The 5 Ripple Effects of the Phillies Firing of Rob Thomson

The Rob Thomson era is over in Philadelphia. It didn't last for four years, and it's perhaps surprising it wasn't even shorter, given the Phillies' 2026 start.

Their 9-19 record is bad enough, ranking at the bottom of MLB, along with the New York Mets. Their -54 run differential is even worse, as they have been outscored by 24 more runs than any other team.

Thomson can always boast of getting the Phillies to the World Series in 2022 and back to the playoffs in 2023, 2024 and 2025. But for now, his only bragging right is lasting longer than Alex Cora, who reportedly turned down the Phillies gig after he was fired by the Boston Red Sox on Saturday.

It's now up to Don Mattingly to get the Phillies off the mat, and how that will go is anyone's guess. The only thing to do in the meantime is assess the ripple effects of Thomson's ouster.

Every Other Manager Hot Seat Just Got Hotter

Between Cora and Thomson, that's two managers in four days who have been sacked by organizations that are spending a lot of money on too few wins.

If that signals a pattern, nobody should be hugging his job tighter than Mets skipper Carlos Mendoza.

His club has the same record as the Phillies, after all, and the Mets are one of just three teams spending even more money than Philly. As such, it would be malpractice for owner Steve Cohen and president of baseball operations David Stearns to not fire Mendoza if things aren't turned around, and fast.

As for who else should be looking over their shoulder, here are five more managers who fit the Cora/Thomson/Mendoza mold of bungling big expectations:

• Joe Espada, Houston Astros
• Matt Quatraro, Kansas City Royals
• John Schneider, Toronto Blue Jays
• Tony Vitello, San Francisco Giants
• Dan Wilson, Seattle Mariners

Vitello has only been managing the Giants for a month, while Schneider and Wilson have too much recent success to be in trouble so soon. All three are likely safe, albeit in more precarious spots than anticipated.

But Espada and Quatraro? Things are ugly where they are, with the Astros and Royals at the bottom of the American League. If they can't turn things around, their bosses don't have much to lose by finding out if someone else can.

The NL East Has Shifted Gears

At the start of the year, FanGraphs had the Mets and Atlanta Braves as co-favorites to win the NL East, with the Phillies as the only other serious contender.

That picture had already been turned on its head, and the Phillies might as well have chucked it out the window. It's the Braves (20-9) who are sitting especially pretty amid all this, as they now face the prospect of strolling to the NL East title.

But dare anyone count out the Miami Marlins and Washington Nationals, both of whom are 13-16?

They are long shots to make the playoffs, much less as division champs over Atlanta. At the same time, the Nationals' high-scoring offense gives them at least half of a viable contender, while the Marlins have only allowed one more run than they have scored.

All we're saying is don't count out Miami, especially now that Kyle Stowers is back to help lift the offense.

How Long Until the Phillies Are Open for Business?

Of course, the Phillies aren't dead yet. And as was the case when Thomson relieved Joe Girardi in 2022, there's a sense that this team is too talented to be so bad.

At the same time, it's hard to fake a 9-19 record or a -54 run differential. Too many parts of this team simply are that deficient. Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber are the only ones getting anything done on offense, while Cristopher Sánchez is surrounded by a bunch of high ERAs in the rotation.

FanGraphs has Philly's playoff chances down to just 32.8 percent, which means there's a 67.2 percent chance of them carrying on as pretenders. And come the trade deadline, pretenders typically cut their losses.

It's doubtful that the Phillies would trade Schwarber or Sánchez so soon after signing them to $254 million worth of contracts. It would otherwise be hard to move Zack Wheeler, Aaron Nola, Trea Turner, J.T. Realmuto, or Jesús Luzardo, none of whom look particularly deserving of a high salary right now. For their parts, neither Alec Bohm nor Bryson Stott still resembles a talented youngster.

But Jhoan Duran, at least, would be an obvious chip to cash in if he's healthy later in the summer. And after what went down over the winter, Harper being traded with five years left on his 13-year, $331 million contract is no longer unthinkable.

Dave Dombrowski Has Put His Job on the Line

The Phillies were already a big spender when they hired Dave Dombrowski as their POBO in 2020, but he's pushed the envelope to a point where they have begun each of the last six years with MLB's fourth-highest payroll.

It's a lot of pressure for any manager to make good on investments like those, and Dombrowski's instincts were proven correct when he deemed Girardi not up to snuff in 2022. But if this second attempt to catch lightning in a bottle fails, it's all going to come back on Dombrowski.

After 2023 and 2024 didn't do the trick, last year should have convinced Dombrowski that the Phillies' roster needed an overhaul. It was their third straight year of diminished returns in the playoffs, and it happened because they just plain weren't as good as the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Instead, Dombrowski largely doubled down by bringing back Schwarber and Realmuto and not really changing much elsewhere. Arguably, his most interesting maneuvers have involved paying Nick Castellanos and Taijuan Walker to go away.

There's $38 million in dead money tied up, and there's just way too much near-dead money elsewhere on the payroll. And the dollars aren't about to stop adding up, as these are the Phillies' luxury tax commitments for the next four seasons:

• 2027: $236.5 million (3rd in MLB)
• 2028: $184 million (4th in MLB)
• 2029: $171.9 million (2nd in MLB)
• 2030: $172.4 million (1st in MLB)

If results don't miraculously materialize during this window, Phillies owner John Middleton will have every right to take his ire out on the guy who built this monstrosity.

The Phillies Are in Danger of Becoming a Dynasty That Never Was

In fairness to Dombrowski, Thomson and basically everyone on the roster right now, this version of the Phillies did succeed where previous iterations failed.

After the club's run as a contender in the late 2000s and early 2010s fell apart, various efforts to get the Phillies back on track kept bumping into .500-ish walls. The Phillies are third in MLB in wins since Thomson took over in 2022.

And yet, the banner for the Phillies' 2008 World Series championship still lacks recent company at Citizens Bank Park.

There was no shame in losing to the Houston Astros in the 2022 World Series, but 2023 really felt like it was the Phillies' year until the Arizona Diamondbacks shocked them in the NLCS. Either of the next two seasons could have been their real year after 95 and 96 wins, respectively, but…well, here we are.

The only hope now is that the Phillies can at least make like the Washington Nationals in 2019, when they redeemed a decade of disappointment by winning it all just as their window was closing. They never became a dynasty, but they made sure the effort didn't go for naught.

The Phillies have wanted more than this. So have their fans. But right now, even getting to settle for good enough would be a relief.

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.