{"id":686036,"date":"2026-04-29T18:03:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T18:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/686036\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T18:03:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T18:03:16","slug":"philadelphia-phillies-dave-dombrowski-faces-scrutiny-after-firing-rob-thomson-amid-team-struggles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/686036\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia Phillies’ Dave Dombrowski faces scrutiny after firing Rob Thomson amid team struggles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Phillies President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski \u201cknows what a winning team looks like,\u201d but this year\u2019s team \u201cisn\u2019t it,\u201d and Dombrowski \u201cmust see\u201d that, according to Scott Lauber of the PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER. Hours after firing manager Rob Thomson<\/a> on Tuesday amid a 9-19 start, Dombrowski was defending the roster that he built and is \u201ccosting ownership more than\u201d $320M, including luxury tax. Dombrowski said, \u201cThis club is talented. … Do I think we can play better? I hope so. If not, then we\u2019ll all have made a mistake.\u201d Lauber writes it \u201ctakes a lot\u201d for Dombrowski to admit this, and he \u201cmight have axed Thomson anyway,\u201d because that is \u201cwhat tends to happen to managers of underachieving teams with sky-high payrolls.\u201d Lauber: \u201cWell, except that Dombrowski\u2019s motivation to make a change seemed to increase after Alex Cora, whom he once hired for the Red Sox and won a championship with in 2018, was let go in Boston last weekend<\/a>.\u201d He notes Cora \u201cspoke by phone\u201d to Dombrowski last Saturday night and again Sunday morning. But Dombrowski said, \u201cHe just called me as a friend.\u201d Lauber notes it was Sunday morning that Dombrowski \u201cgauged Cora\u2019s interest in managing the Phillies \u2026 while Thomson was preparing to manage a game against the Braves.\u201d Lauber: \u201cNot the best look\u201d (PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, 4\/29<\/a>).<\/p>\n

TAKING BLAME: In Philadelphia, Marcus Hayes writes Phillies fans should not believe Dombrowski is the \u201cright person to run the front office\u201d because, in this \u201cmoment of crisis, Dombrowski isn\u2019t being accountable.\u201d Meanwhile, in this moment of failure, Thomson is \u201cbeing eminently accountable.\u201d On Tuesday evening, \u201cjust six hours after the ax fell, Thomson held a video news conference.\u201d He said, \u201cI think, if you\u2019re an accountable person and a leader, you\u2019re going to stand up in front of people and answer the questions when it\u2019s all over.\u201d Dombrowski in a separate press conference on Tuesday \u201canswered lots of questions, but not the most important one.\u201d Hayes: \u201cDombrowski\u2019s job is to hold folks accountable. He\u2019s holding Thomson accountable, obviously. \u2026 But himself? Not so much.\u201d He writes the \u201coverarching theme in Dombrowski\u2019s 23-minute, 40-second post-firing news conference was this: I put together a hell of a team, and it\u2019s not winning, so I fired the manager\u201d (PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, 4\/29<\/a>).<\/p>\n

NO HARD FEELINGS: ESPN.com\u2019s Jesse Rogers wrote Thomson \u201cshowed no animosity toward the team or front office\u201d after his firing Tuesday, instead \u201cexpressing a desire to remain in the organization if he\u2019s wanted.\u201d Thomson \u201cexpressed little concern\u201d about the fact that, over the weekend, Dombrowski reached out to Cora to \u201cgauge his interest in the job\u201d before Thomson had been informed he was fired. Thomson: \u201cI think Dave is just doing his due diligence and he had made up his mind and he was going to move forward. \u2026 I think people need to trust him and he\u2019s going to do the right thing for the organization\u201d (ESPN.com, 4\/28<\/a>).<\/p>\n

SENSE OF URGENCY: SI\u2019s Tom Verducci wrote the firing of Cora made the firing of Thomson \u201ceasier, if not a necessity.\u201d The Red Sox and Phillies are \u201ccut from the same cloth: high-payroll teams off to disastrous starts facing April urgency with no avenues to change personnel.\u201d The Phillies, though, are \u201cin worse shape than even the Red Sox. So, the manager must go.\u201d Verducci: \u201cWhen poor roster construction leads to poor performance, blame goes to the manager and coaches, not the front office decision makers who put the team together, who have far more job security.\u201d He wrote there was a time when general managers \u201cwere reluctant to fire managers, because that moved them closer to having their own job on the line.\u201d Verducci: \u201cAs the saying went, GMs got two manager hires, in rare cases three. Times have changed\u201d (SI, 4\/28<\/a>).<\/p>\n

SPRING CLEANING: In Delaware, Matthew De George wrote Thomson\u2019s firing will \u201cfail to so tidily fix a ballclub whose problems run much deeper than just who signs the lineup card.\u201d He wrote it is a \u201ctruism in sports that the manager is the one to take the fall for an underperforming team\u201d and it is \u201cjust as true that rarely is he the true problem.\u201d Beyond \u201cenumerating the failures and professing a desire for better baseball,\u201d there was not \u201cmuch in the way of concrete changes that Dombrowski offered.\u201d Someone \u201chad to take the fall for the start the Phillies are on,\u201d so the \u201cax fell on Thomson.\u201d And in doing so, it \u201cspring-loaded the mechanism for Dombrowski should the fortunes not change\u201d (Delaware County DAILY TIMES, 4\/28<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Phillies President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski \u201cknows what a winning team looks like,\u201d but this year\u2019s team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":686037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2397],"tags":[5,9600,4,144,25,4216,40],"class_list":["post-686036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia-phillies","tag-baseball","tag-leadership","tag-mlb","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-phillies","tag-philadelphiaphillies","tag-phillies"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116489316142641546","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/686037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}