The Phillies and the Philadelphia Media

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

I really don’t care that Bryce Harper found Dave Dombrowski questioning if he was still elite to be “wild” or not. That’s not a knock on Harper or Dombrowski, both of whom will probably end up enshrined in Cooperstown. It’s just a nothing story. Harper has not uttered the word trade, nor has his agent Scott Boras, and Dombrowski was quick to note he was not ever considering trading Harper. Sure, Harper was asked about the comments again when he arrived at Spring Training, and he did answer honestly, including that he didn’t have an elite season in 2025, according to himself. This is nonsense and should be treated as such. There are much more important things to be covering in this camp.

The Phillies won 96 games last year. Their bullpen is miles better than it was last year to start the season, or for that matter, where it was to end the season. Kepler and Castellanos are gone from the outfield, and while Adolis Garcia may not excite you, he’s a better overall player than them. Of course there is Justin Crawford too, possibly the best player in AAA last season that I saw, who posted an .863 OPS, a year after an .805 OPS. These are better numbers by a now 22 year old than anything we’ve brought up in years. In fact he was better in AAA than top tier Mets prospect Carson Benge, who their fans are rightly excited about sticking into their outfield this year, and is a full year younger. The outfield should be measurably better this year. Turner won the batting title and Schwarber the home run title in the NL last year, so we have no reason to think they’re falling off. And well, Harper should have no problem matching or exceeding last year. The only part of the team that took a step backward on paper is the rotation, because losing Ranger Suarez hurts. If Zack Wheeler is actually back by May and pitching like himself, if Aaron Nola is even a 4.50 ERA type of pitcher, and if Andrew Painter even shows you flashes of his talent this year, they will fill in that hole just fine. This team has things to be concerned about. They absolutely should be a playoff team though. And well, I’m not accounting for Aiden Miller potentially arriving at some point either. He has 30/30 annual talent if he can put it together. The doom and gloom the media have built around this team is nauseating. This is an objectively very good team.

We just went through a season of largely manufactured drama and nonsense around the Eagles, and now we’re starting baseball off on the same foot. The Eagles have been done for a month, no one believes in the Sixers or Flyers, and there aren’t baseball games until Friday, so we get nonsense slop. Castellanos is mostly gone because he was mediocre two years ago (at best) and downright awful in 2025. Matt Strahm is gone because of a couple of playoff meltdowns the last two years, signs of decline, a fairly high salary that outpaced the role he would have had here, and because the Phillies felt they upgraded on him over the past few months. Harper, while still a really good player, was not elite last year. There is no further story, there is nothing to read into it, there’s no smoke, let alone fire. All of the drama coverage is nonsense.

Obviously things will play out on the field. There are real stories to cover. Crawford, Painter, and Miller are to varying degrees competing to carve out roles as rookies on this team. Wheeler and Nola’s bounce backs this season, or lack thereof, will almost certainly determine if this team is as good as last year. Who gets at-bats against lefties instead of Marsh in left field is an actual competition. Stott and Bohm are kind of playing for their futures here. There are lots of things to actually pay attention to in this Phillies camp. None of it is the nonsense we are getting from the press. This is far from “running it back” from last year, and the press is trying to cover this team as if it’s stale and declining with no actual signs of that being true. I’d love to see actual coverage of the baseball team. I’m not holding my breathe that we’ll get it.

Crosswell’s Poll and the Source of My Negatives on Crooksy

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It’s always happy hour in Crosswell’s adopted hometown of DC.

Yesterday a web poll came out that was very obviously from Ryan Crosswell or someone supporting him. They tested a lot of statements, good and bad, about Crosswell. They tested mostly positive messages about Lamont McClure and Carol Obando-Derstine. They tested a bunch of negatives and a little positive on Bob “Crooksy” Brooks. It was by no means a complete poll, but it was much better than the slop Crooksy released.

By no means is this a real poll and the numbers you will eventually get will be whatever point in the poll tested most positive for Crosswell. However the message testing was very interesting. It was almost familiar. It was everything you’ve read here about Crooksy. In fact, I can now say with certainty that whoever dropped me the dossier on Crooksy last year was connected to Crosswell somehow. The reason I know that? I hadn’t yet wrote about Crooksy supporting election deniers, but it was in the dossier. It was in the poll yesterday. Even the wording was the same. I have to tip my cap to the Crosswell folks, good job here. Everything they found was accurate and true, and they got it out into the lifeblood of local politics ahead of their actually using it. Grade A work.

In case you’re wondering if I’m mad about it, I’m not. Bob “Crooksy” Brooks is the worst candidate of the real ones. His personal baggage would lose him the general election, nominating him would be a mistake. I don’t like the idea of nominating a union buster and Republican as the Democrat in PA-7, and I don’t trust Crosswell, but I find him less fraudulent and more electable than Crooksy. I think nominating a Republican carpet bagger is reprehensible, but I find it less repulsive than nominating a guy who stole from his mother-in-law and won’t pay her back.

Also, apologies to Carol Obando-Derstine’s team, who while I had never written it, I long suspected was behind sending me the Crooksy info. I’m pretty certain they were not.

Your World Last Week, 2/16

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Welp, I spent Monday to Wednesday in the hospital last week, how was your week? Since I didn’t do last week, indulge me in doing two weeks. The Milano-Cortina Olympics are about half over now, with Norway and Italy leading the way in the medals count. Americans who have won Gold so far are Breezy Johnson (Alpine Skiing), Liz Lemley (Moguls- singles), Jordan Stolz (500m and 1000m speed skating), and the figure skating team (Ilia Malinin, Amber Glenn, Alysa Liu, Madison Chock, Evan Bates, Ellie Kam, and Danny O’Shea) . Americans who have won Silver so far are Ben Ogden (Cross-Country Skiing), Alex Hall (Freestyle Skiing), Corey Thiesse and Korey Dropkin (Mixed Doubles Curling), Ryan Cochrane-Siegle (Men’s Super G), Jaelin Kauf (Moguls-Singles and duals), Madison Chock and Evan Bates (Figure Skating Pairs-Ice Dance), and Chloe Kim (Snowboarding- Halfpipe). Americans who have won Bronze so far are Ashley Farquharson (Luge), Jacqueline Wiles/Paula Moltzan (Alpine Combined), Jessie Diggins (Cross-Country Skiing), and Liz Lemley (Moguls- duals). Lindsey Vonn did ski after her torn ACL- and ended up getting more hurt, sadly. Mikaela Shiffrin lost. “Quad God” Ilia Malinin stunningly fell and finished eighth. On the positive side, both hockey teams are steamrolling everyone so far on their way to the medal rounds. We need Bode Miller back, he was entertaining.

We celebrated Valentine’s Day, a holiday with mixed historical context, not to mention overpriced food specials. The government is partially shut down over ICE funding, but also ICE is funded by the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” but also government employees will start getting laid off soon. Don’t even try to make sense of that. Nick Castellanos got cut by the Phillies this week, not because he likes to drink beer in the dugout, but mostly because he wasn’t good anymore, which is sad, because I kind of liked him. The Seahawks won the Super Bowl, which is about as “meh” as can be for an Eagles fan, but they were pretty good. The Patriots did not look very good, making for a terrible game. Green Day opened the Super Bowl, and in case you were wondering, they played “American Idiot.” Bad Bunny played halftime, and was disapproved of by a majority of Americans who were also mad that they could not understand Spanish, a language that has been in America basically since Europeans colonized it. For the rest of us, we were reminded that we still like hot Latinas dancing, for some reason there were telephone poles, and Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin were there. Savannah Guthrie’s mom is still missing, despite several people now having been detained for questioning. Unrelated, but the FBI Director is a podcast star. Tyler Reddick won the Daytona 500 and Michael Jordan showed up to hoist the trophy, because he’s Michael Jordan and you’re not. Barack Obama did an interview and he decried the “clown show” on social media from his successor, and also told us aliens are real (although he’s walking that back to mean they “probably” are real). In other words, Barack Obama is just telling you what you already knew. Pam Bondi went up to Capitol Hill to yell at members of Congress in a hearing that was as useless as almost all others, it was just offensive because she tried to act like the Epstein files aren’t a big deal. Tom Homan says the occupation of Minneapolis is over and just a small force will remain. Parts of California could get 8 feet of snow this week. Kid Rock’s festival tour sales suck and a couple of events might be canceled. Iran and the United States are getting ready for talks. I think that’s all the news I have for you this week. Have a great week.

Planet Allentown and that Debate the Other Night

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I don’t know Ana Tiburcio, but I feel bad for her. Getting up and debating in a televised setting for any office takes a level of confidence that like 99% of people don’t have. Then you add on that a lot of the people criticizing her now were going to say she sounded out of her depth no matter what, and it’s kind of a no win situation. She was debating a perennial candidate in Bob Smith, so he’s comfortable being lost up there, and she’s supposed to win, and nothing she did was going to be good enough, and yeah- it’s hard as hell. I want to give her some grace for that debate performance because I know it isn’t easy.

With that said, we are talking about an election that decides who controls a 102-101 election, and by extension, the well being of millions of Pennsylvanians. Tiburcio is supposed to win, and should, but it’s fair to expect her to do some real basic things in a debate. She had a job to introduce herself and her work to the public in the debate. When your leading achievement that *you* cite on the school board is community engagement, you need to go into some depth for us about that engagement- what you’ve learned, some precise stories you’ve heard, some details. I wasn’t sure from that debate if she had mastered her current job, let alone shown us she’s ready for this one. She also had a job to introduce us to her opponent. When she had a chance to ask him three questions, she decided on the second one to say, “I think I know enough about him already.” That’s wonderful. You as the candidate aren’t the audience. The voters are. They need to know more about him, and you have to assume they don’t know yet. When you combine these problems with the consistent answer of “I’ll ask the legislators,” a reasonable person could be left standing there asking, is the Democratic candidate as prepared to actually do the job as the Republican? Or is she literally being put forward as literally a proxy vote in that district for the other two state reps in Allentown? I’ll leave out the criticisms of the bizarre things (calling Josh Siegel a “five… out of ten” in the seat before her because she couldn’t find his office was weird shit), but I think it would be fair to ask if this is going to be an independent person and legislator in Harrisburg or if everything down to district office staff will be picked in the other two offices.

Which leads us to the subject of Ce-Ce Gerlach in this race. Ce-Ce is a bit to my left, as I think you could guess from the blog. With that said, no competent adult watched that debate and can honestly say Ce-Ce wouldn’t have been a more prepared candidate to do this job in March when the winner is seated. She was passed over because the folks pulling the strings here, the other major electeds in Allentown, don’t want her. I’m not sure why one blessed voter in Allentown should care what they want? When the other option was someone who was working on state issues as an aide to the State Senator, I think that was easy to excuse. He was ready to do the job. That does not seem to be the case now. If this races doesn’t change (i.e.- add candidates) between now and May, I have literally no argument for why a person should not vote for Ce-Ce Gerlach. In fact, I’ll be honest, they should. If that upsets some of the folks who are “leaders” in Allentown, so be it.

Allentown has weird politics. In the past year the Mayor beat a “Make Allentown Great Again” style candidate 80-20%, a noose was planted in City Hall, allegedly by the person who claimed it was put on their desk, and the “conservative” wing of City Council went away for the first time in forever. Don’t get this twisted, Easton and Bethlehem have their quirks too, but Allentown can be on it’s own planet sometimes. While the utter disgusting corruption of the Pawlowski era is gone now, the old idea of a couple of leaders sitting around and dividing out the spoils among the peasants that are loyal to them is still there. We’re seeing the ugly side effects of that manifest themselves in this race now. It isn’t a pretty sight to watch.