Why the ‘September Collapse’ narrative makes little sense to Rob Thomson

Rob Thomson knows the narrative.

The Phillies’ interim manager has seen — both from afar and up close — the last four seasons worth of Phillies September collapses. When his team started the month of September 0-2 (now 0-3) after a separate 1-3 stretch led into it, he heard the chatter that the four-year collapse streak was tracking to extend to five.

He, for one, doesn’t buy it. 

Before the Phillies’ series finale against the Giants in San Francisco on Sunday, Thomson explained why he doesn’t see much merit in the September Collapse storyline that’s followed the Phillies the last four years (through their own doing, to be sure) and certainly isn’t dissipating after a rocky start to the final full month of the 2022 regular season.

The Canadian turned to the National Hockey League and drew on his own Toronto Maple Leafs fandom to do so.

“I don’t really pay attention to that. That doesn’t make any sense to me, because there’s just different players, different people, different coaches. Everything’s different,” Thomson said. “[The Toronto Maple Leafs] haven’t gotten out of the first round in the last 15 years. And, like, they’re obviously not the same people. So why would you even go there? As a player, a coach or a manager. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

Several things can be true at once. 

The first is that Thomson is right. Just five players from the Phillies’ 2018 collapse — the 8-20 September, which preceded 12-16 in 2019, 13-17 in 2020 and 14-16 (including October) in 2021 — remain on the team in 2022. Those would be Rhys Hoskins, Zach Eflin, Ranger Suárez, Aaron Nola and Seranthony Domínguez. Just two coaches (Thomson being one of them; Dusty Wathan the other) are holdovers. 

Thomson is right. They’re not the same people. The 2022 roster is significantly better than each of those previous iterations, a large reason why they’re the only of those teams (outside of the anomalous 2020) to hold a playoff spot entering September, and why their .557 winning percentage at the start of the month was the best of the five teams in question. While the case can be made that the 2018-21 Phillies were playing above their heads for the season’s first five months, the 2022 Phillies seem to actually belong in the playoff hunt; their Pythagorean W-L record is actually one game better than their real one.

The other simultaneous truth is that no one really cares. The roster may look nothing like it did in 2018, but largely the same group of fans are following the team. They’ve experienced each of those collapses as they’ve unfolded, and it’s hard to convince them not to fear another meltdown, especially when the first few games of the month went as poorly as they did. The Phillies, whichever particular personnel that blanket may include, have completely fallen apart down the stretch each of the last four seasons. Who’s to say it won’t happen again?

And, finally, there’s the concept of inheritance. Sure, Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos and David Robertson played no role in the Phillies’ collapses of 2018, 2021 or any year in between. But they hear the narrative too. They know the history. Through no fault of their own, they’re now part of the franchise that cratered when it mattered most for four consecutive seasons.

Does that weigh on them? Who knows? Baseball is a psychological game. Maybe there’s a burden to carry, even if the burden was inherited. Or maybe there’s not.

The Phillies have 28 games to prove to us the latter.

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