Mattingly Gets the Job. The Roster He Inherits Is a Different Problem.

Don Mattingly has been hired as the Phillies' manager on a two-year deal, which settles the front office's most pressing offseason question after a search that lost its top target earlier this month. The organization gets a name with big-league credibility — Mattingly managed in Miami and Los Angeles across parts of two decades, with a reputation for steadying clubhouses through difficult stretches. That background fits what Philadelphia needs right now.

What it doesn't fix is the roster. Five players finished the season on the 60-day IL, including outfielders Johan Rojas and Adolis Garcia, and the pitching depth that was supposed to carry this team into October never held together. Orion Kerkering's late-season implosion left the bullpen short, and Aaron Nola's 7-14 record with a 4.74 ERA made the rotation's middle look unreliable even when the top of it — Sánchez, Wheeler, Luzardo — was genuinely good. Mattingly inherits a staff with real anchors and real holes.

The offense is the quieter concern. Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber produced. The lineup around them, for long stretches, did not. That's a construction question as much as a personnel one, and it's the kind of thing a new manager can influence at the margins but can't solve by himself. The front office will have work to do this winter regardless of who's in the dugout.

So: the search is over, which is something. What comes next is harder.