So this is pretty wild: A polling firm that came out of nowhere to show Francesca Hong with a 23-point lead over David Crowley in the Wisconsin primary has shut down and said its whole operation was bogus pic.twitter.com/QTmlXkvGPC
A friend of mine who is a lot more “lefty” than me said something to me in 2020 that is starting to resonate now- “part of why we always lose is because of the narrative that we can’t win.” Even when Bernie took a polling lead in 2020 with a plurality, everyone saw through it- there wasn’t 50% plus one vote out there to nominate him, because everyone believed he’d lose to Trump, which he almost certainly would have. The narrative was almost self-defeating. Nobody wants to pick you if they believe you’ll lose.
Welcome to 2026, where all of a sudden, polls come out that show Nazi criminal Graham Platner leading in Maine. Anti-Israel crusader Abdul El-Sayed leading in Michigan. Lost weirdo Francesca Hong leading in Wisconsin. Congressional polls repeatedly showing “Fight Agency’s” clients leading. Weirdly though, in many cases they end up wildly underperforming, or winning with a minority of the vote. General election polls suddenly come out showing the once mighty leads they claimed were false. Even their initial internals, such as Bob “Crooksy” Brooks’ own, show close races where they are shy of 50%- and that’s what they were *willing* to release. It’s as though… no way, right? No way they literally just cooked the books, right?
Well, we have our first fake polling firm story. Median Strategies, which showed Francesca Hong way up, is no more. It was in fact, never real. Nor was their poll showing Karen Bass leading big in Los Angeles’ Mayor race. The whole firm was a fake. They literally just made shit up.
I cannot, for the life of me, underscore just how unserious these people are. They are selling a false narrative, and even powerful people like Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer will not push back on the nonsense. The country rejected Kamala Harris and Joe Biden because they felt they were too liberal, yet these folks want you to believe that now the solution is to move left. Are they winning some deep blue primaries against unorganized incumbents? Yes. That’s because the party shrunk as it was perceived to move left. That is not indicative of how the public feels. Yes, the public hates Trump, and the left is rightly realizing that means they could have a chance in a binary choice against MAGA, but no, people have not decided that Hasan Piker and his audience of less than 1% of America are now representative of “who we are.” This is all nonsense. It’s made up. And Democratic leaders are falling for it, hook, line, and sinker.
All the dumbest people. What can I say? Just the dumbest people.
Poor Danny got stuck with me on his list. I feel for him, I’ve been there. Asking someone to volunteer who is repulsed by your ticket’s existence is hard. I don’t make it better.
So I am decided. I won’t be voting for Bob “Crooksy” Brooks. No way, no how. The best part is this is just the stuff that can be sourced. This guy said way worse that just can’t be verified. A man who steals from his family is not fit for any office. A man who failed to purchase workman’s comp insurance for his employees calling himself a “working class hero” is a joke. I won’t vote for Mackenzie, despite personally liking him more, because he voted for Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill.” That is disqualifying.
I’ll be voting for Senator Lisa Boscola and Jeff Warren for the State House. Both are solid, normal people who will fight to make life more affordable for us. I’m decided there.
As for Josh Shapiro? Whatever. What has he done? Shorty worked hard on building data centers and passing school vouchers, while SEPTA funding, property tax reform, and adult recreational weed legalization went nowhere. What’s the point of high approval if all you want to do is take it with you to South Carolina in January? To be fair, he made the smart decision to Xerox the Wolf budgets and maybe add the inflation rate to the numbers. I guess he also fixed twenty yards of road in Philly too one time. Get shit done, right? Still, the guy is basically competent and kept the state from going off course in his first term. Stacy Garrity is incompetent and has bad ideas. Nobody needs her as Governor.
If the Democratic Party wants to embrace Bernie Sanders style politics, they’ll lose votes. Not as many as they should, because the GOP is a cult, devoted to the dumbest, most fat, grotesque beta in America, and that has to hurt more. But it’s uncomfortably close.
Well, the bad and losing ideas of the 2020 Democratic Presidential primaries are making a comeback and we can’t get rid of them. The newest returnee? The wealth tax. The long and short here? The idea is you’d tax the actual wealth and estate values of rich people instead of just their income.
It seems overwhelmingly likely that the current Supreme Court would invalidate a wealth tax under the Fifth Amendment. If somehow they didn’t, the issue with the tax is fairly simple. How does you deal with illiquid billionaires vs. liquid billionaires? What happens if you have billionaires selling off stocks and assets in a rush to have the cash for the tax? There’s a ton that can go wrong- assuming it ever even clears the courts.
There’s a better way that makes sense and would probably build more public support. Create more brackets, make them lower, and eliminate or dramatically cut write-offs. If someone proposed making people who earn over a million dollars *actually* pay 25%, rather than claim every write-off known to man and pay nothing, the public would probably support it. Maybe you don’t like the 25% number, fine, pick your number. If your complaint is that rich people don’t pay, take away the write-offs and shield regular people from the hits under lower rates like 5 or 10%.
It’s true that increasing wealth concentration under the ultra wealthy is a real problem. Sure, you can do a windfall tax, and that probably is good at some high number, but that number is not a million dollars in 2026. Everyone would be better off with a legitimately simple, straight forward graduated income tax with simple brackets that are lower. Collect more revenue and make things simple. Only conservative ideologically crazy people would complain. That would be actually a good thing.
The Democratic Socialists of America just unveiled a new, radical push to eliminate the Senate, and its co-Chair Gustavo Gordillo is now calling it an "undemocratic institution."
"It gives more representation to people in smaller states," Gordillo said, as @ Martha MacCallum… pic.twitter.com/dXb2HYGbNz
Ok, let’s be serious. Who are we kidding. More Americans saw Joe Biden as “too liberal” than saw Donald Trump as “too conservative” during the 2024 campaign. Kamala Harris actually was about 5% better than Biden (insane now, I know), but still viewed as more extreme than Trump. It’s worth pointing out that Biden got nominated as a moderate Democrat and then basically started moving left immediately, which is certifiably batshit when looked back on sober eyed. While Kamala Harris *tried* to run as a moderate, the truth was just that people didn’t believe her. Period. They thought she was a crazy leftist and out of touch with normalcy. She lost.
Many critiques that leftists have of the Democratic Party are correct. The national party’s organizations are largely out of touch organizations filled with DC staffers who respond to major donors who live in LaLa Land. The voters are rejecting the party more than the past. We’re selling a brand that only really excites like 10-20% of Americans at most, but is “acceptable” to more like 45-50%, then pretending that something like half the country likes what the party is selling. It’s a shit sandwich. A lot of voters who vote for us think it’s a shit sandwich, for a variety of reasons. We should probably settle around a couple of pragmatic, popular political positions and stop trying to give everyone something. You know what though, some of you should totally keep selling yourself as Harrisburg and DC’s favorite Democrat. We’d be better off with you going up in flames and starting over in two years.
But let’s be honest. If the public thinks Joe Biden is a pinko, what the hell will they think of Mamdani and DSA? We’re going to eliminate the Senate now, huh? I mean… here is what the GOP has to say about these folks now:
DSA Co-Chair Megan Romer confirms their platform includes:
– Abolishing the Senate, presidency, & Supreme Court – Abolishing ICE, borders, & prisons – Defunding the Pentagon – Mass amnesty for illegals pic.twitter.com/rPQiT9HCXN
So we’re going to go from Trump winning the popular vote and gaining in his share for ten years, to… mass amnesty and defunding the Pentagon. And I know what you’ll say- they’re not being honest about what she said. Ok. And if they spend more money in the election, people will agree with what they say.
Frankly, I’ll be honest. I think the current Democratic Party is a disaster. Frankly, I don’t think the problem is we didn’t “Democrat” hard enough. And honestly, i’m not at all interested in supporting finding out.
Governor Shapiro signed a $50.8 Billion budget just shy of two weeks late. That’s the good part, as last year’s budget fight stretched so long that counties were running out money. They might be still. Hey, at least they got some money out to the counties, cities, school boards, and non-profits the state government provides most of the funding for. Look, it probably wasn’t good enough, but in an election year it’s as good as the Pennsylvania Legislature is going to do.
Let’s just be honest, Tom Wolf was not satisfying as 21st century politicians go, there was no sizzle there, but he was a really, really good Governor. He fixed the mess he inherited, while dealing with an incredibly weak Democratic House Leader (the Senate was marginally better) and Republican Majorities in both chambers. Tom Wolf was able to finally establish a health care exchange for the state under the ACA and pass the fair education funding formula while he served as Governor, two monumental acts of government that directly impacted millions of Pennsylvanians lives in a positive way. He handed Josh Shapiro a functioning state government in 2023, as well as a Democratic Majority in the House with leadership that is dynamic and wants to govern. For the most part, not many major things have passed the legislature since. Governor Shapiro’s early attempt at pushing school vouchers through didn’t go well, and most of the achievements since then have been marginal upgrades on things the state already does. On data centers the state response has been a confused mish-mash of doing anything possible to court the jobs and kind of, sort of, at least talking about regulating them. I’m going to be fair for a second- most of them mostly maintain what the folks before them did. For the most part, this Governor is Xeroxing his predecessor’s budgets, which is politically brilliant and frankly the right thing to do. Yeah, he fixed a 20 yard stretch of road and handed out a lot of economic development money, most of which was approved before his term. This is not ground breaking, transformational stuff, and you know what, I’m glad. Tom Wolf inherited a disaster of a state government. He fixed it. It’s far from perfect, but it’s way better than it was. And you know what? I’m not sure the public wants it much better. The lack of activity in Harrisburg isn’t hitting most of them, yet. And so, as they usually do, they like it. Josh Shapiro is very popular. Tom Wolf was very popular. Ed Rendell was very popular. Tom Ridge was very popular. Bob Casey Sr. was very popular. Hell, Dick Thornburgh was really popular, and that’s every Governor in my life besides Tom Corbett. Some of them did big things as Governor. Some didn’t. Pennsylvanians are fine if the trains run on time and they never really have to read about their government. At least in the short term.
You see though, Governors are not really the problem or the solution in Pennsylvania. Our courts, which 20 years ago went through horrific scandals with the pay raise and “Kids for Cash,” are actually pretty good now too and functioning to the benefit of the public. The problem is, and basically usually is, the legislature. It is a body with a wide variety of grifters and odd balls. When I was a high school student I once asked my wonderful State Representative at the time, whose daughter was a good friend willing to introduce me to him, what the legislature is like. He responded “Rich, I meet some of these guys and decide I never want to actually go to some of their districts- and those are the good guys.” The Senate has been hopelessly lead by corrupt lunatics since 1995, a one party rule that is only made worse by the Senate Dems inability to get out of their own way and run candidates around the state that want to represent the state, and not Philadelphia or Pittsburgh. The House has either been run by the same brand of ideological nutbags or narrowly lead by sane people who can’t find 102 votes to do much, let alone then get their bills through the Senate. Last year as the state languished without a budget for months, the Senate literally went on a Summer vacation longer than the school kids across Pennsylvania. Meanwhile the House Dems passed bills representing many of their core partisan priorities. Good stuff, but tone deaf under the circumstances. If you want to solve something, the courts and the Executive Branch might have your remedy. The legislature struggles to cut through the noise of lunatic fringers who inhabit it.
Right now, the legislature is in full election year mode. They had several priorities that needed passage, and they really didn’t do any of them. The courts nullified life without parole for second degree murder as a mandatory sentence, saying it was unconstitutional (not that it can’t be the sentence, but that judges should be able to consider a range). The courts also ruled that video poker machines are in fact slot machines and not a special category of “skill games” that don’t require licenses. In both cases, the cases were sent back to the legislature to address by passing a bill. So far, neither has happened. One might forgive them for not acting at the whims of the court if one thought they were doing it to assert that they don’t work for the courts, but it’s really more like watching moss grow on a stone. There are things though that are fully the responsibility of the legislature to do, and well, they just didn’t do them. Even after the importance of SEPTA in Philadelphia navigating America 250 celebrations, the World Cup, and the All-Star Game, I’ll be damned if the legislature would actually fund our mass transit. The Senate doesn’t want to do it, and well, nobody made them. God forbid they actually fund transportation in the largest economic activity hub in the state. And of course, finally, there is adult recreational marijuana use, which is something forward thinking states have done to help them fund their state governments. Ohio, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York- also known as all of our neighbors but one- have already done this. Pennsylvanians are driving to their states and purchasing marijuana products as adults, and paying tax dollars to their states. Their seniors and their students are getting those dollars. Meanwhile, we’re underfunding our counties. We lack clear DUI laws that make sense for marijuana users. We can’t do basic things.
I know we like to joke about how PennDOT is a third world organization and our roads suck. Honestly, other than a clean sweep, I have no idea how you fix that. It would be nice though if the legislature wanted to legislate. While I have my issues with the House, I am specifically talking about the Senate, where good and bad ideas go to die so everyone can go do whatever they do with their down time. It is, at this point, creating problems for the future, for the sake of doing nothing. It’s a disaster. And while right now everyone is cool with it, the chickens will come home to roost. We’ll be sitting here at some point, wondering why we can’t do basic things. I wonder if people will be smart enough to assign blame correctly.
Pip: Every election cycle, someone promises the apocalypse is finally arriving on schedule — and every cycle, the map barely moves.
Mara: That's the territory Rich Wilkins has been mapping on Apocalypse Vibes — the structural limits on Democratic ambitions in 2026, the candidate quality problems making those limits worse, the progressive left's Israel politics, and what America's 250th birthday actually means when you're paying attention. Let's start with where the 2026 wave is, and isn't, headed.
The 2026 Map: Real Gains, Real Ceilings
Pip: The central argument in "Political Gravity in 2026" is that Democrats are probably winning the House, but the landslide narrative is running ahead of the actual numbers.
Mara: The post puts it plainly: "The best way to understand American politics is to understand that our country has been stuck in a 48-46% split for a quarter century or so now." That's the floor and the ceiling both.
Pip: Which means gerrymandering doesn't even need to work that hard — the electorate is doing most of the structural work already.
Mara: The post estimates roughly 400 of 435 districts are drawn so partisanly that even a wave doesn't move them, projecting a net Republican loss of fifteen to twenty seats. "The Delusions of the Progressive Populist Left" and "What Democrats Got Wrong" both reinforce why: the party is consolidating leftward while independents — now 45 percent of Americans — are calling themselves moderate, and they are not moving toward the Democratic Party as it shifts.
Pip: So the wave is real, the ceiling is low, and the party is spending energy debating whether to go further in the direction that's already not working.
Mara: That's essentially the argument. Which brings us to the candidates Democrats are actually fielding.
Crooksy Brooks: A Case Study in Self-Inflicted Damage
Pip: "Crooksy's Loose Lips" opens with a scene that pretty much writes the rest of the segment for us — Bob Brooks, at a private lunch, cracking jokes about a popular mayor's spelling while his own social media history is a liability archive.
Mara: The post is direct about the strategic problem: "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." Same consultants, same pitch, same early polling lead that is already shrinking.
Pip: A 47-43 internal in July, per "Bernie, Platner, Crooksy" — which also notes the NRCC didn't wait long to tie Brooks directly to the Fight Agency consultants behind Platner's campaign.
Mara: "Crooksy Goes to Court" lays out the financial record: money loaned in 2004, a signed promissory note from 2008, an appeal lost in 2022, and a reported hundred dollars paid to date. The post also notes an ethics complaint was filed with the House during the primary.
Pip: A hundred dollars. Over twenty-two years. That is a commitment to a position.
Mara: "The NRCC's File on Crooksy" details four lines of attack the Republicans have already assembled — unpaid workers' compensation insurance, racist social media posts, the mother-in-law lawsuit, and a pay raise Brooks took while cutting spending on actual union member advocacy. The post notes this probably is not everything they have.
Mara: Then there is the firefighter issue. "Bob Crooksy Brooks Doesn't Just Hate Barack Obama, He Hates the Folks Who Save Your Life" covers his social media posts calling IAFF members who also volunteer "scabs" and "shitbags." "Someone Ask Crooksy How Many Scabs Helped Fight Last Week's Massive Fire in Allentown" puts a concrete number on what that argument looks like in practice: over a hundred firefighters from as far as Carbon County, working for more than seven hours.
Pip: His pathway to victory, the post argues, runs through turning out the Susan Wild coalition — the very voters he most repulses.
Mara: And the through-line across all of this is candidate quality as a structural problem, not a one-race accident. Which connects directly to what's happening on the Israel and progressive politics front.
The Progressive Left, Israel, and the Limits of the Movement
Pip: "These Folks are Mentally Ill" is about the New York primaries, but the argument is really about where the progressive left can and cannot win.
Mara: The post draws the line precisely: "these embarrassing freaks are only winning certain kinds of races — very blue district, legislative races that usually have more than two candidates." Safe seats, low-turnout fields, places where you never have to acknowledge Republicans or moderate Democrats exist.
Pip: The Gaza politics driving a lot of these candidacies gets its own full examination in "For All the Talk About a Free Palestine, Nobody Has a Plan for Who Would Lead It."
Mara: That post walks through the practical obstacles — two separate governing authorities that do not recognize each other, Abbas whose term ended in 2009, Hamas, skeptical neighboring states, and an Israeli electorate that roundly rejected the idea after October 7th. The conclusion is that attaching conditions to foreign aid is reasonable; promising a functioning Palestinian state in the near term is not.
Pip: Serious conditions on aid — yes. Promising a flying cow — also apparently on the table, and the post is not more optimistic about one than the other.
Mara: From there, the question becomes what any of this means for a country about to turn 250.
America at 250: Pride Without Amnesia
Pip: "Happy Birthday America" is the outlier in tone — a genuine defense of patriotism that holds the country's failures and its achievements in the same frame.
Mara: The post names the failures directly — slavery, Japanese internment, Jim Crow, January 6th — and then pivots: "We're also the greatest country on Earth. There is a reason my friends in foreign countries want to come here." The argument is that a nation is more than the sum of its government and its worst moments.
Pip: Ho Chi Minh quoting Thomas Jefferson in Vietnam's own Declaration of Independence is the detail that earns that argument.
Mara: The post closes on that note — that the ideals in the Declaration of Independence matter more than the day-to-day failures, and that billions live in greater freedom today at least partly because of what this country did and inspired.
Pip: A structurally frozen electorate, a candidate class that keeps finding new ways to underperform it, and a birthday party anyway.
Mara: The through-line is the gap between what the moment calls for and what the parties are actually offering. That gap isn't closing before November — we'll see if it narrows at all.
For the last ten years, Democrats have been locked in a brutal battle over the direction of their party. One wing of the party, let’s call it the mainstream, took the lesson from the Obama years that leaning into social issues, pluralism, and changing demographics was the pathway to a longer term majority. The other wing felt that the Occupy Wall Street movement, anger at wealthy people, and a more ideological policy portfolio would lead to victory. The “mainstream” generally won this fight and occupies a majority within the party. But the insurgents are a sizable bunch. Either way, neither has been successful.
The mainstream Democratic Party, for lack of a better way to put it, decided it needed to lean into social issues and “identity” politics late in the Obama years. This was driven in no small part by the party’s failures in elections where Barack Obama was not on the ballot. The thinking was that if you could turn out the “Obama coalition” consistently, you would win elections consistently. Not only did this fail in 2016, but Trump has seen his share of the vote improve amongst most of the groups that Obama rode to big victories, at least at the margins. The only place the party has seen real growth in this era with this strategy has been among college educated voters, particularly white ones, and that has had to offset declines with lower educated white voters. Basically running on what leftists call the “HR Lady politics” is not very popular and can’t build a sustainable majority outside of white collar, educated enclaves. It’s a losing strategy. Outreach to non-white voters who gave Obama huge numbers in his runs usually has brought leftists into the fray with circus clown candidates like Graham Platner who make fools of the party, and unpopular, absolute joke policy soundbites like “Defund the Police,” which end up not only costing us White voters, but also Black voters and Latino voters. In short, Democratic “mainstream” operatives have no bloody idea how to reach any group of voters right now besides white folks with grad degrees, and they’re still the better option because they don’t sound crazy, harmful, and destructive.
Then there’s the other side, which sounds like a campus protest at this point. These fools thought the reason Obama was successful was leftist protest movements such as “Occupy Wall Street,” and well, that’s went how you’d expect. They have jumped from “omnicause” to omnicause, hoping to jumpstart their revolution, and it just never quite finds enough support outside of lower and lower turnout primaries where they can edge out a low intensity win. They come up with slogans like “defund the police,” “Green New Deal,” and “Free Palestine,” none of which have any actual substance behind the plans (they often argue over what they even mean), and end up as the subject of Republican attack ads. They have leading figures like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren who don’t have many career achievements and generally dislike the party more than they hate their opponents, and it ends as horribly bad as you’d expect. They give us ideological lunatics like Tulsi Gabbard, John Fetterman, and Graham Platner, who end up practically making the Republican arguments for them as they run away from the Democratic Party, people so intellectually flexible that they end up disagreeing with themselves on what kind of America they want. They make up roughly a third of the party that is just angry and wants to “FIGHT” or “DO SOMETHING” even if there is no concrete idea what that is. They can’t build a majority of the party, let alone the country, and if they did take over a lot more of the existing Democrats would leave. Which is bad when you’re 27% of America. They justify this though by living in an imaginary world where they’ll convert some portion of non-voters and Trump voters into leftists, which is nonsensical to any thinking person, but it’s the only way to justify moving left when the country thinks we’ve gone too far now.
The second problem is truly a problem of leadership though, and it’s made these problems way, way worse. Instead of standing on their beliefs and values and presenting a plan of any kind to the country, they have bent over backwards to appease these folks. What’s come out of it is slop policy, adaptation of half measures to try and appease people which does not appease people, and the perception among less ideological voters of all stripes that Democrats are a bunch of weirdos obsessed with changing everything in society. Let’s be honest, I kind of get people defining us by our furthest left flank- they at least have a list of things they want to do. They might not have a real plan to get there, or any clue how they’d change a government not meant to change, but they have policies. What does a Chuck Schumer Democrat do, run the government better? It’s basically a management class political party that promises to appropriate money better than the other guys and maybe be a bit better about hiring more diverse people, and defending achievements the party had in the past, like Medicare, Obamacare, or Social Security. Really, let’s be serious, most of the great achievements Democrats have in recent times are cleaning up messes left to them by Republicans. It’s not as though they’ve put forward serious regulatory bills on things like the internet, social media, or AI. It’s kind of just “we’re better at governance,” which makes people’s eyes glaze over. Then the leftists yell about giving out free shit, and most voters know it will never happen, but some folks do latch onto it, and so people assume that’s the party’s position. I mean, it’s dumb, but I can’t blame people.
So not only are Democratic leaders appeasing people who want to change the very core of the support they currently have to become something less popular, they’re also literally putting nothing forward as a party. And this has been the case for ten years. We’ll pass continuing resolutions for the same government you don’t like, but do it better than them, so vote for us. Then we wonder why we’re being defined by the least popular among us. I don’t know why we’re shocked. Ten years into this.
Well it’s the All-Star Break. Baseball is descending on Philadelphia. Tonight I’ll be sitting in the seats watching Cristopher Sanchez deliver the first pitch to Mike Trout. I was not nearly as excited about this months ago as I have become recently. In 1996 I was there, and it was awesome, but there was one Phillies player in the game. This will be dramatically different. Maybe too different in my view, but there’s no way to balance getting every team involved with giving the fans what they want.
As for where baseball is- well, it’s where you expect it to be. The Dodgers are good. The Brewers, Braves, Phillies, and Cubs are chasing them in the NL. The Yankees, Guardians, and Mariners are good. But it’s also not. Miami, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis are as alive as the Padres and Diamondbacks in the NL. The White Sox and Rays are more alive than the Tigers or Blue Jays. Everything that was predictable, well most of it was. But not all of it.
First, here’s my preseason picks. Boy, I got some wrong. Here’s the first and second power rankings too. I’ll give you my updated power rankings now, then the thoughts on the rest of the season:
Los Angeles Dodgers
Milwaukee Brewers
Tampa Bay Rays
Atlanta Braves
Chicago Cubs
Philadelphia Phillies
New York Yankees
Cleveland Guardians
Chicago White Sox
Miami Marlins
Texas Rangers
St. Louis Cardinals
Pittsburgh Pirates
Arizona Diamondbacks
San Diego Padres
Seattle Mariners
Boston Red Sox
Washington Nationals
Minnesota Twins
Houston Astros
Baltimore Orioles
Detroit Tigers
Toronto Blue Jays
Cincinnati Reds
Sacramento Athletics
San Francisco Giants
New York Mets
Kansas City Royals
Colorado Rockies
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
So I re-arranged the front group, but not wildly. I think the top eight all have a legitimate shot to win the World Series and should be absolute buyers. From nine to sixteen, those teams really should believe in their team and try to buy. Here’s the thing though- I don’t think any of the top 24 are like 100% out of this. How they come out after the break will really determine what those teams do, and there are teams like Boston and Detroit that I thought were absolutely dead that have actually regained some life in recent weeks.
Here’s how I would evaluate each team’s chances though- how many legitimate #1 or 2 pitchers do they have, and how bad is the back end of their bullpen. Teams that have three or even four premium arms are going to eventually just pull away, as long as they have a bullpen that doesn’t just give away wins they should get. If you made me predict today, I’d predict the Dodgers, Brewers, Phillies, Yankees, Guardians, and Mariners to win their divisions. I’d predict the Cubs, Braves, and Marlins to win the NL Wild Cards, today. The teams I think with the best shot of knocking off the Marlins? Pittsburgh and Arizona. The deadline will decide that, and frankly if Atlanta pulls a strong deadline they could hold off the Phillies- if they don’t do the same. In the AL, I’d pick the Wild Cards to go to Texas, Tampa, and Boston- yes, Boston- right now. Again, pitching. Most pitchers are at 18 or 19 starts this season right now, and teams with less proven arms will see serious depreciation in the last ten to thirteen starts of a pitcher’s season. Teams like St. Louis and Washington, who have really fun lineups to be excited about, will need pitching to not fall off. I love what the White Sox are doing, but they are a team who needs to add arms. Again, I like teams like Miami and Pittsburgh, who have young arms that casual fans don’t realize are really talented, and will hold up better than you believe. I still basically believe the teams like the Yankees and Cubs who were built with postseason aspirations, or even just well run teams like Milwaukee, will hold up better. Those teams are made for long seasons.
AS FOR MY PHILLIES, I did say I think they’ll win the division, but the deadline will matter. They have the best top three starters in the division, if not the league, and that will be decisive. They have the most top heavy roster in baseball though. They have six guys at the All-Star Game. Add Wheeler to that, and that’s about all of the roster that you’d bet your season on. Maybe you’d add Kerkering or a Stott and say you feel decent about them, or you might still feel very good about Justin Crawford’s progress as a rookie, but they’re truly all complimentary pieces. The truth is that the Phillies charitably can feel good about maybe nine or ten roster spots, and should look for any upgrades they can possibly make for the other 16. I’m not asking for big names like Buxton or Trout, I’d be fine with several marginal upgrades. I particularly am intrigued by the possibilities with the Giants, Tigers, Angels and Twins, among teams that may have more than one piece we want in a deal. Like everyone else, a right-handed bat, left handed reliever, and starting pitcher better than Aaron Nola would work. Given that this team is carrying two back-up catchers around for an abnormal amount of time, I’m not picky on bats, just someone who actually can hit. I’d love to buy a rental arm like Ray, but that’s probably a pipe dream, so again, anything above a five. And someone to replace Alvarado as the main lefty in the seventh and eighth.
I said Ohtani and Judge would win the MVP’s, with Bobby Witt Jr. and Juan Soto as the top challenges. Woof. Do I think Ohtani should win? No, I think frankly he should be more under consideration for Cy Young, but in the analytics age he’s a given. Personally I’m drifting further from being a WAR voter as this season goes on, but I’d probably vote for James Wood in the NL, though I’m tempted to say the hell with the analytics and pick Schwarber. If he really hits 60 and people start telling me about PCA’s defensive metrics, I’ll bite their head off. With that said, Pete Crow-Armstrong is having a very good season and needs a look too. My AL mention of Witt is more than deserving, but his team is massively disappointing. Yordan Alvarez’s team isn’t a ton better. So maybe I’m voting for Junior Caminero. For NL Cy Young I am going homer and saying I’d pick Zack Wheeler (yes, the non-All Star) over Sanchez, Misiorowski, and Ohtani in what is a fantastic race. In the AL, give me Cam Schlittler by a nose over Dylan Cease right now. I’ll give Kevin McGonigle the nod for AL Rookie of the Year and J.J. Wetherholt the NL nod, unless Murakami can come back strong from injury. That AL race is going to be great. Clayton McCullough and Will Venable get my Manager of the Year nods.
Brooks uses Fight Agency, the same consultants tied to Platner’s campaign, and has shown no interest in dropping them.
“Bernie Bro Bob Brooks is backed by far-left political allies who helped prop up alleged sexual abuser Graham Platner. Brooks won’t distance himself from them because he is exactly what the Democrat machine produces: a self-serving socialist who protects the system, not families.” – NRCC Spokesman Reilly Richardson
You know, it’s about time for this “revolution” to die. I have to hand it to Crooksy though- he’s maybe not a Russian asset, Nazi, or Shrek, but he did stiff his former mother-in-law. Bernie and Fight Agency are really picking out some fantastic people to run for Congress.
The NRCC has put up it’s first “red box” page on Bob “Crooksy” Brooks in PA-7, and it’s a mix of things we expected and knew, and things that are expansions on his other laundry list of problems. The four main hits they put up:
I have to admit that I’m surprised they limited themselves to just four things with this guy, but as I found in the primaries, there’s so much more than you can actually print legally about him. They’re hitting on the obvious stuff, being a racist who stiffed his family. They’re also hitting him though right where his message is most vulnerable- he’s not a champion of blue collar Americans. They’re going to call him a “union boss,” an attack with a false meaning for the most part, by hitting him for his compensation in the job and job performance. I mean, I guess that works with Republicans, but I don’t know there. The first hit, that he doesn’t have workman’s compensation insurance for his landscaping business could expose him to some serious issues legally, and also open up the long rumored issues of how he got the business. Of course they have videos of Crooksy saying crazy things and also avoiding talking (see above) on the page as well. I doubt this is everything they have, but it’s probably enough to pull Crooksy down a bit. I’m sure they’re going to use the deadbeat stuff and racism to really nuke him, because well, it’s true.
