When the Miami Marlins decided to go ahead with their hiring of Don Mattingly as their next manager, they gained instant credibility. Of course, that is a thing they badly needed.
But now it’s up to them to make sure their new skipper stays credible, and that will require an effort beyond just filing away his signed contract and hoping for the best.
One thing we know for sure is that this is no longer Dan Jennings’ problem. Mere hours after word came out on Thursday morning that Mattingly signed a four-year deal to manage the Marlins—Molly Knight of Vice Sports had it first—the other shoe dropped.
As reported by Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald, the Marlins gave Jennings the boot from their general manager position:
The Marlins did indeed make it official, with club president David Samson offering the following in a statement on Thursday evening (h/t the Sun Sentinel):
We want to thank Dan for his dedication and loyal service to the Marlins organization over the last 13 years. This is the continuation of the restructuring of our baseball operations department and we look forward to moving in a unified direction to reach our goal of becoming a championship-caliber ballclub that our fans richly deserve.
It’s admittedly unusual to see a team hire a manager and then fire its general manager, as typically the idea is to put a GM in place and then let him choose his own manager. But the Marlins clearly planned for this, as president of baseball operations Michael Hill is taking over a GM chair that Jennings was never actually destined to fill going forward.
As Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported, Jennings didn’t even take part in the interview process for Mattingly, who is coming to the Marlins from the Los Angeles Dodgers. In fact, he hadn’t had any dealings with anyone in the Marlins front office since the end of the regular season.
Knowing that, we can deduce that Mattingly knew what the deal was and accepted the job anyway.
For the rest of us, though, the dismissal of Jennings is just the latest bit of shady business from baseball’s shadiest team.
It raises the question of why the Marlins waited to fire Jennings if he was a goner all along, and that’s a question with only one logical answer: Rather than risk any bad press that would come from Jennings’ firing, the Marlins wanted to secure some good press by hiring a name-brand manager first.
If there was a right way for the Marlins to get going on their offseason, clearly it was to do something about the volatility that’s been hanging over the franchise in recent years.
Here’s the thing about that volatility, though: It’s still there, and the only way the Marlins will get rid of it for good is if they turn Mattingly‘s hiring into more than just a PR move.
To be sure, there are tangible reasons why the Marlins and Mattingly make sense for each other.
The Marlins are getting an experienced manager who racked up a .551 winning percentage and three division titles in five years in Los Angeles. Mattingly, meanwhile, is presumably getting some good money out of his four-year deal, and it doesn’t hurt that he’s moving to a less stressful environment.
What’s not so tangible, however, is what else could have drawn Mattingly to the Marlins.
He’s not joining a particularly good team, after all. The Marlins haven’t made the playoffs since winning the World Series in 2003, and their 71-91 record in 2015 made it six-straight losing seasons.
Though they boast a solid young core of players in Giancarlo Stanton, Jose Fernandez, Dee Gordon, Christian Yelich, Marcell Ozuna and J.T. Realmuto, there’s an awful lot of mediocrity elsewhere on the roster.
If the Marlins are going to make Mattingly‘s arrival worth it, they thus have quite a bit of work to do. To that end, how much they can do and how much they’re willing to do are good questions.
Trades for high-profile players may be out of the question, because once you get beneath the young talent the Marlins already have at the major league level, you get into a farm system that MLB.com claims contains only one top-100 prospect. There’s not much ammo for blockbuster deals.
So the Marlins may have to spend some money. That’s where you really hope Mattingly knows what he’s getting into, as the Marlins are the polar opposite of the organization he just left.
In the time the Marlins have been owned by Jeffrey Loria, SI.com’s Jay Jaffe summed it up well by writing that they “simply haven’t maintained any commitment to spending money.” The Marlins’ payroll has consistently been at the bottom of the league since Loria took over in 2002, and he hasn’t been above carrying out a few fire sales to make sure it stays that way.
The most notorious ones took place after the team won the World Series in 2003 and after the Marlins failed miserably with a $100 million payroll—the first and, to date, only nine-figure payroll in club history—in 2012.
The latter infamously involved shedding all three big-name free agents acquired the previous winter: Heath Bell, Jose Reyes and Mark Buehrle.
What’s more, the fire sale that went down after 2012 may not be done hurting the Marlins.
It badly damaged their credibility with fans at the time, no question about it. What’s even more relevant now, with the Marlins hopefully looking to build a strong roster for Mattingly, is that it hurt their credibility with free agents. That fire sale warned any and all big-timers to stay away from Miami, lest they very suddenly find out their new home doesn’t want them anymore.
If the Marlins plan to pursue any big-timers this winter, they better plan on having to break through some thick walls of skepticism.
If there’s any reason for optimism, it’s the notion that Mattingly‘s mere presence will help the front office in its pursuit of free-agent talent. And if we also assume Loria is willing to play against type by dishing out some serious cash, maybe Mattingly will have a legit team on his hands after all.
But even then, he wouldn’t necessarily be out of the woods. Because if Loria is known for anything besides his cheapness, it’s his impatience and habit of sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong.
That Mattingly is Miami’s eighth manager since 2010 is testament enough to Loria’s impatience. As for his meddling, it was felt by former manager Mike Redmond on at least one occasion and, according to Nightengale, contributed to a falling-out between Loria and Jennings:
Mind you, it is true that Mattingly doesn’t have a reputation for being the game’s best tactical manager. But even he is certainly much more qualified to call the shots on the field than Loria is. Going forward, the one guy who will need to understand that is Loria himself.
Again, for now, the Marlins deserve credit for bringing aboard one of the more accomplished managers in the game. If nothing else, Mattingly gives the Marlins a much-needed shot of credibility.
What the Marlins can’t do, however, is stand idly by and hope that Mattingly proves to be a magician who turns them back into winners all on his own. For that to happen, Mattingly will need the Marlins to help by investing in the talent he needs and then staying out of his way.
Basically, he’ll need the Marlins to stop being the Marlins.
Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.
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