Did Don Mattingly’s managing cost the Miami Marlins a major recent game?

I wrote about Don Mattingly and concerns over how he manages the Miami Marlins recently. Things went wrong for The Fish again with Mattingly’s management coming under scrutiny during our 3-2 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies on Monday. Let’s look at what went wrong and why Mattingly has been blamed on social media. Let’s also see if it was indeed his fault. Did Don Mattingly cost the Miami Marlins an important divisional game?

Don Mattingly may have cost the Miami Marlins an important divisional game.

The game in question saw the Miami Marlins blow a 2-1 lead in the 8’th inning, allowing the Philadelphia Phillies to then score two runs and win the game. Sandy Alcantara was pitching a gem, but Don Mattingly took him out after 7.2 innings and inserted Steven Okert and Anthony Bass who then together opened up the floodgates and allowed Philly to win the game.

Fan backlash on Twitter was enormous… Was Don Mattingly wrong to take out Alcantara? Sandy is a workhorse who loves pitching deep in games, so should Mattingly have just let him do that? After all, the player himself didn’t have a problem with that, so why should Donnie Baseball?

Sandy Alcantara threw 113 pitches in the game and these days it’s a common procedure to take starting pitchers out of the game when they throw over 100 pitches. As consistently awesome and healthy as Sandy has been, it makes perfect sense for Don Mattingly to protect his ace and not have him risk injury.

Don Mattingly seems to have been protecting Sandy and his health, so I don’t think that replacing him was a mistake. Was there a mistake at all then? Yes, there was. The mistake wasn’t replacing Alcantara, the mistake was not putting in better relievers.

In fact, why has the bullpen been struggling so much? While this probably won’t age well, why wasn’t Tanner Scott out there in what was a save situation? An 8-16 record in one-run games is well below average and is completely unacceptable.

Why didn’t Don Mattingly play matchups better? I have no problem with Mattingly pulling his ace when he has over 100 pitches. I do have a problem with the bullpen blowing the game, which is partly his fault.