NL WILD CARD SERIES: PHILLIES VS BRAVES

October 1, 2026

Don Mattingly

Truist Park

Philadelphia Phillies

Postgame Press Conference

Braves 6, Phillies 2

Q. Don, it's been a strange season. What did you tell the guys afterwards, and what are your thoughts now that it's over?

DON MATTINGLY: Just appreciate the effort of really everybody in the organization -- just appreciative of all the effort from the training staff to the players, the coaches, just everything that they went through from really the start of Spring Training and preparing for Spring Training, getting through a season.

A lot of time, a lot of work. Obviously it doesn't end the way we want it to. If you don't win the last game, it's a crash landing no matter what. It doesn't matter where it is. There's going to be one team that doesn't have it.

Q. They've won 80 games of the, I guess, 137 you've managed. Do you want to come back? Do you think you've earned the right to come back?

DON MATTINGLY: It's not the time to talk about anything like that. I'm not concerned about myself in this situation. I want the Phillies to do what they need to do to set themselves up for success. Yeah, I'm not really -- it's like, my stuff doesn't really matter.

Q. You ended up having Wheeler available for a little bit of length. Was there any consideration to giving him the start, and what did you think about Zack and Aaron tonight?

DON MATTINGLY: Yeah, there was. We talked about both scenarios, and the group kind of came to the fact that it felt like Noles was on solid rest. If he can get us into the game at all and have Zack after that -- obviously that didn't go that well. After that we pitched okay. Just the long ball kind of hurt us today, got the 3-run, the 2-run, and the one, so give up six hits or so.

We weren't able to get anything going, and anytime we did, we weren't able to extend it.

Q. On the pitching plans, do you feel like the fact that you guys had to take it to the last day of the regular season with the way that last week went, did that make things more difficult for you in this playoff series?

DON MATTINGLY: Oh, no question. You'd love to be able to set your pitching up and them be rested and all that kind of stuff. But that's not the way it went. We had to fight to get ourselves in, and to do what we had to do to get in, we had to do what we had to do basically every game in the series.

You never know how that goes.

Q. Just to be clear, it sounds like the plan was you were going to use Zack regardless, considering your bullpen issues. You didn't expect Aaron to get you five or six innings or something like that? If that's accurate, why not just open with Zack?

DON MATTINGLY: That's not really accurate. I think if Aaron goes out -- he was one of our best guys down the stretch. If he goes out and keeps us in the game, we're going to read and react to the game and go from there.

Q. Do you have any explanation sort of in hindsight why it became so hard for you guys to consistently produce runs, both down the stretch and in these three games?

DON MATTINGLY: Not really an answer. Scoring is tough in general with pitching the way it is. So no real answer for that.

Q. What did you see from Ray Kerr in his two-plus innings?

DON MATTINGLY: He was good. Obviously kept us down and we didn't really get anything going on him. I don't know what their plan was, if it's short, if it's not going good or whatever. But obviously it's nice when you're -- in that situation where you can run through your lefties again at the top is probably the best case scenario, and he was able to do that.

Q. I know you said you don't want to talk about your future with this team or anything, but from a bigger picture, do you still want to be in baseball in some capacity moving forward?

DON MATTINGLY: Yeah, for sure. I love the game. It doesn't mean -- again, it's not the time to talk about it. I'm comfortable with whatever they want to do.

Again, I want the best for the Phillies. I had a great -- I loved being in Philly this year. I actually like playing in that environment. I like the environment. It's a rough environment, but it's good.

Again, I think you let the organization evaluate, talk about what they think moving forward, what they should do, and that dictates a lot of different things.

Q. Is that something you've talked with Dave or anyone about up to this point, or were you always saving it for an offseason conversation?

DON MATTINGLY: No, I haven't talked about it, haven't worried about it. Just trying to win games, honestly, and put us in the best spot to win games and move forward from there.

Q. If you can reflect -- not talking about Suarez, if you want to stay on that -- but what did you learn during this stint of being a manager?

DON MATTINGLY: I'm not sure what I learned in general. You learn a lot over the years. Being in different places and different situations, you learn from all of it. But I don't know about anything in particular this year.

But in general, as you get away from it, you look back at it, that's when you kind of evaluate it a little differently.

But obviously over the years, I think you learn from everything. You learn from good. You learn from bad. Good situations, bad situations, you learn from everything.

Q. This team and this group, they haven't won a postseason series since 2023. From what you've seen from them, why do you think it is maybe that this core hasn't been able to get back over some of the humps to get back to that World Series contention and what gives you the confidence that they would be able to do it going forward?

DON MATTINGLY: Again, I don't think it's the time right now to try to evaluate why or whatever happened, what's good, what's bad. It's like any situation. You look at your club, you evaluate it, what went wrong, what went right, what's the positive, what's the negative, how do you move forward.

But again, that's not my place to talk about that. I think that's the organization's place. It's Dave's spot to -- how they build the club.

I'm sure those are things they'll be thinking about over the winter.

Q. Obviously in an elimination game all hands are on deck with both pitching staffs. Were you prepared for Chris Sale to get the outs that he did in this one?

DON MATTINGLY: Yeah, I expected him to be a part of the equation if they needed him. Yeah, for sure you kind of know that everybody is available.

Q. Can you just address how difficult it was for you to manage or navigate these three games when it was clear that you weren't comfortable going to four or five guys that are on your roster in your bullpen? It seems like an elephant in the room, but they won a game with their bullpen today, and you seemed to be a little hamstrung in that department.

DON MATTINGLY: I don't know about that. I didn't really feel like that.

I think anytime you're in the playoffs -- I was in the playoffs, World Series last year with the Dodgers. They basically didn't use their bullpen, they used all starters. I think you're going to use your best guys in games. If we needed any more guys, we'd have used them.

I didn't really feel hamstrung in that regard.

I just want to congratulate Walt and the Braves organization. Walt does a great job. Those guys kind of went start to finish in this division. They showed they were the -- over the course of the 162, they were the best team in our division. Congratulations.