The Phillies aren’t still playing if Rob Thomson didn’t become manager when he did, replacing Joe Girardi when the Phillies were 22-29. They went from being seven games under .500 to being 65-46 the rest of the way. Then they swept the Cardinals in an NL Wild Card Series before beating the Braves, defending champions of the world and 101-game winners during the regular season, in the Division Series round. It is a wonderful story -- a baseball lifer like Thomson finally getting his chance at the age of 59 and watching his team deliver the way it has.
But Dave Dombrowski is the one who gave Thomson his chance, at long last. Dombrowski is a lifer himself, from the time he was working in the White Sox front office in his early 20s. Now he has a chance to go to the World Series with a fourth team in what has been a truly great front-office career.
Dombrowski won with the 1997 Marlins. He won with the 2018 Red Sox, the best team in Red Sox history. And he twice went to the Series when he was running the Tigers. So it’s worth noting, and not for the first time, how interesting it is that good teams just seem to keep following Dave Dombrowski around.
No current baseball executive around has a more interesting resume than he does. Or a better one, frankly, just because of the way he wins wherever he goes. Now the Phillies, on his watch, aren’t just back in the postseason finally, but have a chance to win their first World Series since 2008.
I asked Dombrowski the other day how he ended up in Philadelphia. John Henry, the Red Sox owner, fired Dombrowski the year after the Red Sox had not just won 108 regular-season games but defeated the defending-champ Astros and then the Dodgers on their way to winning it all. Dombrowski then signed on with a group trying to bring Major League Baseball to Nashville, Tenn., before he became president of baseball operations with the Phillies, succeeding Andy MacPhail.
“It only took a couple of conversations with [Phillies owner] John Middleton to convince me this was a great spot,” Dombrowski said. “Also, having Andy MacPhail on board at time, and, telling me how good a place Philadelphia is for baseball, and, how good an owner John is to work, also really helped.”
And before long Dombrowski, who never sits back, was letting people know he was open for business again. He signed Kyle Schwarber as a free agent last winter, and Schwarber rewarded him and the Phillies by hitting 46 home runs this season, a season in which only Aaron Judge hit more. Dombrowski signed Nicholas Castellanos after Castellanos left the Reds. Castellanos did not have his best regular season, with just 13 homers and a .263 batting average. But in Game 1 against the Braves, Castellanos got three hits and three RBIs and might have saved the game for the Phillies when he made a great diving, sliding, lay-out catch of William Contreras’ liner to short right as the Braves were trying to come back on the Phillies in the 9th.
Leading up to the Aug. 2 Trade Deadline, Dombrowski acquired closer David Robertson from the Cubs, and Brandon Marsh and Noah Syndergaard from the Angels. The Phillies had gotten hot after Thomson took over on June 3, and Dombrowski clearly thought his team had a shot to make some noise if it could get to October. Now Philly is making noise again in baseball.
“Rob has done a great job,” Dombrowski said. “Many of our changes are directly related to him being in charge. For example, our younger players playing better and being more comfortable. Also, as the season progressed, adding Marsh and [shortstop Edmundo] Sosa helped our defense. In addition, having [Jose] Alvarado return from his brief stint in the Minors and throw the way he has, and having Seranthony Domínguez continue to get healthy changed our bullpen.”
Of course it all revolves around one of baseball’s truest stars in Bryce Harper, who has come back the way he has over the second half of the season after a pitch broke his thumb in San Diego three weeks after Thomson took over, and the Phillies were showing the kind of life they were. Now Harper has advanced past the Division Series round for the first time in his two-time-MVP career. He has three homers in six postseason games for the Phillies, six RBIs, a .435 average, 10 hits so far, and a dazzling, small-sample OPS of 1.437.
Dombrowski inherited Harper, who had signed a $330 million free-agent contract with the Phillies after leaving the Nationals. But he has quickly transformed the Phillies, most recently in the postseason in 2011, into a contender. Schwarber hit all those home runs. Syndergaard pitched three one-hit innings as a starter in the closeout game against the Braves last Saturday. Marsh, acquired more for his defense in center field than anything else, is hitting .308 himself in the postseason.
Robertson injured a calf muscle celebrating a Bryce Harper homer against the Cardinals, but had six saves for the Phillies down the stretch as they were fighting for a Wild Card.
Everything changed for the ’22 Phillies when Rob Thomson took over. But he didn’t hire himself. Truly, everything changed in Philly the day Dave Dombrowski got to town.
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