NL WILD CARD SERIES: MARLINS VS PHILLIES

October 4, 2023

Rob Thomson

Citizens Bank Park

Philadelphia Phillies

Pregame Press Conference

Q. Rhys is in Clearwater today. How many at-bats do you think he needs to get before he's ready to possibly face Major League pitching?

ROB THOMSON: Well, everybody's a little bit different, but usually we get guys 50, 60 at-bats in Spring Training, if not a little bit more. This new Trajekt machine helps out a little bit, but it's always better to get at-bats.

I don't know the exact number, but I would say 40-ish, 50 maybe, and then we'll see where he's at, how he feels.

Q. Speaking of Rhys, what did you think of the moment before the game last night?

ROB THOMSON: Fantastic, emotional. I know Rhys was a little bit emotional. Nobody knew -- I knew that he was going to do it. Rhys knew he was going to do it obviously. But I don't think many of the players knew it, and everybody was pretty fired up about it.

Q. Rob, obviously, Aaron pitching tonight. You've been here a long time with him. Kind of an open-ended question. What is his best quality, or what has he meant to this team the last four or five years?

ROB THOMSON: A lot of starts, a lot of innings, a lot of wins, big game wins, especially the last couple years. Just been kind of that steady hand that you've got in that rotation, much like Wheeler too. Reliable. He's going to prepare. He's going to compete, and he's going to leave it all on the field.

He's a leader. He's really good to have in the club.

Q. To follow up on that, you say that you've said multiple times that you trust him with your life. Where does that trust come from in Aaron?

ROB THOMSON: Just over the years, just watching him and watching how he prepares and how he competes and taking down big games. Those guys, they're few and far between, and he's one of them.

Q. His last two starts obviously have been encouraging. His numbers this season against the Marlins, not to what Aaron's standards are. What does he need to do tonight to have better success against them?

ROB THOMSON: If he throws the way he did the last two games, he's going to be fine. He's going to be able to throw strikes, not give free passes, keep the ball down, locate his fastball in, his breaking ball, and use his change-up. If he does that, he's going to be fine.

Q. Do you sit down with the coaching staff or sit down with Dusty and look at the plays from last night and see if anything could have been done differently, or do you kind of move on?

ROB THOMSON: At times, but we didn't look at the plays last night. I looked at the plays last night, and I was fine with Dusty's decisions, I really was. Our scouting reports have both those outfielders with plus arms, and we actually have a better accuracy grade on Sanchez than we do Chisholm. Sanchez throws the ball up the line, Chisholm throws a strike to the plate. It happens.

I've coached third for a long time. Until you're in that box, you don't know what it's like. Dusty's really good.

Q. Just back to Nola really quick. Do you think his durability is somewhat underrated by people? And how much of a comfort level to the team and the rotation is it knowing that you can give him the ball every fifth day and he's going to go six, seven innings?

ROB THOMSON: Yeah, it's huge to have that type of guy, and I think it is underrated. You can count on 30, 32 starts every year. You can count on a high number of innings every year. It's just the way he prepares, not only in season, but in the off-season his preparation, the way he works. He's just ready to grind it out. That's a great guy to have on your staff.

Q. With your bullpen, obviously tonight you've got a chance to close it out, you're going to go for high leverage guys. How do you balance this time of year? Let's say that happens. You have two off days, another off day Sunday, an off day Tuesday. How do you keep the other guys fresh when you do inevitably need them, guys like Dominguez and Soto? How do you keep guys fresh with all the potential off days?

ROB THOMSON: We keep them fresh by doing bullpens. If we have enough off days, you can set up a short BP for them so they see some hitters. We'll get them in the pen, have some guys stand in, take them through a full inning of at-bats without anybody swinging obviously. That's pretty much all you can do.

Q. Rob, the team have won the first game in every one of the series since last year since the postseason. This is a three-game series. You won the first game. Is your view and the team's view that this is a must game? From a mentality standpoint.

ROB THOMSON: I wouldn't say it's a must game because we've already won one, but we're going to -- we're playing to win tonight. We'll do whatever we can to get it done.

Q. You saw three, at least three, really nice defensive plays last night. Alec said that this is something that the guys have kind of rallied around getting better and improving over the course of the season. How important was it for you to kind of have defense become more of a focus with this team this year?

ROB THOMSON: Hugely important. I mean, it's something we talk about all winter, and I think over the course of the last couple years, we've really gotten more athletic. Obviously we have J.T. behind the plate. Now you have Stott at second base, who's really athletic. You had Turner. You've got Marsh and Pache and now Rojas in center field. So we're really athletic up the middle, and that's one thing that makes you a lot better defensively.

Plus we've attacked the individual side of it. Getting better jumps, glove action, creating better hops in the infield, things like that.

So I think we have, we've put a major emphasis on that, and I think it's coming to fruition. And the work that Bobby Dickerson and Paco Figueroa and Dusty Wathan have done with our position players has just been fantastic.