The Phillies on Tuesday fired manager Rob Thomson, the owner of the highest managerial winning percentage in franchise history who guided them to four postseason appearances in four years, but now bears the brunt of a nightmarish beginning to the 2026 season.
Bench coach Don Mattingly was promoted to interim manager. The club will turn to Mattingly, whose son Preston is the Phillies’ general manager, to find the answers Thomson couldn’t. There may not be any answers. The Phillies have not hit, their reliable rotation has failed them, and the defense has been erratic at best. Absent a major roster shakeup, the Phillies are banking on a managerial change sparking something.
Carrying the largest payroll in franchise history with World Series-or-bust expectations, the Phillies have played listless baseball for much of April, entering Tuesday with a 9-19 mark. They endured a 10-game losing streak — their longest since 1999. The roster constructed by Dave Dombrowski, the veteran president of baseball operations, revealed far more cracks than anticipated. Thomson will take the blame for that.
But by removing one layer of insulation, Dombrowski will be subject to greater scrutiny. He acted with a swifter hand than in 2022, when he fired manager Joe Girardi after 51 games and installed Thomson as the interim leader.
Now, in making a change after only 28 games, Dombrowski is hoping for the same effect. The veteran executive, according to league sources, pursued fired Red Sox manager Alex Cora, who turned down a job offer to manage the Phillies.
The Phillies also promoted third base coach Dusty Wathan to bench coach. Triple-A Lehigh Valley manager Anthony Contreras will join the major-league staff as third base coach.
Thomson, 62, operated with a steadiness that his players admired. He was an accidental manager; he had spent decades in player development and as a big-league coach. He had long moved past the idea of managing in the majors. He had planned to retire from baseball after the 2022 season. Instead, he reached the World Series and rekindled his love for the game.
He will be remembered for the magical 2022 season that resulted in a National League pennant and the backbreaking October failures that followed. In 2023, the Phillies were one win from back-to-back World Series appearances; the specter of that year’s National League Championship Series still hovers over the franchise to this day. It felt like the Phillies’ moment, then they lost Games 6 and 7 at home to the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Thomson’s .568 winning percentage in parts of five seasons is the best mark of any Phillies manager since the 19th century. He was only the fourth manager in MLB history to reach the postseason in each of his first four full seasons as a manager (Dave Roberts, Aaron Boone and Mike Matheny were the others). He is one of only three Phillies managers to win consecutive division titles.
But Thomson, fairly or unfairly, became the symbol of a staleness that overcame the Phillies, who have lost eight of their last 10 postseason games while increasing their regular-season wins each of the last three seasons.
Rob Thomson inherited a 22-29 team as interim manager in June 2022 and led the Phillies to the World Series. (Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
Dombrowski decided to retain Thomson after a taut, four-game series defeat to the mighty Los Angeles Dodgers last October. The Phillies then extended Thomson’s contract through 2027, aligning him with Dombrowski’s term. They re-signed hitting coach Kevin Long to a three-year contract, league sources said, because Long was a free agent and fielded robust interest from rival clubs in the offseason.
Then, sometime during spring training, the Phillies extended the contracts of the entire coaching staff, keeping them in place through 2027. That was not just a vote of confidence; it was a statement that management believed in the infrastructure the Phillies had in place. They valued continuity.
Until they didn’t.
Thomson, lacking a consistent righty-hitting presence in his lineup, used 21 different batting orders in 28 games. He tried Felix Reyes, a veteran of 18 games at Triple A, as his cleanup hitter two games into his big-league career. He attempted platoons and shifted players up and down the order. Thomson preached loyalty, sometimes to a fault, and he stuck with certain players through prolonged slumps. Often, it was because the alternatives were not compelling enough. The best — and only — fix in 2026 was to lurch forward with the assembled pieces at his disposal.
This was Thomson’s ninth season with the Phillies. He came to Philadelphia as Gabe Kapler’s bench coach, then served in the same role when Girardi was manager. A decade of darkness evaporated with Thomson in charge because Philadelphia tasted postseason baseball again. Now it’s the expectation, and that is Thomson’s legacy as he exits.
