The column ended like this: “Changing managers would accomplish only so much for this team, if anything. The problems with the 2022 Phillies are not subtle. And they are not going away.”
That was on May 31. Three days later, the Phillies fired Joe Girardi. And as the good people of Philadelphia continually remind me on Twitter, the problems almost immediately went away.
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After virtually every Phillies victory, my mentions include enough daggers to put another crack in the Liberty Bell. “Take it back!” fans demand. “Apologize!” And various other niceties that, for the sake of the children, I will refrain from repeating.
As the Phillies revived, without Jean Segura and then Bryce Harper, I knew I had to write a mea culpa, but it would be at a time of my choosing, not anyone else’s. So I waited until the Phillies were closing in on their first postseason berth since 2011 to personally investigate how the turnaround happened, talking to players, Girardi’s replacement, Rob Thomson, and the man who made the change, Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski.
The Phillies’ recent five-game losing streak and 3-0 deficit in the eighth inning Wednesday night had me wondering if maybe I was the one owed an apology, but enough of my insolence. After the Phils’ dramatic 4-3 victory over the Blue Jays in 10 innings, I’m taking the high road, if not quite the parade route down Broad Street. My analysis in late May obviously was flawed — no, wait for it, W-R-O-N-G — and I’m happy to own it. No one in baseball is right all the time, no writer, no manager, no executive, and believe it or not, no fan.
One thing I will say in my defense: Several of the players and even Thomson understood why I was skeptical of the Phillies’ chances at the time of Girardi’s dismissal.
“That was kind of everybody’s vibe, right? ‘Nothing’s going to change. The Phillies are going to be the Phillies. It’s been the same thing for 10 years straight, since we haven’t made it to the playoffs,’” Harper said. “But I think everyone knew in here that we are a really good team. We just needed to put it together and get comfortable.”
That was Dombrowski’s sense, too.
“The reality is, when you make those type changes, you’re making a calculated decision,” Dombrowski said of the managerial switch. “But nobody 100 percent knows if it’s going to work. I just thought for our situation we needed a different feeling, a different intensity level.”
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Dombrowski and the players still speak highly of Girardi, but the combination of the manager’s lame-duck contractual status and the team’s high expectations created additional pressure in the early part of the season. Girardi looks ready to burst with tension even in the best of times. Nearly two months into the season, the Phillies were 22-29. Segura had just gone on the injured list with a fractured right index finger. And the discussion about Girardi’s job security, in one of America’s most demanding sports cities, grew louder.
When Dombrowski made the change, the players responded as if it was a wake-up call.
“I know that there was a lot of speculation with Joe. Once it happened, it was kind of a tap on the shoulder to the players, and they got it going,” Thomson said. “Nothing to do with Joe. Just all that speculation (being over), they kind of relaxed.”
Thomson’s calm, stabilizing demeanor helped create that better environment, but even the most compelling baseball narratives are multi-dimensional, and the new manager was not the entire story.
The Phillies benefited from their schedule getting easier. Young players and veteran newcomers became more settled. The lineup and starting rotation began to perform at their expected levels. Dombrowski fortified the roster at the deadline by trading for two pitchers, right-hander Noah Syndergaard and reliever David Robertson; and two quality defenders, infielder Edmundo Sosa and outfielder Brandon Marsh.
The Phillies’ defense still isn’t good, ranking 27th in defensive runs saved and 29th in outs above average, but they’ve committed the fourth-fewest errors in the NL, so they have at least improved in making plays they should. Their bullpen produced the fourth-best ERA in the NL between Thompson’s hiring on June 3 and Seranthony Domínguez going on the injured list with right triceps soreness on Aug. 21. His injury disrupted the bullpen’s balance, while Domínguez, in his two most recent outings since his return on Sept. 11, has allowed homers to the Braves’ Ronald Acuña Jr. and Jays’ Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
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Such details, while significant, are merely the backdrop to the larger point. In Dombrowski’s view, the environment around the team needed an adjustment, in ways many of us on the outside could not fully understand.
“I don’t mean this to you. I don’t mean it to anybody in particular,” Dombrowski said. “But it made me cringe listening to MLB Network, listening to Steve Phillips and Bo Porter. They were just ripping us. ‘This club is bad. They can’t win. There’s no way.’ I’m thinking, ‘How do you guys know, really?’
“Sometimes, you need a different voice. And it was a different voice and a different tone, an overall different atmosphere. When you walked in the clubhouse, you got a different feeling.”
Earlier this week, one of the Phillies’ athletic trainers entered Thomson’s office to update the status of an injured player. The update was discouraging. And the athletic trainer reacted with surprise when Thomson maintained the same facial expression and body language upon receiving the news, merely saying, “OK.”
“He said, ‘You’re not upset.’ But I can’t control (an injured player’s progress). All I can control is my reaction to it.
“If my reaction is calm, then typically everybody else stays calm. But if my reaction is, ‘What the f—, when are we getting him back?’ Now you get excited. You’ve got anxiety. You walk out of there and you spread it around to everyone else, and all of a sudden we’ve got a problem. It’s like a snowball rolling down a hill. And we just can’t have that.”
The episode summed up Thomson well. He was a minor-league coach, field coordinator and farm director for 16 years, then spent 18-plus seasons as a major-league coach, much of it under Girardi with the Yankees and Phillies. Now 59, he is a major-league manager for the first time, but only on an interim basis. One might think he would be jumpy, eager to put his own stamp on the Phillies. Instead, he is just the opposite.
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Thomson understands the rhythms of the game, the importance of staying composed amid the inevitable ebbs and flows. His even demeanor stands in contrast to the naturally uptight Girardi. And because Thomson had all but given up on getting a job he always wanted, he gives off the impression he has nothing to lose. Again, in contrast to Girardi.
“I sense a little bit from him that he feels like he’s playing with house money,” first baseman Rhys Hoskins said. “When you do that, there’s just a freeness. That’s what we get from him. Playing a game with a freeness is something that’s hard to come by. We should do it more often than we do. It’s just hard. The game will beat you up.”
The Phillies were beaten up in the first two months, but in retrospect, the players say, it was not all that surprising, and not all the fault of their manager. Start with the schedule. It was one of the most difficult in the majors during Girardi’s tenure. It has been one of the easiest since.
Twelve of the Phillies’ first 48 games were against the Mets, a team that started hot and currently is five wins away from 100. The Phils went 3-9 in those games. From May 5 to 29, they played seven straight series against likely postseason qualifiers, including two against the Mets, two against the Dodgers and one against the Braves. They went 10-13, yet were outscored by only one run.
The difficulty of the early schedule, Hoskins said, gets “overlooked.” Reliever Brad Hand echoed that sentiment, noting, “We were playing a lot of good teams. Then we started playing some lesser opponents and putting some wins together. It was just the timing of everything. It just happened to be when Joe left.”
At the time of Girardi’s firing, the Phillies had yet to play the Nationals, against whom they are 13-2. But Dombrowski said he did not plan Girardi’s dismissal to coincide with a moment when the team logically would get on a roll. He merely wanted to give the club enough time to recover from its poor start. But the choice of Thomson as a replacement was not obvious.
In my initial column, I wrote that even if Dombrowski and owner John Middleton wanted to replace Girardi, their options would be limited. Thomson was the first potential replacement I mentioned, but I noted that he and two other internal candidates, hitting coach Kevin Long and third base coach Dusty Wathan, had never managed in the majors. Pairing one of them with a relatively inexperienced pitching coach, I wrote — Caleb Cotham is only in his second year running a major-league staff — would “not be ideal.”
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It turns out the Phillies’ coaching staff is an under-appreciated strength. Girardi spoke highly of the entire group, viewing Cotham as a rising star, and Long and infield coach Bobby Dickerson as true difference-makers. Elevating one of them over the others was tricky because so many hold managerial inspirations. But Thomson, as bench coach, already was closest to the seat of power. More important, the other coaches respected his work ethic, baseball acumen and steady hand. The players did, too.
“There’s a certain calmness, a quiet confidence about him,” Hoskins said. “If you watch him in the dugout, he’s serious, of course. In tune to the game. Ready to call upon his baseball knowledge. But he’ll also walk over and make a joke about a dumb play that we made, whatever. Just talking with the guys on the bench, making sure they’re locked into the game, they’re ready. That they’re not scared, they’re not wide-eyed. He instills that quiet confidence in us as a group.”
Even the best managers influence only so much. If teams truly believed a dugout strategist could sway outcomes, they would pay managers more. Even when the manager appears at fault — the Phillies under Girardi, the White Sox under Tony La Russa — the success of any club falls on the players. And as Harper said, “There were definitely some guys, myself included, who were underachieving at the time.”
The Phillies’ Opening Day roster included seven players who were new to the organization. That is not an especially high number — the Mets had nine newcomers. But the Phillies’ two biggest imports, outfielders Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos, also had, in Harper’s words, “real-life things going on.” Schwarber’s wife, Paige, gave birth to their first child, a son named Kade, on March 16, hours after he agreed to his free-agent deal with the Phillies. Castellanos’ wife, Jessica, gave birth to their second son, Otto, on May 4.
None of this is an excuse. But not all teams come together as quickly as the Mets did. In those first 49 games under Girardi, Hoskins said, “we were still trying to figure each other out.” After the managerial change, they had no choice, and the loss of Segura forced another development that proved critical: Rookie Bryson Stott took over at second base.
Girardi did not oppose creating opportunities for young players. He had lobbied successfully for Stott to make the Opening Day roster along with Bohm, believing he could find playing time for both. But Thomson, with his background in player development, is skilled at making young players comfortable, creating an environment in which they can thrive.
The Phillies needed that touch, especially while Segura and Harper were injured. Stott took over at shortstop after the Phillies released Didi Gregorius on Aug. 4. Other rookie position players — Matt Vierling, Darick Hall, Dalton Guthrie — also are making contributions. Only two contenders, the Guardians and Cardinals, have given more plate appearances to rookies this season.
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“There is just a more relaxed atmosphere in general,” Dombrowski said. “Joe’s an intense guy, right? That’s how he is during a game, very intense. And when I say that, it’s not being critical at all. That’s just how he is. When you’re young, sometimes intense is not the best way.
“Rob Thomson is a much more laid-back individual. Now, is that the difference or is it just a guy like Stott, who struggled so much early, has made adjustments? It’s hard for these guys unless you’re a superstar to break in at the big-league level. There are not many Julio Rodríguezes out there. Stott kept working, working on pitch selection, and just got better and better.”
With the bullpen, Thomson stuck briefly with struggling closer Corey Knebel, then removed him from the role in mid-June. (Knebel has not pitched since Aug. 14 and will miss the remainder of the year with a tear in his right shoulder capsule.) Thomson showed more faith in other relievers than Girardi did, but also benefited from events that might have occurred even if Girardi had remained manager. Lefty Jose Alvarado straightened out during a stint at Triple A. And when Dombrowski acquired Robertson, the Phillies suddenly had a powerhouse trio of Alvarado, Domínguez and Robertson to protect late-inning leads.
Still, there was so much the Thomson Phillies had to overcome. They went 32-20 without Harper after he suffered a fractured left thumb on a pitch from the Padres’ Blake Snell on June 25. They were 17-13 while both Harper and Segura were on the injured list. Gregorius, reliever Jeurys Familia and outfielder Odúbel Herrera were released in early August. And while Schwarber leads the NL with 40 home runs, Castellanos never got untracked, and has been on the injured list since Sept. 4 with a right oblique strain.
Thomson isn’t the entire reason the Phillies revived, but he was a big reason. I underestimated the stress the players felt under Girardi. I underrated Thomson’s potential value as a replacement. So now, I am happy to say the words the Philadelphia Twitterati spent months demanding: I WAS WRONG!
“I hope you’re still writing it into late October,” Dombrowski said, chuckling.
(Top photo of Phillies celebrating win over Blue Jays: Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images))
