Yankee legend Don Mattingly’s latest challenge is coaching up the rival Blue Jays – New York Daily News

DUNEDIN, Fla. — There’s a whole new vibe of professionalism about the Blue Jays this spring, and right in the middle is one guy who couldn’t look out of place in a royal blue and white Toronto uniform with the red Canadian maple leaf logo on the front as Donald Arthur Mattingly.

I met “Donnie Baseball” who was doing infield practice on one of the back fields of the Blue Jays minor league complex the other day and as I approached him he smiled because he knew what I was going to ask him.

“So what are you doing here, in the belly of the enemy?”

“I want to be honest,” Mattingly said. “When I left Miami after the end of last season, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was perfectly content to sit at home and watch my eight-year-old Louie play little league.”

And then, out of the blue (Toronto), Ross Atkins, GM of Blue Jays, called and offered him the job of bench coach for John Schneider, who took charge of Jays on July 13 last year after Atkins’ popular, Montoyo left Charlie fired. At first, Mattingly was reluctant until Atkins assured him that Schneider fully agreed with the decision. Though Mattingly was already an established, mostly successful manager himself (889-950), winning three consecutive AL West titles with the Dodgers from 2013-15 and NL Manager of the Year awards with the Marlins in the 2020 season curtailed by the pandemic won, wanting to make it clear that if things didn’t go well in Schneider’s first full year, he wouldn’t come on as a prospective manager.

But as Atkins explained on the day of Mattingly’s hire, “Experience and credibility are words that are used a lot in professional sports and in the corporate world, but it’s hard to quantify exactly how valuable that is. I find [the hiring of Mattingly] is something that will have a calming effect and an impact. Not only will it help with performance and lack thereof, but also with accountability, which will be huge for us.”

It was a tacit acknowledgment of what was wrong with the Blue Jays last year. Despite a loaded, powerful lineup led by All-Stars Vlad Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette, George Springer and plump catcher Alejandro Kirk in which the Blue Jays finished fourth in the majors, third in OPS and seventh in homers, they never really challenged the Yankees and was later eliminated in two games by the Mariners in the wild card series. What they spearheaded in the league was showboating and over-zealous celebrations, especially after home runs, for which they kept a “home run jacket” in the dugout. Such was the case in New York in late August when they took the first three games of a four-game series against the Yankees to nearly seven first-place games and it was like winning the World Series. A few days after that series, a Yankees baseball official said to me, “We’re not worried about the Blue Jays. They act like A-holes and they don’t know how to win.”

Atkins was certain that there was no way the Blue Jay players would perform in front of Mattingly, the epitome of professionalism. To further underscore his commitment to changing the culture around his ball club, this spring he brought in respected former clubhouse managers Victor Martinez, Edgar Encarnacion, Pat Hentgen and Paul Quantrill as guest coaches. And on the player side, he addressed the Blue Jays’ biggest needs — left-handers and outfield defense — by trading in for Daulton Varsho from Arizona and signing Kevin Kiermaier, the longtime Rays’ inspirational force, as a free agent.

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The trade for 26-year-old Varsho, who had a breakout season last year with 27 homers, caused quite a stir in Toronto for the cost alone — highly-rated capture contender Gabriel Moreno and 29-year-old outfielder Lourdes Gurriel Jr., the .291 /.343/.400 cut in ’22 but eligible for free agency after the ’24 season. But Varsho, an Arizona team leader, was coveted by a number of teams, and Atkins considered him one who met all of his requirements. Time will tell if it was too big of a setback, as Moreno is widely viewed as a rising superstar and the Blue Jays’ depth of catch now seems badly compromised behind the 5-8, 245-pound Kirk and the weak-battering Danny Jansen.

In the meantime, though, there’s optimism in the Blue Jay camp this spring — the best kind of optimism. Along with Varsho and Kiermaier, Atkins also signed Chris Bassitt as a proven No. 3 starter behind Alek Manoah and Kevin Gausman, and traded outfielder Teoscar Hernandez (who some suspect was the Blue Jays’ No. 1 hot dog last year) to Seattle, to impress him right aide Erik Swanson.

“I’m really impressed with these kids,” Mattingly said. “They really want to win and they set out to take the next step, working hard here every day on the little things it takes to win. One of the main reasons I took this job was because I wanted to join a team that can win. That wouldn’t happen in Miami, which is why I left. I had done everything I could there and they needed a new voice.”

Of course, no conversation with Mattingly can’t help but eventually make it to the Yankees and why he’ll never be reunited with the team he will forever be linked to as one of their greatest players. Their split began in 2007 when Brian Cashman traded him to manager after Joe Torre in favor of Joe Girardi. He followed Torre to Los Angeles as bench coach and succeeded him as Dodgers manager in 2011. Later we went on to Miami and to the Marlins, which were always rebuilding. But after all these years, Mattingly has yet to see a World Series.

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Despite rumors this winter that the Yankees had offered him a job in the YES TV booth, Mattingly, 61, said “not true.” None of the Yankees, he said, had approached him about anything. When I asked him if he thought the Yankee ship had sailed forever, he shrugged.

“At the end of the day,” he said, “I grew up there and they will always be a part of me. That never changes. Look at Yogi, when he left he was everywhere but he ended up back in New York. You never know, but right now, at this point in my life, I couldn’t be in a better place.”

Baseball went a bit cold last week when it was announced that Diamond Sports Group, the subsidiary that controls the regional networks for 14 major league teams, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. What is likely to happen next is that the contractual RSN legal fees for these 14 clubs will be significantly reduced. The Yankees and Mets, as well as the Red Sox, Cubs and Dodgers are unaffected as they all have their own regional networks, while teams like the Braves, Cardinals and Angels, whose RSNs are all extremely profitable, are also not unduly impacted become. It’s teams like the Reds, Guardians, Pirates, Padres and Diamondbacks whose RSNs aren’t worth the rights fees that will take the hit, and Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said they will be compensated for reduced rights fees from MLB for at least this year. Eventually, however, Manfred said MLB’s long-term plan was to control the rights for all of its teams under one roof. Ironically, this whole mess stems from Sinclair overpaying for the rights to Disney’s 21 regional FOX sports networks by $9.6 billion in 2019. The second largest bidder was reportedly MLB.