Three consecutive National League West titles weren’t good enough, so it was time for Los Angeles Dodgers manager Don Mattingly to move on. Parting ways with new bosses who hadn’t signed him beyond 2016, Mattingly put Los Angeles in his rearview mirror last offseason.
Donnie Baseball didn’t stop until he got to the Atlantic Ocean. You’ll find him in South Florida, where he oversees the Miami Marlins. He looks less stressed, even after his second baseman, Dee Gordon, was suspended for 80 games after testing positive for performance-enhancing substances.
Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine never claimed three NL West crowns in a row, nor did L.A.’s famed Big Blue Wrecking Crew. Nor had anyone else in the West since its birth in 1969.
Yes, divisions were larger in the 1970s. But no one in baseball would call the Mattingly Era a “turkey,” bowling’s term for three consecutive strikes.
“Back to back to back,” says Tony Gwynn Jr., a former Dodgers outfielder who works on the club’s broadcast team. The appreciation oozed from Gwynn, a baseball lifer.
It wasn’t good enough. Flops in the playoffs weren’t what new Dodgers owners had in mind when they bankrolled industry-record payrolls.
So after a tip of the cap to genial, steady Mattingly, we’ll find out if one of the nicest men in baseball — and one of the most popular men inside the industry — can survive the intense L.A. heat.
It’s up to Dave Roberts to get it done. Can the rookie manager/cancer survivor/former 28th-round-draft pick-made-good end a World Series title drought? At 27 years and counting, it’s older than his shortstop (Corey Seager), right fielder (Yasiel Puig) and center fielder (Joc Pederson or Trayce Thompson)?
Even as the front office’s hire, Roberts might need to do more than win the NL West to survive. The Dodgers have the sport’s largest local TV deal, worth $8 billion.
“World Series or bust” might be too reductive for now, but at some point the phrase could apply to Roberts, just as it did to Mattingly.
“In the back of your mind, you have to wonder about that yourself,” Gwynn says. “Are they saying you’re going to have to get to a World Series in order for it to be considered better? Who knows?”
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Hot start fizzles
The bigger the market, the bigger the stakes. When the Dodgers won 12 of 19 games to start this season, friends of Roberts exhaled.
“Dave can deal with difficult, too, and that’s why he’s the perfect person for that job,” says Roberts’ longtime agent, John Boggs. “But if you don’t get off to a good start and guys aren’t playing for you, guys will turn on you instantaneously.”
The Dodgers lost their next six games, all at home, four to Mattingly’s Marlins. They tugged a 12-13 record into May, the skid ending with Clayton Kershaw’s 1-0 shutout of the San Diego Padres in which Kershaw drove in the team’s only run.
Seven other NL teams had a better April. But Roberts got a mulligan from L.A.’s four West rivals, who also finished April under .500.
Not surprisingly, the skid didn’t seem to dent Roberts, 43. On the final day of April, he flashed his ready smile while standing near the Dodger Stadium home dugout.
Compared with having to steal a base when the entire baseball world is watching, as Roberts famously did in the 2004 playoffs for the Boston Red Sox against the New York Yankees, a one-week slump is a blip. For that matter, so is a hectic first month on a round-the-clock job.
“There’s been a lot this first month,” Roberts said. “There’s been a lot of ups, downs. But I think that it’s kind of what I expected, the workload. For me, I’m very process-driven, and I really don’t concern myself at this point with the win-loss.
“The way our guys go about playing the game every day, that’s what’s encouraging for me, and we’ve got good players.”
Aside from a one-game stint with the Padres last June, when he moved up from bench coach after Bud Black was fired, Roberts had never managed before this season.
He played professional baseball from 1994 to 2008, distinguishing himself as a leadoff man and basestealer. Broadcasting with the Red Sox and Padres provided him a different view, as did stints in San Diego’s front office and as Black’s sidekick.
“Honestly, the game management, all that kind of stuff — I had a great mentor in Buddy Black. I’m prepared,” Roberts said. “So there’s really been no surprises.”
“I’m having the time of my life,” he added. “Every day, it gets better than the next. Honestly, all the pressure, the win-loss, I just look to today. I’ve simplified it. It’s all I care about. That’s my only focus.”
Understand that Dodgers executives speak well of Mattingly, but they laud how Roberts has performed in his new role. They praise his dealings with Puig, whose injury hiatuses last year and recurring mental errors seemed to wear on Mattingly.
In addition, the front office likes the way Roberts has used a varied group of reserves while adapting to numerous injuries.
“We have, we think, a one-to-13 position-player group,” Dodgers senior vice president of baseball operations Josh Byrnes says. “So how to mix and match with that every day, create matchups, use the versatile players, keep guys fresh, I think he’s done a good job with that.”
Despite having the major league’s second-highest payroll (their $221 million opening-day mark was about $2 million less than that of the Yankees), the team’s architects see a roster that isn’t flawless. Getting back to the playoffs isn’t entirely on Roberts.
“I think that’s on all of us,” Byrnes says. “Every season has a different story. Obviously, (co-ace) Zack Greinke left (to sign a $206.5 million deal with the Arizona Diamondbacks last offseason). We had a weird offseason with certain things that didn’t bounce our way.
“So, no. He’s part of our success and our failure. If we don’t win the division, then we all came up short.”
Gwynn noted that Roberts, like all managers, is to some extent at the mercy of his bullpen. As was the case amid vexing stretches last season and in recent postseasons, the Dodgers have drawn volatile relief in front of star closer Kenley Jansen.
Things might have been different had the front office’s offseason pursuit of closer Aroldis Chapman panned out, but the left-hander ended up with the Yankees.
“Our bullpen, we’re not scripted in the seventh or eighth inning, so it’s got to be a little bit of hot hand and matchups,” Byrnes says. “That’s tough on any manager to get the ball all the way to Jansen.
“Dave has done a good job. Your personnel is your personnel. We don’t have (a bullpen) like the Yankees right now. They get to the end of the game, it’s over. Not every team has that.”
In tactics, Gwynn has seen the same chutzpah from Roberts that made him a great basestealer, such as when Dodgers No. 3 hitter Justin Turner bunted a teammate over in the season’s first series. Dodgers players, Gwynn says, have responded to the manager’s “humility that makes you want to get to know him,” while also respecting that Roberts, a broad-chested, former high school quarterback, isn’t someone you should cross.
“There’s no pressure, there’s no getting ahead of myself, and our players feel the same way,” Roberts said. “I’m coaching, I’ve been coaching. I’m the same guy. It’s managing players and people, and that’s what we do.”
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