MLB WORLD SERIES: PHILLIES VS ASTROS

October 28, 2022

Rob Thomson

Minute Maid Park

Philadelphia Phillies

Pregame 1 Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: We'll go ahead and get started with questions for Rob Thomson.

Q. Did you hear Dusty say you weren't the real Rob Thomson?

ROB THOMSON: (Laughing.) It's funny because I get like, I don't know, a hundred of Robby's baseball cards every year, and I have to send them all back. It's all right.

Q. So the question is -- I asked this to Dusty, about a third of managers in Major League Baseball now are 60 and over. Pretty soon you'll be in that category --

ROB THOMSON: Thank you.

Q. What do you think has happened -- you're welcome.

ROB THOMSON: (Laughing.)

Q. What do you think is happening, the transition in baseball, that teams are going back to these guys again?

ROB THOMSON: I don't know. I really don't look at those numbers all that much. Maybe they're trying to, maybe general managers, owners, presidents, are trying to get some type of balance in analytics and old school baseball. I don't know. That's the only thing I can think of.

Q. Some of the guys said Kyle Schwarber spoke to them. I don't know if it was as a group or just one on one, but was telling them about what this experience is going to be like. How important has his leadership been to this team?

ROB THOMSON: He's been incredible. He's brought the entire team together, young, experienced guys, young guys. When guys are going bad, he's the guy that's got his arm around 'em, helping 'em out. And this experience, you know, he's been through it and all that information is so valuable.

Q. You said you were going to kick around the idea of maybe of moving Harper up to 3. What went into not doing that?

ROB THOMSON: Well, so I came in yesterday and I talked to Kevin Long and I talked to Mike Calitri and I talked to a lot of the players about the lineup because I didn't want to overthink it. And to a man, they were like, you know, we've been swinging the bats pretty good right where we're at, everybody's really comfortable with where we're at, so that's what we're going with.

Q. Could you talk about Nick getting on the roster, both Nicks getting on the roster.

ROB THOMSON: Yeah. So basically they're right-hand dominant, both their offensive and their pitching staff in that bullpen, so it just made sense to me to add the right-hander when we took Bailey off. And I told Bailey, It has nothing to do with you. I mean, the start he had against the Padres, very rusty, a bunch of days off. And he's been so valuable for us all year long. He really, I mean, taking over Wheeler's slot, just pitched so well for us. He's a huge part of it.

And then with Nick Maton, all those right-handers in the pen, now they have added Will Smith, but they're still right-handed dominant. So it just seemed to me like that was better match than Dalton Guthrie.

Q. What do you do with those baseball cards you have to send back? Do you put a note in there or just send 'em back?

ROB THOMSON: Usually they come with an envelope that's already post-stamped and it's got the address on it. If it doesn't, they go in the garbage. I'm not going to track people down.

Q. And how is Zack Wheeler's knee?

ROB THOMSON: Good. Yeah. No, he's good to go tomorrow. A couple reasons why I wanted Zack to go tomorrow is that, one, he gets five days rest and his numbers are better. But when we first had to start talking about the rotation I was still concerned about his knee. But I'm not any more.

Q. And Dave had mentioned that he was telling some guys yesterday that this is the World Series, it's different than the NLCS if you've never been here before. Is Wheeler one of those guys that you really don't have to worry about the moment being too big for him?

ROB THOMSON: I don't worry about him. Really there's not many guys I worry about. I mean, it was on my mind going into the playoffs. But we played so relaxed the entire playoffs that it's not on my mind any more.

Q. Following up on the previous question, talking to Cora, in Boston a few years ago when he was working for Dave, and he basically said they gave him information and they just let him run the game. Is it the same way under Dave with you?

ROB THOMSON: Absolutely. Yeah. They give us all the R & D information and all the analytics and then they leave us alone.

Q. So you guys were just here. Obviously a lot has happened since then. But does that go into how you prepare for this team specifically at all?

ROB THOMSON: Yeah, because, I mean, we went an entire year without playing these guys and then we play 'em the last series. So that was a lot of work. So I'm glad we did that work. We didn't have to do as much. We're still working, obviously.

But we saw Verlander. We saw Valdez. We saw McCullers. So it's different time of year, I get it, but it's still good for those guys to get their eyes on those pitchers.

Q. Dusty Baker said he heard from Snoop Dogg to wish him luck.

ROB THOMSON: I didn't.

Q. Did you hear from Justin Trudeau or anybody like that?

ROB THOMSON: No, no, no. I heard from Dave Keon. If you don't know who Dave Keon is he's a famous Toronto Maple Leaf.

Q. Any other Leafs?

ROB THOMSON: No. I heard from Tony La Russa. I heard from Joe Torre. So those are nice.

Q. When Zack had the elbow issue in September, were you pretty confident it would just be a few missed turns or was there ever a point you were worried that he might go down longer?

ROB THOMSON: No, based on the trainer's information and doing the MRI and knowing that there's no structural problem I was pretty sure that he was coming back at some point.