As the Phillies’ 2026 mercifully approaches its conclusion (what’s that? It’s still only April???), they’ll welcome the San Francisco Giants to Citizens Bank Park for a three-game set. The Phillies already took their annual trip to San Francisco and suffered their annual series loss there. The Phillies have traditionally fared better when these teams play in Philadelphia (extremely low set bar), but the way the Phillies have been playing, I’m not sure it matters.
The Giants are having a disappointing
season of their own, sitting at 13-15. And perhaps the biggest disappointment on the team has been staff ace Logan Webb.
Webb has somewhat quietly been one of the best pitchers in baseball over the past few seasons. He’s led the league in innings pitched for three straight years, and they’ve largely been quality innings, with an ERA in the low 3’s every year. He rarely walks batters and led the league in strikeouts in 2025.
He’s not off to as strong a start this season. While his ERA of 4.86 is a bit inflated due to a six-run outing on Opening Day, he’s walking more batters than usual, and his strikeout rate is down from last season. He also took some criticism from the Dodgers after possibly intentionally beaning a player.
The good news for Webb is that a start against the Phillies has served as a “get right” game for quite a few pitchers this season The bad news is that he has poor career numbers against them, with a 6.19 ERA in three starts.
Pennant year song battle
It’s a Mistake by Men at Work prevailed again, getting past I Hate U by SZA.
This week’s song is from 2009, and is what the Phillies said to manager Rob Thomson today: Goodbye by Kristina DeBarge:
Vote for this week’s winner:
Non-Phillies thought
It would have been nice to see the Flyers take care of business and close out the series against the Penguins. Come on, guys, bandwagon fans like me just got back on board! Don’t make us regret it!
As for the Sixers, they’re clearly out matched, and as expected, re-integrating Joel Embiid into the lineup has not been smooth. Oh well, maybe next year will be the year when Embiid enters the playoffs healthy and stays that way throughout the duration. (Laughs hysterically)
Additional thought about the series
Rob Thomson is now the ex-manager of the Phillies. Many fans are happy about that, while some think that Dave Dombrowski should have been the one to get fired, if not both of them.
While I have a tough time laying all the blame at Thomson’s feet, I can understand why they made the move. Maybe you aren’t a fan of the work Dombrowski did this offseason, but they returned the core of a team that’s been very successful, and most of the players are greatly underperforming reasonable expectations. It isn’t necessarily Topper’s fault, but he certainly doesn’t seem to have the answers either.
Thomson is a “player’s manager,” and maybe the team just got a bit too comfortable. I don’t think interim manager Don Mattingly is going to make any drastic changes in the clubhouse, but it’s possible that the knowledge that they got their manager fired will motivate the players to improve.
The last time the Phillies fired the manager in season, it worked out well for them, as the team eventually made it all the way to the World Series after jettisoning Joe Girardi. Back then, I could identify several issues with Girardi that seemed to be holding the team back: He often buried younger players in favor of subpar veterans and he seemingly no concept of reliever leverage.
I couldn’t see any similar fatal flaws in Thomson. He’s clearly not the best strategist, but neither are lots of successful managers. (We loved Charlie Manuel, but he was no Connie Mack.) But as they say, you can’t fire all the players, and with the team in danger of wasting the season, they decided that Thomson had to go. Hopefully, the team reacts as well as they did when Thomson was first hired and turns the season around quickly.
