L.A. Dodgers: Why Don Mattingly Deserves Consideration as NL Manager of the Year

LOS ANGELES, CA—Throughout his time in MLB, Don Mattingly has proven to be a victim of circumstance, with his first year on the job as manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers as just the latest instance of poor timing over a career that spans nearly three decades at the big-league level.

"Donnie Baseball" had the great misfortune of succeeding legendary skipper Joe Torre in LA in the midst of the franchise's darkest hour, with fans abandoning the stands at Dodger Stadium while owner Frank McCourt drags the entire team down with him like so many sports losers have done before and since (see: Nevin Shapiro and Miami).

This, after a successful 14-year Major League career with the New York Yankees during which Mattingly earned six All-Star selections, nine Gold Gloves, three Silver Slugger Awards and the 1985 AL MVP while garnering the dubious distinction of being the greatest Yankee to never play in the World Series.

The Bronx Bombers reached the Fall Classic in 1981, the year before Mattingly broke into the big leagues, and won four World Series pennants in five years immediately after he called it quits.

And yet, though hard times seem to follow Donnie wherever (and whenever) he goes, he has maintained his composure and his Midwestern charm, thriving against the odds all the while.

Which is just a small part of why Mattingly, dismal as the Dodgers may be on paper, deserves to be taken seriously as a candidate for this year's National League Manager of the Year Award. 

Clubhouse Leadership

Spend some time in the Dodgers' clubhouse and you'd hardly, if ever, be able to tell that the team is mired in third place in the NL West, 12 games back of the division-leading Arizona Diamondbacks and without any realistic hope of playing into October.

Amidst distractions off the field and inconsistency on it, Mattingly has managed to keep the feel around the park relaxed and friendly while still focused on the task of winning baseball games.  

"Given all the adversity we’ve had to go through, this clubhouse is in really good shape," said Dodgers infielder Aaron Miles. "It’s a great group of guys, but it all starts at the top with him being a leader and creating an atmosphere in the clubhouse and on the field that everybody enjoys coming to the ballpark."

A tall task, indeed, given how dismal things have been in and around Chavez Ravine this season. According to ESPN, the Dodgers have averaged just under 37,000 fans in attendance per game.

Which wouldn't be so bad if not for two things:

1) The Dodgers haven't drawn fewer than 40,000 fans per game since 2003, even during some fairly lean years.

2) One step into Dodger Stadium this season and it's clear the official numbers are grossly inflated.

Yet, even with so many seats left empty by fans boycotting the McCourt "regime", there's little sense that the players are distracted or even dejected by the lack of fanfare, which all comes back to the steady guidance of Donnie Baseball.  

Calm, Cool, Collected

Mattingly's leadership stems from his personality, which is both easygoing and serious, but not too serious.

Donnie's demeanor has played an integral role in his ability to keep the ball club on track through the seemingly endless string of obstacles that have been thrown in their path.

"He’s been just even-keeled, the same attitude every day," said infielder Jamey Carroll, who, like Donnie, hails from Evansville, Indiana. "With the way our season has gone, it’s tough to do for anybody so, you know, who we are all sits on how he is, and I think he’s been great for us this year."

So even while the Dodgers have been maddeningly inconsistent on the field, Mattingly has maintained his own composure from day to day, setting the tone for a franchise that is in such dire need of someone as cool under pressure as Donnie is.

A Player's Manager

Leading a ball club through tough times requires more than just leadership. It also asks of a manager that he be in tune with his players, that he understand how to balance their different wants and needs while keeping everybody motivated to give their all on the diamond every single day.

"He knows the game and he knows how to motivate his players," said center fielder Matt Kemp, who, as one of the leading candidates to be the NL MVP, knows full well the positive effects of Mattingly's approach.

Donnie's effectiveness in getting his players to perform is all about attention to detail. "He’s done a great job with his personal attention to each and every player," Miles added.

"He comes and talks to you, asks you how you’re feeling. Maybe it’ll be a situation in a game. He’s not afraid to come up and talk to you, pull you aside the next day after you’ve cooled down, if you didn’t come through or something, and talk about a situation and where your head was, what you were thinking."

That task may sound simple, but is so often complicated by the inflated egos of a big-league clubhouse. So how does Donnie do it?

"Just talking to guys on a daily basis," said Mattingly, "in the lineup or out of the lineup."

A Player as Manager

That sort of empathy, that ability on Mattingly's part to put himself in the shoes of his players, is a testament to the fact that his playing days are not all that far behind him.

Unlike more veteran managers like Joe Torre and Tony La Russa, who played in the 1960s and 1970s, Mattingly is more attuned to the experience of the modern major leaguer. Coming from a long and successful playing career in New York, Mattingly understands the demands of the contemporary sports media and pressure to perform put on players each and every day.

"He knows what it’s like to play," said Clayton Kershaw, the Dodgers' lefty and NL Cy Young Award hopeful. "He doesn’t forget how hard it is to play, so he understands the ins and outs of what it’s like to play every day."

"I know Donnie wants to be out on the field playing like he’s one of the players still," added first-baseman James Loney. 

If Mattingly turns out to be even half as good in the dugout as he was on the field (.307 career batting average, 2,153 hits, 222 home runs, 1099 RBI, .996 fielding percentage), then the Dodgers will have themselves one heck of a skipper for the long haul.

Creativity in Handling Adversity

Any manager, regardless of how good or bad his team may be, has to deal with the day-to-day challenges posed by health concerns and slumps.

The Dodgers have been ravaged plenty by injuries all season, with the likes of Juan Uribe, Rafael Furcal (now with the Cardinals), Casey Blake and rookie Dee Gordon among a host of important players whose contributions have been limited by knees, shoulders, necks, hamstrings and everything in between.

So far, Donnie has demonstrated a definite knack for playing around with his lineups, especially when guys are tired or unfit to perform. "To go back to all the injuries we’ve had to deal with this year and the creativity he’s had to come up with the lineups that we’ve had to put out there with guys being hurt, guys maybe needing their break, guys maybe needing to take a couple days off to step away, he’s definitely a players manager," added Miles, who himself has batted in just about every spot in the Dodgers' order this season.

Not Joe Torre

Mattingly's ascension to the top job in Chavez Ravine has been unenviable in more ways than one. Most notably, he's had to fill the enormous shoes and escape the miles-long shadow left behind by Joe Torre.

No easy task, to put it lightly, considering that Torre won 2,326 games (fifth-most in baseball history) and four World Series championships and was twice named AL Manager of the Year.

Not that Donnie Baseball is trying to be Joe Torre. "It’s not fair to compare one to another," Carroll insisted. "I know it’s easy to do here because Donnie’s been underneath him, learning from him for a long time, but each has their own style and, obviously, Donnie’s learned a lot from Joe."

Anything in particular?

Said Mattingly:

"

"There’s things that I kind of go through where I see Joe’s logic just by watching what I’ve seen in the last six, seven years being around him and watching him work." 

"

Not Perfect, Either

As much as he has learned from Torre over the years and as good as he's been thus far, Donnie is still a rookie manager and, as such, necessarily a work in progress.

That much was evident even before he assumed the position full-time. In July of last season, during a game against the rival San Francisco Giants, Mattingly temporarily took over as manager after Torre was tossed from the game and, with the Dodgers hanging on to a tenuous lead in the ninth inning, was charged with two visits to the mound in one trip. That controversial miscue forced closer Jonathan Broxton out of the game and allowed the Giants to feast on the pitching of George Sherill and Travis Schlichting to notch a 7-5 comeback victory.

Mattingly has certainly learned from that incident, as well as the myriad mistakes, both major and minor, that he's made over the course of his first full season at the helm. After all, being a successful manager requires quite a bit of on-the-job trainig.

"There’s a lot of stuff that’s happened from which I’ve learned a lot, day in and day out, that I don’t think you can really get until you’re going through it," Mattingly said, adding that handling the bullpen has been a particularly thorny task to get a hold of, and one that even Torre never seemed to master."It took a while, really in my own mind, to kind of get a handle on the bullpen, what you’re seeing with guys, pulling the trigger with them."  

Nonetheless, Mattingly's players understand the pitfalls of his particular position and remain supportive of their humble clubhouse leader.

"In his mind, he’s probably made a few mistakes here and there, but nothing major," said Loney in his evaluation. "It’s a hard job to do, and a hard job to do perfect. You want to be perfect in it. There are tough decisions you’ve got to make sometimes, but he embraces the role and he loves to do it."

Miles was also quick to his manager's defense:

"

"We’ve played a bunch of close games, so for a first-year manager to go through that many close games, I’m sure he’s taking a lot from it and filing it in his head and I expect him to gain a lot of experience from this year." 

"

Love of the Game

Through it all—the invigorating wins, the demoralizing losses, the media scrutiny and the McCourt-centric circus—Don Mattingly has maintained his Midwesterner's even keel along with his love of baseball while nurturing a passion for his new role.

"I love what I’m doing," he said, smiling understatedly as he always seems to do. "I like the challenge of what we’re doing."

Dodger fans might not care for he's doing, or even know given the apathy toward the team around the city amidst Frank's fiasco.

None of that has done anything to dispirit Donnie. In fact, the turmoil has had quite the opposite effect. Mattingly relishes the task of captaining the Dodgers through turbulent waters, just as he did with the Yankees during the 1980s and 1990s. 

"All the stuff that you go through, I think it’s just part of the challenge of what you do. That part of it, to me, I love. The fact that we have struggled is really just an opportunity. You’re in a position where you’ve got to lead, so you can’t be the one dragging your head going, oh, woe is me. We’ve got to keep playing and we’ve got to keep going, we’ve got to keep getting better, so we can’t be panicking. It’s been great so far."

And it only figures to get better. Sure, Mattingly won't win be named Manager of the Year this time around.

Not with former Dodgers Kirk Gibson and Ron Roenicke succeeding as they have with the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Milwaukee Brewers, respectively.

And not with the Dodgers being as far out of contention as they are right now.

That being said, Mattingly definitely deserves at least a few votes for the honor, though he'd likely trade those in for a few more wins, and greater stability, in a heartbeat.

Josh Martin is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained first-hand or from official interview materials from the Los Angeles Dodgers.

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