Phillies hire Preston Mattingly as new farm director

The Philadelphia Phillies have found their next director of player development.

The team announced Wednesday that they have hired Preston Mattingly as the team’s director of player development. Mattingly previously served as the Padres coordinator of major league advanced scouting and game planning.

“He embodies a lot of what we’re looking for culturally,” general manager Sam Fuld said Wednesday at Truist Park. “He’s humble, he has empathy, he’s driven, he’s open-minded in his learning. He learns a lot. He learns quickly. He learns from a lot of different people … He’s smart and he’s just motivated to be really good. I think he’s somebody that would be really good at anything that he did and happens to have tremendous feel for people and knowledge of the game.”

Mattingly seemingly beat out David Adams — manager of the New York Yankees’ Low-A affiliates — who Jim Salisbury of NBC Sports Philadelphia had reported earlier this week was a “serious candidate for the position.”

A first-round pick by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2006, Mattingly never reached Double-A in parts of six seasons in the team’s system. However, Lin says that Mattingly “is highly regarded as an up-and-comer in the industry,” noting that prior to working in his current position with the Padres, the 34-year-old had been the organization’s pro scouting manager.

“Anywhere we checked, people praised him for every regard,” president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said at Truist Park on Wednesday. “When I say that in every respect as far as baseball [is concerned], he’s a baseball rat. He loves baseball. He watches baseball all the time. … He’s knowledgeable. He’s dealt with the analytical fronts. He’s dealt with coordinating information to the Padres big league pitchers and staff, so he has a lot of experience. When the Padres hired him, they exposed him to everything. That was there philosophy.”

Mattingly, of course, is the son of Don Mattingly, a six-time All-Star that spent his entire 14-year career with the New York Yankees. Don is currently wrapping up his sixth season as the manager of the Miami Marlins, which follows five seasons in the same position with the Dodgers.

For as epic as the Padres second-half collapse in 2021 has been, the organization has done a tremendous job in recent years of identifying talent. General manager A.J. Preller landed Fernando Tatis Jr., Jake Cronenworth and Joe Musgrove, among others, in trades in the last six years. The Padres have drafted pieces like C.J. Abrams and Robert Hassell III, seemingly having nailed high draft selections, something the Phillies have failed to do.

That’s not to say that the Padres organization has been perfect, but certainly they’ve outpaced the Phillies in terms of finding talent both through the draft and via trades.

Destiny Lugardo contributed to this report.

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