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Don Mattingly Repeats Consistent Message: “We Have to Play Better Baseball”
By Luke Arcaini
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The Phillies have played bad all-around baseball to start 2026. Ultimately, it was the driving force in the firing of manager Rob Thomson, which was announced Tuesday morning.
Don Mattingly was promoted to interim manager, and will lead the Phillies tonight as they open up a 3-game set against the Giants. Prior to Tuesday’s game, Mattingly spoke to the media in the dugout and repeated the same words about 20 times:
“We have to play better baseball”
He’s right, and everybody knows it. The players, the front office, the coaching staff, and the city of Philadelphia. The Phillies have been the worst offense in baseball through the first 28 games of their season, and their starting pitching – a group that was predicted to be a top-3 unit in the league heading into the season – has the highest ERA in Major League Baseball.
Something needs to change. The Phillies are hoping a new leading voice is the start of the turnaround.
“First of all, Rob Thomson, I talked to him this morning… I talk to him every day during the regular season, we had a warm conversation,” Dave Dombrowski said to the media. “He’s a wonderful person. He’s done so much for this organization. I thanked him for it… but I think at this time, I felt that we needed a new voice in there, a little different feeling in the clubhouse.”
One thing that stuck out to me, in Mattingly’s opening dugout appearance, was his urgency. He continued to say this team needed to play better baseball, whether that’s hitting, pitching, fielding, or anything else.
“It’s better baseball… we haven’t been losing unluckily,” Mattingly said. “It’s not just that we haven’t hit the baseball. We haven’t been as good defensively as I think we can be. We haven’t had consistent, good starting pitching. Our bullpen has been good at times and bad at times. These are all the same things I talked to the players about. This is a ‘We’ thing. This isn’t a pointing the finger at one thing and say this is a solution. The solution is: Play better baseball than the other team. We’ve lost because we haven’t played better baseball than the other team.”
Although Mattingly did not go into detail, he did note pregame that he’s planning on continuing to talk with his coaching staff about things they can change when it comes to the lineup, pregame routines, practice, and more. It’s the start of a long uphill battle for the Phillies, who sit at 9-19 through 28 games, dead last in the NL East by 10.5 games while owning the worst run differential in the sport.
“What’s happened in the past to this point, we’re not getting those games back,” Mattingly said. “We’re not getting those losses back. We’re not getting those mistakes back. I’ve said it so many times over the years. You have to turn the page.”
Luke Arcaini covers the Phillies for Crossing Broad. The wave is the worst thing is sports. Follow him on Twitter @ArcainiLuke