Rob Thomson, the sluggers, and relievers cost the Phillies a World Series season as the Mets take the NLDS

NEW YORK — When you lose, it’s always the manager’s fault. When you don’t score, it’s always the hitters’ fault. When you don’t stop the bleeding, it’s always the bullpen’s fault.

When your team loses, it’s always somebody’s fault, right? When your team had the best record in baseball for months, and when it wins 95 games and the division and enters the postseason with the No. 2 seed and the bye, with a massive home-field advantage against a rookie manager and his luxury-taxed team mired in a semi-rebuild — well, it’s got to be somebody’s fault, right?

Like the 2022 Phillies, Team Totem is for real — the Mets have a Rally Pumpkin, an “OMG,” a pop-star second baseman, and have been the best team in baseball since McDonald’s milkshake monster Grimace threw out a first pitch in June (which is why there are purple people roaming Queens). But when Sean Manaea squashes you in Game 3 on a Tuesday and Jose Quintana buries you in Game 4 on a lovely Wednesday evening, you have to find someone to blame.

The Phillies’ targets are easy.

And deserved.

Rob Thomson bore criticisms when the Phillies lost Game 6 and the 2022 World Series after he lifted ace Zack Wheeler and the game turned. He suffered again last year, when lineup flaws and bullpen collapses cost the Phillies a second straight pennant.

He will spend this winter persecuted again. It’s part of the job description.

The Phillies have won more games each of the past three seasons but exited the playoffs faster each of the past three seasons. Topper?

“I don’t see us going backward, no,” Thomson said.

That’s debatable.

So, can this $247 million roster ever win it all?

“Absolutely. Absolutely,” Thomson said. “There are ebbs and flows in the season, when you get into a rut. It happens in the postseason, too. Unfortunately, it happened at the end of the Arizona series last year. And then again this year.”

Pause.

“That doesn’t mean things won’t change next year.”

OK.

This time, Thomson couldn’t figure out his bullpen against a balanced, disciplined Mets lineup; maybe he left Jeff Hoffman in too long. He also couldn’t compose an effective lineup: He started left-handed hitters Bryson Stott and Brandon Marsh against Quintana, a left-handed pitcher on whom Stott’s and Marsh’s understudies, Johan Rojas and Edmundo Sosa, had feasted.

The Phillies sent two relief pitchers to the All-Star Game, Hoffman and Matt Strahm. They were abysmal.

» READ MORE: Phillies’ $800 million Big Four vanishes again in Game 3 loss

In the sixth inning in Game 4 on Wednesday, Hoffman, the Game 1 goat, repeated his performance. He walked two Mets batters, hit another, and, amid it all, threw two wild pitches before he finally got an out, after which he was lifted for presumptive closer Carlos Estévez.

Francisco Lindor launched a 99-mph fastball 398 feet to center field for a 4-1 New York lead and a 4-1 win.

Hoffman had a 1-0 lead in Game 1, too, when he entered in the eighth inning. He gave up a single, a walk, and an RBI single. Strahm entered Game 1 and gave up two hits, allowing two more runs to score. Orion Kerkering entered and two more scored. Kerkering also allowed two of three inherited runners to score in a Game 3 loss.

But the manager is a Cinderella story — a lifer coach whose interim-ship in 2022 made him a sudden star — and Hoffman, Strahm, and Kerkering aren’t exactly Tom Gordon and Mariano Rivera.

The batters, on the other hand, are exactly Flash and the Sandman.

The Phillies’ 1-2-3-4 hitters —,Kyle Schwarber, Trea Turner, Bryce Harper, and Nick Castellanos — are under contract for almost $800 million. Unlike well-paid J.T. Realmuto, the 33-year-old catcher who had knee surgery and went 0-for-11 against the Mets, the other four guys aren’t on the roster for their leather. They’re hitters. Ostensibly.

“I felt like the big inning kind of avoided us,” said Schwarber, who, after the third inning of Game 1, went hitless in his next 14 at-bats.

“Offense comes and goes,” Thomson said.

» READ MORE: Murphy: Phillies’ crushing NLDS loss raises questions about longterm futures of Bohm, Marsh, even Thomson

“We’ve just gotta be better. We’ve got to finish the job,” said Harper, whose 1.279 postseason OPS was an outlier in an otherwise mundane offense. “We’ve got a great group of guys and a really good core. We just weren’t able to get the job done.”

Again.

The Phillies are now 1-5 in their last six playoff games, including the home-field collapses in Games 6 and 7 of the NLCS against the Diamondbacks last season. Thomson and the bullpen were complicit in those failures, too.

But the offense the Big Four anchors now has scored eight runs in those five losses.

That’s about $100 million per loss.

That dog don’t hunt.

The hitters wasted shutout starts from Wheeler in Game 1 and from Ranger Suárez in Game 4. Wheeler is baseball’s best pitcher over the last five seasons and has been a postseason revelation, so his dominance was to be expected.

Suárez, not so much.

Suárez pitched his way to his first All-Star Game, and likely a huge contract, with a 10-2 record and a 1.83 ERA in his first 16 starts. He was, by many measures, the best pitcher in baseball.

Then his back began to act up. First the right side, then the left.

Suárez went 2-6 with a 6.54 ERA in his last 11 starts. Opponents’ OPS against him was .885; for context, only 11 players had a season OPS better than .885. He was, by many measures, the worst pitcher in baseball, except for teammate Taijuan Walker.

After spending three months searching, Suárez found himself just in time.

He gave the Phillies 4⅓ innings of a scoreless start that came out of nowhere. Suárez loaded the bases in each of the first two innings, and he left two runners on when he exited for Hoffman with one out in the fifth, but Suárez squirmed out of trouble early and Hoffman mowed down Pete Alonso, then got Jose Iglesias to weakly ground out.

» READ MORE: Rob Thomson, Nick Castellanos, Ranger Suárez: The Phillies with the most to lose and gain in the playoffs

Suárez delivered 97 pitches, only 58 of them strikes, but considering he hadn’t thrown that many pitches in more than three weeks, and considering he’d been atrocious since his back started to spasm in late June, what he managed in Game 4 was miraculous. He lowered his postseason ERA to 1.43, which remains the best in Phillies history among pitchers with at least 20 innings. He got almost no support.

The lineup scratched out one ugly run in the fourth inning. It was just the second run of support Phillies starters had while pitching in the four NLDS games.

Blame Thomson for that Wednesday night. He said he wanted Marsh and Stott to play to produce offense, but Marsh and Stott, left-handed hitters, both were 0-for-2 against Quintana, who is, remember, a lefty.

Rojas, the Phillies’ defensive ace in center field and a right-handed hitter, was 5-for-9 against Quintana; he is the only pitcher Rojas has faced in more than three plate appearances against whom Rojas has an on-base percentage over .500. Quintana is, literally, the only major-league pitcher Rojas dominates. Sosa, meanwhile, was 3-for-9.

Even stranger, left fielder Austin Hays, a righty, was 1-for-1. Weston Wilson replaced him Wednesday night. Wilson was 0-for-6 against Quintana, and had never had a postseason plate appearance.

Stott, Marsh, and Wilson combined to go 0-for-6 against Quintana.

They really weren’t the issue Wednesday. Neither was Harper, who walked in the fourth, then led off the sixth with a double that chased Quintana. Right-hander Reed Garrett entered and struck out Castellanos, walked Alec Bohm, then struck out Realmuto. Lefty reliever David Peterson entered and Stott grounded out.

So yes, bury Topper and rip the ‘pen, but, really, when you’re paying Trea “3-for-15″ Turner and four other hitters nigh unto $1 billion, and they score two runs or less in five of six games, well, it ain’t really Topper and the ‘pen, now is it?

Well, maybe it is, a little.