Don Mattingly and the Hall of Fame

by Dusty Writes

November 14, 2025

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"Dusty Writes" is a pen name for a reader of SSTN who often writes detailed messages to our Editor-in-Chief. Over time, this reader has stated that the e-mail messages he sends can be shared on the site, but the writer himself wishes to remain anonymous.

We came up with "Dusty Writes" as a fun pen name. Dusty Rhodes was a famous pinch-hitter in the 1950s. Our "Dusty" is a pinch writer instead of pinch hitter.

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Whether or not Don Mattingly should be elected to the Hall of Fame is a fascinating debate. In Mattingly's Hall of Fame candidacy, it seems that many important things have not been mentioned that could be the difference whether or not Mattingly gets elected.

Mattingly won the 1985 MVP. If he won two MVP awards would he already be a Hall of Fame member? What if he won three MVP awards?  It would seem that had Mattingly won two MVP awards, he would have been elected to the Hall of Fame already. Had Mattingly won three MVP awards, he easily would have had enough votes to make him a Hall of Fame player. 

My point is this: Should Mattingly have had won at least 2 or 3 MVP awards? In 1986, Mattingly finished second in the MVP voting, as Roger Clemens won the MVP and Cy Young award. Many people say that a pitcher should not be able to win an MVP, because they have their own award ( the Cy Young). I agree.

Mattingly, having placed second in the 1986 MVP voting received more votes than every other position player in 1986. He was the best regular position player in the league in 1986, yet since Clemens won the MVP, there was no major award to give to Mattingly. The flaw in giving an MVP to the pitcher, is that the best regular season player has no major award to receive for his outstanding season. Many fans believe a pitcher, pitching approximately 20 percent of a team's games, cannot be more valuable than a player playing every day. 

Pitchers don't have that problem. The Cy Young award will always be available to a pitcher. No batters, no matter how great their stats, can win a Cy Young. But the best regular season players are not guaranteed to win the MVP. 

Many fans may believe Mattingly should have won two consecutive MVP ( 1985, 1986).

Also, in 1984, Mattingly finished 5th in the MVP voting. Two of the four players who received more votes than Mattingly were pitchers, one of which won the MVP ( Willie Hernandez). Hernandez also won the Cy Young award that season.

If we eliminate the two pitchers in the 1984 MVP voting, only Kent Hrbek and Eddie Murray had more votes than Mattingly among position players. Mattingly overall had much better stats than Hrbek that season. Either Eddie Murray or Don Mattingly had the credentials to win the MVP that season, their stats were very close overall.

It wasn't an exaggeration to say Mattingly was the best position player in the league all 3 seasons ( 1984-1986) and could have won three straight MVPs.  

Also, Mattingly won 9 Gold Glove Awards and was one of the greatest defensive first baseman in history. Since we really have no good way to quantify defensive ability, great defensive players with borderline offensive stats, often don't get enough credit and have been passed by in Hall of Fame voting. Keith Hernandez and Don Mattingly have not been elected to Cooperstown, in large part because defensive skills cannot be quantified correctly. 

Let's say Mattingly makes a great defensive play with two outs in the 6th inning with runners on second and third base. The ball seemed like a sure double and two rbis. Mattingly makes a fantastic play and the inning is over. How many runs did Mattingly get credit for saving? Do the fielding stats say he saved two runs? We know he saved at least two runs, but how do we know how many runs  the team would have scored had Mattingly not made that fantastic play? Maybe that team scores six runs that inning and Mattingly, therefore saved six runs. We have no way of knowing, no matter what defensive metrics we use, to know how many runs a great defensive player prevents from scoring.

Also, by making great defensive plays to get the pitcher out of an inning, the pitcher now has more left in the tank, in large part because Mattingly (in this instance) saved a pitcher from throwing let's say, an extra 10-15 pitches, had the inning continued. This pitcher may now be able to pitch an extra inning, thereby reducing the need for an extra relief pitcher to come into the game. Less relief pitchers that need to come into a game has the beneficial effect of having a more rested bullpen for the next game.

What often doesn't get appreciated enough is that great defensive plays are the type of intangibles that not only are beneficial for that particular game, but is a major asset for the next game and possibly the next few games due to the domino effect.

Many great defensive players are not in the Hall of Fame because their contributions cannot be quantified as easily as offensive stats can. These type of players such as Keith Hernandez, Don Mattingly, Dominic DiMaggio, perhaps Jim Edmonds and many others are often underappreciated.

Mattingly rarely ever struck out. He struck out only 444 times in his career, averaging only 40 strikeouts in a 162 game season, His career strikeout to home run totals, is exactly a 2-1 ratio ( 444 strikeouts to 222 home runs). Mattingly's ability to make  productive outs by not striking out (moving runners along, reaching on errors, causing the defense to come up with plays), doesn't show up on the stat sheet.

Lastly, compared to other Hall of Fame players who have similar offensive stats to Mattingly, Mattingly, with the exception of his home run totals, didn't benefit as much from his home stadium as other players did. According to Baseball Reference, Mattingly batted a career .313 at home and .302 on the road. Todd Helton batted .345 at home and .287 on the road in his career. Helton's slugging percentage for his career was .607 at home and .469 on the road.  Mattingly's career slugging percentage on the road was similar to Helton's. Mattingly had a .450 slugging percentage on the road compared to Helton's .469 road slugging percentage. At home, Helton had a .607 slugging percentage compared to Mattingly's .495 at home.

I am not saying Mattingly is a better player or just as good as Helton. The point I am trying to emphasize is that many Hall of Fame players have had a tremendous "home field advantage" -much more than Mattingly had.

According to Baseball Reference, Mattingly has never had anywhere near the necessary vote totals to get elected to the Hall of Fame. His highest total among the BBWAA  was 28.2 percent in 2001. In 2015 it was 9.1 percent. In 2023 the Veterans Committee gave Mattingly 50 percent of the vote.

Should a managerial career be combined with a player's playing career when deciding a player's Hall of Fame candidacy? Many fans will probably say yes, many fans will say no.  Mattingly's managerial record has some negative and positive aspects. The negative is this: His won loss percentage is below .500 at (.483) in 12 seasons and he never won a World Series or pennant. His managerial record from this perspective doesn't seem like it would increase his chances to get into the Hall of Fame. However, his managerial career had some positive attributes. He won three straight divisional titles as Dodgers' manager, and he won the NL Manager of the Year Award in 2020.

Mattingly was one of the most popular Yankees' players of all time, and many fans, not only Yankees fans, will be rooting for Mattingly to get voted into the Hall of Fame, especially since Mattingly came so incredibly close to finally winning a World Series with Toronto this season.