00:00Phillies can make it. Donnie Mattingly is the right guy to stabilize things, but Donnie is not
00:07going to be that guy that's going to come in and change anything and be that rah-rah guy. He
00:11is an
00:11even-keeled, put the guys on the field and let them do the job, and we'll see if it works.
00:16You know what's interesting about this, too, because when the move went down,
00:20there was sort of that delay. Now we find out that Dave Dombrowski picked up the phone and
00:24called Alex Cora, had a nice conversation. They go way back. One of his favorite guys,
00:27as he says in baseball, is Alex Cora talking about Dombrowski. Now they offered the job to Alex
00:33Cora, wasn't ready to commit just yet, said he's going to take the summer off, but even hearing
00:36some of the national beat writers here, like Bob Nightingale came on Philadelphia Radio saying he
00:41wouldn't be surprised if even at the end of this campaign, win or lose, that Alex Cora is still
00:45going to be the manager of the Phillies. But did you find it interesting where Mattingly came to
00:49Philadelphia and specifically said, and rightfully so, hey, I don't think I'm going to be a manager
00:52again, found a great spot here, and we'll see where it goes. Well, granted, if he's going to be
00:56offer the interim manager, he's not going to turn that down and still be a bench coach. But how do
00:59you feel about moving forward? Like if the Phillies play well, make the playoffs, does that mean a
01:03future for Mattingly or do the Phillies just say, you know what, Donnie Baseball, we know you might
01:07not have the energy to do it at your age, which is kind of crazy at this point. How do
01:11you think
01:11this plays out in Philadelphia if the Phillies are actually good this year, bounce back and make the
01:15playoffs, Greg? Yeah. So Mattingly, I've come to know for a really long period of time because he was
01:20the manager of the Marlins. So Donnie previously, of course, had a son named Preston. Preston
01:26Mattingly, who's the GM of the Phillies. And then later on in life, did get remarried,
01:32lovely wife, and then had a son named Louie. And Louie is a young kid. And now the deal is,
01:38Donnie, is that I think that when he took the Blue Jays job, he thought this would be my final
01:44destination. And, you know, Louie's getting and all of a sudden his son, Donnie, is starting
01:49to really love baseball. And I think that's why Mattingly wants to keep going. He's bringing his
01:55son all around him. He loves being there. He loves being on the field. And so he was like,
01:59all right, you know what, I'll just keep doing this. My kid is starting to really enjoy being
02:03around the game. I truthfully do believe there's a large portion of that. So he's like, all right,
02:07I'll go be bench coach with my other son. This makes a lot of sense. I got my whole family
02:11together.
02:11I don't think he anticipated this at all. So to answer your question, at the end of the season,
02:18I could still see Mattingly being a bench coach to Alex Cora or somebody else. I could see him
02:25easily going back to that role. As far as the Cora question that you asked or you discussed,
02:31why in the world would Alex Cora take that job right now? Why in the world a week ago would
02:37he
02:37look at the Phillies and say, yeah, let me take on a team almost 10 games under 500,
02:42try to get them 10 games over 500. What's the outcome? What's the best cost benefit to that?
02:48So I think Cora absolutely made the right decision and he'll sit back in the off season. There'll be
02:54four or five jobs that are available, very similar to football. He'll, you know, parse them out,
02:59take a look at what he wants to do. Maybe the Phillies will be that one. Maybe it'll be somewhere
03:03else. I think unless Mattingly takes the team deep into the post season and maybe he will,
03:11maybe he won't. I think he slides right back into the bench coach role again next year. And by the
03:15way, I think he'd be fine with it.
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