After four straight trips to the playoffs, including a World Series appearance in 2022, the 9-19 Philadelphia Phillies fired manager Rob Thomson Tuesday morning. The move was made for a number of reasons but we can safely conclude that the timing of the firing was inspired by abject fear of facing a red-hot San Francisco Giants team riding a three-series win streak.
The Phillies’ main issue is that the team can’t score runs. They’ve put up only 102 runs in 28 games despite having players like two-time MVP Bryce Harper, two-time home run leader Kyle Schwarber, and two-time batting champion Trea Turner. For some context, that’s only five runs more than the 29th-place Giants! And only ten runs better than the New York Mets.
Thomson’s teams went 355-270 (.568) and won two NL East titles, but this season, with the Phillies sitting 10.5 games back of the Atlanta Braves, team management made the cheapest, simplest move to shake up the team: Firing the manager. After all, Thomson got the Phillies job under similar circumstances in 2022, when team president Dave Dombrowski fired Joe Girardi after a 22-29 start, and the team went to the World Series.
Though this managerial change wasn’t all that simple. The Phillies tried to hire recently-fired Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora over the weekend, but he turned them down Monday. Which is how Don Mattingly is the new boss in the City of Brotherly Love.
Mattingly managed the Los Angeles Dodgers from 2011-15, winning the National League West in the last three seasons but advancing past the first round of the playoffs only once, going 8-11 overall in the postseason. He went on to spend the next seven seasons at the helm of the Miami Marlins, where he went 443-587 (.430), which is a poor record even by Marlins standards.
Of course, Mattingly’s most memorable moment as a manager came in 2010, when he was still the Dodgers bench coach. Manager Joe Torre was ejected along with Clayton Kershaw after a beanball exchange, leaving Mattingly in charge with the Dodgers up 5-4. In the 9th inning, Mattingly brought in closer Jonathan Broxton, who loaded the bases with an intentional walk to Aubrey Huff. Before the next visit, Mattingly went out to the mound to confer with Broxton, stepped off the mound, then returned for a final word.
But once he stepped off the pitcher’s mound and onto the infield grass, the original mound visit ended and a second mound visit began. Bruce Bochy noticed, and alerted the umpires that, by rule, Mattingly had to replace Broxton.
Mattingly had no one warming up in the bullpen as he had no plans to replace his closer, so an ice-cold George Sherrill entered the game and allowed a go-ahead double to Andres Torres. A second reliever gave up an RBI single to Buster Posey and the Giants got an improbable 7-5 victory in a season where they won the NL West on the last day of the season.
Arguably, Don Mattingly was a crucial reason the Giants won the 2010 title and launched their three-championships-in-five-years dynasty. In other words, welcome back, Forever Giant Don Mattingly!
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