4 Phillies Who Cost Their Team the NLCS

2. Rob Thomson

When you've got someone struggling like Kimbrel and keep going back to the well, some of that isn't on the pitcher themselves though.

Everyone is going to struggle sometimes, and when a player's in a slump and keeps being put out there anyway, you have to start to look at the manager.

Rob Thomson's biggest mistake with his pitchers wasn't his use of relievers, however. It was more about when he wasn't using his relievers.

Game 6, which may well have been the most important game of the series, saw him totally botch the game. Leaving Aaron Nola in there too long to try and brute-force his way into getting to use his usual plan with the relievers was a total blunder.

And on the offensive side, Thomson made no lineup changes for Game 7 despite the fact that the Phillies had scored just 1 run the night before.

There's a common thread with those issues: inaction. Every step of the way Thomson's approach was "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" even when it started to become clear that some things were, indeed, broke.

You don't want to see a manager panic and make too many changes, of course. It's good to believe in your guys. But at some point you have to take action, and Thomson allowed his overconfidence to cost the