As I’ve done for the past few years, I’m going to be grading each eliminated postseason manager on their decision-making. We spend the year mostly ignoring managers’ on-field contributions, because to be honest, they’re pretty small. Using the wrong reliever in the eighth inning just doesn’t feel that bad on June 22; there are so many more games still coming, and the regular season is more about managing the grind than getting every possible edge every day. The playoffs aren’t like that; with so few games to separate wheat from chaff, every last ounce of win probability matters, and managers make personnel decisions accordingly. What better time to grade them?

My goal is to evaluate each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things — getting team buy-in for new strategies and unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is a skill I find particularly valuable — but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for it.

I’m also purposefully avoiding vague qualitative concerns like “trusting your veterans because they’ve been there before.” Playoff coverage lovingly focuses on clutch plays by proven performers, but Josh Jung and Geraldo Perdomo have been important, too. Forget trusting your veterans; the playoffs are about trusting your best players. Nathan Eovaldi is valuable because he’s great, not because of the number of playoff series he’s appeared in. There’s nothing inherently good about having been around a long time; when I’m evaluating decisions, “but he’s a veteran” just doesn’t enter my thought process.

One note: In the pitching section, I’m taking a more specific look at reliever matchups. This 2022 Cameron Grove study, which I’ve mentioned in a few prior report cards, measures a repeat-matchup reliever penalty. A forthcoming article, which I’ve reviewed, examines the issue without focusing on specific matchups, but rather looking at relievers pitching on back-to-back days or on short rest after heavy workloads. Both of these things are, unsurprisingly, bad for reliever performance. Managing the balance between starter and reliever over-work is really hard. I probably haven’t given enough credit to the necessity of balancing bullpen workloads against particular opposing batters in the past, but I’ll make a note of it going forward.

I’ve already covered the losing managers of the Wild Card round, the various Division Series eliminations, and the ALCS. Today, it’s Rob Thomson’s turn.

Rob Thomson, Philadelphia Phillies
Batting: B
There are a lot of games to cover for the Phillies, and their lineup was fairly static, so let’s do this one at double speed. Thomson started the playoffs by platooning Brandon Marsh and Cristian Pache. The Marlins have a ton of lefty starters and also a ton of lefty relievers, which meant Thomson was willing to let Pache bat against righty relievers early in the game, to avoid getting Marsh picked on later. This felt slightly too cute for me – a lot of those lefty relievers invariably got aimed at Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper, not at Marsh – but I see where he was coming from.

While Pache got the majority of the playing time against Miami, it was Marsh’s turn against Atlanta, though Pache drew the start against lefty Max Fried. That’s one of the few lineup decisions Thomson made in the NLDS, though I also give him credit for selectively amping up baserunning; with Spencer Strider on the mound in Game 1, the Phillies knew they’d have to scrape together runs, and they attempted six steals as a result. Against Fried, who holds runners well, they went back down to no attempts, then stole two bases off of reliever Kirby Yates. Against Bryce Elder, they didn’t attempt a single steal: Why waste precious outs when you’re planning on scoring a lot? It also helped that they went up 6-1 early.

By the start of the NLCS, Marsh had performed well enough to change Thomson’s mind; he began leaving Marsh in against lefty relievers. I think there was a good argument to do this all along; Marsh is a meaningfully better hitter than Pache, and by enough that bringing in a cold Pache as a pinch-hitter, even with the platoon advantage, might not be an improvement. Combine that with the fact that Arizona doesn’t have any lefty starters, and that meant Marsh played every day the rest of the way.

That leaves me with only one decision to talk about: Johan Rojas’ sacrifice bunt in Game 7. I’m generally opposed to bunts that aren’t bona fide attempts to reach base. It’s one thing to attempt to bunt for a hit and end up merely advancing the runner, but that’s not what we’re talking about here; this was a pure sacrifice. I didn’t like it. I particularly didn’t like it because Schwarber, who had been walking a ton in the series, was on deck. He might get you that extra 90 feet even if Rojas didn’t do it, and Rojas is so fast that he wasn’t likely to hit into a double play. That felt like a rare instance of over-managing from Thomson, who mostly got out of the way and let his hitters go to work. That can be hard for managers, but Thomson did very well at it with his lineup and batting decisions.

Pitching: B+
One great thing about the Phillies pitching staff? They have some nights where they simply can’t be mismanaged. The Wild Card series was one example: Zack Wheeler went 6.2 innings with one earned run, and then Aaron Nola went seven scoreless the next night. Thomson ably mixed and matched his relievers behind them – lefties to force Miami’s weak bench into play, righties against Jorge Soler – and made easy work of the series.

Facing the Braves offense, on the other hand, is never easy work. Thomson and the Phillies came up with a plan to get as many righty/righty pitching matchups as possible against Atlanta’s fearsome group of right-handed mashers. That meant an early hook for Game 1 starter Ranger Suárez, and Thomson added a wrinkle by telling everyone but the starter what would be happening, which let the bullpen prepare more effectively. I liked this move a lot; the Braves are just a great offense, period, but they’re particularly lethal against lefties, so lengthening the bullpen when Philadelphia started a lefty is just good business. One minor quibble: Suárez departed after facing Matt Olson (makes sense) and then Ozzie Albies, who is a switch hitter in name only. He bats .250/.311/.445 against righties and .338/.365/.571 against lefties for his career. I would’ve liked to get a righty reliever in against him rather than give Suárez that phenomenally tough assignment as his last batter.

I already wrote about Thomson’s decision to leave Wheeler in when he was cruising the next day. I think it was fine to sacrifice a bit of expected value in Game 2 to protect the bullpen, though it didn’t work out — Travis d’Arnaud hit a two-run homer. Thomson got all the matchups he wanted after that – José Alvarado and Gregory Soto against lefties, Jeff Hoffman against a tough pocket of righties – but the Braves just beat Philly’s best. C’est la vie.

You might think there aren’t many decisions to talk about in the next game, a 10-2 Phillies victory, but I think it actually produced Thomson’s weakest moment of the series. With the Phillies rolling, Thomson mostly emptied out the fringes of the bullpen. But why not go the whole way? Michael Lorenzen covered the last inning, but he could have handled more. Specifically, he could have saved Seranthony Domínguez, who’s much higher up the bullpen hierarchy, from entering in an 8-2 game. Domínguez faced Ronald Acuña Jr., Albies, and Austin Riley, then had to face the exact same three batters in a close game the next day. Why give the Atlanta hitters a free look in a laugher?

That’s a minor quibble. The rest of Game 4 went mostly to plan, and Thomson even brought in Craig Kimbrel an inning early to face that Acuña/Albies/Riley trifecta, a move I absolutely loved. The Braves are a formidable opponent, but they also give managers a chance to work matchups, and I think that Thomson did an excellent job at it overall, that one Domínguez slip notwithstanding.

I mention that lapse because I think that Thomson otherwise managed like he was considering the familiarity effect. The Diamondbacks have exactly one section of the lineup that’s a natural home for lefties: Geraldo Perdomo, Ketel Marte, and Corbin Carroll batted consecutively in some order in every game of the series. But Alvarado, the team’s best lefty, only faced that troika three times; Thomson found ways to use him without wearing him out against the same few batters. Ditto for Matt Strahm (three times each) and Soto (two times each).

With that plan for splitting up the lefty bullpen work in place, Thomson’s job seemed easy: lean on the three trustworthy starters, figure out a bullpen-ish game for Game 4, and hope that worked. That plan looked great through two games; the Phillies won both, and Alvarado only had to pitch once. But Thomson made another small error, likely borne of the desire to take no chances. With the Phillies up 6-0 after six innings, it was a natural spot for the low-leverage relief brigade. But Thomson called on Hoffman, one of his trusted relievers. Hoffman faced Gabriel Moreno in that meaningless spot, and ended up facing him five times in the series.

I’m nitpicking with these decisions, because I really liked Thomson’s overall choices, but he ended up having to use Hoffman five times in seven games, almost exclusively in high-leverage situations. That’s because Kimbrel started to falter as the series went on. His command was the biggest issue – he walked 17% of opposing hitters – but regardless of why things went wrong, Thomson responded by making Hoffman his top righty reliever. Hoffman performed impressively in that role, but he might have had an easier time if he didn’t have to pitch quite so much.

Some more praise for Thomson: I thought he used Suárez quite well in this series. Suárez made two starts and faced exactly 20 batters in each of them; he turned the lineup over twice and then faced Marte and Carroll for a third time before hitting the showers. That worked hand-in-hand with Thomson’s use of his lefty relievers; by getting naturally advantageous matchups against those tough hitters three times with his starter, he was able to mix and match the relievers behind them. Suárez only allowed three runs over 10 innings – and the last of those runs came when Moreno won the fifth Hoffman/Moreno matchup of the series to cash in a runner that Suárez was responsible for.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Game 4, when Cristopher Sánchez made his only start of the playoffs and lasted only 11 batters (2.1 innings). With Wheeler and Nola scheduled for the next two games, Thomson deployed a very quick hook and used all of his most trusted relievers in an attempt to scratch out a win without one of his three top starters going. It might have worked, too, if Kimbrel hadn’t given up a game-tying Alek Thomas homer and allowed four of the six batters he faced to reach. I liked the bullpen decisions in this one; the only thing that confuses me is why Sánchez drew the start instead of Taijuan Walker, who didn’t appear in the playoffs. That feels more like a front office decision than a managerial one, though, so I won’t judge Thomson for it.

Truly, I think that Thomson managed an excellent series. I haven’t lingered on his usage of Wheeler and Nola because I don’t have any critiques. They mostly made it easy on him by posting dominant starts, of course, but he knew to stay out of the way given Kimbrel’s waning effectiveness and Hoffman’s heavy pitching load. So rather than walk through each of those decisions, I’ll focus on what happened when Nola failed. In Game 6, Nola gave up three runs in the second, and the offense sputtered against Merrill Kelly. Thomson knew that a potential Game 7 would require the whole bullpen, particularly the overtaxed righties; Suárez was scheduled for his classic 20-batter outing.

So Thomson let Nola go, even as he struggled. When Nola gave up a fourth run in the fifth, Thomson did what I wanted him to do in the previous series: he realized that the game was no longer competitive and let Lorenzen work multiple innings. He followed that up with Orion Kerkering, and then even threw Kimbrel (!) into the mix, seemingly knowing that he wouldn’t need him the next day. In the climactic Game 7, that meant that Thomson was able to use four relievers (counting a masterful Wheeler bullpen outing) without any of them pitching on back-to-back days. That was a nice little touch, even though it didn’t work out in the end; the Philadelphia offense simply didn’t score enough. My main point is this: Thomson handled the ABC decisions so well that I can focus on tiny edges that he accumulated or failed to accumulate. That’s the mark of good management.