GLENDALE, Ariz. -- There's a line in Moneyball in which Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman) tells Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), "I can't manage a team on a one-year contract."

"Sure you can," Beane tells him.

I asked Dodgers manager Don Mattingly on Wednesday morning if he remembered the scene.

"That guy was out of shape," he said, smiling.

He smiled when he said it, and indeed, he is in better shape than Philip Seymour Hoffman and a lot of other people. At 51, he still looks a lot like the guy who played 14 seasons in the big leagues and retired with 2,153 hits and a .307 career batting average.

That was then. Now he finds himself in a potentially uncomfortable position this Spring Training. His new bosses have thrown hundreds of millions of dollars at players the last nine months on their way to constructing baseball's most interesting roster.

Yet perhaps their most intriguing decision involves Mattingly. After two seasons in which he has distinguished himself in virtually every aspect of the job, the Dodgers decided not to extend his contract beyond 2013.

READ MORE: Dodgers.com