Phillies fire manager Rob Thomson - Phils shutout Giants as Jesús Luzardo tosses a gem | Game today postponed, doubleheader tomorrow
Phew, 2026 has been an absolute whirlwind of a season for the Phillies.
Nick Castellanos was released under mildly odd circumstances
Two new rookies in center fielder Justin Crawford and starting pitcher Andrew Painter join the team and are expected to play significant roles
The Phillies start season terribly, pitcher Taijuan Walker gets released
That's just a few things off the top of my head, and it only gets a bit crazier as the Phillies have fired manager of approximately four years in Rob Thomson. It appears to have happened yesterday. I had a very long day yesterday so I only noticed the news after I made my Phillies post.
This news is really unfortunate, I was mildly surprised but not overly so. I like Rob Thomson, as most fans and people around the team do. Thomson played a big part in making the Phillies regular contenders once again over the past four years and won a National League Pennant with the team in 2022. 2022 was magical because well, the Phillies started that season in a pretty rough way and ended up firing then manager Joe Girardi. As a result the Phillies promoted Rob Thomson. That Thomson-led Phillies team, as I said, won the Pennant and made a World Series appearance. Thomson was a pretty dry, blunt, honest, and likeable guy, just solid overall. Nobody is really jumping for joy to see him go by any means.
Thomson showed admirable class post-firing as well. Frankly he's displayed good leadership even when he's not in the organization anymore! Unbelievable! He actually spoke with the media about his firing, basically saying he is not remotely upset. He loves the team, organization, and city. He hopes the team still does well in 2026. He expressed interest in perhaps re-joining the organization in a different role in the future just as Charlie Manuel and Larry Bowa have after their time with the team ended. Thomson seems to genuinely like being a Phillie. Pretty amazing honestly. Your time won't be forgotten Rob! Thanks for the good times.
So now the Phillies move on. The Phillies sought Alex Cora initially to be the manager but he declined. So the Phillies have promoted baseball legend Don Mattingly from bench coach to interim manager. Mattingly had a pretty excellent baseball career with the Yankees, particularly in the 80's. Since 2004 he's been coaching or managing teams with pretty solid success. I think he's a pretty solid choice for the Phillies. The guy knows ball.
Mattingly is not night and day different from Thomson but he seems a bit more thoughtful with his words. He seems a bit more lively in the way he speaks. But that doesn't mean he's this loud or insanely outgoing guy, but compared to Thomson's sort of extremely chill yet blunt, almost quiet demeanor, Mattingly certainly seems to speak a bit more louder and clearer.
Agreed!
https://youtube.com/shorts/M-Sr04_zN78?si=sW-6MozJJi4wpmm7
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A bit on Mattingly's really good career as a player.
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In Mattingly's first game as the interim manager, the Phillies dominated! It's easy to say that the manager situation had nothing to do with yesterday's victory, but that's something we'll perhaps never know. We are in a new reality now. That fact is the Phillies fired Thomson, put in Mattingly, and the Phillies proceed to dominate the Giants 7-0.
Thomson was well liked by the players and his firing definitely might have hit different on several levels. It's a wake up call sure, but it's just a whole vibe shift in general. It has to create some type of shift in the team's mentality going forward.
Jesús Luzardo, out of nowhere, had the best outing of not only his own season, but of any Phillies pitcher so far this season. He went seven innings for the first time by any Phillies pitcher in 2026. He allowed zero runs, just two hits, and struck out eight batters. He was on point! He was having a pretty bad season up until yesterday, maybe he'll find a groove as we enter May! After yesterday's gem, Luzardo's ERA shrunk from 6.92 to 5.50, his whip shrunk from 1.54 to 1.28! He's now 2-3 on the season.
The Phillies' offense also did their part! Every batter in the starting lineup reached base. Trea Turner has been relatively cold to start the year, but he had four of the Phillies' eleven hits all by himself! Alec Bohm, whose been really bad, also had two hits which you love to see.
The northeast is getting drilled pretty bad by a lot of rain today, so today's game was postponed. They'll play a doubleheader tomorrow instead which is always pretty fun.
So yeah, a pretty wild series of events for the Phillies here. Hopefully this leads to more wins in the future!
I'll be very busy tomorrow but I'll be listening to the games the best I can!
#GOPHILLIES
I had no idea that Mattingly was still active in baseball. That was my most valuable baseball card in my collection when I was a kid.
That's really cool, I see why it could be valuable, Mattingly's career is interesting in general. He seems like a bright spot for the Yankees in the 80's. Looks like there was some good Yankees teams in that decade but somehow they never made the playoffs much. That a bit of baseball history I should have known about but didn't, I always assume the Yankees were consistently in the playoffs. They did have multiple good records in the regular season in the 1980's, so they were pretty good with Mattingly, but somehow they always just missed it. They actually finished 1980-89 with the best overall record in the MLB in that time span going 854-708. They would have made a Wild Card in likely most of those seasons if the playoffs were setup how it is today. Pure divisional ruleset before 1995 was intense it's fascinating how difficult it was to make the playoffs back then it put a whole different emphasis on the regular season.
So would have I even at the time. It wasn't so easy to keep up with all that was going on in baseball back then though. Imagine trying to watch all the games, or even just the games you wanted to watch, without the internet?
I wonder if that was around the time that Yankees started spending big money to be in the top always? I kind of just presumed they always did that.