Philly Rob in Year 3: Still the man for the job, still amazed that he has it

The fires were coming like they always do this time of year, as predictable as a shotgun blast, random embers bursting into blazes as the opening day clock ticked down. A key starting pitcher was battling a shoulder issue. A young reliever was a month behind schedule after a battle with the flu. A popular veteran was on the wrong side of a numbers crunch, the front office in search of a trade partner who might do him right.

Two years after he decided to retire, Rob Thomson walked into a windowless office 1,500 miles from home, looked at the black leather couch that occasionally doubles as his bed, and thought about how lucky he was.

“I’m serious when I say this,” the 60-year-old Canadian said on a recent Saturday morning. “I pinch myself every day.”

Baseball’s most improbable managerial success story is still only 22 months old. That should be a difficult thing to believe for anybody who remembers who the Phillies were when the story began. When the Phillies hired Thomson as interim manager on June 3, 2022, they had lost more games than all but two teams in the majors over the previous 10 seasons. They were one of only two teams that did not appear in a playoff game during that stretch.

More damning than the concrete numbers were the abstract qualities that had come to define the organization. Directionless, dysfunctional, unlikable. They were losers, from the executive suites down to the clubhouse.

It was worse than that, really. A long and tortuous rebuilding process had given way to a four-year plateau that seemed immune to the copious amounts of money and hype heaped upon the roster in the offseason. Each September disappointment seemed to carry a little longer into the following March, whittling away at the fan base’s attention span and emotional availability. From 2008 through 2011, you could walk from one end of the city to the other and never miss a pitch. A good baseball team has a centering quality, every window and storefront united by the same flickering collage of red and white and green. Once upon a time, you did not need to ask the bartender to put the Phillies on. Now, you just shrugged your shoulders and watched Jeopardy.

Thomson may have been the one person who could offer the Phillies the reset they so desperately needed. They were underachievers in a city where that sort of thing is like a cheesesteak with Swiss. The collision between expectation and failure had created a storm front with winds beginning to blow through the clubhouse. Baseball is a hard enough job when it does not feel like a job. The further behind you fall in the count, the worse it is to press.

What the Phillies got in Thomson was a manager who understood the power of letting go. He’d spent four decades working his way up the coaching ladder, preparing himself for a managerial job that never arrived. By the time the Phillies hired him as bench coach ahead of the 2018 season, the interview opportunities had dried up as owners turned their attention toward a new generation of former players and analytics-driven minds.

“When I came here in 2018, I put my mind to rest on managing,” Thomson said, “because I knew I was coming toward the end, and I knew that a lot of teams were going with younger managers, and rightly so. So to have this happen and all the great things that have happened, it’s kind of surreal.”

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It is also a lesson. We tend to judge managers on the things we see on television. The pitching changes, the lineup cards, the skill development. But the most important work a manager does is off the screen. The best managers have equal parts understanding of the nature of baseball and the nature of the human beings who play it. The old cliché says that the sport is one of failure. The important thing is to create an environment where the players do not dwell on it.

“I think he does an unbelievable job of just letting us be ourselves,” said reliever Matt Strahm. “I’ve had veteran coaches and I’ve had new managers, and I think Topper walks that line perfectly of being the old-school manager but also being in touch with the analytics stuff and being in communication with the players. He does a good job of just letting us be us.”

Thomson will tell you that the Phillies’ clubhouse is a construction of the players who populate it. The worst thing a manager can do is make it about himself. Some leaders push. Other leaders pull. Thomson views himself as the steadying hand.

“I’ve been dropped into this really unbelievable environment with great players and great people, great coaches, and, for whatever reason, we’ve won,” he said. “Because of talent. To experience being in the World Series again, being in the All-Star Game again, it’s just — I was going to retire at the end of ‘22. It’s just unbelievable to me where it’s all gone.”

Often, the best leaders are not the ones you see front and center. Rather, you see them chiefly through their reflection in their charges. Twenty-two months after Thomson finally landed the job he long sought, the Phillies have won more games than all but three teams in the majors. The storefronts are flickering again, as is the clubhouse. More than anyone, Thomson knows that it is often better to be lucky than good. Of course, the best thing of all is to be both.

Join us live from Citizens Bank Park on Friday at 1:30 p.m. for an exclusive Phillies preview on Gameday Central. Join Inquirer sports reporters Alex Coffey and Scott Lauber as they dive deep into the 2024 season with a detailed look at the Phillies’ roster, key players, and what fans can expect this season.