Rob Thomson will need to come up big in a lot of ways for the Phillies to beat the Dodgers

I’ve never been a fan of the notion of a baseball game as a chess match. In chess, strategic decisions are the only variable. Once you make a move, the only open question is how your opponent will respond. A bishop will always move diagonally. A queen will always move in whatever direction you choose. There are no off nights for rooks. They will do what you ask them to do.

Managing a baseball game is more like poker. You are playing your opponent, but you are also playing your odds, while playing the cards you are dealt. There are good poker players. There are bad poker players. There are no poker players who aren’t at the mercy of things they cannot control.

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When the Phillies take the field against the Dodgers on Saturday for Game 1 of their National League Division Series, Rob Thomson will be seated at the table like never before. The Phillies manager enters his fourth postseason facing a staggering list of decisions that could easily decide the outcome of this best-of-five series.

The Phillies have a remarkable degree of flux for a team that ran away with its division and cruised through the last two months of the season en route to 96 wins. The list of what we know is as follows: Cristopher Sánchez in Game 1, Jhoan Duran in the ninth inning, Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper somewhere in the top half of the lineup. Almost everything else is subject to Thomson’s decision-making, before and during the games.

Simply put, Thomson has never been in this position before. Not to this extent. For the first time in his Phillies career, Thomson has 13 players who started at least 40 games during the regular season. That’s two more than he had in 2022, when the Phillies stunned the world to advance to the World Series. That year, the Phillies also had Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola as their obvious Game 1 and Game 2 starters, and Seranthony Domínguez and Jose Alvarado as their two highest leverage relievers. The past couple of years, the Phillies’ lineup was pretty close to set it and forget it.

At Friday’s workout at Citizens Bank Park, Thomson declined to name a Game 2 starter.

1. Will Nick Castellanos and/or Edmundo Sosa start Game 2 against Dodgers lefty Blake Snell?

We’re assuming lefties Brandon Marsh and Max Kepler will be in left and right field against righties Shohei Ohtani in Game 1 and, presumably, Yoshinobu Yamamoto in Game 3. Same goes for Bryson Stott at second base. I can’t imagine Thomson would keep Castellanos on the bench against a lefty. Do that, and you are risking him checking out of what you hope will be a long postseason. That said, Castellanos only started 11 of 27 games heading into the final weekend of the regular season. For a lot longer than that, he’s been a near-complete zero at the plate. With a .569 OPS in his last 54 games, Castellanos has done little to warrant the benefit of the doubt this postseason.

Sosa might actually be the more compelling story. Thomson loves him, and he has an .868 OPS with 10 home runs in 152 plate appearances since late June. I have to think he’ll be in the lineup in Game 2. The only question is where he’ll be playing in the field.

2. On that note, how liberally will Thomson substitute off his bench during each game?

The Dodgers have four lefties out of the bullpen, not including veteran Clayton Kershaw (who was a young buck coming out of the bullpen the last time these two teams met in the postseason). Thomson will presumably have Castellanos and Sosa on the bench. Perhaps Weston Wilson and/or Otto Kemp as well.

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One of the many unknowns is how the Dodgers plan on using Tanner Scott, who has been relatively abysmal as the team’s closer after signing as a big ticket free agent. Beyond Scott, Schwarber is 0-for-7 with three strikeouts and a walk against southpaw Alex Vesia. Kepler, Marsh and Stott are a combined 1-for-13 with six strikeouts. Castellanos is 2-for-4 with a home run against him. Sosa is also 2-for-4, while Kemp walked in his only plate appearance. The Dodgers can also call on rookie Jack Dreyer (who retired 14 of 18 Phillies batters he has faced this season) and veteran Anthony Banda, who was left off the wild-card roster but will presumably be up for the NLDS.

Complicating the decision-making process is the Dodgers’ surplus of starters, particularly righties Emmet Sheehan and Tyler Glasnow.

3. How tight of a situation will Thomson trust Orion Kerkering and/or David Robertson?

The broader question: how aggressive will Thomson be with going to his bullpen?

How aggressive can he be?

Matt Strahm remains the Phillies’ most dependable high-leverage arm in front of Duran. And he remains so by a wide margin.

The Phillies paid Robertson a lot of money with the hope that he could fill the void left by Jose Alvarado, who is ineligible for the postseason thanks to his PED suspension. Robertson, the veteran righty with two previous stints in Philly, looked promising after debuting in August. He allowed just one run in his first 7⅔ innings while striking out 12 and walking just three. That has since changed.

In his last 10 innings, Robertson has allowed three home runs and five walks against 10 strikeouts while being charged with eight runs.

Kerkering ended the season on a high note, striking out all four batters he faced on back-to-back days in the Phillies’ last two games. They are going to need a reliever like that to emerge this postseason.

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Kerkering has yet to be that guy in October. In 11 career appearances, he has allowed 21 base runners in nine innings while allowing five of seven inherited runners to score. He didn’t take the next step in the 2025 regular season. Before his last two outings, he’d allowed at least one run in eight of 14 appearances.

Apart from Strahm, the Phillies’ most consistent reliever has been lefty Tanner Banks, who has a 2.23 ERA in his last 39 appearances.

My guess here is that Thomson will go to bed each night praying to God for six or seven innings out of his starter. With an extra off day between Games 1 and 2, he can afford to be aggressive.

That being said. . .

“It all depends on your starting pitcher,” Thomson said Friday. “If he’s lights out, then you stay with him.”

That’s the easy part.

4. Who will start Games 2 and 3? If not Aaron Nola or Walker Buehler, then how will he use the veteran right-handers?

It’s going to be a fascinating series from a pitching standpoint. The Dodgers seem locked in with Ohtani, Snell and Yamamoto, who were all brilliant against the Phillies in the regular season. Where it gets interesting is behind those starters, with Glasnow, Sheehan and Kershaw all potentially factoring in. It’s a similar situation with the Phillies, who have righties Nola and Buehler as options in addition to Sánchez and fellow lefties Ranger Suárez and Jesús Luzardo.

Thomson has a remarkable number of ways he can turn. On a pitching front alone, he has a near infinite number of justifiable combinations he could go with.

The defining question of this NLDS: how creative and hands-on is Thomson willing to be?