As Thomson ponders his future, he believes Phils will turn things around
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PHILADELPHIA -- A baseball team fires a manager, and the manager often leaves town without a word.
Rob Thomson is not that type of manager.
“If you’re an accountable person, if you’re a leader, you’re going to stand up in front of people and answer the questions when it’s all over,” Thomson said on Tuesday evening, the same day he lost his job as the Phillies' manager. “And I just wanted to make sure that I did that in the right way. It’s like the last four years, I hope that people feel like, whether I did a good job or a bad job, I represented this organization properly, with class and with dignity. So this is all part of it to me.”
Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski called Thomson on Tuesday morning and told him to stop by his office at Citizens Bank Park. Thomson knew then that he had lost his job.
The Phils had a $300-million-plus payroll, but a 9-19 record.
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“When you're not playing well and you're the manager of a ballclub, you're held accountable, and rightly so,” Thomson said.
Dombrowski replaced Thomson with bench coach Don Mattingly, but only after former Red Sox manager Alex Cora declined his offer to take the job.
Dombrowski said he and owner John Middleton offered Thomson a future role in the organization.
Maybe in the future, Thomson will take one. Now is not the time, he said.
Thomson leaves the organization with the highest winning percentage (.568) of any Phillies manager since 1900. He is just the second manager to guide them to four consecutive postseasons, joining Charlie Manuel (2007-11). Thomson helped the Phils win the 2022 NL pennant, getting them to the World Series for the first time since 2009 and the postseason for the first time since 2011.
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Thomson created some great memories here. He helped bring back Red October to Philadelphia. There’s no Bedlam at the Bank without the ’22 turnaround. No question people will remember Thomson asking J.T. Realmuto how many more wins the Phillies needed to win the World Series after every postseason series.
“Four more, Thomper!” Realmuto said.
Thomson won’t lead the Phillies to their third World Series championship in franchise history. But he said he is pulling for Mattingly. He is pulling for his former players.
Thomson said he believes they can play better and win.
“I still think and I hope -- because I love these guys -- that this team is going to turn this thing around, and they're going to get hot,” Thomson said. “I have a bunch of different reasons why, but one is the fact that there's a lot of talent in there. And if you look at the back of the baseball cards with these guys, usually, they reach those numbers by the end of the year. So I think that they are going to turn it around.”
Thomson has been in baseball for 42 years, so this will be his first summer without a job in a long time. He doesn’t know what he will do.
“Thank God my wife put a pool in a couple years ago, so maybe I'll go for a swim or something,” he said. “But it’s a new thing and I’ve just got to figure it out.”
But on Tuesday night anyway, he said he planned to watch the Phillies on TV.