Despite being fired, Rob Thomson would ‘seriously entertain’ staying with the Phillies in a new role
Thomson met with local reporters less than eight hours after being fired as Phillies manager. “I love this organization. I’ve been treated with class and dignity the last eight years," he said.
After Rob Thomson was fired earlier Tuesday as manager of the Phillies, he said he might spend the night watching some playoff hockey.
Or not.
“Actually, I’m going to watch our game,” he said. “I really am.”
That Thomson still calls the Phillies’ series opener against the Giants our game isn’t just a force of habit. While his managing days are over, he said he would still be open to a role in the Phillies organization in the future.
» READ MORE: Phillies players process the ‘tough’ firing of Rob Thomson: ‘We all feel responsible for what happened to him’
Following Thomson’s meeting with president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski on Tuesday morning, principal owner John Middleton stopped by and expressed that Thomson was always welcome. While Thomson was not officially offered a role, there was some discussion about a special assistant position at some point.
“I’ve said throughout my four years as manager here, I don’t want to go anywhere else,” Thomson said. “I love this organization. I’ve been treated with class and dignity the last eight years, ever since I came here, and not only the organization, but the city of Philadelphia as well. … I would seriously entertain staying with the organization.
“Maybe right now isn’t the right time, and we give it a little bit of a break here, but yeah, I’m all in on that.”
Less than eight hours after he was relieved of his duties and Don Mattingly was elevated from bench coach to interim manager, Thomson met with the media on a Zoom call to discuss his exit. It was an unusual move. Four years ago, when Joe Girardi was fired by the Phillies, he did not speak publicly afterward. When Alex Cora was let go by the Red Sox last week, he didn’t hold a news conference.
But for Thomson, it felt important to do.
“I think if you’re an accountable person and you’re a leader, you’re going to stand up in front of people and answer the questions when it’s all over,” he said. “And I just want to make sure I did that in the right way. The last four years, I just hope that people feel like — whether I did a good job or bad job — I represented this organization properly, with class and with dignity. So this is all part of it for me.”
He could return at some point. But first on the agenda is spending the summer at home in Canada for the first time in 42 years.
“Maybe I’ll go for a swim or something,” he said. “But we’ll see. But it’s a new thing, and I just got to figure it out.”
The job was never supposed to be his in the first place. Thomson, a baseball lifer but never a manager, took over for the fired Girardi in June 2022 with the interim tag at first. He had entered that season as the Phillies’ bench coach, fully intending on retiring at season’s end.
But following the 2022 run — which Thomson described Tuesday as a “magical year” — that timeline was pushed back. So it was again in 2024 and 2025, when he signed extensions, the latest of which was supposed to take him through 2027.
» READ MORE: Thank fired Phillies manager Rob Thomson for all the winning but don’t blame him for the flawed roster
Over that time, Thomson said there’s plenty of moves he made as manager that he wished he could have back. While the Phillies made the postseason in each of his four seasons as manager, they didn’t make it back to the World Series after 2022.
“All those decisions, especially during the playoffs where they’re really magnified, they sort of sit in the back of my mind,” Thomson said.
He said what he will miss the most is working together with all the players and coaches on a daily basis, and thinking about strategies.
But even if he won’t be involved in it, Thomson still expects things to turn around for the Phillies this season.
“Time will tell, but I think we’ve really underperformed so far to this point, and that’s why we’re sitting here today,” he said. “But I think that the players, eventually, the cream will rise to the top, and the players will get back to where they normally are, and this team will go on a run.”
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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