Phillies need a more proactive version of Rob Thomson next October
Take this as a strong indicator that Rob Thomson will be returning for a fourth season as Phillies manager.
He and Dave Dombrowski are scheduled to address the media separately next Tuesday at a news conference at Citizens Bank Park.
The yearly postmortem press conference is happening a lot sooner than expected. Most of the blame rightfully falls on the lineup’s inability to string together hits in three out of the four games against the Mets and the bullpen’s stunning collapse after a strong season.
Both of those areas should be addressed during the offseason to varying extents. The Phillies will need at least two more high leverage relievers with Jeff Hoffman and Carlos Estévez both becoming free agents. The front office will have to get creative if they want to retool the lineup with most players on guaranteed contracts.
What will not be addressed this offseason is the manager’s chair, but Thomson needs to use this loss as a teaching lesson if he intends to stick around for years to come.
Thomson was right to make health the priority in the regular season as they went into the postseason with just about every key player on the roster available, but they were unable to raise their level of play like they have in each of the last two postseasons. It’s something that they will have to address in the offseason, even if there’s no obvious solution.
And even though Thomson isn’t responsible for the entire relief core combining for a four digit ERA over four games, he is responsible for the decisions made on who pitches in what spots and deserves some blame for the moves he did and did not make.
Obviously, it’s hard to blame him for the eighth inning of Game 1, when Hoffman, Matt Strahm and Orion Kerkering all struggled to hold Zack Wheeler’s narrow 1-0 lead. But there are moments in the series where a more proactive approach could have led to a better result.
Think back to Game 4.
With Ranger Suárez allowing a single and a walk to begin the second inning, Hoffman began warming up in the visiting bullpen. After back-to-back strikeouts and a single to load the bases, Suárez was able to limit the damage by getting Brandon Nimmo to ground out to first. A base hit there and Hoffman was likely going into the game with Suárez at 53 pitches through two innings.
But he had to wait. There was traffic, but Suárez was able to lean on his curveball and keep his team in the game through four innings. Hoffman warmed up again in the third.
He was up for a third time in the fifth and the plan was obvious – get Suárez past Nimmo and turn it over to Hoffman to get out of the inning. The plan worked and Hoffman was able to get Pete Alonso on strikes and Jose Iglesias to ground out to end the inning with the Phillies still ahead 1-0.
Then came the sixth inning, when the Phillies had yet another chance to give the pitching staff some breathing room. What followed was an unproductive 20 minutes that set the tone for the disaster that was to come in the bottom of the sixth.
Bryce Harper led off the sixth with a double against Jose Quintana. The Mets predictably went to get the righty Reed Garrett to face Nick Castellanos, Alec Bohm and J.T. Realmuto. The next pitcher, lefty David Peterson, was warming up to face Bryson Stott.
Castellanos got six pitches below the zone — and struck out. Bohm walked after getting only one pitch in the strike zone. Garrett stayed more in the zone against Realmuto, who struck out on a sweeper on the outside corner. The Mets then brought in the lefty Peterson to face Stott. Ahead 2-0, Stott grounded out to first to strand Harper and Bohm at first.
Having Hoffman come back out for the sixth made sense, but Thomson was slow to act when it became clear the layoff negatively impacted Hoffman’s command.
In his first at-bat of the inning against J.D. Martinez, he missed Realmuto’s glove on a high fastball. Martinez later reached on a single and advanced to second on a wild pitch. For Thomson, that wasn’t enough to get someone up behind Hoffman. Marte was later hit by a pitch.
It took until the next batter Tyrone Taylor was due up for Carlos Estévez to start warming up in the bullpen. As Estévez threw, the inning got further and further away from Hoffman, who threw another wild pitch and walked Taylor.
“I still think [Hoffman’s] stuff is good, even though he got up three times because of Ranger’s pitch count in the first couple of innings,” Thomson said. “He didn’t really throw all that much. He didn’t have many pitches down there. I thought he still had some left.”
Somehow, Hoffman was able to get a ground ball for a force out at home. Then it was time for Estévez to come into the game with an impossible task — keep the Phillies up with Francisco Lindor and Mark Vientos due up with the bases loaded.
The rest is history. Lindor crushed a 2-1 fastball down the middle for a grand slam to give New York a three-run lead.
It didn’t have to go down like that. Blame Estévez for making a bad pitch and Hoffman for leaving a mess, but Thomson should not have let it get to that point.
Estévez, since coming over to the Phillies, had entered a game only once with a runner on base. It came on Sept. 1 — when he came into the 10th inning with the ghost runner on second. A prolific strike thrower, Estévez is better suited to pitch a clean inning. Having Estévez pitch with the bases loaded against a contact-oriented Mets lineup just didn’t make sense.
It’s easier to look like a genius when the bullpen is pitching well. In each of the last two postseasons, the bullpen pitched to an ERA under three. It was over 11 through four games in the NLDS.
But prior to this series, Thomson was known for making aggressive pitching decisions in the postseason. His best work came in Game 1 of the 2022 World Series, when he deployed his best reliever Jose Alvarado in the fifth to face Yordan Alvarez after the Phillies tied the game. He got four outs from Zach Eflin, two from potential Game 3 starter Ranger Suarez, five from Seranthony Domínguez and three more from David Robertson in the 10th.
It all worked out because those five Phillies relievers combined to allow zero runs, but Thomson sensed the momentum, went for the win and was rewarded for it.
Sometimes that aggression backfires, like it did in Game 6 when Alvarez homered against Alvarado after Thomson pulled Wheeler.
The Phillies didn’t need that same level of aggression from Thomson in this series, but they did need a version of him that was better equipped to sense danger and react accordingly. For some reason, Thomson, like his Phillies team, was still stuck in regular season mode.
It’s not one of the main reasons why the Phillies lost, but it can’t happen again next year.
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