Rob Thomson, Bryce Harper, and J.T. Realmuto all reflect on their season ending in game four of the NLDS.
The Mets were still cavorting on the grass at Citi Field and the Phillies team bus still hadn't pulled out of the parking lot when the second-guessing began.
This is normal. This is healthy. This shows that fans care, which after all is the foundation for the entire industry. And while anyone paying attention to the way the Phillies played during the last couple months of the season shouldn't be stunned that the Metropolitans needed just four games to eliminate the team with baseball's fourth-highest payroll and second-best record in the NLDS round, the seeming ease with which they did it was bound to be triggering.
Sure was. And among the primary proposed scapegoats was Rob Thomson. In an ever-changing baseball world, it's nice to know that firing the manager remains the default cure-all for everything that goes wrong when a ballclub falls so woefully short of expectations.
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And how short was that? Put it this way: They needed 11 postseason wins to reach their announced Promised Land. They won one.
It says here that Thomson has to shoulder his share of the responsibility, although maybe not in the way many appear to think. More on that later. It also says here that his accountability has nothing to do with lineup construction, bullpen use, not playing enough small ball or any of the other criticisms that every manager is subject to.
The reality is that the outside world has no idea how much input the manager has for the names on the card that are handed to the umpire before every game. Some are believed to have a lot. Some, it's suspected, have very little. Where Thomson sits on that spectrum is unknown outside the inner sanctum. Ditto for a lot 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 swing an entire series. And, in his first two years running the show, Thomson played it pretty much by that book.
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This year, he left himself open to criticism for not having a quick enough hook, specifically with Aaron Nola in Game 3 and Jeff Hoffman in Game 4. Well, hell. Given that every reliever in the bullpen could go Trick or Treating this year as a ticking time bomb, what exactly was he supposed to do?
Same thing with the lineup. "Superstars gotta show up," was Bryce Harper's prescription when the team fell into an offensive lull earlier in the season. That's triply important in a short, win-or-go-home series.
So to fault Austin Hays or Johan Rojas or Brandon Marsh or Edmundo Sosa for the breathtaking crash and burn of the offense is kind of missing the point. But even that observation is complicated by another aspect of the game that's kept shrouded in secrecy.
Six of the hitters in the Opening Day lineup including the first five – Kyle Schwarber, Trea Turner, J.T. Realmuto, Alec Bohm – plus Marsh in the 8-hole spent time on the injured list. All were back for the playoffs. But were they fully healthy?
Harper was the NL Player of the Month for May and June and a legitimate MVP candidate. He admitted to having issues with his elbow and wrist later in the year. He hit 21 homers 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 at the end of August, .170/502 after he came back.
Add that to a bottom third of the order that was being patched together every game, and the lineup was a lot shorter than it may have appeared. That was exacerbated, of course, by the fact that Schwarber batted .125 against the Mets, Turner hit .200 and Realmuto was hitless in 11 at bats. It's hard to see what Thomson could have done to change any of that.
But …
Ultimately, the way the game is structured, the manager's biggest challenge is to set the proper tone. To create a culture that keeps the players happy and productive. The fact that the Phillies turned their season around literally the day that Thomson replaced Joe Girardi in 2022 is a testament to how important that is.
Is it possible, though, that in cahoots with owner John Middleton, he's been too successful in that section of his job description?
The thought occurred after reading an excellent article on SI.com about Middleton. It led with Realmuto, after arriving in a trade from the Marlins, casually mentioned that the Fish flew in a much better plane. Word got back to Middleton, who figuratively snapped his fingers and made it happen.
"Anything you really need, he's going to deliver the best in the game," Harper was quoted as saying. President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said in the piece that he's free to greenlight most requests because "I already know what his mindset is."
Which is great. And Thomson fits right into that mentality. He'll never criticize a player publicly, never even admit to having anything less than the fullest confidence in whatever player he's been asked about.
It creates an atmosphere from the outside looking in that the players are coddled and cosseted in a manner befitting European royals. And, to be clear, the Phillies aren't the only team that does this.
Still, baseball is played best with a combination of looseness and edge. At his first spring training press conference, Thomson laid out graphically how hungry he thought his players would be this year. "I think these guys are motivated. They've had two years of tasting it. Now they want to take a chunk out of it and swallow it, you know, and eat it," he said.
For the first couple months of the season, they played like it. That sort of emotion is difficult to maintain indefinitely, though. They built a big lead. Then they went 33-33 in the second half. Injuries played a part, sure. But every team has injuries. It's hard to know, given how access to players is so limited and stage-managed, whether they became 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 wasn't his sense that his team had lost its edge. But he didn't dismiss the possibility entirely. "Something to look at, for sure," he said.
