Amid resurgence, Mattingly welcomes idea of staying on as Phillies manager

CINCINNATI -- The Phillies have been the second-best team in baseball since Don Mattingly became interim manager on April 28.

Perhaps they will remove his interim tag at some point. Perhaps he will manage next year, too.

Mattingly would welcome the opportunity. He told ESPN’s Buster Olney before Wednesday’s game at Great American Ball Park that he would return next season as manager, if Phils president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski offered him the job.

Mattingly reiterated those feelings on Thursday.

“I like doing it,” he said. “I didn't come here to do it, but I actually like doing it. I committed to two years, right? And, in my mind, I told Dave, ‘I’d go two years.’ Right? So at that point you make a commitment with your family and what's going on with everything that you're going to do this for two years. So if that's something that Dave wanted me to do then I’m fine with it.”

Will it happen? Perhaps. The Phillies have cut a 10 1/2-game deficit to the Braves to just 3 1/2 games in the NL East since Mattingly took charge. While it seemed inevitable that the Phils would play better than they did in April -- they were 9-19 when Rob Thomson lost his job -- Mattingly has led the way.

But former Red Sox manager Alex Cora’s shadow looms large. Days before Dombrowski dismissed Thomson on the morning of April 28, he had pursued and offered the job to Cora, who had been fired on April 25.

Dombrowski and Cora are close, having won a World Series together in Boston in 2018. In fact, even before word broke that Dombrowski offered Cora the Phillies’ job, baseball insiders said they expected Cora to inevitably be the team’s next manager, whenever Thomson stepped aside.

Cora, however, told Dombrowski that he wasn’t ready to immediately step into a new job following his unexpected exit from Boston.

When Mattingly became Phillies’ bench coach in January, he said he didn’t want to manage again, but he noted Thursday that it would have been poor form to openly discuss managing in any capacity.

“You don’t want to ever have that conversation,” Mattingly said. “So that's one of the reasons that publicly you're going to basically say, ‘I’m not doing that.’ And I also basically didn't think I would ever go back on the field again after last year. But Dave talked to me and worked it out.”

When Thomson became interim manager in June 2022, the Phillies removed the interim tag before Game 1 of the NLDS against Atlanta.