Phillies fire Rob Thomson after 9-19 start; Don Mattingly named interim manager
Thomson, who led the Phillies to the playoffs four straight years, paid the price for a team with the game’s fifth-highest payroll starting off 9-19, which included a 10-game losing streak.
Rob Thomson spent much of Monday, a day off for the Phillies, going over scouting reports and preparing for this week’s three-game series against the Giants.
It was business as usual.
But the Phillies also were tied for the worst record in the majors (9-19) despite having the fifth-highest payroll ($317 million). So, when president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski called at about 8 a.m. Tuesday and asked Thomson to come into the office, well …
“At that point,” Thomson said, “I pretty much knew.”
» READ MORE: Dave Dombrowski is ‘responsible’ for this reeling Phillies roster. And these decisions helped get them here.
Four years after getting his long-awaited first chance to manage and steering the Phillies to a World Series, Thomson was fired. It was Dombrowski’s decision. Don Mattingly, hired in January as bench coach, took over as interim manager through the rest of the season, but not before Dombrowski tried to hire Alex Cora, let go as manager of the Red Sox last Saturday night.
“This isn’t a blame game,” Dombrowski said in a news conference at Citizens Bank Park. “We, collectively, are not doing well. This is a whole group. You can blame whomever you choose to, but for us, we don’t really do that.”
Except that Thomson took the fall, as managers in these circumstances usually do.
“Obviously losing Topper, it’s tough,” Bryce Harper said. “When anybody loses their job, it’s always tough, man. We love ‘Topper’ in here. He was a great manager for us over the years.”
Said Dombrowski: “I think we’re a much better club than we’ve played, so you make some decisions that are tough at times. At this time, I felt that we needed a new voice in there, a little different feeling in the clubhouse.”
Mattingly, hired by the Phillies in January, qualifies as a new voice. But the iconic former Yankees star and former Dodgers and Marlins manager conceded he isn’t especially different from Thomson in demeanor or overall philosophy.
Cora would’ve represented a bigger change. He’s close with Dombrowski, who hired him in Boston in 2017 and partnered with him to win a World Series a year later.
Dombrowski called Cora on Sunday, the morning after Cora got let go, to gauge his interest. But Cora, who is owed more than $13 million from the Red Sox through 2027, prefers to spend the rest of the season with his family.
“I’d really come to the conclusion at that point that, if he took it, I was going to make a change,” Dombrowski said. “And I thought that he might take it.”
» READ MORE: Hayes: Thank fired Phillies manager Rob Thomson for all the winning but don’t blame him for the flawed roster
Thomson was still managing the Phillies at the time, although the walls were closing in. Dombrowski invited three trusted lieutenants — pro scouts David Chadd, Charley Kerfeld, and Brad Sloan — to meet the team in Atlanta and encouraged them to spend time in the dugout and the clubhouse before and after games.
But Thomson maintained that he didn’t find them to be intrusive. He also said his relationship with Dombrowski is “rock solid” and that he’s open to considering owner John Middleton’s invitation to eventually return to the club as a special assistant.
“I don’t think anybody was in there snooping or anything,” Thomson said. “I think they were just trying to evaluate the ballclub and where can we get better. I don’t think there was any backdoor dirty business towards me.”
Thomson, 62, a mild-mannered Canadian and baseball lifer — “Topper” to his players and staff — skippered the Phillies to a 355-270 record, four consecutive playoff appearances, and back-to-back National League East titles after replacing deposed Joe Girardi on June 3, 2022.
Last winter, the Phillies extended Thomson’s contract through 2027. He owns the highest winning percentage (.568) of any Phillies manager since 1900. Earlier this month, he reached 350 career wins faster than any manager in club history.
And his downfall happened just as quickly.
Two weeks ago, on April 13, the Phillies trounced the Cubs, 13-7, at home. They lost the next 10 games by a combined 69-26. Last Tuesday, in the midst of that skid, Dombrowski offered a vote of confidence for Thomson, saying there was “nothing to ponder at this point” about a managerial change.
» READ MORE: There’s not much Rob Thomson can do about the Phillies’ roster. But he might end up taking the fall for it.
But the losing continued. The Phillies are off to their worst 28-game start since 2002. They have dropped six consecutive series. After bowing again Sunday in Atlanta, they slid to 10½ games behind the NL East-leading Braves, their largest deficit in the division in April since 1997.
It wasn’t what anyone, least of all Middleton, expected from a $317 million roster.
Something had to give.
But a managerial change still feels like whiplash for the Phillies, who leaned in to extreme continuity during Thomson’s tenure. The core of the roster — Harper, J.T. Realmuto, Zack Wheeler, Aaron Nola, Kyle Schwarber, and Trea Turner — hasn’t changed, even as the players aged into their 30s. Thomson’s coaching staff stayed intact, too, year after year, save for the addition of Mattingly.
Have things gotten stale?
“I don’t sense that,” Thomson said. “I don’t sense staleness with the players. I see frustration with the players, but I think that’s natural when you have the record that we do.”
With Mattingly taking over for Thomson, Dusty Wathan will move from third base coach to bench coach. Anthony Contreras, who managed in triple A since 2022, will take over the third-base coaching duties.
Mattingly, who turned 65 earlier this month, said in January that he believed his days as a manager “passed me by.” His son, Preston, is the Phillies’ general manager.
Why, then, did he agree to take over for Thomson?
“Because Dave asked,” Mattingly said.
Mattingly said his comments in January about lacking the energy to manage again were made out of deference to Thomson, his friend and former colleague with the Yankees. He also said he’s unconcerned about a conflict of interest in working with Preston.
“We both want to win games,” Mattingly said. “I’m here to win, my coaches are here to win, our players are here to win, Preston’s here to win, Dave’s here to win. I’m sure ownership’s here to win and the fans want to win.”
But the Phillies’ stunning futility isn’t a reflection of Thomson’s ability to reach the players or devise solutions as an indictment of Dombrowski’s roster construction.
Most notably, the Phillies rank 29th, 25th, and 27th in OPS from the Nos. 4, 5, and 6 spots in the lineup. Their right-handed hitters have a .505 OPS against left-handed pitching, which would be the lowest mark for any team since the 1918 Red Sox.
» READ MORE: Dave Dombrowski is ‘responsible’ for this reeling Phillies roster. And these decisions helped get them here.
With the Phillies facing Braves ace lefty Chris Sale on Sunday, Thomson stacked the lineup with right-handed hitters, including rookie left fielder Felix Reyes and utility man Dylan Moore, who made his first start of the season in center field. The Phillies got only one hit against Sale and two hits in all.
It turned out to be Thomson’s last lineup.
Does Dombrowski regret how he built the roster?
“No, I don’t have any regrets,” Dombrowski said. “I mean, if we play this way the rest of the year, I’ll have a lot of regrets at the end of the year. But I think we’re a lot better than this.”
Thomson was poised to retire after the 2022 season when Dombrowski tapped him to replace Girardi. That was 51 games into the season. The Phillies were 22-29 and hadn’t made the playoffs in 10 years.
Expectations are different now. Thomson had a big hand in that.
Thomson’s dismissal after 28 games represents the earliest the Phillies have fired a manager since they dumped Nick Leyva after 13 games in 1991. Dombrowski said he typically takes until about the 40-game mark to make judgments about his personnel.
But the depth of the Phillies’ problems — and perhaps Cora’s unexpected availability — sped up the process.
“I’ve never spent a summer in 42 years at home,” Thomson said. “Thank God my wife put a pool in a couple of years ago. Maybe I’ll go for a swim or something.”
Hunter Pence's 368-day stint with the Phillies was a study in extremes. Acquired at the trade deadline in 2011 as the missing right-handed bat for a World Series contender, he got dealt a year later by an underachieving team. And with the Phillies in full-on crisis mode this week, Pence sits down with "Phillies Extra," the Inquirer's baseball podcast, to discuss how quickly a team's fortunes can change. Watch here.
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