Phillies Hiring Don Mattingly as Full-Time Manager is a Choice That Was Made for Them

The Phillies officially have a full-time manager, and instead of hiring outside the franchise, they’ve elected to go with former interim manager Don Mattingly.

Mattingly agreed to a two-year contract on Wednesday morning, the team announced. Mattingly took over for the Phillies’ 28 games into this past season after the team started 9-19, going 80-57, helping lead Philadelphia to the No. 6 seed in the National League.

The end of the season didn’t go exactly as they hoped it would, losing to the rival Atlanta Braves in three games in the Wild Card series, but if we’re being honest, even if the Phillies found a way to beat the Braves in the Wild Card, they weren’t getting much further in the playoffs.

Hiring Mattingly to a full-time position is a decision that many aren’t going to like despite the success he put on display during his time as the interim. While the Phillies did make the playoffs, it took them until the last day of the season to clinch a spot in the postseason, as a 10-14 month of September nearly caused them to miss the dance. While they did make it in, right away the struggles from the final month of the season carried over, ultimately resulting in their quick elimination.

The 2026 Phillies were just not a good enough team to win a World Series, and that opinion is being proven during the current NLCS between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Milwaukee Brewers. Both of these teams are far better roster construction-wise, having deep pitching staffs, starters and bullpen combined, as well as bats that know how to work at-bats and get hits when it matters.

The disappointing end to the season should not all be on the shoulders of Mattingly. He did the best he could in the situation he was thrown in. Some of his decisions were questioned in using certain pitchers in certain situations out of the bullpen, but ask yourself: who were you confident in throwing innings for this team in a big spot?

After Jhoan Duran and Alex McFarlane, Jonathan Bowlan was expected to be next up on the call sheet for a trustworthy arm, but he was struggling and injured heading into October. Guys like Andrew Painter were being forced to fill in the big reliever spots because, after really two arms, the Phillies had nobody.

Jose Alvarado, Tanner Banks, Chase Shugart, Tim Mayza, Orion Kerkering, and Brooks Raley were the guys who would have to face the Braves, Dodgers, and Brewers lineup if the Phillies somehow kept advancing. Those guys had no chance against those lineups. Mattingly and co. knew that, essentially tying his hands and forcing him to make decisions he didn’t want to make but had no choice.

On top of the offensive decisions from this past year’s team is one of the worst from this current core of Phillies teams. Outside of Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber, the first half of the season of Brandon Marsh, and the second half of the season of Alec Bohm, this offense was terrible.

J.T. Realmuto, who the Phillies just gave a new three-year contract to, had the worst season of his career; Trea Turner continued to get worse and worse as his tenure with the Phillies has gone on, and the bottom half of the Phillies order never did anything impactful to help get this team rolling.

Every time runners were aboard this season, it felt like nobody on the team could bring them in. They ranked 19th in runs scored and 22nd in OPS, and ranked in the bottom half as a team in nearly every major offensive category.

I blame the 2026 season more on president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski and the way he and the Phillies constructed the roster heading into the season, and the offensive coaching staff, mainly headed by Kevin Long.

Dombrowski did next to nothing to improve this team during free agency last winter, and the trade deadline was lackluster as well, putting an already weak Phillies team even weaker heading into the final two months of the season.

As for the offense, I think the concept and game planning that Long and the rest of the staff put into motion is some of the worst I’ve seen and, with the way baseball is moving, feels like a thing of the past. Contact hitting is back; stealing bags and moving runners in not just the postseason but the regular season is the way teams are playing.

Look at the Tampa Bay Rays and Brewers — two teams who do the small things right, are coached well, and because of it, are rewarded with the top seeds in their leagues and are very likely to meet in the World Series.

Mattingly can suffer some of that blame as well, as he was technically in charge of calling the shots, but at the end of the day, his “interim” tag is in the way of running the club how he feels fully. Once he was hired midseason, he was merely seen as a fill-in to try to get the ship back from sinking and correct course.

Now, a simple fix to those issues could be to bring in a new manager and get players that fit his system, a former player that the veterans respect and the young guys can learn from. However, doing that is harder than it sounds and, in my opinion, is the main reason the Phillies decided to go with Mattingly as their full-time manager.

In just under seven weeks’ time, the current collective bargaining agreement between Major League Baseball owners and the MLB Players Association will officially expire, putting baseball into a lockout. While we don’t know how long the lockout will last, baseball could be off the field for who knows how long.

Hiring a manager right now who’s unfamiliar with the team, and then having a chance where he can’t speak to the players and team for an unknown number of months, isn’t fair to anyone. So bringing in a new skipper could spell disaster for the Phillies, who would have to learn all new concepts and perhaps a new staff in short amounts of time. While it’s possible, this franchise still has aspirations of winning a World Series, and starting over in such a short amount of time isn’t ideal.

Do I think Don Mattingly can be a World Series manager for this Phillies team? I don’t know. However, with the situation the Phillies and MLB are facing, plus hopeful improvements being made, giving Mattingly time to work things out and play his brand of baseball may not be as bad as people think.

Could this all be coping for the future? Yes, but the decision has been made, and for at least the next two years, the Phillies will roll with Mattingly at the helm.

If we play baseball in 2027, we’ll know pretty soon if Mattingly was a flash in the pan, or if he can actually complete the goal of this team in bringing a World Series back to Philadelphia.

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