Don Mattingly leaving Blue Jays’ post as bench coach after reaching first World Series

Bench coach Don Mattingly is leaving the Toronto Blue Jays after three seasons with the club, the team announced Thursday. Mattingly’s contract with the team expired at the end of the season, after he reached the World Series for the first time.

Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins didn’t specifically say they’d fill the team’s bench coach spot.

“We’ll see, we’re going to work through the best way to align our staff,” he said five days after the Blue Jays lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 7 of the World Series.

Mattingly, 64, was Toronto’s bench coach in 2023 and 2025 and served as its offensive coordinator in 2024, when the Blue Jays ranked ninth in baseball in walks and also had the sixth-fewest strikeouts.

Mattingly’s departure comes while one managerial vacancy remains in the majors — in Colorado. There are also multiple new managers who haven’t set their coaching staffs. In Toronto, Mattingly served alongside an associate manager in DeMarlo Hale.

Before joining the Blue Jays, Mattingly managed the Dodgers from 2011-15, replacing Joe Torre, and the Miami Marlins from 2016-22. He went 446-363 with the Dodgers, leading them to three consecutive division titles and starting the team’s current run of 13 straight playoff appearances in his third full season at the helm (2013). In Miami during an organizational rebuild, he guided one team to a winning record and a postseason appearance (pandemic-shortened 2020 season) and finished with a 443-587 record.

Mattingly was named National League Manager of the Year for his 2020 efforts, which helped the Marlins reach the playoffs for the first time since 2003, but finished only as high as second for the manager award during his time in Los Angeles.

The end of Mattingly’s tenures in both Los Angeles and Miami were both said to have been the result of a mutual decision.

Mattingly coached for the New York Yankees, the team he played for throughout his legendary 14-year MLB career, from 2004-06 before joining Torre in Los Angeles in mid-2008. He also worked as a special instructor during the Yankees’ spring training camps from 1997-2003 before returning to the MLB dugout in 2004.