NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: DIAMONDBACKS VS PHILLIES

October 17, 2023

Rob Thomson

Citizens Bank Park

Philadelphia Phillies

Postgame 2 Press Conference

Phillies 10, Diamondbacks 0

THE MODERATOR: We'll get started with Rob Thomson.

Q. Conventional wisdom is that pitching dominates in the postseason and your pitching obviously has been very good. Can you even begin to explain why your offense has been able to do what they've done?

ROB THOMSON: Well, I mean, we have a really good lineup, and it's a long lineup. We're swinging bats really well right now.

I thought Merrill Kelly did a really nice job, and we finally got to him in the sixth. We hit a couple of solo home runs, but he kept us off balance for the most part up until the sixth, and we started to string some hits together and put up some crooked numbers, so that was good.

Offense comes and goes. We have to stay on it.

Q. I was going to ask you about that. Over half the runs you've scored have come on the home runs.

ROB THOMSON: Yeah.

Q. Is that hard to sustain for the rest of this series and the next series?

ROB THOMSON: That means that the other half of the runs came from stringing hits together, so we can do it both ways.

Q. Can you talk about the decision back on June 2nd when you moved Kyle into the lead-off spot and how that kind of helped you guys really take off the rest of the season?

ROB THOMSON: Well, that was June Schwarber, as they say around here. I believe we were struggling at the time, and it was time to make a little bit of a change. And that was a recipe last year with Schwarber in the lead-off spot, and it just sort of clicked, and we started winning. We started scoring runs, and Schwarb got hot. That was really basically what was behind it.

Q. How do you explain Aaron Nola's performance in the postseason and dating back to the end of the regular season? What's made the difference for him, especially tonight?

ROB THOMSON: Well, they made a little mechanical change with his stride direction. Once he did that, that was like two or three starts -- his last two or three starts of the season, and he started getting the ball to his glove side, and the breaking ball became better. The changeup became better. He started using his changeup a little bit more, and he has dialed it up ever since.

Tonight he was fantastic. I thought he did a great job. If the bottom of the sixth hadn't gone so long, he probably would have gone out -- we would have sent him out for the seventh. But it went so long, I just said that's enough. Now we can get some guys some work.

And so we got Hoffman and Strahm and Kerkering to work because they hadn't pitched in four or five days. It all worked out. But he was fantastic tonight.

Q. Just wondering what you thought about Alec Bohm's performance tonight? A couple of big defensive plays early, gets the hit late. You stuck with him in that four spot even though he has gone through some struggles. I wonder what your overall impression of his game was?

ROB THOMSON: His first at-bat, he was a click away from hitting the ball over the center field fence, and then he got a big double. The first play, the diving play to his back hand, seemed like the ball was by him, and somehow he got his glove on it and threw from his knees.

He has really played well defensively lately and for a while now. But he can hit. You just have to trust that at some point -- you know, as I just said, offense comes and goes. At some point he is going to hit again, and the last couple of nights, his swing has looked really good.

Q. Rules are the same for everybody, but do you think it's possible -- when you talk about the playoffs having a slow heartbeat and slowing the game down, do you think that the pacing that the players have experienced all year long maybe has helped many in some shape or form for them to pace themselves during the games and they're always under pressure, so to speak, on some level, so they're...

ROB THOMSON: Maybe. I think everybody had to make an adjustment at the start of the year with the pitch clock. I think that's what you're talking about; correct?

Q. Yes.

ROB THOMSON: Everybody had to make an adjustment with the pitch clock, and I think everybody for the most part did.

Then once the playoffs start, there's another intensity level this game goes to, and so they have to make another adjustment. I think our guys have done a really good job with that.