Philadelphia Phillies manager Rob Thomson talks early days playing ball in Stratford, Olympics and his career
People know Rob Thomson as the current manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, but the Sarnia-born baseball player has a long history with the game. In his younger days, he played for the Stratford Nationals in the Intercounty Baseball League. He’s giving a talk this week at TheMuseum in downtown Kitchener as part of a fundraiser for the Kitchener Panthers baseball team and he spoke with CBC K-W host Craig Norris about those early days, his career and what he’s looking forward to this summer.
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Injured Phillies Prospect Ranks In MLB Poll
The Philadelphia Phillies won’t have their top prospect, Andrew Painter, pitching in a live game in 2024. But that doesn’t mean that MLB executives have forgotten just how good he is. Recently, MLB.com polled executives and asked them about pitching prospects. The questions were simple — who has the best fastball, who has the best secondary pitch and who has the best pitchability? Painter came up in all three polls. When it came to fastballs,
45% of the executives picked Pittsburgh Pirates prospect Paul Skenes as having the best. He was drafted in the first round out of LSU and he’s on a fast track to the Majors. As for Painter, he was part of a large group of players that received votes. Next was the best secondary pitch. Skenes came up once again, as he led with 20% of the vote for his slider. But Painter’s slider drew 4% of the vote as did the slider of Phillies reliever Orion Kerkering, who played
the final month of the regular season and the postseason with the Phillies. Finally, there was pitchability, which the writers at MLB.com said was hard to define. This is about command, control and feel for how to pitch. Well, Painter ranked high here. He was tied for third with Skenes, as Cincinnati’s Rhett Lowder led the way with 17 percent.
