Firing Rob Thomson is unfair. It's also the right move.
The Phillies did not have many options.
Rob Thomson isn’t responsible for Alec Bohm’s .143 batting average or Aaron Nola’s 6.03 ERA. He bears some measure of responsibility for the $300 million Phillies’ 9-19 start, but it’s easy to name 20 or so individuals who would have lost their jobs before the manager in a just world.
Sadly, that’s not the world we live in. In this reality, the Phillies had two options: fire Thomson or stay the course. And as the losses piled up, staying the course felt untenable.
One of Thomson’s strengths as the team’s manager was his ability to stay unshakable through the highs and lows of a long baseball season. Much like Andy Reid during Reid’s Eagles tenure, “Topper” never gave the city’s drama-hungry media any material to work with. He was the same guy after a win or a loss. He never lost his cool. Clubhouse issues stayed internal. Thomson never publicly placed blame on a specific player.
The skipper’s defining trait may have been his unwavering belief that his veteran players would right the ship and “get to the numbers on the back of their baseball cards,” to borrow one of his favorite phrases. Those players did so often during Thomson’s years with the club. Maybe they would have this year as well, even without a shock to the system.
But after a month of historically bad baseball, a palpable sense of urgency surrounded the 2026 Phils. Something, anything, needed to change. And there weren’t many options available to Dave Dombrowski’s front office.
Dombrowski wasn’t going to fire himself. He wasn’t going to jettison an entire roster of underperforming players. He may have considered canning those players’ beloved hitting coach, Kevin Long, but the Phillies had just given Long a three-year contract extension this past offseason.
So Thomson took the fall.
It really is unfair. Thomson in 2026 is the same guy as Thomson in 2022. We can’t say that about Bohm or Nola or any of the other guys who recently forgot how to baseball. One can quibble with his platoon choices or in-game decisions, but he never seemed worse at the game’s Xs and Os than your average MLB manager.
Thomson leaves Philadelphia with a .568 winning percentage, higher than any other manager in franchise history (if we ignore a few short-timers from the 1890s).
But he also leaves town with a legacy of postseason disappointments spanning four years. Many fans longed for a change even before the dismal start to the ‘26 season. Like Reid’s postgame press conferences, Thomson’s optimistic words had grown stale. And similar to Reid, Thomson started to give the impression that he was simply incapable of taking his team all the way.
Reid, of course, proved he wasn’t the problem in Philadelphia once he joined the Kansas City Chiefs. His firing wasn’t “fair” either. But that doesn’t mean it was a mistake for Big Red and the Birds to part ways.
Once in a while it’s just time for a change.
No story about Thomson’s firing would be complete without noting that the man is an exemplary human being. I met him for the first time in December 2023, and quickly learned that there was nothing insincere about his nice-guy persona. A month or so later, I watched him serve meals in Kensington with Brandon Marsh, treating every person he met with kindness and respect. And in press conference after press conference in the time that followed, I saw him refuse to throw any of his players under the bus—even when they completely deserved it.
He’s a genuine good guy, the type of person we need more of, and he should be remembered more for the magic of his team’s 2022 run than for this disastrous April.
The Phillies, meanwhile, will soldier on with 134 games to play and Don Mattingly in charge. It will be fascinating to see how this group of players responds to the change. Like the switch to Thomson from Joe Girardi, the Phillies timed the switch to Donnie Baseball to coincide with a relatively winnable set of games on the schedule. (Assuming, of course, that these Phils are capable of winning anything.)
With the manager gone, unhappy fans will set their sights on new targets. Dombrowski’s approach to building the club’s roster will be scrutinized more than ever before, as will the performance of the guys on the field. And all roads, ultimately, lead back to John Middleton’s choices.
For better or worse, Rob Thomson will no longer serve as their shield.
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Thank you for reading and go Phils!
He does deserve some criticism. His last game speaks volumes why I wasn't a fan. They finally win night before. Marsh and Stott hit and helped. Reward? Bench on Sunday with off day Monday. They got rid of veteran voices who spoke against him (Nick and Matt). It was a disaster.