On Monday, the Miami Marlins fired hitting coach Barry Bonds, one of the greatest home run hitters in MLB history.
Later in the day an MLB coach told Kevin Kernan of the New York Post that Marlins manager Don Mattingly would have resigned if Bonds had remained with the team.
According to SiriusXM’s Craig Mish, Bonds’ “commitment level dwindled” as the season progressed, and Mattingly called him out over the summer.
However, the writing was on the wall early.
In April, Mattingly, who was in his first season with Miami after spending five years as the manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, took a swipe at Bonds’ work ethic, saying he was “a work in progress,” while lauding assistant hitting coach Frank Menechino for making most of the preparations ahead of games, per Ann Killion of the San Francisco Chronicle:
You see Frankie still doing a lot of the prep work. Barry is still getting into the routine of the ugly side of coaching: being here at 1 and studying video, studying on the plane and you don’t get a chance to watch movies, things like that.
It just depends how good you want to be as a coach. If you want to be a really good coach, you’ve got to do the work.
Under Bonds, the Marlins offense was mediocre as the team finished with a 79-82 record, good for third place in the National League East:
| Stat | Result | MLB Rank |
| Average | .263 | 4th |
| Hits | 1,460 | 5th |
| Runs | 655 | 27th |
| Runs Per Game | 4.07 | 27th |
| Strikeouts | 1,213 | 6th-Least |
| Home Runs | 128 | 29th |
Source: Baseball-Reference.com
However, the Marlins’ difficult ending to the season, with the tragic death of ace Jose Fernandez, made late-September and October baseball irrelevant.
For Bonds, his first job in MLB since his retirement as a player in 2007 ended early, and his reported problems with Mattingly might not make it easy for him to catch on anywhere else.
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