Here is how 2025 ended for a once-great player and great baseball man named Don Mattingly: He ended up two outs away from finally being a part of a World Series winner, as manager John Schneider’s bench coach with the Blue Jays. That was at the beginning of November. Then, at the end of December, Mattingly ended six votes short in the Contemporary Era Baseball Committee of finally making it to Cooperstown, where he absolutely belongs.
There were images of Mattingly -- along with so many of the Blue Jays' players -- watching the Dodgers celebrate winning their second title in a row, this one at Rogers Centre in Toronto. And you thought we might finally be looking at the end of Mattingly’s long and honorable baseball life. He would turn 65 the following April. There was the thought that he would walk away for good, that this was the end of his last ride.
But now Mattingly came back. Came back once again as a bench coach, this time for his old friend Rob Thomson in Philadelphia. Not only that, Mattingly was now working for his son Preston, the Phillies general manager and Dave Dombrowski’s No. 2 in Philly. Only then the Phillies got off to a start as bad as anybody’s despite high expectations and another high payroll. They were 9-19 and Thomson was fired and Don Mattingly, known once as Donnie Baseball when he was a great Yankee, was managing again, after having done that already in Los Angeles and then with the Marlins, where he became National League Manager of the Year in 2020.
And what looked like a lost season for the Phillies, even in April, has suddenly been found under Mattingly.
The Phillies, who welcome the Padres to Citizens Bank Park starting on Tuesday, are 21-10 under Don Mattingly and right back in the thick of the NL Wild Card chase. And even not hitting the way Mattingly believes they ultimately will, have started to look like the team they were expected to be, three weeks from the official start of summer and with more than 100 games left to play.
“Listen,” Mattingly told me the other day, “as great as it’s been for these guys to show that they didn’t suddenly forget how to play baseball, there’s still a part of this that stinks for me, because of Rob [Thomson] losing his job. I mean, one of the big reasons I came here was because of him, and now the reason I’m managing the team here is because of what happened to him.”
With all that, I asked him what it feels like to once again be a part of something, the way he has for more than 40 years in the big leagues.
“Everybody finally gets older in this game, obviously,” he said. “But that part of it, the team part of it, that will never get old, at least not for me.”
I asked him then what it is like being the manager of the Phillies and having his son be general manager.
“A blessing,” he said. “There’s no other way for me to put it. Hey, I know that if there’s an off-day, I’ve got a granddaughter waiting for me at his place. It’s why I really feel these days as if I’m working from home.”
Mattingly is talking then -- again -- about how confident he is that his team is going to hit as a group. Kyle Schwarber, of course, has been Kyle Schwarber, with 22 home runs through the weekend series in Los Angeles when the Phillies lost two of three to the Dodgers. Bryce Harper, with 13 home runs and 34 RBIs (just five fewer than Schwarber), is looking more like himself than he did a year ago. Brandon Marsh is hitting .317 to lead his team.
But Trea Turner is still hitting just .223 and Alec Bohm is at .210. Adolis García is at .191. J.T. Realmuto, always one of their stars, was at .220 at the end of the Dodgers series, having given Mattingly and everybody else a scare after taking a fastball to his left wrist, the soreness in the wrist probably going to cause him to take off a few more days.
“Fortunately,” Mattingly told me, “our pitching hasn’t just been good. It’s been crazy good.”
Since he took over, the earned run average for the starting rotation, led by Cristopher Sánchez and Zack Wheeler, has been 2.55, right there with the best in baseball. Sánchez, in particular, has been one of the breakout pitching stars of this season, with a 6-2 record and 1.47 ERA, and a scoreless streak of 44 2/3 innings, the longest in franchise history.
“When you talk about crazy good pitching, you have to start with [Sánchez],” Mattingly said.
Mattingly played a long time in New York. Later, he managed in Los Angeles. Now he’s managing in a baseball place, Philadelphia, as demanding as there is anywhere.
“Let’s say, I know the territory,” he said.
Maybe this is going to be the last ride for Don Mattingly. If so, well, so far, so good for Donnie Baseball.