After a weird series of will he or won’t he, Don Mattingly is back with the Philadelphia Phillies. The NL East club announced the return on Wednesday (Oct. 14), with Mattingly locked into a new two-year contract that runs through the 2028 season.

For Toronto Blue Jays fans, the announcement naturally brings the conversation back to Mattingly’s time in Toronto. He spent three seasons as the club’s bench coach and offensive co-ordinator from 2023 to 2025, helped guide the Blue Jays to the 2025 World Series and became one of John Schneider’s most trusted voices. One year after Mattingly left, Philadelphia has decided it wants more of what Toronto let walk out the door.

That does not automatically mean the Blue Jays kept the wrong manager. It does, however, make the question harder to ignore after the two clubs travelled in opposite directions during the 2026 season.

Don Mattingly gave the Phillies exactly what they needed to turnaround their season in 2026

Philadelphia was 9-19 when Mattingly replaced Rob Thomson in late April. The Phillies went 79-55 under their interim manager, playing at a .590 clip and posting the fourth-best record in the majors the rest of the way. They recovered well enough to claim the National League’s final Wild Card spot before losing to the Atlanta Braves in three games.

However, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for “Donny Ballgame” as Philadelphia nearly coughed up a four-game Wild Card lead in September. Mattingly also drew criticism for some of his bullpen decisions. But he still steadied a talented but flawed roster, and earned the respect of the clubhouse.

Even after all of that, Mattingly was still not necessarily Philadelphia’s first choice. President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski pursued former Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora in April and circled back after the season, only for Cora to decline both times. Yet calling Mattingly a fallback undersells what he accomplished. The 65-year-old took over a team in free fall and managed it at roughly a 96-win pace over a full season.

Philadelphia’s wRC+ climbed from 84 before Mattingly took over to 104 under his watch. Bryce Harper, at age 33, slashed .269/.380/.485 with 29 home runs and a 135 wRC+, while posting his best walk rate since 2021.

Kyle Schwarber, Alec Bohm and the rest of the lineup still endured uneven stretches, but Mattingly helped turn an early-season weakness into a functional unit and all of those players posted 15+ home runs and were positive fWAR players, some just slightly compared to others.

Toronto never found the same answer with their offense. The Blue Jays spent much of 2026 near the bottom of the league in scoring, lacked home-run power and carried a sub-.700 team OPS deep into the season.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s historically poor year became the most visible example. Schneider continued to insist that he wanted Guerrero hitting in premium spots rather than moving him down the order, even as the lineup searched for a spark. His recent eye correction surgery may explain some of Guerrero’s struggles, but that means very little to the overall results of 2026.

Since taking over midway through 2022, Schneider has led Toronto to three post-season appearances, including the 2025 American League pennant. His managerial record stands at 382-340, good for a .529 winning percentage.

He has also overseen two losing seasons and two Wild Card Series exits, with the run to the World Series standing as both his greatest accomplishment and the reason expectations were so high in 2026.

In fairness, Schneider dealt with circumstances Mattingly did not. Toronto’s pitching staff was ravaged by injuries and required a franchise-record 40 pitchers to get through the season. Philadelphia’s staff remained comparatively healthy, giving Mattingly far more stability from one series to the next. No manager can scheme his way around that level of attrition.

Still, the manager question is not only about wins and losses. It is about whether the voice in the room can identify what is going wrong and push the right buttons before a season slips away. Mattingly did that in Philadelphia. Schneider and the Blue Jays never found their next gear.

The Phillies have now made their choice. They trust Mattingly’s experience, his relationships with their players and the evidence he supplied over 134 games. Toronto, meanwhile, remains committed to Schneider even after a season in which the offence regressed and the club finished 79-83.

At the end of the day, the manager of a major league team can only do so much to affect the outcome of a game. The players still have to come through. But it is an interesting thought experiment to think about whether the Blue Jays would have benefited from having an older voice in charge – and someone they aren’t unfamiliar with – in Mattingly in 2026.

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