ozuna and Christian Yelich completing the outfield (with Ichiro Suzuki as his fourth outfielder, mind you). JT Realmuto as the up-and-coming catcher.
“When I first came to Miami and looked at that team, I thought ‘Man, we’ve got a chance’ when you look at the names that we had put together,” Mattingly said.
That team went 79-82 — their most wins in a season since 2010 — and finished seven-and-a-half games out of the wild card.
And then things changed.
It started with Fernandez’s death on Sept. 25, 2016, when the 24-year-old crashed his boat with two friend on board into jetty rocks at Government Cut.
And then the Bruce Sherman and Jeter ownership group took over the club after the 2017 season, and those tough decisions that are constantly referenced began shortly afterward.
Gordon, Ozuna, Stanton and Yelich were traded within two months of each other ahead of the 2018 season. Realmuto was traded just before 2019 spring training.
The goal: Stock up the Marlins’ virtually non-existent minor-league system. Build the organization’s depth from the ground up.
“Kind of a start over,” Mattingly said.
Struggles followed. A 63-98 record in 2018 was followed by a 57-105 season in 2019. Two of the Marlins’ four worst seasons in franchise history.
But while the losses racked up at the MLB level, the Marlins’ future started becoming clearer.
The minor-league system went from being among the worst in baseball to a consensus top-10 ranking. MLBPipeline has the Marlins at No. 4.
Twenty-five of the team’s top-30 prospects joined the organization after the new ownership group took over.
The Marlins have five of baseball’s top 100 prospects. That’s tied with the Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres, Seattle Mariners, Atlanta Braves, San Francisco Giants and Arizona Diamondbacks for the second most top prospects. Only the Tampa Bay Rays have more with six.
“You could see it coming,” Mattingly said. “You could feel it.”
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The focus was on the future, but Mattingly still had to keep his team in the present prepared no matter how bleak the evident outcome seemed.
“You never sell that to your players or buy into that,” Mattingly said. “You always want to fight that. We can win. You have to believe you can win at all times. That can’t change. Those two years of losing doesn’t mean you buy into that. You’ve got to keep fighting through that. We’ve got to get better. We’ve got to continue to get better.”
Mattingly earned the clubhouse’s respect for that. Players know the front office’s long-term plans. They knew on paper it would be tough to compete with the rest of MLB with the way the roster was constructed.
But Mattingly fought for them, so they competed on the field for him.
“You want a manager who knows how it feels when you’re struggling,” said shortstop Miguel Rojas, one of three players who has been on the Marlins’ roster since Mattingly’s tenure began in 2015. “Donnie’s more than just a person who’s running this team. He’s a good mentor for everybody. He played the game. He knows how hard it is. He’s battled through the past couple years. Now that we’re in a better position, hopefully he’s the guy who gets the credit too.”
One thing is certain: He’ll have at least two years to prove he’s worthy of the credit.
“As a teammate, as a coach and now as a manager, when I think about Don Mattingly, I think about leadership,” Jeter said. “I think about his demeanor. I think about patience. More importantly, I think about his overall character. When I think about who we want to help lead this team moving forward, Don Mattingly is the right person.”
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