The beautiful thing about being a baseball analyst or fan, rather than a player, is that we can pass judgement upon a team when a report comes out. Without knowing the inner-workings of a franchise, it's easy to read something like this and wonder: Why were the Phillies not already doing this?
The #Phillies coaches and team officials are going to have a meeting today with Don Mattingly to go over trends and weaknesses and to come up with plans to address them.
— Jeff Kerr (@JeffKerrPHL) May 6, 2026
This is something the Blue Jays did when Mattingly was there.
Mattingly said it will be around once a…
Effectively, Don Mattingly has instituted a new policy with the Philadelphia Phillies, wherein the entire coaching staff will meet roughly once per month to analyze the weaknesses plaguing the team. The idea is to nip bad habits in the bud before they sink the entire season.
We likely don't have the full context here, but this report makes it sound like the team, at least under the not-so-watchful eye of Rob Thomson, wasn't already doing this, right? Which, if true, feels like organizational malpractice when a season is as long as baseball's grueling 162-game slate.
Far be it for me or any of us to question Mattingly's wisdom. The Phillies are on a roll since he took control of the ship, forcing themselves right back into the thick of the at-large picture in the National League. Who would have thought that all this team needed was an extra meeting on the old Google Calendar?
Don Mattingly enforcing accountability as Phillies surge back into relevancy
In all seriousness, the Phillies were almost certainly doing some form of this already, as is every team in Major League Baseball. The job of everyone on the coaching staff is to help players get better, and you do that by identifying weaknesses and creating plans to address them.
The point behind this kind of all-hands meeting -- and the reason it worked so well for Mattingly while he was with the Toronto Blue Jays -- is that it enforces accountability across the entire organization. It's no longer the responsibility of any one coach to fix a player's struggles. That is now the burden of everyone who will be in attendance for this monthly review.
It's clear the players are responding well to Mattingly's managerial style, but it's perhaps just as impressive that he's taken over Thomson's coaching staff and is leading with aplomb. This was the benefit of hiring an in-house interim for the remainder of the season, rather than trying to wedge a long-term solution like Alex Cora into the mix.
Of course, the Phillies won't be this hot forever, but we also knew they weren't nearly as bad as their 9-19 start indicated. The law of averages will work its magic over the course of the season, but whatever fire the front office was hoping to ignite by bringing in a new voice to lead the clubhouse is clearly burning bright.
Add us as a preferred source on Google