ATLANTA — Rob Thomson spent Sunday morning in his visiting manager’s office at Truist Park with four members of the Phillies’ front office, and by the time the day was over the questions around his club had only sharpened. The Phillies fell 6-2 to the Atlanta Braves on Sunday and slipped to 9-19 in the fifth week of the season, already outscored by 54 runs.
The loss was ugly in a way that cuts past the standings. The Phillies managed one hit in six innings against Chris Sale, and their right-handed hitters entered the day with a.505 OPS against left-handed pitchers, 91 points lower than the club’s overall mark. They were also 0-10 against left-handed starters excluding openers, a split that has become one of the clearest pressure points in a season that has gone badly off course.
That is why Dave Dombrowski summoned three scouts to Atlanta over the weekend to evaluate every part of the club. The front-office attention was widely read as an outward show of power while the Phillies struggled, and it came with the season already nearing a familiar point of no return in the 28th game of a year that began with far more expectation than this. For a team that spent the offseason on the verge of signing Bo Bichette and moving on from Alec Bohm, the gap between what was imagined and what has happened is now impossible to ignore.
Thomson did not sound rattled by the noise around him. Asked about his job security, he said he had never worried about that in his entire career and added, “Well, I mean, that’s natural, right?” He also said, “I’m a person who thinks about other people.” On the baseball side, he was far more direct about the one area that keeps failing his lineup. “We have to fix that, for sure,” he said of the Phillies’ problems against left-handed pitching, then added, “Maybe it is the lineup. I don’t know.” He said he remains confident in hitting coach Kevin Long and his assistants.
Kyle Schwarber backed the idea that the room still believes the pieces are there, saying, “I feel like we have the right people here,” and, “and we got the right people to figure it out.” Thomson, for his part, said, “Well, I’m sure we’ll talk about it on the plane,” when asked whether bigger changes might be needed. That leaves the Phillies with the same hard task they have had for weeks: stop the bleeding before the math gets final, and figure out whether the answer is a lineup tweak, a broader reshuffle, or something closer to the kind of change front offices usually resist until the losses leave no alternative.
The Phillies do not need more proof that this is more than a bad stretch. They need a way out, and they need it fast.
