Marlins’ Mattingly, with a ‘club to be proud of’ has a case for NL Manager of the Year
Miami Marlins manager Don Mattingly is quick to deflect credit to others. The success, he asserts, belongs to the players, his coaching staff, the front office — everyone else, really — for putting the team in position to make the run they’re making.
The Marlins, with six games left in this shortened 60-game season, are in the thick of the playoff race and have the inside track to their first postseason berth since 2003. And it comes after the team went 120-203 over the last two years at the start of the franchise’s latest rebuild under the new ownership group led by Bruce Sherman and Derek Jeter.
Try as he might to push the praise elsewhere, Mattingly deserves recognition for how he kept this team not just together, but competing throughout everything this team has endured over the past two-plus months.
And it’s why it’s no wonder Mattingly should be considered the frontrunner for the National League’s Manager of the Year.
He maneuvered his team through a COVID-19 outbreak that sidelined 18 players, 167 roster moves through Monday’s game, 18 players making their MLB debut, and playing 28 games over 24 consecutive days to close out the season.
Even with all that, Mattingly has the Marlins with a winning record and the playoffs in sight as the regular season reached its final week. Heading into Tuesday’s 7:10 p.m. game against the Braves, the Marlins’ magic number to clinch a playoff berth is five. In simplest terms, that means the combination of wins by the Marlins and losses by the Philadelphia Phillies (the team behind the Marlins in the standings) needs to add up to at least five by the end of the season.
Considering the Marlins were given a 0.2 percent chance to reach the playoffs at the start of the season, clinching one of the eight spots in the expanded playoff field is a feat that shouldn’t go unnoticed.
Mattingly played a key role in getting them there, even though he would rather the attention placed on him to be minimal.
“This is an easy club to be proud of,” Mattingly said Monday when asked where making the playoffs this year would rank in terms of personal achievements. “I know nobody gave this picked this club to be able to do anything this season. Over 162, we don’t know what would have happened, but we believed in ourselves in that scenario also. But it’s easy to be proud of these guys the way they have dealt with everything. A lot of things have come our way, but a lot of things have come to a lot of clubs this year. We feel like we probably had more than our share, at least we felt like we got pretty much everything you could deal with during this.
“These guys have bounced back,” Mattingly continued. “It’s always a credit to them and your staff and even your organization to put you in a good position with depth and trades and pickups and things like that to keep you in it. But it does feel good to have a club like this that you know has battled for you every day, that is fighting for every inch of that field and doesn’t give up or get down over anything. It’s a good group.”
The deflection is in Mattingly’s nature. The 59-year-old and former New York Yankees star is always one to focus on the present, not reflect on what they accomplished in the past or what might happen in the future. He has remained stoic throughout the highs and lows of a tumultuous season ... in most occasions.
“You never see him get too mad,” first baseman/designated hitter Garrett Cooper said, “unless it’s a bad pitch call or something like that.”
But that even-keeled approach is needed in a time like this. Most Marlins players have never been through a playoff push, a pennant race, a chance to compete for a World Series.
He’s maximizing players’ roles and health. With no off days for the final three-and-a-half weeks of the regular season, he’s rotating players into and out of the lineup to give them innings off every few days to make sure they stay as fresh as possible down the stretch.
He’s utilizing players to hone their strengths, too. That’s why he’s platooning Lewis Brinson and Matt Joyce in right field and why Monte Harrison has been almost exclusively used as a defensive replacement and a pinch-runner these past two weeks.
“You want to have that type of leadership and we knew that Donnie was the right person to lead us,” shortstop and de-facto team captain Miguel Rojas said. “He’s been through a lot with this organization and a couple tough years, ‘18 and ‘19. It’s refreshing to see him back on the winning type of season. He deserves it. A great guy in the clubhouse and a great guy in managing us. He’s one of the best.”
Added starting pitcher Pablo Lopez: “The guidance he provides to us is really good. His insight, his input. Obviously you know what he’s talking about but the way he explains things, the ways he runs you through what he thinks and what he knows, it just stays with you and sticks with you. It makes you give everything for the team and the organization. The way he guides us and leads us, he’s the head of this family. We’re not just a team. We’re a family. With everything we’ve been through, he made sure to never lose sight of that. ... It’s all a mindset thing. He’s big on that, how important the mental aspect of the game is. That’s been huge for us this year.”
The year isn’t over, though. The playoff hunt isn’t finished. Mattingly still has to guide this team through another half-dozen games. He’s ready. He knows his players are, too.
“There’s no message needed for these guys,” Mattingly said. “They know where we’re at. ... I don’t think anything’s going to faze us at this point.”
This story was originally published September 22, 2020 at 12:46 PM.
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