The Philadelphia Phillies were hoping to bounce back on Monday following back-to-back series losses, but lost a frustrating contest against the San Francisco Giants by a final score of 10-64. While Taijuan Walker expectedly received much of the blame for the team’s defeat, Phillies fans weren’t shy when it came to pointing the finger at Rob Thomson. It isn’t hard to see why.

When the game was still very much within reach in the bottom of the sixth inning, and the team was rallying, J.T. Realmuto took a pitch that very clearly should’ve been ball four. It was not even close to clipping the outside corner. Instead of the Phillies having the bases loaded with two outs, the inning came to an end. Unsurprisingly, the Giants immediately tacked on two more insurance runs and wound up winning the game handily.

Instead of sticking up for a very irate Realmuto, Thomson sat in the dugout as he seemingly always does, expressionless. This has been a common theme for Thomson that Phillies fans have become increasingly frustrated with.

Rob Thomson proves he’s not right for Phillies

This is simply inexcusable. It’d be inexcusable for a manager not to defend his player regardless, but in a city like Philadelphia, where the fans and the players are as passionate as they are, Thomson needs to show more fire.

At the end of the day, it feels as if Thomson manages without any sort of urgency whatsoever. Sure, it’s only April, and the season is long, but again, this is a common theme. He continued to act without any urgency after Monday’s loss.

Ho-hum, I guess. Thomson has no idea why a team that hasn’t played particularly well since the first half of the 2024 campaign continues to struggle, and doesn’t seem eager to change anything up to find a solution. He doesn’t seem eager to show some passion in an effort to wake his players up.

Just last year, when the Phillies were struggling, Thomson answered questions about what was going on exactly the same way. He doesn’t have answers, he just expects things to turn around by themselves.

I’m not here to say that Thomson getting himself run from Monday’s game would’ve solved anything. The Giants were still in the driver’s seat and probably would’ve won that game. Still, it would’ve been nice to have seen something from Thomson. Instead, the players and fans got nothing.

This roster is quite good, but this roster also hasn’t played well in quite some time. At some point, Thomson has to figure out that the status quo just isn’t good enough. The Phillies are in dire need of a spark. Thomson had a chance to give them that and simply did not come through.

There’s no denying that Thomson is a good enough manager to get the Phillies to the playoffs, but the team has yet to win a World Series with him at the helm. Perhaps a contributing factor to their underwhelming postseason performances is Thomson’s managerial style.