Phillies’ Rob Thomson had no answers in an epic meltdown against the Padres in Game 2 of the NLCS

SAN DIEGO — The best you can do is give Rob Thomson credit for time served. The Phillies manager has pushed a lot of the right buttons over the last five months, on the field and off. He is one of the big reasons the Phillies found themselves where they did Wednesday, up by two runs, an ace starting pitcher on the mound, a mere four-and-a-half innings away from taking a 2-0 lead for the right to represent the National League in the World Series. He has earned some degree of the benefit of the doubt.

Yet Thomson knows as well as anybody that baseball is a results-based business, and when the results are what they were for the Phillies in the bottom of the fifth inning, the first place you should look is the man at the controls.

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Rarely has the tide of a playoff series turned so decisively in such a short period of time as the NLCS did in Game 2. Rarely has three outs felt so ambitious a goal for a team that appeared to hold such advantage. The final tally: five singles, a double, a hit by pitch, and a walk, all of it interspersed by five runs, two pitching changes, 46 pitches, and, somehow, three outs. A 4-2 lead turned into a 7-4 deficit. A potential 2-0 series advantage turned into a 1-1 split with the 8-5 defeat.

Needless to say, the right buttons were not pushed.

In hindsight there was one thing Thomson could have done that would have given the Phillies a chance to survive the fifth inning and live to fight the final four. He could have recognized the imminent danger that Aaron Nola was in after allowing a one-out RBI single to Austin Nola: not only his older brother, but the Padres’ nine-hole hitter. Thomson could have gotten lefty relief ace José Alvarado ready in case he was needed against lefty slugger Juan Soto. He could have then made the call after Nola allowed a single to Jurickson Profar that put runners on the corners with one out and the Phillies up, 4-3. Alvarado could have faced Soto and Manny Machado, and the inning could have ended.

Would it have? Who knows. But the devil we don’t know was better than the one we came to meet.

Thomson considered a number of factors when deciding against it. One it was the fifth inning, and Alvarado was one of his few options for a later inning against the lefty-righty-lefty heart of the Padres order. Besides, he was barely 20 hours removed from pitching out of trouble in the ninth inning of Game 1. Two, Nola was still shy of 80 pitches, and, well, he was still Nola. Three, the next best reliever for Soto was lefty Brad Hand, who didn’t do much to bolster the argument for himself when he eventually did get into the game. After Nola allowed a game-tying RBI double to Soto and struck out righty Machado for the second out, Hand replaced him and put all three batters he faced on base, allowing two more runs.

“He’s had a lot of success, veteran guy,” Thomson said. “I thought that was the right guy to go to, even though you’ve got [Brandon] Drury and [Josh] Bell behind him.”

Too early for Alvarado?

“Yeah, yeah,” Thomson said. “Especially pitching [Tuesday].”

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The tough thing about managing a baseball game is the tough thing about critiquing those who do. You cannot prove a hypothetical any more than you can a negative. Just because Decision A turned out so wrong doesn’t mean Decision B would have been any more right.

Yet they could not have turned out much worse for Thomson and the Phillies. Even as the Phillies were building an early lead with a four-run second inning, Nola was showing some signs that his third postseason start would go a little different than his first two. By the bottom of the fifth, Nola had allowed three extra-base hits, including back-to-back solo homers that cut the lead to 4-2.

» READ MORE: Flat Phillies need a big weekend from their fans after losing to the Padres in Game 2 of the NLCS

But Thomson was going to give his guy all of the rope. Nola entered the fifth having retired the last eight batters he’d faced, striking out three of the last four. His pitch count sat at a more-than-manageable 64.

Defensible? Sure, particularly given the stage of the game and the reality that we subsequently saw unfold when Thomson did go to his bullpen. Lineups like the Padres tend to put you in positions where there are no good decisions. Whatever the case, none of Thomson’s worked.

It’s impossible to know if things would have played out any differently. All that matters is the way they did. Now, suddenly, the pressure is on the Phillies. In Game 3, they will be on the wrong side of a pitching mismatch between Joe Musgrove and Ranger Suárez. Lose one of three back home, and Nola will be back in San Diego pitching in Game 6.

Everyone expected a series. Well, now it most definitely is.

“We went into Atlanta, won the first one, lost the second one — disappointing game,” Thomson said. “We had a day off and came back home in front of 46,000 raucous people and played really well. I expect to do the same thing.”

He will need to do what he has done all season: lead the Phillies back.