The Phillies introduced Monday that they’ve employed Don Mattingly as the brand new bench coach to supervisor Rob Thomson. President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski acknowledged final month that he’d spoken to Mattingly concerning the emptiness. Final 12 months’s bench coach, Mike Calitri, modified roles this offseason and have become the workforce’s main league subject coordinator. Mattingly has spent the previous three seasons because the Blue Jays’ bench coach however selected to not return in that function for the 2026 season as he as a substitute explored different alternatives.
“I’m excited to welcome Don Mattingly to Philadelphia,” Thomson mentioned on this morning’s press launch. “Having identified Don for years and having labored carefully with him in New York, I do know that his information of the sport and his character make him an amazing addition to our large teaching workers.”
Notably, Mattingly joins a company that employs his son, Preston, as its basic supervisor. The youthful Mattingly isn’t the highest decision-maker in Philadelphia’s entrance workplace — Dombrowski nonetheless holds hat function because the workforce’s president — however he’s a key determine in baseball operations who spent a number of seasons because the workforce’s director of participant improvement and an assistant basic supervisor earlier than being elevated to his present submit.
As Thomson famous in his remark, the 2 males labored collectively within the Yankees group, although they didn’t overlap on the workforce’s main league teaching workers. Thomson truly succeeded Mattingly as bench coach in 2008, after Mattingly accepted a suggestion to turn out to be Joe Torre’s hitting coach in Los Angeles. He’d been within the operating for the managerial emptiness within the Bronx that finally went to Joe Girardi, who named Thomson his new bench coach.
Even when they weren’t on the identical large league workers, nevertheless, Mattingly and Thomson labored along with the Yankees. Mattingly was a minor league teacher previous to being added to the large league workers as hitting coach in 2003. Throughout that point, Thomson labored each as a minor league supervisor and as a key determine within the Yankees’ participant improvement division, the place the 2 aligned to work with the Yankees’ up-and-coming expertise.
Along with his work as a bench coach and hitting coach between the Bronx and L.A., the now-64-year-old Mattingly spent 5 years managing the Dodgers and one other seven managing the Marlins. He then jumped to the Jays, the place he was first employed as bench coach after which had the title “offensive coordinator” added to his place. In that function, Mattingly oversaw the hitting coaches up and down your entire group.
Now certain for Philadelphia, Mattingly will function Thomson’s high lieutenant. There’s been some hypothesis as to how lengthy Thomson will proceed to handle, however he signed a one-year extension by the 2027 season following the 2025 marketing campaign, so he’s locked in for no less than two extra years. Mattingly is definitely two years older than Thomson, so he’s not precisely the prototypical youthful heir-apparent in ready, but when Thomson does step away after his present contract, the Phillies would have an skilled possibility within the group already. If not, Mattingly merely provides one other seasoned coach to a veteran workers stuffed with a number of well-regarded names.
