Marlins want experienced manager; Mattingly?

The Marlins have decided to make a change at manager after the year and plan to ask interim skipper Dan Jennings to move back to the front office, sources confirm.

The Marlins, who have had a disastrous injury-plagued season, also are readying for what is expected to be an “exhaustive” search for an experienced manager to take over next year, but one name that keeps popping up in internal talks is Dodgers manager Don Mattingly, whose job could become tenuous depending on how his $300-million team finishes out the year.

A meeting is planned among Marlins higher-ups for Thursday, when the team returns from a road trip, and it is expected at that time that Jennings will be given the option to return to front office as GM at the end of the year. Jennings agreed to take the interim manager’s job after his bosses suggested that they strongly believed that was the best alternative after they decided to fire Mike Redmond as manager, but it had been expressed publicly and to Jennings at that time that he could return to the front office if the manager gig didn’t work out as hoped.

Things are uncomfortable around the Marlins, where their playoff hopes blew up early and the season disintegrated among a spate of unrecoverable injuries and abject underperformance. No surprise, the team isn’t drawing in Miami under these unhappy circumstances. It is 39-57 under Jennings after going 16-22 under Redmond.

While Jennings is praised for tireless work and an eternally upbeat attitude, Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria has told everyone he seeks an experienced manager now. Mattingly, a known favorite of the owner, is thought to be among the strong considerations, should he become available.

With a wide-ranging search the expectation, though, several other prominent names are expected to come up, possibly including Dusty Baker, Bud Black, Ron Gardenhire, Bobby Valentine, Willie Randolph, Larry Bowa, Jerry Manuel, Jim Riggleman, Rick Renteria and many, many others.

After two stints with relatively inexperieneced managers (Redmond had minor-league managing experience and Jennings had spent his three-decade career exclusively in the front office). Loria is said determined to find an experienced hand. Ozzie Guillen’s $10-million, four-year contract runs out after the year, so that could aid in the willingness to spend for a new manager.

Loria, a New Yorker, is said to long be an admirer of Mattingly, and the owner drawn from his own New York experiences before, once hiring Tino Martinez as hitting coach and a couple times previously considering Valentine, the former Mets manager. Mattingly has won praise for his steady hand and up-front approach from Dodgers veterans, but the expectations are sky-high for baseball’s first $300-million team, which also happens to be led by a new front office regime this year.

The Miami Herald and FOXSports.com, which suggested Jennings’ likely out of the dugout chair at year’s end, described some possible front office tension and potential intrigue, with both outlets saying there were signs that the longstanding close relationship between Jennings and Loria was showing signs of being “strained.” Both outlets also suggested there could be a prominent role for assistant GM Michael Berger, who has assumed some GM type duties while Jennings has managed the team.

In any case, Jennings, should he decide to return to his GM chair, may find a somewhat more crowded front-office hierarchy due to the expansion of the role of Berger, who has known Loria for a couple decades, going back to when Loria owner the Oklahoma City 89ers in the early 1990s, as Ken Rosenthal of FOXSports.com pointed out.

It was reported first by CBSSports.com several weeks ago that Jennings was likely to be moved back to the front office, and Mattingly’s name first appeared in a subsequent colum in this space. MLB.com mentioned Mattingly as a possibility Wednesday, as well as Bowa.

The Miami Herald also reported there could be “sweeping changes to baseball operations, from player development and scouting, all the way up to the front office.”

Dan Jennings is likely headed back to his comfort zone. (USATSI)

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