Do The Miami Marlins Need To Talk About Donnie?
The Miami Marlins came into 2022 with big expectations. If they stumble early, will manager Don Mattingly pay the price?
What a difference four games make for the Miami Marlins. Back then this article would have made a lot more sense.
However, nothing about the three game winning streak the Marlins are currently on changes these two facts. For one, despite promising to start the season fast out of the gates for a change, they have still spent exactly zero days above .500 with sixteen games in the books. For another, it feels like manager Don Mattingly has had a decision questioned at least sixteen times this season. At times, very publicly. Consequently, it only seems fair to ask these two questions:
Do the Miami Marlins have a Donnie problem? And if the stumbling continues as the calendar turns to May, might the Marlins actually move on mid-season from their long-time skipper?
The answer to the first question, probably, is no. Historically, I have not been a fan of many a Mattingly bullpen decision. That much is true, and I’ve hardly been on an island there. Beyond that though, it’s hard to fault much of what he’s done since taking over in 2016. As for the recent lineup decisions, most of them were backed by the baseball math. Mattingly discovering analytics is an overall positive, not a negative. If the Marlins were just one to two games better, the narrative on Mattingly is likely very different, and the easiest scapegoat for that is the lack of an established, elite closer on this roster. Mattingly can do a lot, but he can’t write the checks or make the trades.
The Marlins need another high leverage arm, and they need their veteran hitters to wake up and start contributing. Those are the areas of need, and sixteen games is a ridiculously small sample size for doing anything as drastic as firing a manager when there are still 146 games left in the season. Still, that doesn’t mean the Marlins won’t fire Mattingly. Just that they shouldn’t.
Earlier this week, I made the case that this 2022 Marlins team reminds me quite a bit of the 2015 version. High expectations, more money spent on talent, trades made for talent, and a key player signed to a big extension. Both seasons have all those things in common. All those things…and also a disappointing start to the year.
Yes, the Marlins are currently a .500 team. But, the 2015 team fought back to .500 too. Criticism of then manager Mike Redmond was reaching a fever pitch over the first two weeks, only to be temporarily shutdown when the club won 9 of their next 10 games. A couple series losses later though, and the hot seat heated right back up, so much so that it led to my greatest moment as a baseball blogger, as Redmond was fired on the exact day with the exact record that I predicted it would take for that happen.
Now, that bit of clever reporting was based entirely on a psychological analysis of an impulsive owner with a track record of being impulsive and believing that they were smarter than all the baseball experts because once upon a time their team had some real success. Obviously, none of that is the case with the 2022 Miami Marlins. I can’t recall Bruce Sherman even speaking to the media until this season, when the sudden departure of figurehead Derek Jeter made it necessary. There’s no former championship secret sauce formula to chase here either, just one screwball season where the team finished one game over .500. For all of his faults, and really it’s only the one fault of not spending Steve Cohen money on the roster, Sherman does seem comfortable acknowledging that he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.
Still. Sherman does probably know something about business though. And Mattingly has had five chances in a full length season to produce a winning team that makes the playoffs, and come up short every time. Now, he has a ton of excellent excuses to fall back on. Excuses so good, I believe they should buy him a full season. The passing of Jose Fernandez. Covid. A ton of major injuries. A complete rebuild. For me, only three of these seasons should count at all in terms of a Mattingly evaluation, and there’s a compelling case to be made that it should only be two.
That’s an eternity in professional sports today.
It should also be said, Sherman never hired Don Mattingly. Neither did Kim Ng. Extended for a year, yes, but not hired. They inherited him. On the strength of tenure alone, he’s the franchise wins leader. Unfortunately, he’s also the loss leader, and that one is harder to chalk up to just being here long enough to accrue them. Manager turnover was one of the hallmarks of the dysfunction of the previous regime, and keeping Mattingly on board helped sell the message things would be different with this group. However, Bench coach James Rowson did enjoy some upcoming manager buzz before signing on with the Marlins in 2020. I don’t think it’s crazy at all to believe that Sherman and Ng would like to give Rowson a long audition, while simultaneously giving outside candidates a lot of time to consider a move to South Florida, if they do decide that Mattingly is not the guy to take the Marlins to the postseason.
Bottom-line, the only way Mattingly is the manager next season is if this team meets expectations. Even if the injury bug strikes again…I just think he’s out of injury excuses at this point in this sports climate. It’s win or go home for Donnie Baseball.
Now, if the Marlins play above. 500 the next couple weeks, and get to the softer part of their schedule, this could all become moot very quickly. But if they don’t…it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Miami has a new manager by June 1st.
