It didn’t take long for the MLB off season to get rolling thanks to the Miami Marlins.
Just mere hours after the Kansas City Royals were crowned World Series champions the Marlins held a press conference announcing the signing of manager Don Mattingly to a four-year contract replacing Dan Jennings who held the position on an interim basis. He will the team’s fourth manager since moving from Sun Life Stadium to Marlins Park.
Mattingly originally signed the deal on October 29 but Miami chose to wait on making the contract official until after the World Series ended.
Mattingly brings to Miami a great managerial record from his tenure with the Los Angeles Dodgers where the team won three straight National League West Division titles from 2012 to this past season. Unfortunately for Mattingly his teams were not able to get to the World Series and on October 22 both parties chose to mutually part.
In choosing the Marlins as his new club while there were managerial openings with teams like the Washington Nationals and San Diego Padres Mattingly touted the chance to develop and teach a young core group of players in Giancarlo Stanton, Jose Fernandez, Christian Yelich, and Dee Gordon. He also stated that while his contract is for four years he hoped to be in the Marlins clubhouse for ten.
The length of Mattingly’s tenure in Miami will ultimately be decided by team owner Jeffrey Loria, who is notoriously fickle when it comes to managers. In 2006 he fired Joe Giraldi despite him having the Marlins in Wild Card contention and winning the NL Manager Of The Year award. In 2012 he did the same to Ozzie Guillen after bringing him in as part of a spending spree to help usher in Marlins Park. The longest tenured manager for Miami since then has been Mike Redmond who held the job from 2013 to this past season where he was fired and replaced by Jennings.