ALLENTOWN, Pa, — Colby Thomas was in the middle of the desert when he found out he was being traded to the Phillies.
He was four hours into his eight hour drive from Sacramento to Las Vegas when Major League Baseball’s trade deadline was approaching. While Thomas — an outfielder in the Athletics’ organization — was already half way through his trip to the Triple-A squad, he switched seats with his wife, Anna Grace, in anticipation that he might get the call.
The 3 p.m. Pacific time deadline came and went, but his phone didn’t ring. He figured there were still moves that hadn’t gone through yet and continued on standby. He eventually did get the call ten minutes later, but it wasn’t obvious when he picked up.
“I had a call from a number I didn’t have saved,” Thomas said. “In the first few seconds of it, nobody said anything. I said hello. There was no response. I said hello, and then it was our GM.”
Then-Athletics general manager David Forst informed Thomas he was being sent to Philadelphia in exchange for reliever Seth Johnson. The former No. 2 prospect soon got on the phone with Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski, who told him he would join the squad at Triple-A Lehigh Valley.
“I was ready to get back into a groove,” said Thomas, who had already been preparing to return to the minor leagues anyway. He would’ve preferred the call four hours earlier, but the Thomases, both natives of Valdosta, Georgia, were excited to return to the East Coast.
“My wife’s family thought we were pranking them,” he said. “I’m like, ‘No, I’m serious.’ So, I had to send them the article. They said, ‘How’d you get somebody to write that?’ I was like, ‘No, I promise it’s real.’”
Thomas, 25, batted .309 across the first month of 2026 at Triple-A before earning a promotion to the A’s. He struggled across 55 games for the big league club, hitting .202/.235/.333 with 37 strikeouts. But he ultimately made the most of his bench role by watching the game and learning from All-Stars Nick Kurtz, Shea Langeliers and Brent Rooker. It’s allowed him to slow things down, which he said is the biggest difference for him from when he made his major league debut in 2025.
“If you get in the box, you’re up there, and sometimes you’re stressing, and the game’s fast,” Thomas said. “But when you’re sitting in the dugout, you’re watching a pitcher pitch. You can breathe and think about what the pitcher is going to throw, and you’re like, ‘Why can’t I do that when I’m in the box?’”
It’s just another one of the strides he’s made since his collegiate days at Mercer University. Thomas said his sophomore season in 2021 was the first time he struggled playing baseball, and after continuing to do so in the Cape Cod Baseball League, he had to learn to fail and “take the panic out of the game.” He flushed it out and returned to the field with less pressure on himself, and it paid off — Thomas batted .325 in 213 plate appearances for the Bears in 2022 and was selected in the third round of the MLB draft that July.
Of course, he’s faced other struggles since. He had a 33.7% chase rate and 26.3% strikeout rate before being called up in 2025, and he hasn’t shown consistency at the big league level. Rather than being something to dwell over, Thomas knows it’s just something he needs to work through.
“If you think about something like I have to do this, it’s just in your head, and it’s just failure,” he said. “If you take all the stuff out and you just play, you’re going to get better results. You’re just going to have more fun while you’re doing it. You’re going to play better. You’re going to be a better teammate.”
Thomas joined the IronPigs in the midst of their six-game road trip at Worcester last week. Across four games, he went 3-for-11 with an RBI and appeared in every outfield spot. He joins a deep outfielder room that recently added Kameron Misner and saw Gabriel Rincones Jr. return after two months with the Phillies, and already includes Otto Kemp, Tommy Pham, Steward Berroa and occasionally Dylan Moore and Felix Reyes. His presence will allow for even more flexibility for manager Chris Adamson down the stretch of the season, who’s already a fan of Thomas.
“He’s fitting great,” Adamson said. “He makes us a bit more dynamic on defense. He can go and get it with the best of them, and you know he can steal a base. He runs well. There’s a lot of power, so we just added another dimension to our lineup.”
