After the Dodgers got swept in Atlanta over the weekend, speculation about Don Mattingly‘s job reached a fever pitch, both on blogs like mine and on the more mainstream media sites. One particular report from Ken Rosenthal made many think that Mattingly wouldn’t even make it from Atlanta to Milwaukee, but obviously that didn’t happen, and all of that talk really seems to have quieted over the last few days.

To which I ask… why? Because Clayton Kershaw being his usual stellar self got the team a win in the opener against the Brewers on Monday? That remains the only victory the team has had in the last five games, and if we’re looking for signs that things have turned around, I’m not really seeing them.

This is not to say I’m suddenly on the “Fire Mattingly” bandwagon, because you know that I am not for all of the reasons we’ve been over a million times. But I have shifted to the side that accepts it will probably happen, and with something like 56 hours between the start of today’s game and the first pitch of Friday’s opener against St. Louis, if the move is coming it’s hard to find a better time to do it than right now.

If this is the end for Mattingly, he’s certainly chosen an interesting lineup to go out on. Nick Punto steps in for Dee Gordon for the second time in the last four games, which is fine, because Gordon is terrible, but Andre Ethier is sitting against a righty starter, which is almost unthinkable. We’re also seeing a Ramon Hernandez start for the first time since May 7, though without Tim Federowicz around someone has to relieve A.J. Ellis.

To be honest, I’m wondering if there’s an Ethier injury we don’t know about, not only because he’s sitting against a righty (!), but because Dylan Hernandez passes on a report from Mattingly that the team has discussed calling up Joc Pederson & Yasiel Puig. Aside from all the reasons why that seems silly, it makes me wonder if outright desperation is settling in… and rarely does anything good come from that.

(Update: Hernandez says Ethier is not hurt, just that Mattingly “wants to field team that will compete the best.” Uh, yikes.)

Don Mattingly is going to manage the Dodgers tonight. Normally, you really shouldn’t have to lead off a game story with confirmation that the manager of the team is still calling the shots, but, well… nothing about this is normal, and for a while today I was really far from certain if Mattingly would still be in the dugout tonight. Ned Colletti, it should be noted, is in Milwaukee with the team, though that’s not entirely out of the ordinary.

David Vassegh reports that Mattingly “isn’t aware of all the rumors in the media today of his job being in jeopardy”, and while I get that he’s probably not spending a lot of time reading the papers right now, I find that more than a little difficult to believe. Then again, I’m really not sure what we expect Mattingly to say in response to that. “Yep, I’m totally going to be out of a job by the end of the week, you got me.” Of course not.

In the meantime, Ted Lilly has been activated and Matt Magill has been returned to Albuquerque. I had originally tried to justify this by saying that it’d be okay as long as Lilly was only here to be in the bullpen to help out some exhausted relievers, figuring that the fifth spot could be skipped on Thursday. That might yet be what will happen, but Dylan Hernandez reports that Lilly still figures to slot into the rotation. The team doesn’t need him, assuming he’s skipped on Thursday, until a week from tomorrow, and there’s a lot that can happen between now and then. Let’s hope it does; I don’t think anyone really wants to see Lilly making another start, especially after Magill looked good in Atlanta this weekend.

Other than Dee Gordon replacing the injured Hanley Ramirez, we’re actually looking at something that resembles the “regular” Dodger lineup tonight, in what should be a marquee matchup between Clayton Kershaw & Yovani Gallardo. I’m pleased to see that the terribly slumping Gordon — now without a hit in his last 17 plate appearances — is still hitting 8th if he has to be in there at all, and there’s not a lot I can do to argue with this lineup. So it’d be nice if they would start to, you know, hit.

Good news, friends! Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register is reporting that Ted Lilly will be activated tomorrow, though he slyly points out that  it “doesn’t sound like [Don Mattingly] knows what to do with him though.”

Like most of you, I’d hoped to never see Lilly in a Dodger uniform again, but I suppose there’s at least some utility here. There’s not really a long man on this team, and with guys like Matt Magill, Josh Beckett, and tonight’s starter, Chris Capuano, often having trouble working deep into games, a long man is a nice thing to have. You can’t continually get through short starts by asking J.P.Howell, Paco Rodriguez, & Matt Guerrier to work multiple innings. If it sounds like I’m grasping at straws here, perhaps I am, but I can live with Lilly pitching four innings in a blow out. I cannot live with him entering a tight game with men on base, nor do I really want to see him getting starts ahead of Magill. I imagine that Javy Guerra would be headed back to Triple-A to make room.

But Lilly isn’t here yet, so we’ll focus on the fact that Matt Kemp is once again hitting second and that Tim Federowicz gets the start behind the dish. I like that Federowicz is spelling A.J. Ellis because it means that Ramon Hernandez is not, and in fact Hernandez has started (and appeared) just once this month, back on May 7. It’s actually a little interesting that he’s not even being used as a pinch hitter with three catchers on the roster, but perhaps Mattingly has just as little idea why he’s on the roster as we do.

Of course, I can’t even hammer too much on the fact that Hernandez still exists, because there’s not exactly anyone in Albuquerque that I’m dying to see — maybe Alex Castellanos, but he’s only just back to action after spending weeks on the disabled list — and there’s a pretty damn good argument to make to drop Luis Cruz ahead of Hernandez. With Mark Ellis likely to be activated in the next few days, we can be happy to expect that at least one of those two anchors will finally be set adrift.