Dodgers Manager Don Mattingly pleased with what he sees

Reporting from Scottsdale, Ariz.

Don Mattingly said he thought Saturday would be like any other day.

He didn’t have much experience managing, but he had done it before — in spring training, in the regular season, in something called the Arizona Fall League.

But the rookie manager said he felt something unexpected when one of the Dodgers’ two split squads to play that day took the field at Scottsdale Stadium.

He would get to see his players — yes, his players — for the first time in game action. Opposite them were the San Francisco Giants. He said he didn’t know what exactly he felt.

“Just the first game, you know,� he said. “It’s different.�

The Dodgers fell to the Giants, 8-3. Their other split squad dropped a 4-1 decision to the Angels in Tempe.

But Mattingly said he was pleased, at least from what he saw in Scottsdale.

The Dodgers didn’t make any errors and backed up plays the way they were instructed to during the first week of full-squad workouts. Mattingly liked the way his players ran the bases.

“The fundamental stuff, we’ve been talking about in the first part of camp was pretty good,� Mattingly said.

There was even some positive news on the medical front, as a surgically repaired Vicente Padilla returned to the Dodgers’ spring training complex and said he thought he could be ready to pitch by May 1.

The Dodgers’ opening-day starter last season and projected long reliever this season, Padilla underwent an operation on Thursday to release a nerve that was entrapped in a muscle in his forearm.

In the clubhouse, Padilla wore a bandage around his right elbow, which, he said, covered a three-inch scar.

Padilla was his usual goofy self, telling lewd jokes and laughing about how bored he would be until he could resume throwing in three to four weeks.

“If everything goes well, I can be pitching in two months,� Padilla said. “I should be able to come back 100%.�

Padilla said the discomfort he felt in his arm last week never seriously concerned him.

Problems with the same nerve sidelined him for almost two months last season.

“I wasn’t that worried because this is the third year I’ve had this,� he said. “It wasn’t so much a pain as it was a pinch. Last year it was a lot more painful. I couldn’t even move my arm.�

But back to Mattingly.

Not that anyone would dare say anything negative about their manager at this stage, but players seem to be taking to him.

“The first four, five days, he’s been great,� veteran utility man Jamey Carroll said. “He’s in the mix of everything.�

Mattingly’s predecessor, Joe Torre, was less hands-on.

Carroll described Mattingly as being more intense than he might appear to outsiders.

“When he does talk, he does say it with meaning and passion,� Carroll said.

In the past, sometimes that meaning and passion has resulted in him screaming at umpires from the dugout.

Told that reporters were debating when he would be ejected for the first time this year and that he was invited to join in the pool, Mattingly smiled and replied, “No. Can’t bet on games.�

Asked whether he would curb his dugout demeanor, he said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do, really. I don’t have any plan to chirp for any reason. It just comes out when things happen. I can’t really stop it.�

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