If Don Mattingly Doesn’t Get Fired I’ll Be Shocked

We all watched as the New York Mets whipping boy, my opinion, Daniel Murphy hit what turned out to be the game winning home run off the Los Angeles Dodgers starter Zack Greinke that sent the Dodgers home early for the third straight season in awe. The Dodgers, the team with possibly the two best starting pitchers in the National League and the team with the $300 million payroll, were headed home early with their manager Don Mattingly’s behind placed firmly in the hot seat. Me personally, I think Mattingly is a good manager and I think it would be a mistake to let him get out of Los Angeles but after that Game 5 of the NLDS I’d be shocked if he didn’t get fired.

I say this, and I know it will be an unpopular article once again here on the blog, because the way that Game 5 was handled. When you have the confidence and control in and from your team that a manager commands and expects you don’t have one of your star players in Andre Ethier screaming at you in the dugout in the third inning. Emotions run high, especially in an elimination game, but you cannot let it spill out in the dugout for all to see. You take Ethier in the tunnel, you let him cool down first, whatever you have to do. The game of Major League Baseball is a sport and a child’s game but it’s also a business and when the fans and paying customers see that the first immediate thought that pops into many heads is that Mattingly has lost control of his team.

Mattingly addressed the media and stood up for his player, as a good manager should, stating that Ethier was just yelling because he was frustrated with the play and the call from the umpire and that Ethier was not mad at Mattingly specifically. Mattingly stated he was trying to calm Ethier down as to keep him from being ejected, again in a game of this magnitude that is what a good manager did, which are all reasons not to get rid of Donnie Baseball. The Dodgers upper management can ignore all this if they choose to though and instead focus on three straight trips to the playoffs and three straight National League West Division titles along with three disappointing and early exits from the National League playoffs.

The Los Angeles Dodgers haven’t been to the World Series since 1988 but, again in my opinion, the last person to take the axe for $780 million in payroll spent over the last three seasons and little to show for it is Don Mattingly.