First Condition: Loria Doesn’t Cram This Down Hill and Mattingly’s Throats
More than A-Rod having anything left in the tank, more than being able to play a position, more than any of that, it is essential to the short and long-term prospects of this organization that the above isn’t the case.
Say what you want about Mattingly’s occasional bullpen miscues, but no one has had more of an influence on the success of this team this season than Donnie Baseball. Yes, the world be a sabermetrically filled happy place if all thirty teams had a Joe Maddon clone at the helm. But Mattingly has gotten these players to buy in to degree Dan Jennings simply couldn’t come close to managing.
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Yes, that last sentence was constructed that way intentionally.
So the last thing we need is for Loria to suddenly break the the spirit of detente that seems to have presided over Marlins operations since the 2015 fiasco. If these internal discussions are a result of people who know far more about baseball than I do, people like Michael Hill or Mattingly, seeing a unique opportunity to add a stupidly cheap, high upside piece to a championship puzzle, then go for it Marlins.
However, if this is forced upon the team’s newest manager from on high, the fallout could be extreme. Mattingly is a keeper, and seems content to stay as long as the line between ownership and operations remains clear.
Next: Second Condition