The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers' Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse by Molly Knight

Author:Molly Knight [Knight, Molly]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2015-07-13T22:00:00+00:00

7

THE RUN

On what Mattingly figured to be his day of reckoning, the ball found its way into Zack Greinke’s right hand, as it always seemed to in the season’s biggest moments. Though he’d been a Dodger for only three months, Greinke had already been at the center of mega-brawls with two division rivals. And now here he was, back on the same mound where his clavicle was snapped in one of those dustups just weeks earlier, pitching to save his skipper’s job. While Puig had been awesome in his three weeks with the Dodgers, smacking home runs and gunning down runners and generally playing like an inspired maniac fans couldn’t take their eyes off, he couldn’t stop the club’s free fall by himself. Heading into their June 22 contest at San Diego, Los Angeles had dropped six of its last eight.

Players knew Mattingly’s job was at risk, so they scoured social media and texted their agents and traded gossip. One popular theory was that Gerry Hunsicker, whom Kasten hired in the off-season as senior advisor of baseball operations, would take over for Colletti and replace Mattingly with Rays bench coach Dave Martinez. Hunsicker had been the Astros’ GM from 2005 to 2014 before going to work as an executive for Tampa, and was thought to be close with the popular, bilingual coach. Martinez would have made sense. The Rays were respected throughout the industry as a model organization that made the most out of their limited resources by adhering to the sabermetric vision of their bright young general manager, Andrew Friedman. Plus, Tampa’s coaches and front-office executives had earned the reputation of being loyal to Friedman and to each other, which influenced the Rays’ strong clubhouse chemistry. When Mattingly spoke of the need to get his players to rally around each other he liked to use the analogy of a group of men tugging on the same end of a rope, even though he knew it was corny. The Rays were famous for doing just that; so deep was the organizational trust that Friedman worked without a contract, despite being one of the most sought-after executives in baseball. Though their payroll had never crossed the $100 million threshold, the Rays made it all the way to the World Series in 2008. The rich Dodgers, meanwhile, were spiraling into chaos, with their coaches, players, general manager, scouting department, and player development executives pointing fingers at each other in an effort to stay employed.

Another rumor had both Mattingly and his bench coach Trey Hillman fired, with Tim Wallach promoted to interim manager. The veracity of the gossip didn’t matter: the point was, it was getting louder by the day. No one knew for sure what Kasten and Walter were waiting for, but many players and staff members thought that if the Dodgers failed to win both weekend games in San Diego, Donnie Baseball would be gone.

While most of his players continued to like Mattingly, some covering the team wondered if the club might do better with another skipper in charge.

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