Los Angeles Dodgers and Don Mattingly mutually part ways

After five years and three consecutive division championships, team and manager decide to part ways.

In one of the most inevitable outcomes of the 2015 season, the Los Angeles Dodgers and manager Don Mattingly have parted ways.

It was another year of accomplishment for the Dodgers, who won the National League West for the third consecutive year under Mattingly.  But that success would be tempered by the burden of the sizeable expectations that possessing the top payroll.

Despite topping 90 wins yet again, Los Angeles failed to reach the National League Championship series for a second straight year. After an offseason that saw changes to nearly half of the previous roster that failed to do so, the expectation for getting over the hump this year was constantly evident.

But regardless of measures of success the Dodgers had during Mattingly’s run, the burden of expectation always loomed far larger than the outcomes that reality yielded. Although being considered a “player’s coach,” he was often in the middle of turmoil amongst his lineup construction and the presences in his clubhouse. Frequently saddled with a comparable level of player strife that a roster oversaturated with big contracts (and comparable egos) brings, Mattingly deserved credit for navigating the team through those waters and putting a regularly competitive regular season product on the field.

But in the end, division titles were not enough and both sides realized that a change was a must. With the new direction of the team underneath president Andrew Friedman, who is entering his second offseason overseeing the club’s affairs, it was always likely that it would take a substantial improvement in the team’s postseason success to ensure Mattingly would maintain a vote of confidence from the full front office. In the end, the status quo level of success he established was not good enough.

There is also the element that Mattingly himself likely wanted out of the “good enough is never enough” nature of guiding the ever aggressive Dodgers. There had been questions in the past about how long in the saddle he would be to stay in LA, and the frustrations of another underachieving season and entering into another year of a similar situation may have been enough.

Mattingly, who has expressed that he desires to continue managing, will enter a group of free agent managers that includes Bud Black, Ron Gardenhire and Dusty Baker, among others. Outside of LA, there are currently managerial vacancies with the Miami Marlins, Seattle Mariners, San Diego Padres and Washington Nationals.

After the dust settles, Friedman and general manager Farhan Zaidi will add finding a new bench captain to their already growing list of offseason tasks to take on. The Dodgers are entering an offseason where they will once again tinker with their formula in an attempt to make good on the sizable investment in their roster. But they will have to accomplish this while attempting to negotiate a new deal with one-half of their pair of aces in Greinke, who will exercise his early opt-out clause in his contract after only three years and with $71 million remaining on it.