Stephen Stills once sang, “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.”
Dave Dombrowski and the Philadelphia Phillies are heeding that advice.
The Phillies pursued former Red Sox manager Alex Cora to take over as the team’s manager, both early in the 2026 season, after they fired Rob Thomson, and then after the Phillies were eliminated from the playoffs earlier this month. Cora, however, declined both times.
The Phillies named bench coach Don Mattingly the interim manager after
firing Thomson, and the Phillies had a big turnaround under him, going 79-55 with Mattingly at the helm. However, they stumbled to the finish line, going 10-14 in September and barely holding off the Arizona Diamondbacks for the final Wild Card spot, then lost to the Atlanta Braves in the Wild Card series. Once their season ended, the Phillies’ preference was to replace Mattingly with Cora, per reports.
However, once Cora passed, the Phillies opted to stick with who they had, and have now announced that Mattingly is returning on a two year deal.
2027 will be Mattingly’s 14th season as a manager. He managed the Los Angeles Dodgers from 2011-15, then the Miami Marlins from 2016-22. He has a 968-1005 career record as a manager, with the seven seasons with the Marlins dragging his record down — he won more games (446) in five seasons with the Dodgers than he had in seven seasons with Miami (443).
The Phillies have been in “win now” mode since signing Bryce Harper prior to the 2019 season. After hovering around .500 from 2019-21, Philadelphia made it to the World Series in 2022, falling to the Houston Astros in six games. Since then, Philadelphia’s fortunes have slowly gone backwards, as they lost in the 2023 NLCS to the D-Backs in seven games, fell in the NLDS round in both 2024 and 2025, and then got knocked out this year in the Wild Card round.
