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Phillies Notebook: Phillies players say Thompson's firing is a message

ABOUT 4 P.M., Phillies staffers shepherded a healthy contingent of media out of the clubhouse. Not long after, Charlie Manuel entered the room and spent the better part of the next 20 minutes addressing his players. In reality, though, his message had already been sent.

Phillies' new batting coach Greg Gross watches team from dugout. (Steven M. Falk / Staff Photographer)
Phillies' new batting coach Greg Gross watches team from dugout. (Steven M. Falk / Staff Photographer)Read more

ABOUT 4 P.M., Phillies staffers shepherded a healthy contingent of media out of the clubhouse. Not long after, Charlie Manuel entered the room and spent the better part of the next 20 minutes addressing his players. In reality, though, his message had already been sent.

Twenty hours earlier, Manuel had made what he would later call one of the toughest decisions of his career when he fired Milt Thompson, his only hitting coach in six seasons as Phillies manager.

By the time the players arrived at the ballpark yesterday, they were well aware of the development, announced late Thursday night in a terse, two-paragraph press release that did not include a comment from any member of the organization.

Yesterday, Manuel took full responsibility.

The Phillies' hitters took the hint.

A "message," second baseman Chase Utley called it.

"It's completely on us," shortstop Jimmy Rollins said.

Utley and Rollins are the two longest-tenured Phillies in the lineup. Both were on the team during the 2005 season, after which the club fired manager Larry Bowa and a handful of assistants that included hitting coach Greg Gross. Yesterday, Gross rejoined the team as Thompson's replacement, hoping to serve as a catalyst for a team that entered the day having scored fewer than four runs in 37 of their 95 games. He chose not to speak with the media, an understandable decision given his arrival in a still-warm chair. Besides, what Gross has to say might not matter as much as the fact that somebody different is speaking.

"We need to go back and start playing baseball the Phillie way, and the Phillie way was how we played for about 3 or 4 years," Manuel said. "We had it. And it's kind of gotten away from us. That doesn't mean that changing hitting coaches will bring that part back, but I felt like we needed just a new person, something like that might make a difference."

Change for change's sake is a hallmark of management in professional sports, and even Thompson acknowledges as much. Reached by phone yesterday, the former Phillies outfielder said that while the team's litany of injuries did not help his cause, his repeated attempts to get his hitters to relax at the plate and stay within themselves had yet to succeed this season.

"I just wish the best for them. I hope GG comes in and gets them going," said Thompson, whose offense finished in the top three in the NL in runs in each of his first six seasons as hitting coach but entered yesterday ranked sixth. "He's a good friend and a great baseball man, and I wish him the best. If he can find a way to get these guys to relax throughout all of this, that'd be great."

There is a simple truth, though: A coach can't turn Wilson Valdez, a journeyman utility player, into Utley, the pre-eminent offensive second baseman in the game who just happens to be sidelined with a thumb injury until late August. And while he can't help a struggling veteran like Rollins, who was hitting .227 with a .326 on-base percentage and a .373 slugging percentage in 39 games, it should be noted that Thompson was the hitting coach in 2007, when Rollins slugged his way to the NL MVP.

"He's never hit for us, never struck out for us, but he's the guy that's responsible for us as hitters," Rollins said matter-of-factly. "So the hitters aren't doing the job, we're going to take the blame, but it's going to end up costing his job, and that's what happened."

One after another, a similar message was repeated: We never want to see anybody lose a job, but we know it's part of the business.

"Any time somebody loses their job, you feel bad," Utley said. "But we as a group need to swing the bat better. I think this could be a small message."

Can it really be a difference?

"It absolutely can be," Utley said. "Without a doubt. GG's here, so we'll have a different opinion, a different outlook. And hopefully that will help."

Whether it does remains to be seen. The Phillies scored five runs in the fifth inning last night, aided in large part by the contributions of the struggling veterans Rollins and Raul Ibanez, who contributed a leadoff single and a two-run double to the rally. They also received a two-run homer from Ross Gload, who started in rightfield and replaced Shane Victorino, who entered the night with a paltry .265 OBP since July 1 while hitting .253 overall. That said, they have scored five runs before.

It is easy to forget that from June 13 to 27, the Phillies won nine of 13 games while hitting .262 with a .333 OBP and averaging 6.5 runs per game. Utley was heating up, Rollins was nearing a return from his second DL stint of the season, and the entire team looked like it had merely endured another downturn in its usual streaky production. But then Utley went down, and the Phillies lost 12 of their next 21 while hitting .236 with a .296 OBP.

"I got to the point where I looked at our hitting and I thought that something had to be done," Manuel said. "The only thing I could possibly think of was a change. I thought that it had to be done . . . Probably the last couple days is really when I started thinking a lot about it and how we can get better as far as getting our guys to go. And that's the only thing I could come up with. I felt like I had to do something."