Well, I’m home from eating hot dogs and hamburgers, drinking beers, and shooting off fireworks to celebrate America’s 250th birthday. No, I didn’t watch any of Trump’s speeches or freak show. No, I didn’t watch Mamdani’s speech either, because he’s not our leader. I divorced myself from real world politics today, and well, it was nice.
A lot of folks have suggested that Trump, and the issues facing our nation, made this July 4th less worth celebrating than past ones. Not surprisingly, I don’t agree. Part of celebrating America is celebrating the ideals of it, not necessarily the day-to-day reality of it. I also happen to think that a nation is a lot more than the sum of it’s government and laws. It’s worth noting that our Declaration of Independence was written years before our first real legal document, the Constitution, and is far more of an idealist document. It is a document that celebrates freedom, independence, and the idea of a country where all people are free to live as they want. It’s a beautiful document. It is a beautiful idea. And yes, we are a beautiful country.
The United States has a lot of failings. Slavery. The Trail of Tears. Japanese Internment Camps. Jim Crow. Segregation. The Immigration Act of 1924. The Iraq War. The Patriot Act. The War on Drugs. The way we treated Vietnam veterans when they came home from the war. I would argue January 6th and the current actions of ICE are not good moments. Our failings are pretty bi-partisan and very real. I suppose if you’re an absolutist, you could cancel us as a nation. Lord knows we’ve done it to plenty of people who we shouldn’t have.
We’re also the greatest country on Earth. There is a reason my friends in foreign countries *want* to come here. There’s a reason millions of people try to immigrate here illegally, or overstay visas, or try to float from Cuba, or even seek to marry to get here. It’s better here than it is there. Sure, it’s not *equally* better for all people, we don’t all have the same opportunities, and that’s a problem we should be trying to fix every day. No, I’m sorry though, there’s not really somewhere else I’d rather be. And you know, the rest of the world wants us at our best. The French maintain a cemetery at Normandy because brave Americans of all stripes were willing to sacrifice their lives for their freedom, as they did for us during the Revolution. We’re the country that lead the 20th century in innovation. We landed on the Moon. We won the World Wars. We built the interstate highway system. We built suburbia. We were a leader in the industrial revolution. Nations across the globe quote our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution in their own founding documents. Millions come see our musicians, actresses, and athletes when they come to their countries. Yes, sure, we did some shitty stuff in history that we should reckon with and avoid doing again. We’ve also done the greatest shit in world history. Like individual people, we should hang our head in shame because of our worst moments. Screw that, it’s no way to live. Billions live in freedom around the globe today, either directly because of what we did, or in part because of the inspiration of our own revolution. We fought a whole war with Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, and he and his nation directly quoted Thomas Jefferson in the opening of their very own Declaration of Independence. We’re not perfect, we’re not even the only great nation in this world, but dammit be proud, we’re the best.
So yeah, I celebrated like a red blooded American today. The idea of this country, the great things we do, matters a lot more to me than the failings. I hope to hell all of you celebrated too. God bless America.
The other day Bob “Crooksy” Brooks was sitting for a lunch with friends. As one would expect from Crooksy, he said something stupid. He made a joke about Mayor Sal Panto’s social media posting, saying something along the lines of he got drug for his social media postings, but at least he spelled them right. He probably figured he was sitting with friends, and he was. But well, the walls have ears when you run for Congress, and the walls couldn’t wait to tell me about it. Was his joke mildly funny? Sure. But Sal Panto is popular in Easton, and with good reason, he’s the best Mayor the city has ever had. Also though, Crooksy’s social media postings are cringe, cringe, cringe. And more cringe. He all but defends violence. Like the problem here isn’t whether or not Bob can put together a complete sentence (he barely can), it’s more that he spent most of his adult life spouting off offensive, racist shit before he decided he was a working class hero leftist politician. But that’s neither here nor there, he’s nominated now, amiright?
The right wing is just starting to tee up their line of attack against Bob for later this Fall. They dug up his hits on IAFF Fire Fighters who are volunteers too, and kind of easily, because the guy must not have his Facebook locked down. I mean, you’re running for Congress, man. The graphic above from Fox News ironically just uses his own words against his campaign statements, they didn’t even have to lie for once. Look, pro tip here- a former bartender should have a consistent position on how we tax tips for bartenders. Going on some bro podcast and calling Trump’s so-called (it’s not really, or at least not fully) “no tax on tips” position “garbage,” then having your handlers say you support it is campaign malpractice that’s impressively bad even for a knuckle dragger like Crooksy. The question is, is he dishonest, stupid, or both? I’m going with both. The result of that is he just shoots from the hip on policy questions and tells the room whatever he thinks they want to hear. Kind of makes sense now that he recently told a room of mostly Muslim Americans that Israel’s war in Gaza is a genocide, but when he was asked about cutting aid to Israel at a Lehigh Valley for All meeting a few months ago, he pulled his shirt over his face like he was afraid of the question. This guy believes whatever he’s told to believe. Consistency isn’t his thing.
If you believe the Democrats are going to win 30 seats and take the House in a wave this year, none of this will matter. Crooksy will win because Democrats win, and frankly any complaints I have against him won’t mean anything because the race will be too far gone. I don’t believe that at all. These midterm elections are going to be way more competitive than most Democratic activists want to believe. This is what happens when activists and electeds just talk to each other and confirm each other’s biases. The fact is that battleground voters think Democrats are nuts right now. They think we are more extreme than Republicans. They thought this in 2024 too, and then voted for Republicans. Now we’re nominating embarrassing, Mamdani-DSA candidates around the country.
The blueprint for Crooksy was written by *literally* the same people who created Nazi oyster farmer Graham Platner in Maine and John Fetterman here in Pennsylvania. The idea they sold voters on is that Crooksy would win back (white) working class voters because he’s a working class, union President with a bald head that said some stupid things on social media that makes him “authentic.” It’s literally the same as Platner’s story, to the word. We heard some of the same rhetoric around James Talarico’s campaign in Texas too. Well, how’s it going? Platner’s once mighty lead in Maine is gone, because his personal baggage is out now (oh hey, Crooksy), and he’s getting absolutely housed among white, non-college educated voters in Maine, the people he was supposed to pull back to the Democrats. Oops! Talarico is doing even worse. There’s less than zero reason to think that Crooksy is doing better with white non-college educated voters here, or frankly any other group that didn’t vote Democratic in 2024. He’s not. He’s probably going to be lucky to flip any individual precincts on Mackenzie, let alone communities, and therefore his pathway to victory will be motivating more core Democrats, the type that were the backbone of Susan Wild’s coalition, to show up. Frankly, he repulses a lot of those activist types, and I doubt he does much better with the 30 or 40 something year old college graduate couple living in the suburbs either.
Crooksy’s continual mistakes are going to burn him. And he’s going to keep making them.
Ok, as usual here- those are Bob “Crooksy” Brooks own words, right? Crooksy said recently that IAFF members who also serve as volunteer fire fighters and respond in areas where other IAFF members work are “scabs.” I talked about how ignorant of a thing this was for Crooksy to say here. Look, it was an ignorant statement, and Crooksy is an ignorant guy, but I do get it in theory. If IAFF members were undercutting other IAFF members by working for some sort of renegade department that went into their municipalities and worked for free, they would legitimately be “scabs.” That’s never how it works though. Basically, some IAFF members also serve as volunteers in their home communities, either out of civic duty or for the benefits Pennsylvania offers them to do so. Sometimes they get called in to towns with professional fire fighters, because there is a fire so big and awful that it requires a lot of extra, outside help. Even professional forces don’t always have enough guys. So they ask neighboring communities for help. You know, like during a six alarm fire in Allentown…
“Most of those homes are displaced, some of them sustained significant damage. Fire crews worked an offensive attack, as soon as the fire jumped the street, in order to save these homes. The homes are salvageable, but they are significantly damaged,” says Steed.
One resident tells us they saw flames shoot up into the sky from several blocks away.
“I saw the flames, they were way beyond the building height right now, I felt the heat, and I’m like ‘Yo man, I hope they get this taken care of,” says Charles Shafer of Allentown.
Others say they smelled the fire before even seeing it.
Danitza Lopez of Allentown says, “It smelled like my house was on fire, I smelled the smoke, it was like engulfing my house, and then thankfully I looked around everywhere, and there was no fire, but then I came outside, and the whole building was engulfed in flames.”
For more than 7 hours, over a hundred firefighters from as far as Carbon County were entrenched, snuffing out the blaze inside the vacant industrial building.
Oh, yikes. I have no idea what Crooksy meant when he was spouting off online, and judging from the quality of his other posts, I doubt he knows what he meant either. I’m going to say that I hope he wasn’t talking about situations like this, because honestly, that would be brain dead. For the record, two juveniles have been charged with setting the fire. I’m going to take a guess that a lot of “scabs” were on site.
I suppose it’s possible that some volunteer force somewhere is trying to respond to calls in a town that has professional fire fighters, and in this hypothetical it would make sense for a union leader to make a statement against that. I have no idea what kind of ass backwards place that’s happening in, but I won’t say it’s impossible. I just will take a guess that it’s not happening in Allentown. So thank you to everyone who responded to the fire, both the professionals and those who were volunteering. Most folks appreciate you.
Well, baseball season is about half over. The last time I did a power ranking was Memorial Day. Seeing as it’s almost the 4th of July, and the season is now about half over, it seems time for another. Several teams have fired their managers. The results have been mixed. Even as those teams made changes, some things remained constant- the Dodgers having the best record in baseball. The Brewers, Braves, Phillies, Cubs, and Padres as the predictable teams in pursuit in the NL. Meanwhile the AL is like 2/3 terrible. Some things make perfect sense. Others are just plain weird.
Okay, so a lot of changes there from last time. The top four from last time are all re-arranged, but still right there. The Guardians, Yankees, Padres, and Cubs are all still top ten teams. The Phillies and White Sox are charging up the board though. The Cardinals have only lost a little steam, while Arizona has dropped off a bit, but remains alive. All told, I would tell you right now that the top 22 teams still have a realistic shot, while 23 and 24 are alive because the American League is hot garbage. After that, these teams should be sellers unless something changes in a hurry. The reality is that some of the teams I’m not calling sellers yet will end up as sellers soon.
So then, how do we separate real contenders from pretenders on this list? To be clear, this is a ranking of their performance so far this season, not a ranking of how I think these teams will end up. For instance, I think Washington has had a generally pretty nice season, but I doubt their starting staff will keep them at .500 for the long haul. Pittsburgh is having a pretty nice season, but do you buy that lineup? Meanwhile Seattle is a huge disappointment, as is Cincinnati and Toronto, but I think all of those teams will chip their way back into the race this season. Most of how I make these judgments is how I feel about starting pitching staffs and late inning relief corps, but I do look at lineups too. For the most part, if you don’t have enough starting pitching, it probably won’t end well for you. I don’t care how much you hit, if you can’t limit the other team’s lineup for the first six innings of a game most of the time, you’ll end up losing more and more as the season goes on, and the innings pile up on your arms.
If I had to predict the National League right now, I’d say two teams make the playoffs from each division- Atlanta, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Diego. I would give the best odds of breaking that group up to Arizona, Cincinnati, Miami, and Pittsburgh. St. Louis and Washington are really nice stories, but I think their rotations will hit a wall. In the American League, I’m honestly struggling to count to six. I have the Yankees, Guardians, Mariners, Tampa, Toronto, and Houston right now, with the White Sox obviously as the best positioned team to break through, and Texas as well. I don’t really trust Minnesota and Sacramento to pitch well enough. As I say all of that though, how the hell can I trust Toronto and Houston, given what we’ve seen. If I were being honest about the eye test, I’d be saying Chicago and Texas, but I am still giving some credit for recent success.
For months now we’ve been reading that MLB is heading towards a lockout next year. It is inevitable and there’s no way MLB will have a normal off-season, spring training, and season. So says literally everyone. The owners are absolutely united in wanting a salary cap and the players will not accept it. So the outcome is locked in. Accept it. Both sides are going to the mat here.
I get the players not wanting a salary tax that doesn’t exist now, that makes logical sense. I’ve never understood the owners side though. How are the Dodgers, Mets, Phillies, and Cubs in perfect alignment with the Pirates, Athletics, and Rockies? They don’t behave the same now, and clearly have different goals for their franchise, right? These are franchise dumping money into their teams to try and win, while other owners (who are billionaires) are literally just trying to turn a profit. Why would owners who are spending be in agreement with owners who are not? Why would owners who have relatively good television deals regionally want television money entirely pooled between all the clubs? Why would teams who are good at player development want to ban high school players from the draft and off-ramp all player development to the college level? How are 30 owners in entirely different situations in lockstep on such a radical alteration to the game?
The best way to understand this labor dispute is *not* as an argument over the way things are, but frankly an argument over the way things *might* be. MLB owners aren’t trying to salvage their current system. MLB is generating record revenue. Attendance is actually moving back in the right direction, topping 70 million. Teams are monetizing more and more of their product. Even beyond their game driven revenues, teams are monetizing their real estate and owning more things. And team values are rising. In short, MLB is actually doing better than it has probably ever. This fight is not about improving this system for the owners or the league. I’m not sure there’s much they can do there.
Baseball is volatile though. They don’t like that. MLB wants to be the NFL. The truth is, every sport does, but not necessarily because they are comparing the actual revenues. The NFL is easy. Whereas the Kansas City Royals are considered a “small market” baseball team, the Chiefs are a constant contender that is trying to spend money and is building a new stadium now. The Packers have one of the smallest home cities of any major sports team globally, and they spend and compete every year. These franchises sign free agents every year that are good, relatively expensive players, they win a lot of games, and most importantly, they still turn a profit. MLB teams turn a profit in one of two ways- either they cost cut and keep their operating expenses low enough that they can make more from television, tickets, and whatever else they can monetize, OR they spend a lot of money in an effort to compete for championships, and therefore be popular enough that their fanbase puts more and more money back into the team. Let’s be honest though, even the biggest market teams that almost always try to contend end up going through a year or two bust cycle under this model, where either the team decides it’s not competitive or the fans decide it for them, and then their left cutting costs to turn a profit on the fly. Owners don’t like that kind of instability. Just look at my beloved Phillies, a team that has consistently been spending among the top five to ten teams in baseball for close to a decade now, after doing so for the majority of the previous fifteen years too. Are they good? Yes. Do they have a large fanbase? Yes. But right now attendance is ever so slightly down after a fourth straight playoff loss last year, and there are concerns about their television deal with Comcast SportsNet’s Philadelphia regional affiliate. So much so that they are considering creating their own network. Because, well, stability. People that own multi-billion dollar assets want those assets to essentially be risk free. If anyone tells you they are free market capitalists, remind them that no one is less in favor of that than owners of sports teams.
While those figures are generally kept private, they are revealed through the Green Bay Packers each season. The Packers are the only publicly owned team in the league, which requires them to reveal their financials on a yearly basis.
Though each team is different, the Packers’ financial statement provides a pretty good benchmark for franchises throughout the league. The Packers’ profit from operations, according to ESPN, increased from $60.1 million to $83.7 million year-over-year. Local revenue, which was helped with the addition of a ninth regular-season home game for the first time last season, also increased by about $35 million.
The Packers said that the national revenue sharing they receive accounts for about 60% of their total revenue.
The article goes on to quote their outgoing Team President as saying the league aims for 7% growth every year. Of course that growth level controls the salary cap level for every team, and also the media rights pay out to every team in the league. Every team in the league has a relative baseline to plan what they will receive, and every team in the league has a relative baseline to plan their expenses. No boom cycles or bust cycles. If the team is good, you might sell more merchandise and monetize more things. But if the team is bad, you’re getting a media rights check that should come in around 7% higher than last year, and your expenses are set to basically match. You almost can’t *lose* money on an NFL team. Even signing a bad contract with a player who becomes terrible quickly doesn’t matter, because the only guarantees in NFL player contracts are the bonus money, so you can cut a player at any time.
This is essentially what MLB is shooting for. Rob Manfred has talked about wanting to nationalize more of the media rights. Couple that with the owners proposed salary cap and you see where this is going. They want to limit contracts to five years. They want to end contract deferrals. They essentially want to cap a player’s salary somewhere around $44 million a year. They want to remove high school players from the draft. In other words, they want to set certainty into most of a team’s revenues for the season across the board, and set certainty onto the costs too. Like the NFL. They want to streamline and shorten player development, like the NFL has by forcing players into college programs. They’re willing to give in on tying draft compensation to the qualifying offer for free agents, as well as let players who are 30 years old receive free agency after five years (shorter than now), in exchange for essentially limiting compensation growth moving forward to a target number based on revenues they can control. They’ll even accept a salary floor if they can get the stability and certainty they want.
Look, this would dramatically change the way the game operates. Obviously it would make it much easier for teams like Pittsburgh and whatever city the A’s will be playing in by then to take free agency risks on par with the Dodgers. On the other hand, it would have two major impacts on the players. First, it would limit the on-field compensation for the biggest stars in the game. Second, while they are saying they would raise the minimum salary, this would cause a lot of mid-level and role players to cycle out of the league much faster, as paying them in free agency would make less sense than bringing up new, cheaper players when you have a set limit on what you can spend. It would force teams to find incentives beyond on field pay to attract players to their team. It would also set up a situation not unlike the NFL and NBA, where players tend to flock to the cities they like most, and leave some franchises constantly in a state of struggle.
It is true that running a baseball team is riskier than other sports. You can make a mess of your roster and payroll situation, become a bad team, and then lose money for an extended number of years if you’re an idiot. Does equity bring about parity though? When are the Cleveland Browns or New York Jets good? How have the Memphis Grizzlies done attracting major free agents? Is it an accident that the Cincinnati Bengals managed to mess up a great thing after Joe Burrow took them to a Super Bowl, I mean he’s the only man to quarterback them to a playoff win in the cell phone age for a reason. You can’t tell me most teams make what Jerry Jones does in the NFL, the guy just decided to build a stadium way bigger than everyone else’s for a reason. If teams no longer control their own television situation because the league does, will Pirates fans still get a Bob Walk, or Phillies fans a John Kruk, or will we get the sanitized, one size fits all that we get from most national broadcasts? He’s actually improved a bit since 2008, but do I want Joe Buck calling my games over Harry Kalas? A cookie cutter league is just that, cookie cutter. Sure, you’re giving the Arizona Cardinals a chance to win in the NFL on par with the Eagles, but frankly they don’t. Are you really going to tell Mets fans that Steve Cohen can’t die trying to bring his favorite team their first title since the Reagan Administration?
Major League Baseball is doing very well. Even lower revenue teams seem to be generating at least close to $300 million a year. High revenue teams may be generating considerably more (here’s looking at you, Yankees) than many NFL teams. I tend to be a fan of teams running their own ship and taking their own risks. I also get the reality- with regional sports networks dying, teams increasingly will either need their own networks or will have to be in a national media rights deal. Even so, the players are the product. I don’t like deals like Shohei Ohtani’s that danced around the luxury tax, but I also don’t think a salary cap should stop Juan Soto or Mike Trout from getting the deal they can get. If we’re sitting here and saying “Tarik Skubal isn’t worth $50 million a year” then maybe no owner should offer it? I know, they can’t collude, but if there’s someone who wants to pay it, I say have at it. All of these guys are billionaires, if they’re smart enough to succeed in business, maybe they don’t need so many guard rails.
I tend to side with the players here, but I’m a realist. The league is going to have to increasingly control media rights because that’s where both commerce and platforms are moving us. If players want earlier free agency, increases in minimum salary, and a salary floor, I don’t think a salary cap is necessary, but the players are probably going to have to give some of that up and still at least accept a more punitive luxury tax. Rich guys, generally speaking, demand stability for their wealth. If we’re having a political conversation there is no need for us as a society to generally underwrite this and insure it for them, but a negotiation between millionaire baseball players who make their money playing in an organized league and billionaire owners who have the capital to create that league is a lot different than asking if billionaires should be paying more in to Social Security and Medicare. Yes, I think the players should be free to earn whatever they can earn on a free and fair market during the short time they can play baseball. Playing in MLB is not a right though, it’s a far cry different than discussing if people should have health care or retirement. There’s similarities, there’s common ground and themes in the conversation. I generally support the players. But it’s a collective bargaining agreement for a reason. The emphasis on agreement.
These people are a bunch of sick nuts. We had a woman who wanted to put “Zionists” in concentration camps get 40% in a primary this year, so I don’t think we can put anything as “out of play” at this point. Here in PA-7 we nominated a grifter who stiffed his mother-in-law, so even normal places are nominating nuts. How did the Democratic Party go this far? We were normal like five minutes ago? One way to understand it is that a good chunk of Hillary’s 2016 primary voters are either independents now or dead, and Bernie’s 2016 voters are mostly still around. Another way to view it is that the party is hollowing out and only 27% of Americans identify as Democrats, so the nuts are what’s left. While I think the Hillary Clinton campaign playbook largely doesn’t work in America, nominating people who howl at the moon is probably not a path forward. Just ask Corbyn’s Labor Party.
I think it’s worth noting though, these embarrassing freaks are only winning certain kinds of races- very blue district, legislative races that usually have more than two candidates. The third of Democrats who don’t think Fidel Castro was that bad can win three and four way primaries in places where the Republicans aren’t a threat. Relatively normal, moderate Dems will be tasked with taking back the Senate in Alaska, Iowa, Texas, Ohio, and North Carolina, while a Nazi will try in Maine.These nutbags seem to do well in super urban and rural areas and nowhere else. Basically in places where you don’t have to acknowledge Republicans or even moderate Democrats exist if you don’t want.
Leave it to Philadelphia fans and media to worry about things they shouldn’t lose a moment’s sleep over. On the night Zack Wheeler returned to the Phillies, their record sat at 8-18, and they were probably the worst team in baseball to that point in the season. His return was just a couple of days removed from the Phillies DFA’ing Taijuan Walker, who was maybe the worst starting pitcher in baseball through the first five rotations through. Andrew Painter kind of looked like a normal rookie trying to figure things out and the night before, Rob Thomson had left him in a batter too long against Atlanta in what had been a good start up until that point. In the time since then, the Phillies are 32-16, but 1-8 in Painter’s starts. If the Phillies continue this rather substantial stretch they’ve been on for almost two months the rest of the way, they’ll win 98 or 99 games. They’re going to be a playoff team rather easily in the end. Painter’s struggles have been substantial, but they have been but a bump on the road for a team that is going to steamroll to one of the NL Playoff spots this season. Yes, I said steamroll.
This does not mean that Painter’s problems are not a real problem. Half the games they’ve lost in the last 48 games were his starts. That’s astoundingly bad. By contrast, Aaron Nola has been as absolutely mediocre as a league average four or five starter over that stretch (to be read, you don’t enjoy his starts) and the Phillies have won the overwhelming majority of them. Yes, it’s not even close to .500. Basically if Painter was going three or four OK innings in his starts and handing the ball to the bullpen the rest of the way, the Phillies would very likely have three or four more wins than they have. Painter has simply not been good enough to be a major league pitcher. I have read plenty of writers and fans lamenting that Alan Rangel is the best current option to replace him in the rotation, and I don’t agree with them, or any talk of the Phillies going and trying to trade for a fifth starter in June. They could literally treat the fifth spot in the rotation as essentially a bullpen/opener game, try to get three or four okay innings from Rangel, and they’ll be a better team for it. The bar is super low.
Of course in the world of sports talk hyperbole today you’re seeing people write Painter’s obituary and say the Phillies should just trade any young prospect they can for any MLB ready help they can, because most prospects fail. There are folks ready to give up on Justin Crawford after a tough month or so, as well as Felix Reyes, Gabriel Rincones Jr., Otto Kemp, and any other number of younger players. Of course this is how you end up as the Angels, watching Brandon Marsh become the player you desperately needed in another uniform before the age of 30. Crawford for sure, but I’d probably say Reyes and Rincones too, need an extended period of at-bats in the majors to figure it out. Crawford’s game probably will take some time to reach it’s potential, but the team is winning games while he figures it out right now, and that really doesn’t make it as big of a problem as some fans would believe. Reyes hit his 16th homer in AAA on Tuesday, but has struggled in sporadic playing time in the major leagues so far- because sporadic playing time is not a good way to see if a guy who crushed AA and AAA as a full time player can hit in the majors. If it were me, I would not be carrying two back-up catchers who cannot hit major league pitching (again, it’s not like they play enough to improve, and Lord knows they should be giving Marchan one start in every series to save J.T. at this age), I’d be platooning Rincones and Reyes in left and getting Reyes some starts at third base as well, to see what they can actually do in the majors. This team is winning games anyway, because their top three starting pitchers, their top several relievers, and their top three or four bats are all so good that they can sustain winning two-thirds of their game when all healthy and playing. You have about a month to decide what people are ahead of the trade deadline and then go get what’s necessary then. Maybe these guys aren’t good enough to win with. Maybe they are. I’d actually kind of like to know.
As for Painter, it’s important to look back on the early careers of Max Scherzer, Roy Halladay, Curt Schilling, and Randy Johnson and understand that not every Hall-of-Fame level stud pitcher that can carry a staff came up ready to carry a staff like a Justin Verlander or Paul Skenes. Hell, Zack Wheeler spent his early years baffling the Mets and the league as to what he was. Writing him off today would be a mistake, though I’m not saying I wouldn’t put him in a trade if I could actually get a difference maker under contract for a while onto my team. Painter might still figure it out if given the time by his organization, he’s only 23 right now. There are guys who will be drafted at his age this year. Blaming the Phillies for holding Painter as a top prospect when literally the whole league called him a top ten prospect in 2023 (and even some in 2024), is silly. The problem since his Tommy John surgery is basically two things- his fastball is flat and his command has not returned. Some folks want to talk about his velocity, but for the most part it has returned and is at least pretty normal. The Phillies are not asking him to be a number one right now, and realistically he needs to be a number three in like 2028 for this team to flourish with him, the bar is not super high. He just needs to be a league average (aka- Nola) fourth or fifth starter right now and stop getting absolutely raked the way he has this season. The problem is simple though- it may not happen. We are about 13 months into him pitching in live professional games post-surgery, the majority of that in AAA and the Majors, and his fastball has lacked it’s old movement since. The Phillies claimed some of it was his arm slot last year, then told us it was fixed in Spring Training, and the ball is still flat. Guys throwing in the mid-to-high 90’s with a flat fastball get hit hard in the Major Leagues, and also many times in AAA. He could certainly survive as a mid to back end rotation piece who doesn’t cost much for the next half decade in Philadelphia if he had better command of all of his stuff, but he has not had that last year or this year. You can’t hang breaking balls against professional hitters. You can’t miss your location with a flat 96 mph fastball in the majors. I don’t know if Painter’s lack of improvement on these things from last year to this year is a Painter problem or a coaching problem, but if no one fixes it, he might not ever be a Major League starter, or even reliever.
Given that the Phillies are a team willing to spend money, Painter failing wouldn’t be as bad of a long term hit as it would be on a small market team. Even so, him being at least a league average guy would be a huge help. In the short term though? Honestly, I don’t get the freak out, or people ready and willing to pay a premium to go get a starting pitcher who would never throw a playoff inning for you outside of mop up (think Taijuan Walker and Walker Buehler *last year*). Yes, I’d like the Phillies to try to get a couple (two or three, quantity over a big splash) of right handed or quality bats in general at the deadline and a late inning reliever, because those moves would help this team in October, and maybe we need a fifth starter at some point later, but these are not urgent, immediate problems for a team winning two-thirds of it’s games for a nearly 50 game sample now. The Phillies have time to see what some of these younger players can do for sustained runs, and they should be trying them out to see just that. They’re on their way to the playoffs. I’ll be honest, I’d be very surprised if they don’t finish as the fourth seed and first Wild Card winner in the National League, and that is perfectly fine with me. Outside of LA, Atlanta, and Milwaukee, most of their competition for that spot have much more glaring, important holes on their roster than we do over the long haul. You don’t win the World Series in June, and the Phillies won’t win or lose it because of their fifth starter. They have much more important problems in their path to winning right now.
Bob Brooks is a pile of human garbage that anyone should be ashamed of. If you’re defending him, it’s because you want a Congressional staff job and the benefits, let’s be honest. Don’t tell me it’s because you have Democratic values, the man hates Barack Obama. He is accused of committing mortgage fraud, entirely so he could stiff his mother-in-law. He’s not just a random deadbeat. No, he’s much worse than that.
A couple years ago, you might have heard that I was almost dead. Literally a couple *weeks* ago, a keyboardist had a heart attack in my basement during band practice. Both times, the incredible folks of Suburban EMS came to save the day. There’s not enough things I can say about these people, I’d be cremated or in a box somewhere without them. When the keyboardist had his heart attack, these EMT’s were joined by the good people of the Palmer Township Police Department and our *volunteer” fire fighters. What does Crooksy think of them? From Bernie:
The Beacon’s Chuck Ross has some up with something I failed to cover during the primary, and that is Brooks’ revulsion at professional firefighters who dare act as volunteer firefighters in their own communities. Ross points to angry social media posts from Brooks, calling them “scabs” and “shitbags.”
I understand that Brooks may have no issue with volunteer firefighters so long as they stay out of a municipality covered by a professional and unionized fire department. But does that make sense. The Lehigh Valley’s three cities have all had major fires over the years during which volunteer firefighters from other municipalities assist. The most recent example of this is at an Easton hotel. Should a professional Easton or Bethlehem firefighter refuse to assist if he is also a volunteer at Plainfield’s fire department and that company responds? Should they just stand by and watch a building burn?
As I said before the primary, Republicans had more on this pile of donkey loaf than I did. I did not have these social media posts. Of course they had the goods here:
In the original article they go on to point out that this post from Brooks is nonsense. Of course a volunteer force should not go into Easton, Bethlehem, Wilson, Allentown, or Emmaus uncalled and undercut unionized, paid members who fight fires for a living. What Crooksy doesn’t point out here is *that doesn’t happen in reality.* There aren’t volunteers from Nancy Run going into his former turf of the city of Bethlehem and responding to routine fire calls. Far from. Almost always, the volunteers are called in because there aren’t enough paid fire fighters on call, or in some cases on the force at all, to respond to the severity of the fire. The reality is that our society doesn’t have the resources to keep people safe all of the time. These folks volunteer to help us deal with that.
I’ll take a guess that this human pile of sewage will say is that these professional fire fighters are “taking advantage” of the real estate tax rebates. Yeah well, our society offers those because we can’t take care of ourselves. God bless these guys to give their time off for the rest of us. I sleep better at night knowing anyone would give of the most important resource we have, time. He knows this though. His union was pleading for more resources from the City of Bethlehem in last year’s budget because *they need more fire fighters.* I even agree with him for the most part. Apparently he doesn’t hold the courage of his own convictions.
Crooksy is just a garbage human being. He should drop out of this race today and just admit the con. Maybe we could still convince the former Congresswoman to take his place.
There are rumors that Crooksy is drawing a look from the U.S. Attorney’s office, and I’m sure the Attorney General would like to take a crack at him over his “quit claim” on the property he stiffed his mother-in-law for. I actually don’t think it would be wise for either to open an investigation unless the statute is about to run out on this. He’ll still be as guilty or not next year and it would look nakedly political. Besides, it looks as though Deadbeat Bob will be spending significant general election time in the court room arguing this case anyway. Bob’s defenders have taken in private to criticizing the woman he stiffed out of the money, and I think it’s just a matter of time until they start trying to call her crooked, unhinged, and other evil words. Maybe she is. That doesn’t matter a single iota, as Bob signed the promissory note to pay her back. He acknowledged that he owed her the money, and he then did everything possible to not pay her. If he weren’t your political candidate, you’d call him a deadbeat.
Ryan Mackenzie deserves to lose in 2026. He voted for everything Donald Trump asked him to vote for, and Donald Trump is about as popular with the electorate right now as athlete’s foot. So of course the consultant class in DC and Harrisburg have saddled us with a pile of cow dung to get elected in this district. My plan is to just leave the race blank right now see what comes around in two years.
Apocalypse Vibes 