NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: PHILLIES VS PADRES

October 17, 2022

Rob Thomson

Petco Park

Philadelphia Phillies

Workout Day Press Conference

Q. Rob, what's the latest on David Robertson?

ROB THOMSON: Well, he should be finishing up a bullpen right now, and then he's going to do some agility work, and then as soon as we can get on the field, we're going to do a little PFP and kind of assess it from there.

Q. How has he looked to this point, and is it realistic that he makes it?

ROB THOMSON: I can't really say. I think I've got to see him in his PFP, and that starts at 3:00. But it's kind of miraculous how quick he's come off his injury and how much better he is. I wouldn't have expected he's at where he's at.

Q. From when you took over in June until now and maybe kind of give us your thought process of when you took over the team and thought, okay, now what do I do, and now here you are in the NLCS. What kind of ride has that been like for you?

ROB THOMSON: Pretty fantastic, really. As I've said many times, we came out of Spring Training, and we knew we had a real good ballclub. So being here doesn't really surprise me based on the club we thought we had coming out of Spring Training, but we got off to a slow start and it kind of snowballed a little bit.

I think the club lost confidence a little bit, and then in May we really had a tough schedule, and then in June we started turning it on and got hot, stayed hot, confidence grew back into the team, and they've rolled right through it.

It's been pretty good. Am I surprised that we're here? No. But based on the start of the season, maybe a little bit, yeah.

Q. When you look at the Padres' lineup and pitching staff, do you see a lot of your lineup and pitching staff? Seems like there's a lot of similarities between these two teams.

ROB THOMSON: Yeah, I was looking at -- not advanced numbers but just normal numbers, their pitching and their defense, their offense. Really similar numbers, I mean, as far as on base, slug, OPS, both from pitching staff and offensive side. Defensively very similar. It should be a good series.

Q. Bryce Harper said he called you -- he used a term from the movie "Tombstone" and called you an oak. What do you think when you hear something like that?

ROB THOMSON: I guess I'm thick? I don't know. I don't know what to take from that. I'm not really sure. (Laughter).

Q. The night of June 25 when Bryce got hit, do you remember your initial reaction? Do you remember the sound of the ball hitting him? Do you remember the fear of watching one of your stars go down, kind of the whole night and even afterward, thinking how long you might lose him for or what impact it might be on your club?

ROB THOMSON: Yeah, initially I wasn't really sure where he got hit. I thought maybe he got hit in the face again, which was really scary. Then when he was on the ground, he was saying, "I think my thumb is broke." Yeah, that's kind of a shock when one of your superstars goes down like that.

So it hurts initially, but at the same time you've got to move on, and we did, and there was a whole bunch of guys that stepped in for him. I think it was a growing moment for -- although we don't want to lose Harp, with other guys stepping up, it's kind of a growing moment for the club.

Now we're glad we have him back, that's for sure.

Q. How does the lack of an off-day after Game 2 and the potential of playing five consecutive days, how does that change or impact how you might have to manage in terms of pitching usage, and how much are you thinking about that heading into the series?

ROB THOMSON: Thinking about it a little bit but not a whole lot because we've got a couple games before that. But once we get past the off-day, then I think you really have to think about how you're going to use your bullpen. It's going to be five days in a row, and you certainly don't want to put anybody in harm's way.

That's what we've done all year is we've tried to take care of guys and make sure they're healthy and make sure that they can perform at the highest level.

Once we get through the off-day, we'll have to really think about that hard.

Q. It seems like a big asset for you guys has been the ability to play loose and not really feel like you have a ton of pressure on you right now, and the Padres are in a similar spot because they haven't been to the NLCS in a while. Do you think that could present a different type of challenge for you all?

ROB THOMSON: I think we'll play just exactly the way we're playing. I think our guys are really loose, really poised. They're owning up to the moment, every moment that comes their way. I'm proud of them for that. I don't think their mindset or their heartbeat will change one bit.

Q. Looking at some of the things that got you here, the improvement in the infield defense is really striking and especially that you seem to use the shift a lot less now than you were at the start of the year. What was the thinking behind that, and how do you think that helped the infield get better?

ROB THOMSON: So I have to give a lot of credit to Bobby Dickerson and the work he's done and the players for the work they've done.

But as far as where we align guys, that's like a day-to-day adjustment. We're always looking at, okay, how can we do things better, what factors into whether we play a shift or not play a shift or play a guy in a certain area.

I think as the season has gone on between our analytics people that are doing the suggestions and Bobby and the players, it's been a daily adjustment. We've just gotten a little bit better at it, just a little bit at a time.

Right now it's working out pretty good.

Q. Do you expect any changes to your position players on the roster from last series?

ROB THOMSON: I haven't spoken, but it's going to be very similar roster all the way around. But I haven't talked to the players yet.

Q. Do you think your left-handed relief beyond Alvarado, who's obviously a big piece for you, could the left-handed relief factor more in this series given the opposition?

ROB THOMSON: Yeah, and we have some right-handers to get left-handers out, too. When I look at our bullpen, I kind of see not just Hand and Alvarado, I also see a couple of right-handers. Really I have four or five guys that I go, okay, they can get left-handers out.

Q. The night Bryce went down, I believe you said after that game that you and Kevin were going to get together and go over your options. What do you remember of that conversation, and what were you guys kicking around, and what was the general vibe of that talk?

ROB THOMSON: I think it starts with the players that you've got now, and then you look beyond that to Lehigh Valley. Eventually we got like a Darick Hall in there. So we were kind of mixing and matching and trying to piece together with the people we had at the time.

Then all of a sudden Darick Hall is getting hot in Triple-A and we're going, okay, maybe this is the guy.

We brought him, and he performed right away. We had a lot of that this year, which was really good. We had a lot of guys come up from Lehigh Valley, as you guys know, that gave us performance and energy and all that stuff that help a ballclub win.

Q. You kept Kyle and Rhys one-two. It would have been easy maybe to have one of them hit three. I think you had Castellanos hit third for a while even though he was struggling. Why did you resist the urge, if you had one, to maybe drop one of those guys down?

ROB THOMSON: Well, at the time Schwarber was hitting two home runs every day and walking twice, and Hoskins was hitting a home run every day and walking twice. I didn't really want to mess them up. I didn't want to overthink it. I wanted to keep them right where they're at. They seemed very comfortable there, and it worked out.

There's ebbs and flows to the season, but we've been pretty consistent with that, and I think it's worked out pretty well.

Q. One thing about D-Rob, do you feel like he needs to be full go tomorrow or does he have to show you full-go ability tomorrow, or could you put him on the roster thinking he still needs a day or two? What's your comfort level there?

ROB THOMSON: For me, I think he's got to be full go tomorrow. Because I think it's a big question mark with that injury that you say, oh, in three days he's going to be ready.

I don't know if anybody can answer that question. That's a big roster spot to take up and sort of not be able to utilize it properly.