MILWAUKEE — It’s been a week since Dave Dombrowski woke up, went for a jog, and decided to fire Joe Girardi.
Six games later, the Phillies haven’t lost.
Call it the Thomson Turnaround, and well, you wouldn’t be wrong. It isn’t all about the manager, of course, but dumping Girardi and replacing him with longtime bench coach Rob Thomson has served the desired purpose of shocking the Phillies into playing better.
They won their seventh consecutive game — No. 6 under Thomson, the first manager to start 6-0 since Felipe Alou went 7-0 for the San Francisco Giants in 2003 — Thursday with a sweep-completing 8-3 trouncing of the Milwaukee Brewers, who dropped their sixth game in a row and are falling faster than their mascot on his slide in left field at American Family Field. Whatever. The Phillies will take it, just as they happily swept the swooning Los Angeles Angels last weekend at home.
Don’t look now, but the Phillies are within one game of .500 (28-29), and their next 13 games are against noncontending Arizona, Miami, Washington, and Texas. If they’re going to make their move in the National League playoff race, now is the time, part of the reason Dombrowski believed last Friday was the right time for a managerial change.
In finishing off the Brewers, the Phillies got a massive solo homer off the center-field scoreboard from Bryce Harper in the seventh inning and two-run jobs from Kyle Schwarber in the eighth inning and Odúbel Herrera in the ninth. The late thunder broke open the game and meant that Thomson didn’t have to turn to embattled closer Corey Knebel to safeguard a slim lead.
The Phillies are built to bash their way to victories, and it’s exactly what they have done, especially since Thomson took over. They have outscored opponents by 53-18 during the winning streak. Under Thomson, they have scored 47 runs, an average of 7.8 runs per game, hit 16 homers, and slugged .591.
If the Phillies showed off their slug late in the game, the early innings were a slog for both teams. Phillies starter Zach Eflin and Brewers ace Corbin Burnes, the reigning Cy Young Award winner, racked up high pitch counts and were gone by the fifth inning. The teams combined to use 11 pitchers, who threw a total of 400 pitches.
But there’s seemingly no stopping the Thomson Turnaround. Didi Gregorius, who finished with three hits, broke a 1-1 tie in the fifth inning with a two-out, check-swing RBI double to left field, the sort of result that happens only when everything is going perfectly.
Schwarber’s favorite month
A year ago, Schwarber went 28-for-100 with 16 homers and a .760 slugging percentage in June to turn around his season after a slow start with the Washington Nationals, who inserted him in the leadoff spot.
Once again, Schwarber is back atop the batting order and heating up in June.
Including his two-run homer in the eighth inning against Brewers reliever Trevor Kelley, Schwarber is 10-for-28 (.357) with three doubles, four homers, and an .893 slugging percentage since the calendar flipped from May. After being removed from the leadoff spot for a spell, he has been back atop the Phillies’ order since May 28, a span of 11 games, and reached base at a .415 clip.
Zach attacked
Eflin didn’t have his usual precision command, but the Brewers — specifically Willy Adames — also made him work hard.
Adames, who homered in the first inning, waged a 10-pitch at-bat in the second and a 13-pitch at-bat in the fourth. Although neither resulted in a hit — Adames’ comebacker to the mound left the bases loaded in the second inning — Eflin was out of the game at 96 pitches after four innings.
Eflin made a stellar defensive play in the second inning, bouncing off the mound to barehand a chopper by Hunter Renfroe and making a strong throw to first base.
But Eflin also issued three walks in a stretch of five batters to snap a streak of 33 consecutive starts in which he walked two batters or fewer. It was the third-longest streak by a Phillies pitcher, trailing Robin Roberts (36 starts in 1960-61) and Roy Halladay (35 starts in 2010-11).
