Don Mattingly led three straight Los Angeles Dodgers teams to 90-win seasons and postseason appearances. He's the only manager in Dodger history—Brooklyn or Los Angeles—with three straight first-place finishes.
So why, in the space of three questions at this month's winter meetings, was the new Miami Marlins manager talking about modeling his new team after the Kansas City Royals?
You know why.
The Royals are the World Series champions, which means they got where everyone else wanted to go. It also means that for the next year, everyone will at least think about trying to do it the way the Royals did.
There are trends in baseball, and maybe the Royals didn't need to win it all to convince other teams of the value of building a strong and deep bullpen, or of constructing a lineup long on speed and athleticism even if it's a little short on power. But have you noticed how much money teams are spending on relief pitchers?
Have you noticed the priority teams like the Boston Red Sox, Houston Astros and Detroit Tigers put not just on trading for a closer, but on building a bullpen around the guy they got?
As Mattingly said at the winter meetings, "See what Kansas City has done with their bullpen."
He also mentioned the 2006 New York Yankees with John Wetteland and Mariano Rivera and the way Bruce Bochy won with his San Francisco Giants relievers. But the mention of the Royals was no mistake, just as it wasn't when Mattingly answered a lineup question with a reference to how the Royals succeeded by "putting the ball in play" and moving runners.
Let's just say plenty of teams noticed that the Royals won despite ranking 24th in the majors in home runs and 22nd in rotation ERA.
Big starting pitchers still have great value, which is why David Price, Zack Greinke and even ex-Royal Johnny Cueto got plenty of money as free agents. Big power still has value, which is why the Baltimore Orioles offered Chris Davis so much money and why the Chicago White Sox were willing to give up as much as they did in Wednesday's trade for Todd Frazier.
But there's another way to win, a way to imitate baseball's latest champion without suffering through the early, low-win years of Kansas City general manager Dayton Moore's famous "process."
It wasn't all by plan, but the Royals spent a quarter of their 2015 payroll to pay for their bullpen. They paid Greg Holland $8.25 million and Wade Davis $7 million on a team where only one player (Alex Gordon) made as much as $10 million.
And with Holland due to miss all of 2016 after Tommy John surgery, the Royals went to the free-agent market themselves and signed Joakim Soria for $25 million over three years. Even in a market that didn't include any true closers, Soria was one of five relievers to already receive at least a three-year deal (with Darren O'Day getting four years and $31 million to stay with the Baltimore Orioles).
Now everyone thinks a deeper bullpen can cover up holes in the starting rotation, or make up for a lineup that doesn't score many runs and thus keeps games close. Even the Colorado Rockies spent some of their precious cash on free-agent relievers, signing Jason Motte and Chad Qualls for two years each.
The New York Yankees actually did the Royals thing last year, bulking up their bullpen with trades (Justin Wilson, Chasen Shreve) and a free-agent signing (Andrew Miller). With Miller and Dellin Betances at the back, the Yankees had their version of what the Royals had with Holland and Davis (before Davis went down in September).
Meanwhile, in a game that has excused big strikeout totals in exchange for power in recent years, the Royals were unusual with their put-it-in-play-and-run attitude. Now that they won with it, though, it seems other teams took notice.
Big strikeout guys like Pedro Alvarez and Chris Carter found themselves non-tendered. Versatile, put-it-in-play Ben Zobrist became one of the most coveted players on the free-agent market.
And the Royals found themselves trying to replace Zobrist and probably Gordon as well, as they got too expensive for what is still a small-market team.
When you win, everyone wants what you had.
It's just as Chicago Cubs president Theo Epstein said going into the NLCS. At that point, four teams remained, with four different ways of building a winning roster.
"The only thing I know for sure is that whatever team wins the World Series, their particular style of play will be completely en vogue and trumpeted from the rooftops by the media all offseason—and in front offices—as the way to win," Epstein told reporters, as relayed by Ted Berg of USA Today.
We'll never know how it would have gone if the Cubs (homegrown position players), the New York Mets (great young starting pitching) or the Toronto Blue Jays (big power and big July trades) had won. Instead, it was the Royals.
Everyone wants to do what they did. Many will also try to do it the way they did.
Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.
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