One year to the day that Rob Thomson was hired as the Phillies manager, he and his team found themselves in the same position they were in when he took over for the deposed Joe Girardi.

They were seven games under .500 and playing some of the worst baseball possible.

What happened next, we all know about.

A 10-game winning streak to start his tenure. A 95-win pace for four months. An October joy ride for the ages.

But no one asked for an encore, and yet, to get where they want to go – two more Fall wins than a season ago, that’s exactly what the Phillies were tasked with doing.

It all started rather dramatically for Thomson.

The offense exploded for a three-game sweep of the Los Angeles Angels. They outscored LA 26-9 in those three games, but it was the third one where the heroics were needed.

You can’t forget that one – a game-tying grand slam by Bryce Harper in the bottom of the eighth, and then, after coughing up the lead again in the top of the ninth, a 3-run homer by Bryson Stott to win it.

It was widely considered the game that sparked the great run.

This season, that game was supposed to be the great comeback against the Arizona Diamondbacks a couple weeks ago – a game where after the team fell behind 5-0, the struggling Trea Turner hit a game-tying homer in the bottom of the ninth and Alec Bohm walked it off with a single to the right field wall in the bottom of the 10th.

An acceptable four-game split followed against the first place Atlanta Braves in Georgia, but an equally unacceptable sweep at the hands of the mediocre New York Mets in Queens, and losing the opener of a series in Washington when pitching and defense cost them a winnable game, left the Phillies searching anywhere and everywhere for a hero.

Enter Drew Ellis.

O.K., so Ellis wasn’t a dramatic hero, like Harper and Stott a season ago, and an 11-3 win over a Nationals team the Phillies have defeated 26 of the last 30 times isn’t exactly an outcome that you will likely point to and say, ‘yeah, that was the moment’ – especially because they won the night before as well.

Then there’s the whole thing where two of the three guys who have been in prolonged slumps had great weekends, with J.T. Realmuto hitting homers on back-to-back nights while going 4-for-9 and Kyle Schwarber waking up from hibernation, like he does every June, going 5-for-15 in the series with two Schwarbombs and six RBIs on Sunday.

Ellis wasn’t alone, but Ellis was, for this weekend anyway, just what the Phillies needed:

That was Sunday.

He got his first hit as a Phillie playing 3B on Friday. He drew a walk on Saturday, playing 1B. Then Sunday he was a monster:

He followed that one up with this one:

If he got one more we would have been treading into rarified, Bobby Estalella territory.

But in all seriousness, Ellis, for one weekend, added a right-handed bat to the Phillies lineup that was sorely needed.

With Alec Bohm on the I.L. and the rest of the righties on the team not named Nick Castellanos stuck in quick sand, a jolt from a right-handed hitter to the lineup was sorely needed.

Ellis likely will get a little longer look. Expect him to be in the lineup Monday when the Phillies return home to Citizens Bank Park to face the Detroit Tigers. They’re facing a lefty, and not a very good one, in Joey Wentz, so Ellis will likely get the nod over Kody Clemens at first base.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to see him get starts against righties too, like Sunday, when he got the call ahead of Edmundo Sosa.

Sosa has been overexposed a little by the Phillies this season, and it’s good to get him back into more of the utility role that best suits him, and with Ellis here, the Phillies can do that.

What should be interesting is to see if Ellis can find a way to continue to contribute. If he does, the Phillies will have a curious decision to make once Bohm returns. Could Ellis earn his way onto the bench in lieu of, say, Josh Harrison – who also had a nice game Saturday for the Phillies? Or is he just here as a brief replacement, and then he gets sent right back out?

The search continues for any kind of right-handed production beyond Castellanos. Realmuto looking like his 2022 second-half self for a couple games is a start, but maybe Ellis can be another solid contributor – at east for a few weeks until trading season is upon us and the Phillies can go out and add to the roster.

June Schwarber

I mean, it’s crazy, right?

Here’s a stat that’s absolutely stunning:

Only 10 players, with at least 500 plate appearances, have a career slugging percentage in the month of June over .600.

Eight of them are in the Hall of Fame – Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Larry Walker, Ted Williams, Hank Greenberg, Jim Thome, Jimmie Foxx, and Rogers Hornsby.

The other two?

Mike Trout and Kyle Schwarber.

Schwarber has 49 homers in June, including the two from Sunday. He’s hit one out of the park every 9.7 at bats in June.

Just when you thought this season would be different, because on June 1st he was hitting less than I weighed as a Freshman in high school, Schwarber flips the switch and proves us wrong.

Aaaaannnnddd….

Five hits through four games this month (and really, all five came in the last three contests), three of them for extra bases, six RBIs, a .932 OPS.

He’s got 23 more games. So, that should be about another 12 homers, right?

No longer “Stranger Suarez”

Remember that guy who looked nothing like the Ranger Suarez who became a Phillies pitching icon in 2022 in his first three starts?

Well, that stranger has disappeared in the last two outings.

The old Ranger is back.

Following up on an excellent outing against the Mets, Suarez threw seven innings Sunday, allowing just one run. He did give up eight hits and a walk, but they were mostly scattered.

It’s a big plus for the Phillies, who still have a ways to go to climb out of the crater they put themselves in during a 10-16 May.

Getting the starting pitchers to be more consistent and pitch like they have in the past will be a necessity this month, which features a seven-game stretch against the Dodgers and Diamondbacks and after a quick visit to the minor league team being allowed to impersonate a major league team in Oakland, they come home for another six-game stretch against Atlanta and the Mets.

After that, July and August mostly lighten up on the schedule front, which is when the Phillies can really make hay, but they do need to prevent falling off a cliff in June to get there, and while continued good offense from this past weekend will also be important, the starting pitchers will be what makes or breaks the Phillies in June.