Phillies extend manager Rob Thomson's contract through 2026

PHILADELPHIA -- Every move a manager makes is scrutinized, especially the ones that don’t work.

Phillies manager Rob Thomson said Tuesday at Citizens Bank Park that he has thought about the moves that didn’t work in the NL Division Series against the Mets. But most of the moves that he has made since he replaced Joe Girardi as manager in June 2022 have worked. It is why Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski announced that Thomson has signed a contract extension through the 2026 season.

“This is the only place I want to be,” Thomson said. “And this will be my last stop.”

Thomson’s contract had been set to expire following 2025. This new deal avoids him coming to Spring Training as a lame-duck manager.

“There’s very few clubs in baseball that have made the playoffs three years in a row,” Dombrowski said. “He’s done that. We’ve been a very good club under his guidance.”

Dombrowski also announced that the entire coaching staff will return in 2025. Coaching staff changes often follow disappointing finishes, whether it’s a team that loses 100 games or a team that fails to meet World Series expectations like the Phillies.

“It’s hard to put that on their backs in this case,” Dombrowski said. “I think we all share collectively in what’s happened.”

Fan frustration following the Phillies’ early postseason exit has focused on hitting coach Kevin Long. The Phillies finished fifth in baseball this season in runs (784) and OPS (.750), but they scored only 12 runs in four games in the NLDS. They batted .186 with a .597 OPS against New York. They struck out 38 times. They walked 16 times.

It mirrored the team’s offensive collapse in the final five games of the 2023 NLCS.

“If you go around baseball and you talk to every baseball person and say, ‘OK, give me your top five hitting coaches in baseball.’ He’s going to be on almost every list,” Thomson said about Long. “He’s going to be No. 1 on a lot of lists. It’s a random game. People get sped up. We’ve got to be able to slow them down, and even if they have the opposite field approach, still they get sped up sometimes. We have to make sure that they’re doing the little things, pass the baton, trust your teammates, keep the line moving.”

Will Thomson and Long have any new hitters to work with next year? Probably, yes. But mostly, the Phillies will be bringing back most of the core.

Thomson thinks they can win with that group.

“I think we ran into the hottest team in baseball,” Thomson said, referring to the Mets. “Some of this we need to downplay a little bit and not just think about blowing up the club. Because that’s not going to happen, one. And we’ve got a really good roster. Short series, very random, this game. I really have a lot of confidence in this club moving forward.”