NL DIVISION SERIES: PHILLIES VS BRAVES

October 11, 2022

Rob Thomson

Truist Park

Philadelphia Phillies

Pregame 1 Press Conference

Q. What's up with David Robertson?

ROB THOMSON: Last game against St. Louis he, when Harper hit the home run, he jumped up and strained his right calf. So he was not available for the last game. So he's in Philadelphia.

Yesterday he got a PRP injection. He's going to try to work through it. I don't know when he's going to be available. But obviously he's off this round's roster. Whether he's available for the next round, we don't know.

Q. Right or left?

ROB THOMSON: Right.

Q. And just the decision to go with Sosa, is that just to optimize ground-ball pitcher, optimize defense?

ROB THOMSON: With Fried on the mound, right-handed hitter, he hasn't had that many at-bats, but he's had some in our stay-hot camp. But, yeah.

Q. What does the loss of Robertson to your bullpen beyond those maybe three guys you used in the first round? Who needs to step up in a possible five-game series?

ROB THOMSON: We've got Brogdon and Bellatti, we've added Nick Nelson to the roster. We have Brad Hand back. He hasn't seen much action lately. But somebody of that group somebody's going to step up or a couple of them for sure.

Q. We looked it up with the stat bureaus about your road trip to end the season. It's going to be the longest in baseball history ending a season and winning a playoff series, 14 games in the end.

ROB THOMSON: It feels like it.

Q. Can you tell us about that, how unique it is for this team to be on the road that long? And maybe has the team gotten a little closer, bonding going on, things like that?

ROB THOMSON: I think you see that a lot, especially long road trips, early in the season, coming out of spring training, I think guys get together and they do bond, they get to know each other a little bit.

But I think these guys have bonded well over the course of the year. I don't think they needed much more of that.

But I do think that when you are on the road and you're battling for something, there's less distractions on the road. You don't have to worry about certain things that you have to at home. So I think in some cases, there's an advantage to that.

Q. What was the thought process behind swapping Guthrie for Maton?

ROB THOMSON: Just because of the fact that we can utilize him a little bit -- they've got -- they ended up putting only two lefties in the bullpen, but they had the availability of a few more. So having the right-hand bat come off the bench.

And although Nick has played very well in the outfield, Dalton has a little bit more experience out there, so we can defend late in games. So we thought in this series he was just a little bit better usage for us.

Q. Have you guys tried to figure out, this is looking ahead, but potential Game 4, what kind of goes into that decision since none of these guys have really pitched a lot lately?

ROB THOMSON: A lot of it has to depend on what happens in the first three games, who we've used. So we're sort of on a daily basis kind of talking through it. But really haven't come to a decision yet.

Q. Syndergaard would be one of those guys, but with the loss of Robertson, is it possible you would you treat Syndergaard as a set-up man, a traditional reliever to start the series?

ROB THOMSON: Possibly, depending on what happens in each game. I liked his stuff out of the pen. It ticked up, I've said many times before, he's going to throw strikes. The moment's not going to get the best of him. So I have confidence in doing something like that.

Q. And back to Robertson, that's a difficult way for him to not be available. Have you talked to him? I imagine that's a pretty lonely feeling.

ROB THOMSON: Yeah, he's devastated. He really wanted to pitch in the series. And he knows how big a part he is to this club. And he's very disappointed.

Trust me, he's going to work and do everything he can to get back as soon as he can.