How much responsibility for the collapse falls on the Phillies decision makers? originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
The Mets were still frolicking on the grass at Citi Field and the Phillies team bus still hadn’t left the parking lot when the hesitation began.
This is normal. This is healthy. This shows that fans care, which is after all the basis for the entire industry. And while anyone paying attention to the way the Phillies played the last few months of the season shouldn’t be surprised that it took the Metropolitans just four games to eliminate the team with the fourth-highest payroll in baseball and put it on second-best record in the NLDS round, the apparent ease with which they did so would undoubtedly be a trigger.
Certainly. And one of the main proposed scapegoats was Rob Thomson. In an ever-changing world of baseball, it’s nice to know that firing the manager remains the standard solution for whatever goes wrong when a ball club so woefully falls short of expectations.
And how short was that? Put it this way, they needed eleven postseason wins to reach their proclaimed Promised Land. They won one.
It says here that Thomson must take his share of the responsibility, although perhaps not in the way many seem to think. More about that later. It also says here that his responsibility has nothing to do with lineup construction, bullpen usage, not playing enough small ball, or any of the other criticisms that every manager faces.
The reality is that the outside world has no idea how much input the manager has into the names on the card that is handed to the referee before each match. Some are believed to have a lot. Some, it is suspected, have very little. Where Thomson sits on that spectrum is unknown outside the inner sanctum. Ditto for many of the in-game decisions.
The sabermetric approach in the postseason is to make pitching changes sooner rather than later and that makes sense. In the playoffs, one bad inning, even one bad pitch, can set you back a series. And in his first two years running the show, Thomson pretty much played it by that book.
This year he was open to criticism for not being fast enough, especially with Aaron Nola in Game 3 and Jeff Hoffman in Game 4. Well, hell. Considering that any reliever in the bullpen this year could end up Trick or Treating like a ticking time bomb, what exactly was he supposed to do?
The same goes for the line-up. “Superstars have to show up,” was Bryce Harper’s prescription when the team fell into an offensive lull earlier this season. That’s triple important in a short, win-or-go-home series.
So to blame Austin Hays, Johan Rojas, Brandon Marsh or Edmundo Sosa for the breathtaking crash and burn of the offense is to miss the point a bit. But even that observation is complicated by another aspect of the game that is shrouded in secrecy.
Six of the opening day hitters, including the first five – Kyle Schwarber, Trea Turner, JT Realmuto, Alec Bohm – plus Marsh on the 8-hole were on the injured list. They were all back for the playoffs. But were they completely healthy?
Harper was the NL Player of the Month for May and June and a legitimate MVP candidate. He admitted he had problems with his elbow and wrist later in the year. He hit 21 home runs with 61 RBI and a .983 OPS in the first half, 9 HR, 26 RBI, .793 OPS after the break.
Bohm was .290/.804 before injuring his wrist in late August, and .170/502 after he returned.
Add that to the bottom third of the order being merged each game, and the lineup was a lot shorter than it seemed. Of course, that was compounded by the fact that Schwarber hit .125 against the Mets, Turner hit .200 and Realmuto was hitless in 11 at-bats. It’s hard to imagine what Thomson could have done to change that.
But …
Ultimately, the biggest challenge for the manager, the way the game is structured, is setting the right tone. To create a culture that keeps the players happy and productive. The fact that the Phillies literally turned their season around the day Thomson replaced Joe Girardi in 2022 is a testament to how important that is.
However, is it possible that, in cahoots with owner John Middleton, he has been too successful in that part of his job description?
The thought came after reading an excellent article on SI.com about Middleton. It led to Realmuto, after arriving in a trade from the Marlins, casually saying that the Fish were flying a much better plane. Word got back to Middleton, who figuratively snapped his fingers and let it happen.
“Anything you really need, he will deliver the best in the game,” Harper said. President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said in the piece that he is free to greenlight most requests because “I already know what his mentality is.”
That’s great. And Thomson fits right into that mentality. He will never publicly criticize a player, or even admit that he has less than complete confidence in the player he is asked about.
It creates an atmosphere from the outside looking in where the players are pampered and pampered in a way befitting European royalty. And to be clear, the Phillies aren’t the only team doing this.
Yet baseball is best played with a combination of looseness and sharpness. During his first press conference of spring training, Thomson graphically explained how hungry he thought his players would be this year. “I think these guys are motivated. They’ve tasted it for two years. Now they want to take a piece out of it and swallow it, you know, and eat it,” he said.
They played like that for the first few months of the season. However, those kinds of emotions are difficult to maintain indefinitely. They built up a big lead. Then they went 33-33 in the second half. Injuries certainly played a role. But every team has injuries. It’s hard to know, given the limited access to players and the so staged management of it, whether they’ve become a little too comfortable, a little too willing to believe that everything would take care of itself because so much is taken care of for them.
Moments after his team was eliminated, Thomson said it was not his feeling that his team had lost its lead. But he didn’t dismiss the possibility entirely. “Something to look at, for sure,” he said.
