The Dodgers and Don Mattingly's Conscious Uncoupling

Don Mattingly is no longer the manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

I wrote that sentence in this Word document on October 21, 2013, right after leaving that season's post-mortem press conference at Dodger Stadium. Though he hadn't yet been fired, Mattingly had sat on a stage, in front of live television cameras, for the better part of an hour with his arms folded across his chest and his back turned to the team's then general manager, Ned Colletti, looking like he wanted to stab everyone in the room and then charter a rocket ship to Jupiter. To explain the clenched frown and the death glare on his face, he told a room full of stunned reporters that, although his contract for 2014 had vested when the Dodgers beat the Atlanta Braves to advance to the National League Championship Series, he did not want to work anywhere he was not wanted. The club had made the mistake of sending Mattingly out to talk to the media after being eliminated by the Cardinals in the NLCS—but before they determined whether or not they were canning him for their failure to make the World Series. They did not think he would air his displeasure to the public. They had underestimated him.

Mattingly survived that offseason, but the scars and the hurt feelings remained, and so did the gnawing anxiety that leading a team to 90-plus wins and a division title would not be enough to stay employed in Los Angeles. (The Cardinals, for instance, did not advance past the NLCS in either of the last two seasons, and though Mike Matheny is not known for in-game strategic wizardry, his job never appears to be in any kind of jeopardy.) It turns out that the anxiety was well founded.

Before the 2014 season, the Dodgers inked Mattingly to a three-year contract extension. In retrospect, it was the worst possible timing for both sides. Colletti, the general manager who oversaw that decision, was fired a year into Mattingly's new term. The club hired advanced metric wunderkind Andrew Friedman to take over the baseball decision-making in October of 2014, and Mattingly stayed on. If Friedman could go back in time to the day he arrived in Los Angeles a year ago, I have to think he would have shown Mattingly the door and hired Joe Maddon, his manager from Tampa, away from the Rays.

Though Mattingly told those closest to him that he liked and respected Friedman and his lieutenant, Farhan Zaidi, and enjoyed working with them (and I believe the feeling was mutual), it was probably a bad fit from the start. When Friedman and Zaidi got to Los Angeles, the clubhouse was full of players who came to regular fisticuffs, and the Dodgers' scouting, player development, and general managing departments worked about as well together as the current United States Congress. If the goal was to completely overhaul an organization down to its bones, could such a culture change be accomplished while keeping the same manager in charge? Probably not. But A for effort, I guess.

Gwyneth Paltrow brought the phrase "conscious uncoupling" to our mass consciousness last year, and I think it works for Don Mattingly and the Dodgers on Thursday. We want all breakups to be filled with bitterness and backstabbing and dirt and juice so we can feel better about our own egos and blind spots, and the things we said and did out of hurt and humiliation that we did not mean. But that's not what happened here. After a weekend spent regrouping from a devastating NLDS Game 5 loss to the Mets, beginning on Monday, the Dodgers talked to Mattingly about the possibility of extending his contract for another year, through the 2017 season. Multiple sources close to the situation say that Mattingly thought about the offer, and what it meant that it was only for one additional year, and that it was made after three days of radio silence and only came only because he had asked for some clarity on where he stood.

Given the expectations of what it means to be a Dodger these days, it was perhaps a fair deal. Despite leading the majors in payroll for the last two seasons, the Dodgers still have not participated in a World Series since 1988. Fans are understandably frustrated. Their angst wasn't helped by the fact that the Mets—who knocked them out of the playoffs last week—swept the Cubs to get there. Had the Dodgers won that Game 5 against New York, it is plenty likely they would have spent this weekend preparing to play in their first World Series in twenty-seven years, instead of waving goodbye to their manager.

It is also likely that Don Mattingly would have returned to manage the Dodgers next season had Jeffrey Loria not been so openly keen on making him the Marlins' new manager for the next five to seven years. While that deal hasn't been finalized yet, I expect it will be over the weekend. The Marlins do not appear to be as close to winning a World Series as the Dodgers, but in Miami Mattingly will get a chance to manage young kids he can reach, who are motivated to play hard every day because they haven't yet tasted that free agent dollar.

Is Andrew Friedman the bad guy here? I don't think so. Both Friedman and Zaidi are innovators, and their mission would be better served by a manager who could match their creativity. In Game 1 of the NLDS, with two out and the bases loaded and the Mets leading 1-0, Mattingly removed Clayton Kershaw and replaced him with Pedro Baez, ostensibly because the numbers he had in front of him said that Baez's velocity made him the best matchup for David Wright. Mattingly needed one out there, before he could turn to the excellent Chris Hatcher in the eighth, and the dominant closer, Kenley Jansen, in the ninth. In the most pivotal at-bat of the season, he should have gone to Hatcher or even Jansen, instead of a young, erratic middle reliever who posted an ERA close to 5 over the last month of the season. He didn't. Baez gave up a two-run single. The Dodgers lost.

Then, in Game 5, with one out and runners on first and third and Enrique Hernandez at bat in the third inning (and the Dodgers offense on life support), I thought they might try to safety squeeze a run home. While trading an out for a run is a risky proposition, Hernandez had flailed against righties with spin all year, and didn't appear to have much of a chance against Jacob deGrom's slider. He grounded into a double play. The Dodgers didn't score a run the rest of the night, and lost 3-2. That same week, the Cubs swung their own series against St. Louis with two consecutive safety squeezes. Of course, it's impossible to say that the Dodgers would have won that game if Hernandez had laid down a bunt there. But when I went to look for a time when the club safety squeezed during the season I couldn't find anything. The problem isn't that Mattingly didn't call for a bunt there; the problem is it wasn't even in the arsenal of choices.

When I heard last night that Mattingly was out as the Dodgers manager, I checked the date and noticed it was October 21—the two year anniversary of this Word document's birth. Don Mattingly will get another shot to manage right away, and with it a clean slate in Miami. The new Dodgers front office will get to handpick their own field general. Saying goodbye to a good man is never easy, but it was the right move for everyone involved.