SAN DIEGO — The best you can do is give Rob Thomson credit for time served. The manager has pushed a lot of the right buttons over the last five months, on the field and off. He is one of the big reasons the Phillies found themselves where they did Wednesday, up by two runs, an ace starting pitcher on the mound, a mere four and a half innings away from taking a 2-0 lead for the right to represent the National League in the World Series. He has earned some degree of the benefit of the doubt.
Yet Thomson knows as well as anybody that baseball is a results-based business, and when the results are what they were for the Phillies in the bottom of the fifth inning, the first place you should look is the man at the controls.
Needless to say, the correct buttons were not pushed. Rarely has the tide of a playoff series turned so decisively in such a short period of time as the NLCS did on Thomson’s watch in Game 2. Rarely has three outs felt so ambitious a goal for a team that appeared to hold such advantage. The final tally: five singles, a double, a hit by pitch, and a walk, all of it interspersed by five runs, two pitching changes, 46 pitches, and, somehow, three outs. A 4-2 lead turned into a 7-4 deficit. A potential 2-0 series advantage turned into a 1-1 split with the 8-5 defeat. As the at-bats and hits and runs accrued, there was only one word you could say.
