I'm certainly not going to argue that Don Mattingly has been perfect since taking over as interim Philadelphia Phillies manager back in April. But when Philly fans take stock of everything that went wrong in their team's crushing 5-3 loss to the Atlanta Braves in Game 1 of the Wild Card Round on Tuesday afternoon, Mattingly shouldn't be anywhere near the top of the list.
Sure, Mattingly was decidedly not going by the book when he called on his All-Star closer, Jhoan Duran, to start the bottom of the seventh inning with the Phillies nursing a one-run lead. And it's all too easy to second-guess things after Duran gave up the game-winning, three-run homer to Austin Riley in the eighth — his second inning of work. Mattingly can't control results, though; all he can control is his own process, his process was sound.
Don Mattingly was right to go to Jhoan Duran early, even if it backfired
Let's go back and set the scene. Philly had just taken a 3-2 lead in the top half of the seventh, meaning they had nine outs left to secure a crucial Game 1 win. And make no mistake: Winning Game 1 might not have literally been a must-win, but it was pretty darn close considering how rarely teams come back from an 0-1 hole in a best-of-three series and the fact that the Braves were throwing their only reliable starting pitcher in Chris Sale.
It made all the sense in the world for Mattingly to pull out all the stops. And it just so happened that the top of the Braves order, featuring stars like Drake Baldwin, Ronald Acuña Jr. and Matt Olson, was due up across the seventh and eighth innings. That left the manager with a choice: Try to save Duran for the end of the game and risk a less-reliable reliever against the Braves' best hitters, or match up your best with Atlanta's best?
Mattingly went with the latter, and it's hard to disagree. Either way, assuming Duran was only capable of going two innings, Philly had to get three non-Duran outs somewhere. You can understand why Mattingly decided that those three outs should come against the bottom of Atlanta's order rather than the top; if he'd left Duran in the bullpen while the Braves star bats took back the lead, fans would never have let him live it down.
Mattingly decided to go down with his best, and the brutal part is it nearly worked. Duran sailed through the seventh, and he would've gotten through the eighth as well were it not for an infield single from Michael Harris II — and a two-out homer from a hitter in Riley who'd been struggling for months coming into Tuesday's game. The Phillies would almost certainly take that gamble 10 times out of 10 if they had to do it again.
Of course, the brutal part of being a big-league manager is that you're not actually judged on process. You're judged on results, and no matter how justifiable Mattingly's decisions in Game 1, the loss will very likely wind up costing him his job.
Wild Card loss will likely cost Don Mattingly his shot at Phillies job anyway
That's the reality for a Phillies team that entered these playoffs with pennant-or-bust expectations. Dave Dombrowski has pretty fully leveraged the team's future for one more October run, with Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber, Trea Turner and the gang not getting any younger (or less expensive). Few teams are as win-now as Philly, and if they flame out early in the playoffs for what would be the third season in a row, people are going to start losing their jobs.
That list starts with Mattingly. It wasn't a coincidence that the Phillies opted against removing his interim tag before the postseason began; he deserves credit for righting the ship after taking over for Rob Thomson, but he's also got a spotty track record as a manager and hasn't always covered himself in glory this season. Add in the possibility of regime change in the front office, and Mattingly was only going to stick around for 2027 if he made it impossible to fire him.
Maybe Philly has a rally in their bones over the next two days. But the odds are very much against them, and Mattingly stands to be the fall guy no matter whether that's deserved or not.
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