Phillies Score as Rob Thomson Fired in April After Postseason Run

Phillies score did not just change in April; the manager changed too. Rob Thomson was out before May, seven months after leading the Phillies in the postseason, in one of the strangest managerial turns of the month.

Rob Thomson And Alex Cora

Thomson and Alex Cora were both fired in April after managing in the previous postseason. That had never happened before, according to Baseball Reference researcher Kenny Jackelen, making the double dismissal an outlier even by the sport’s long memory.

Only one other manager had ever been fired in April after taking a club to the previous year’s postseason. Bob Lemon guided the Yankees to the World Series in 1981, then was out by April 26 of the next year.

Red Sox Ninth-Inning Outburst

Cora’s last inning with the Red Sox came on April 25, when they scored 10 runs in the ninth inning in Baltimore. The Red Sox had not scored 10 runs in any game all season before that frame, and the club won 17-1 that day.

The size of that win did not protect Cora. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the last manager to be fired after winning by 16 runs was Bob Ferguson, who was dumped by the 1887 New York club after that kind of result.

A Rare April Pattern

The timeline is what makes the firings stand out: two managers who reached the previous postseason were gone before the calendar flipped to May. Thomson’s exit followed the same unusual pattern as Cora’s, but the Red Sox game supplied the sharpest detail of how abruptly one of those moves landed.

For the Phillies, the practical takeaway is simple. Thomson’s run from last fall no longer buys him time, and the club has already moved into a new phase with a manager who reached the postseason only seven months earlier now out of the job.