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.
Wow.
The tough thing about managing a baseball game is the tough thing about critiquing those who do. You cannot prove a hypothetical any more than you can a negative. Just because Decision A turned out so wrong doesn’t mean Decision B would have been any more right.
Yet they could not have turned out much worse for Thomson and the Phillies than they did. HIs first big decision was more abstract than it was concrete. Even as the Phillies built a 4-0 lead in the early stages of the game, right-hander Aaron Nola was showing some signs that his third postseason start would go a little different than his first two. The Padres answered the Phillies’ four-run second inning with back-to-back home runs off of the veteran, who’d entered the day having allowed a single unearned run in his last 19 innings. The game played under a blinding sun in a cloudless SoCal sky, and by the bottom of the fifth, Nola had allowed three extra-base hits.
But Thomson was going to give his guy all of the rope. Nola entered the fifth having retired the last eight batters he’d faced, striking out three of the last four. His pitch count sat at a more-than-manageable 64. Given what we have seen out of Nola this postseason, it is understandable that Thomson did not sense danger.
The first true test of this mode of operation came when Nola allowed a one-out RBI single to Austin Nola. Not only was this his older brother, but Austin also was the Padres’ nine-hole hitter. This brought the top of the order to the plate with the Phillies leading 4-3 and Juan Soto and Manny Machado looming. Rather than getting a lefty loose in the bullpen in case he was needed against Soto, Thomson apparently decided that Nola would remain in the game at least through the right-handed Machado.
Defensible? Sure, particularly given the stage of the game and the reality that we subsequently saw unfold when Thomson did go to his bullpen. Lineups like the Padres' tend to put you in positions where there are no good decisions. Whatever the case, none of Thomson’s worked. Nola allowed a single to Jurickson Profar to put runners at the corners, and Soto roped a double down the right-field line to tie the game and put runners at second and third.
Nola completed his last act, striking out Machado and then departing the game at 81 pitches. From there, things continued to unravel. Brad Hand gave the argument for leaving Nola in to face Soto, allowing all three batters he faced to reach base as two more runs scored. Andrew Bellatti then walked the first batter he faced in relief of Hand before getting the final out on a merciful called third strike.
It’s impossible to know if things would have played out any differently. All that matters is the way they did. Now, suddenly, the stakes have been raised, the pressure back on. They will be on the wrong side of a lopsided pitching mismatch between Joe Musgrove and Ranger Suárez. They will need to win three straight to avoid heading back to San Diego and having Nola pitch for redemption in Game 6.
Everyone expected a series. Well, now it most definitely it is. Thomson will need to do what he has done all season: lead the Phillies back.
