The Phillies have extended the contract of manager Rob Thomson through the 2025 season, per a team announcement. He’d previously been signed through the 2024 campaign, so this will tack another year onto his deal and prevent him from entering the coming season with lame-duck status. The Phils also announced the hiring of Dustin Lind and Rafael Pena as assistant hitting coaches. Lind was previously an assistant hitting coach with the Giants. Pena has spent six seasons with the Astros organization and most recently served as their minor league hitting coordinator.
Thomson, who turned 60 in August, spent 15 seasons as a coach between the Yankees and Phillies before finally getting elevated to his first big league managerial gig in 2022, when the Phils dismissed then-skipper Joe Giradi. Thomson, his bench coach, was expected to take over the club for the remainder of the year, but the turnaround enjoyed by the Phillies under his watch has since earned him an increasingly lengthy look as the team’s skipper.
Following Thomson’s appointment as manager in ’22, the Phillies went 65-46 to close out the season, sneaking into a Wild Card berth in the National League playoff scene. They made the most of that longshot playoff bid, toppling the Cardinals in the Wild Card series, the Braves in the NL Division Series and the Padres in the NL Championship Series. The Phils eventually came up short in a 4-2 World Series loss to the Astros, but their ascent to the Fall Classic stands as one of the more remarkable midseason turnarounds in recent memory.
Unsurprisingly, on the heels of that run and with the clubhouse rallying around Thomson as a leader, the Phillies shed the “interim” label last November and inked Thomson a to a two-year contract. The Phils enjoyed further success in 2023, once again earning a Wild Card berth and once again winning multiple postseason series. After an 87-win season in 2022, the Phils won 90 games this past season before besting the Marlins in the Wild Card round and, for a second straight season, overcoming the division-winning Braves in the NLDS. The Phillies fell in the seventh game of the NLCS against the World Series runner-up Diamondbacks.
The 35-year-old Lind, in addition to four years with the Giants organization, spent two seasons with the Mariners as a quality assurance coach and director of hitting development. Pena, 33, has served as a minor league hitting coach with the Astros in addition to coaching stints in the Arizona Fall League and the Dominican Winter League. They’ll both work underneath hitting coach Kevin Long, one of the sport’s most respected voices in that position. Long is returning for his third season as Philadelphia’s hitting coach.
This move will payoff if the Phillies are able to win a Game 7.
Gonna be a long time before we see any ROI on this one…
So a WS appearance and beating the team with the best record in MLB in the playoffs is not a good enough 2 year ROI for you?
“Beat his own team”..It’s hard to please Philly fans but everyone is entitled to their own opinions. I can think of many fanbases that would love to trade places with you. I will say if you are a hard-core Phillies fan that watches them 7 days a week, you may know things I do not. I watch several teams(7 days a week)during the regular season and I only catch Phillies baseball 1-2 times a week.
Not the managers fault the team is constructed with a terrible defense and a patchwork bullpen. Two significant areas that are exponentially more important in the postseason than the regular season.
“…everyone is entitled to their own opinions.”
—-Could not agree less.
Pulls his starters way too early and screws them and fantasy league mangers out of wins. Not cool
We will have someone send a message to Dombrowski so that he instructs Thomson to avoid “screwing fantasy league managers out of wins”.
I am sure that he will talk to Rob about this in spring training for you.
Wow…just wow. I am definitely getting old.
Who do you want instead? Rob has gotten to the playoffs in his first 2 seasons. Hes doing a good job
Atta Boy Rob
So far all the current Phillies team has mastered is knocking the Braves out of the playoffs.
Thomson is an all-time good guy in the game, and I was happy to see him finally get his chance. Now he gets a little extra security – not bad for a guy that was just about to retire before he got the nod.
He is a good fit in Philly with a veteran team with high expectations at this point. The clubhouse loves having him at the helm.
2022 Phillies eliminated Cards, Braves and Padres. 2023 Phillies eliminated Marlins and Braves. 2012-2021 Phillies had 0 playoff appearances, one of the longest playoff droughts in sports. I think Rob has done a good job. If a World Series championship is the only metric for success, then expect disappointment.
Well stated.
This is a no-brainer. Great move for Philly locking him up.
Lol lets keep it pg jk
Why only one year? Why not 3 or 4 more years?
ugh
RE TWEET
Schneider for Thomson?
This is a horrible decision. I’m sorry but he’s a moron. Hate this
It depends as long as he learns that Schwarber is not a leadoff hitter and that the lineup sometimes needs adjustments all is good.
It’s not just the lineup adjustments, he manages a Pen horribly, makes awful in game decisions, etc.. he is not as good a manager as the record indicates. Idc what anyone says, I watch every game and every single time he makes my heart sink into my socks. Maybe one day I’ll eat my words, but for today this sucks
The thing is who’s out there that would be a better fit /option?
And yes he made horrible decisions in game 4 of the NLCS, in the play when we scored two runs the way Alec Bohm went to 2 base, with me he goes to the bench right away…
And yeah he moved the pen horribly on that game, especially bringing Kerkering and Kimbrel again
And in the World Series last year he made a ton of bad calls. Idk who’s better, but to continue to put faith in this guy is damning in itself unless ownership says otherwise”hey you make s*** decisios, try harder this year or you’re done.” But I don’t have that much faith in Philly anymore…
@Phillies012TG..”Not as good a manager as the record indicates”…At some point, if a MLB manager keeps putting up good records and results, shouldn’t he get some credit for it?
His in-game decision-making is some of the worst ive ever seen in my long time watching the sport. He is not a smart manager, its not something that can be debated if you watch phillies games.
Nine times out of ten when fans go off on how dumb the manager is when it comes to in-game moves, said fans are simply trying to stake a claim to their own baseball intellect…unsuccessfully.
There is so much more that goes into the job of a manager, and frankly many of the game decisions are a push. Every now and then a manager develops a reputation for strategic genius; most of the time the legend is far greater than the reality. The reverse of that is also true (as has been pointed out with respect to Charlie Manuel).
@CarverAndrews
…Some pretty good and interesting insights. Good take.
If the front office didn’t think Schwarber was a leadoff hitter, he wouldn’t have been a leadoff hitter.
More teams should consider putting unconventional high (comparatively) OBP guys in the #1 slot, though, but it’s not as if Schwarber’s OBP is .380, and he’s more than slow enough to make the likes of Stott and Bohm (and surely Marsh) at least as sensible in the leadoff spot.
Still, run 1,000,000 lineup simulations, and the difference between that and any other fairly rational lineup order will be trivial, on the order of a few runs over the course of a season. If a player likes a spot and feels more comfortable there, that’s likely to outweigh very small production increases via a completely optimized lineup based on OBP, SLG, etc considerations, plus it means that Schwarber is coming up in the 9th with the game on the line more than, say, Stott.
They said they same thing with Charlie Manuel until he won in 08
Exactly. Phillies fans are always negative towards managers. Always.
Except manuel was a good in game manager and Thompson isnt, watch a game. Youll be surprised at how wrong you are.
Lol they said the same thing about Charlie. They bashed him for 3 years until he won in 08. Had to bring Jimmy Williams here to help him with the double switch.
Phillies fans are the worst. This is the best manager we’ve had in decades. Enjoy it.
Youre delusional if you think hes a good manager, good morale guy maybe. Lost when he steps into the dugout and has to make decisions,. if you watched youd see that.
I’m not delusional. Every manager makes mistakes. Rob is not a slave to analytics. He’s also not afraid to use his bullpen in unconventional ways. It won them games in the playoffs. It cost them games in the playoffs. But one of the keywords I’m using is playoffs, something the Phillies hadn’t done in over a decade before Rob. And Girardi was an absolute bullpen disaster. I’ll take Rob over Girardi any day of the week. I’ve never seen a perfect manager. Rob isn’t perfect, but he’s one of the top 5 Phillies managers in the last 30-40 years.
If you think Rob is the reason the Phillies made the playoffs then you are a lost cause. All he does is make constant mistakes in game that cost us. I don’t give a damn about the regular season. In big games he has no clue what to do, if he’s not big on analytics he better get acclimated to them soon. Because being a guys guy in the clubhouse to keep morale high isn’t gonna keep Philly in the hunt.
If Girardi wasn’t fired, Phillies don’t make the playoffs in 22. No doubt about it.
Phillies making the playoff had absolutely nothing to do with how good of an in game manager Thompson is, his way of managing will not breed long term success and can be at times detrimental to the game. If you don’t see that then you aren’t watching
Congratulations. You’ve described every manager in history. In 23 I saw Rob masterfully manage a postseason win. I also saw him waste our bullpen early and get us a loss. That’s baseball. Players need to perform, but Rob trusts his guys. He’s a players’ manager. He makes mistakes. He makes unconventional moves that sometimes pay off. He’s the best we had since Uncke Charlie, who was also flawed.
Very smart move.
Is there any evidence that a respected manager going into his last season under contract suffers from “lame duck” status? Feels like one of those “old-time baseball” beliefs that has little substance.
Tacking on a year seems really light, but perhaps Rob Thomson doesn’t want to commit to more than that.
Joe Maddon had a lame duck year in 2019 season with the Cubs. I’m sure there are more examples but that’s the only one I can think of.
I’m pretty sure teams like the Dodgers and Yankees of recent years rarely, if ever, extend their managers until after their current contracts are over.
Yes, that’s true, I think Boone is up at the end of 2024 and he hasn’t gotten a contract extension. And yes Dave Roberts did go into a lame duck year recently. I was only remembering the 2019 season with Joe Maddon and the Cubs, but that’s because I’m biased.
This guy has the personality of a bag of sand.
I miss watching him as the Yankees 3rd base coach where he would wave baserunners home like Mark Teixeira so they could get tagged out
I thought that was the M.O of phillies fans? Need a scapegoat every season. He’s the go to right now
Why? Thomson has shown only that he has no clue how to manage a bullpen. He and his idiot bench coach should have been fired not extended.
Go off King, Rob sucks!
Kapler and Girardi managed historival bad bullpens. Historically. The Phillies pen is now a strength and people are complaining. Amazing. Now a lot of that credit belongs to DD, but Rob did a fine job all season. He made some blunders in the NLCS, but he also managed like a madman in the NLDS and it worked. He’s a fine manager.
The comments seem to be the two extremes between “This is Great!” and “He sucks!” I am somewhere in the middle. IMO, the guy is definitely a player’s manager, who doesn’t discipline players enough. He also seems to abide by the “I’ll go with what got me here” mentality, (aka Jim Fergosi), which doesn’t always work late in the season/playoffs. Not a fan of his “need” for an alternating LRLR lineup or Schwarber leading off….clogs up the bases. He doesn’t have much of a bench, but felt some hitters needed to be pulled, in the playoffs, for a pinch hitter. He doesn’t always seem to have a feel for his bullpen. I think some of those bull pen guys need defined roles. Still, back to back playoff appearances…..although I think they should have been for the last 3 years regardless of manager…..next year also.
Hopefully the two new hitting coaches can help with the awful chase rate that some of these guys have.
My hope is the Phillies brass find a legit type closer.
No not Hader, but there are a few out there. Topper is a better manager when he has a closer that CAN work the 8th inning.
Kimbrel for all his faults did a great job in ’23. Guy had a loooong record of being bad before the 9th inning, for whatever reason. But he pitched when called upon. In ’23 he pitched more than he had in a decade.
And Philly fans want him crucified? Hope Kimbrel gets a good gig in ’24 and my Phillies find a designated closer…
Thompson pulled Aaron Nola in the 4th inning two games in a row in August (he pitched 4 2/3 innings both games) and cost me two wins in my fantasy league. Because of this, I hate Rob Thompson as he does not know how to manage a pitching staff when he screws his Ace out of two wins. I’m amazed Nola returned to the Philles to be managed by this guy, but I guess $172M talks loud!
“172M talks loud”..Personally I’m quite confident that Nola left probably 15M+ on the table to return to Philly. He signed so quickly, there’s NO WAY his agent had the time to drive up his price, leak phony offers & play teams off against each other to get maximum dollars.