Winter Meetings interview with Don Mattingly

Q. Don, can you tell us about retraining the core, what do you expect a year together and your second year with these guys? DON MATTINGLY: I think I will go back to the beginning, coming to Miami. One of the things that made this club so intriguing was that core group of young players that you felt like we could afford to keep together for a few years. That window doesn’t get to be five or six, it’s always a few years. We possibly can’t keep doing that. But with that intrigue is the fact that with a young core like that you should be able to allow your minor league system to grow up and hopefully get to a point where you can continue to replace and replenish without going outside and search. It’s one of the big things about this core group. We love the talent, we love who the people are and we feel like these guys dare and want to get better. We hope that last year’s experience of, you know, walking through a pennant race, going through that, we weren’t able to sustain. I was talking about it just a few minutes ago. After the first road trip of the second half, we were nine games over, if we just played 500 baseball the rest of the way we get a shot to be in the party. We weren’t able to sustain that, whatever the reasons were, injuries, mentally wearing down. We just weren’t that club the second half. But I also have watched Kansas City, who ends up winning a world championship, watched Cleveland and those young guys growing up and be in the same situation where a couple of years ago Kansas City stayed in the race, stayed in the race and then faded. Cleveland the same way for a couple of years, stay in the race, stay in the race and fade. You hope that experience helps you as you move into the next season. And if we can add pieces and create depth then we have a better chance of sustaining and being ready for that final push.Q. You feel you’re close? DON MATTINGLY: In my mind, yes. Close. What happens to us — things are going to have to still fall our way. We need to be able to stay healthy. That’s why we as we sit in our rooms and talk over the winter, you talk about trying to create depth in your system, trying to create depth with your players so you can sustain injuries. And that’s one of the things that we worry about. Obviously I think without having to wait for a question, the loss of Jose puts us in a different spot because we’ve lost one of the best pitchers in the game and we’re not going to be able to replace that. Along with that we have to be creative in the sense of creating a better pen that can shorten games and things like that. That’s easier said than done because if you start thinking about trying to throwing that many innings over 162, playoffs are different because you can do it for short bursts because you have off days and things like that. But 162 puts in you a different situation. So you have to create your pen in a way that you have multiple inning guys out there, guys that bounce back, have some flexibility with options that you can replenish your bullpen through the course of the season and keep it strong and healthy. Those are the challenges that we have to move to the next step.Q. With Jose’s loss, mentally what do you think those guys that are so tight with him and he pulled a lot of guys even closer, how do you think mentally the team will handle that? DON MATTINGLY: I think we’ll handle that fine. I obviously don’t know, we each individually deal with the situation in our own way. I think the strength at the end of the season with what happened, these guys did bond together even more than we’ve seen in the past and it’s a group that we felt like got along and were after the right things. That seemed to make it even closer, but I don’t think we can count on that to move us forward. I think we’re going to have to go out and perform and do the things you have to do to win games.Q. More so this year than last year, you’re more involved in the decisions upstairs, we heard. Can you talk about that more, what’s been your involvement? DON MATTINGLY: I think another great thing about coming to Miami has been wanting your input, myself and Tim Wallach. Tim is here also. You get a chance to have input and also have a chance to — we know our guys as far as scouts and people that work in the front office and in our minor league system, how do we mold all of us together. That’s really the — when I envisioned coming in is not only a really good Major League team but building a group of people that you love working with that we’re talking about our minor league system, how we want our guys to grow up, how to play the game and what we are expecting at the minor league levels. It allows us all to be on the same page. I think as much as anything it’s better communication and knowing guys better that we can all express our opinions and be able to talk in a way that’s circular. It’s not about the guys on the minor league side or development is one thing, it’s not about Michael Hill and guys up here. For us it has to be one fluid organization, where we know we’re counting on Marc Delpiano to build our system along with a lot of good people. Those are the things that we are able to talk about and be able to have input back and forth in those situations.Q. You managed both Jansen and A.J. Ellis. Have you made any recruiting calls at all? DON MATTINGLY: I’ve spoken with both guys, but from there that’s all it is, just — I’m kind of out of the Michael Hill level of talks, because those talks are in a different spot. But I think as we identify in our meetings what’s important to us with those roles, if you’re talking about an A.J. Ellis or anyone else that’s in that role it’s a back-up role to J.T. It’s there as a support for J.T., it’s about buying into our system of how we’re trying to prepare to win games. We’ve talked about that role, tried to identify a number of guys that we think fit into that role. A.J. is one of those guys. Now, does it work out for us? Not sure, because of our budget restraints, where we are at with that, it’s kind of between Michael — but we talk about those things. The same with Kenley, obviously a whole different level of, you know, financials there. So that’s definitely above what I do, but I have had contact with those guys and just to make sure — see if they have any interest because some guys may say, I don’t want to play in Miami, I want to stay on the West Coast. So you would like to find a level of interest so you’re not wasting your time talking about guys that really don’t want to play in Miami and we want guys that want to be there.Q. Did you try to sell them on the program or the team? DON MATTINGLY: No, not trying to sell ’em. These guys — players pay attention. They know we got a good, young club. There aren’t too many people you talk to in baseball, they know we have a good club and we’re close with that core group of players that we have a chance to be a really good club. So you don’t have to sell them on that. I think you’re hoping the guys that you know with A.J. or Kenley, they understand what you do and so you know them, there is a comfort level there with that from that respect.Q. What do you attribute Fernando Rodney’s struggles to last year? DON MATTINGLY: I wish I could answer that. Obviously his first half was over the top and he wasn’t as good with us. There were times that he was good. Fernando was a great guy in the clubhouse, we had no issues with Fernando, it just didn’t work out very well as far as the performance. Trying to figure that out is always tough with relievers, year-to-year or weeks to weeks, first half, second half, usage, age, all the different factors in there. But for me to answer I would be really guessing.Q. Last September, when you were on the brink of going into last month of the season, I remember talking with you and you said you were going to find out what the club was made of because at that point you were right there. What did you see happening in the last month that contributed to how you finished? DON MATTINGLY: I think part of it was, again, without making any excuses, going into that month we had lost Adam Conley, we had lost Wei Chen, Giancarlo was not there. Justin Bour was coming back but after almost a couple of months off. So we did have factors that I think weighed into what was going on. We had to weaken our bullpen by trying to put Phelps in the rotation for a period. So I don’t know if we got mentally worn down from playing the important games every day but I look at that as it’s part of our process. When you go into ’17, you’re hoping that’ 16 was a lot of lessons learned. From my standpoint as a player, there are things you go through and sometimes you’re so close to it you don’t learn your lessons in it while you’re in it. But when you go to the off-season and you’re able to step back and evaluate your season and you’re finally not on the road at the ballpark every day, every day, you start to realize, Hey, I could have did this differently, I should have been here, I got excited here. We still had a long season, we let …

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