And then, thanks to some interesting officiating, and a few collapses, there were none. No one is undefeated anymore in the NFL. Because of that, there won’t be as much movement as one might think after a crazy week. A lot of teams took an L. A good few of them didn’t see it coming.
I tend to value experiences more than I used to. I actually have felt this way for several years, as I was arriving at the dawn of my fifth decade, but that’s more true than ever after going through a near death experience. I kind of now see that youth is wasted on the young, that all of those playoff and World Series games I got to go to in the Rollins-Howard-Utley-Hamels era, like all the great concerts and other events I got to go to, they were a blessing. I took a long moment to enjoy and take in the atmosphere when I was at game three of the 2022 World Series, as I realized what a childhood dream it was when I was there in 1993 and 2008. You don’t get these experiences every day. In fact, they can be taken away from you in the course of a random Summer afternoon. You need to enjoy it while it’s here.
Saturday evening I was at the Pass & Stowe bar in Citizens Bank Park before the game and having a seat for a moment and that dawned on me again. This group of Phillies has had a really good run, and we ought to appreciate it. “Red October” over these last four years has been the most incredible atmosphere one can experience in sports. I’m grateful to all of these guys, even the guys who are playing terribly right now. Four years is an eternity though in sports. Time passes everyone by. That 2008 group was the greatest era in Phillies history, and it was stone cold dead by the end of 2012. Sports are a young man’s game. Economics are a cruel reality. Being sentimental in the sports industry, and throwing around money chasing a ghost you aren’t going to catch is how you end with an old and broken team. It’s either going to happen or it isn’t. The people running your team need to know that. Otherwise you’ll be in a stadium with 15,000 people in three years watching a losing team play out the string.
I think the Phillies are actually not at the end of their window of contention if they want to stretch it with this group. In fact, they’ve won more games every year since Bryce Harper signed in Philadelphia. There’s a strong argument that you re-sign Schwarber and at least one of Realmuto and Suarez, and just hope your team is the hot one next October. You just run it back, because statistically it’s your best odds of reaching your goal, a championship. Look, we have done this in Philadelphia with the 76ers for the better part of the last decade. Our best shot has been to hope for a healthy Embiid, paired with some star guard, and things maybe will fall our way one year. Then we get to the next season, and things end the same way in the playoffs, or worse. Yes, the Phillies best chance of winning a title is to keep running out a team that has one of the best records in the league. Sure, one year they won’t be that good anymore. We don’t know when that will be, of course, but until then we should just keep trying it with tinkering around the edges. I’m sure that’s what the analytics say.
The Phillies are down 2-0 going to Los Angeles for game three facing elimination. Their top three hitters are a combined 2-for-21 with a few walks through two games, but it looks exactly like last year’s Mets series (if not worse), which kind of looks like the last few games of the 2023 Diamondbacks series, which of course, kind of looks like games 4 through 6 of the 2022 World Series. Not only have the top three bats gone cold again, but the bullpen has wilted under the unkind, bright lights of the playoffs, where every out has outsized meaning. The manager has again, ran out his bullpen arms for one or two too many outs in big spots. Topper has had a great four years here, but Dave Roberts is doing what Carlos Mendoza and Torey Lovullo did before him- press the right buttons. The other teams make adjustments in the series, and even in the games, and the Phillies just can’t quite answer. There just isn’t some stroke of brilliance there, nothing that stems the tide against them. And it’s like this every October. Sure, one year it didn’t happen until the World Series. Here’s the truth though- the Phillies are one loss from a third straight playoff series loss to a team that won less games than them in the regular season. There is something pretty damning about that alone, let alone that it looks the same each time.
The playoffs are just a different beast than the regular season in every sport. In baseball, the biggest difference is that you do have to lean much heavier on your best players. Your bench players can’t really be getting many at-bats, let alone starts. Your middle relievers should be getting the bare minimum number of outs. Your starters should be willing to come out of the bullpen. We can criticize Topper for the fact he is less aggressive within these realities than other managers, but that’s really not the whole story. The Phillies have a tremendous payroll. They have big time star players. Those players have just come up a little short each year. And now we’re one loss from that happening again.
Don’t eulogize the living. Ranger Suarez will throw game three, and while starting pitching hasn’t been the reason the Phillies are losing, Suarez has shown in the past that he is capable of pitching on a whole other level in big spots. Then you have the choice of going with Nola or going back to Sanchez, and well, if you win that game this is a totally different discussion about the greatest comeback in team history. I mean, in truth, they had a better year than the Dodgers and they have been pretty good against them for several years. There’s no reason this team *can’t* comeback in this series. Five game series are notoriously weird and lend themselves to weird outcomes. There’s plenty of reasons to still think it’s possible.
The problem with that though is I’m watching these games. Nothing we see makes us think this is going to happen. In fact, I recently went back and re-read what some of the national writers had to say before the 2022 season about this group, and it’s ringing true. The group the Phillies had assembled would certainly have nights they mashed the ball, but they also were prone to streaky hitting and a lot of strikeouts. This team is capable of putting on a show, but they are also capable of just being shut down for a week. In 2023, the Diamondbacks pitchers had a meeting on the flight back to Philadelphia for game six where their coaches essentially told them to stop giving in and throwing predictable pitches (aka- fastballs for strikes) to this team when they were sitting on it. This group has always been very good, but very flawed. It’s feast or famine. We’ve seen famine before. This looks like famine.
Wednesday night the Phillies will play another baseball game, then they will do so again if they win, on Thursday. Essentially a week from now they might be white hot and preparing for the NLCS, or they may be eliminated by Thursday morning. If this continues towards where it looks like they’re going, I think it’s time for a shake up with these Phillies. That, in my mind, should mean changes to the manager and the coaching staff. It should mean a willingness to trade some starting position players away. It should mean a willingness to let any combination of Kyle Schwarber, J.T. Realmuto, and Ranger Suarez go to free up space to add new and different pieces. It should absolutely mean guaranteeing a spot to Justin Crawford off of a sensational season in left and center fields in AAA this season, who looks ready to come in and make an impact. It should also mean laying out a pathway for Aidan Miller to hit his way into the 2026 infield by the middle of next summer. I would suggest that if this series doesn’t turn around, the Phillies should be married to absolutely nothing going into the off-season. Running it back in 2026 is most likely going to end how all the other years have ended, or worse. Sure, fans will be sad when players who did great things for this group walk away. Fans will eventually learn to love future players if they come in and perform.
Again, as I said above, appreciate everything you’ve had. Also, for all things a season. Father Time is unbeaten.
There is the whole matter though of how Bob “Crooksy” Brooks is raising $300k in the first place though. In multiple calls with local party leaders this week, they all remarked how he’s late for events and leaves before they’re over. At least two of these leaders made the remark to me though, “he does have the state party helping him.” Really? I’m not shocked that he has the Bernie grifters helping him raise money, and for that matter the same people who created Fetterman. The state party though? That’s fascinating. This is a Democratic Primary, almost all of the other candidates are definitely Democrats. The state committee, the elected body that governs the staff at the party, has not voted to endorse in this or any other Congressional Primary in years. No county party in the district has voted to endorse Crooksy. In fact, no elected official in this district is backing Crooksy. So under what authority are the new chairman and his staff helping this guy? Seems crooked as hell.
By now though everyone knows what’s going on here. Brooksy has no shot in hell against Ryan Mackenzie, they’ll drown him just with the fact that he stiffed his mother-in-law for $55k, let alone all the other stupid things. That was a temporary distraction though. No one has shown they are the certain nominee in this district, and Crooksy is good for the good ole’ boys in Harrisburg’s bottom line. Senator Fetterman’s mouthpieces get paid. The out-of-district legislators endorsing him get to come back to the IAFF later and remind them how they supported their guy. The Governor can say to IAFF leadership in his gubernatorial run, and his future Presidential run, that he has been a loyal soldier with them. Here’s the thing- that’s all true. The folks at the DCCC got to push some work to consultants they like too. Absolutely none of this does anything to win this seat and give the Democrats a majority in PA-7. We actually run the risk of nominating a dude who will be way over his head and get mugged by the GOP money machine in November. It’s a political dead end, and worse yet, even if I’m wrong and he does win, the guy is just another John Fetterman. Wasn’t it enough for the good ole’ boys in Harrisburg to push one massive mistake on us all? Do we need to do that again?
Does one district decide everything? No. This one is as close as you can get though. Nominating this guy and either losing or getting a shit Congressman will hurt people who need government to work. No one benefits from that. We need to sink this guy, and sink him fast. He’s a nightmare in waiting.
A week ago I wrote up my rankings with 12 teams alive. Today, four of them are eliminated. Another is down 2-0. Two others are down 1-0. As I write this, the rankings are tremendously shook up by those facts, and MLB’s “second season” is a totally different world than we were living in a week ago. Teams #13-30 won’t be changing until free agency and other things happen. In the playoffs though, the world changes fast and furiously for those taking part.
Here is this week’s rankings:
The Milwaukee Brewers
The Toronto Blue Jays
The Los Angeles Dodgers
The Detroit Tigers
The Seattle Mariners
The Philadelphia Phillies
The Chicago Cubs
The New York Yankees
The Cleveland Guardians
The San Diego Padres
The Boston Red Sox
The Cincinnati Reds
The Houston Astros
The New York Mets
The Kansas City Royals
The Texas Rangers
The San Francisco Giants
The Arizona Diamondbacks
The Miami Marlins
The St. Louis Cardinals
The Tampa Bay Rays
The Oakland Athletics
The Atlanta Braves
The Baltimore Orioles
The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
The Pittsburgh Pirates
The Minnesota Twins
The Washington Nationals
The Chicago White Sox
The Colorado Rockies
As was the case last week for teams #13-30, this is the end of the line for teams #9-12. Teams #6-8 are currently trailing in their series, and if that holds, next week will be their last new ranking, as it will be for whoever loses #4-5. At the end of the playoffs I’ll re-rank #3-12 based on opinion, but it probably won’t change a lot.
There will be millions of dollars spent on Pennsylvania’s judiciary this year. Millions will be spent on the Supreme Court’s retention race, where simply vote yes or no on each of the three incumbents (I recommend yes). The same will be said for the Superior Court and Commonwealth seats up for retention this year. There will be at least a few hundred grand spent on races for new seats on the Superior and Commonwealth Court as well. Here in the Lehigh Valley there is a singular seat on the Court of Common Pleas in both counties that is being competitively contested. All of these races will get plenty of attention and will stir up people’s emotions, just as races for County Executive, County Council, and municipal office will.
You know what hopefully doesn’t get you all hot and bothered this year? Retention votes for the Court of Common Pleas in Northampton County. Judge Paula Roscioli and Judge Sam Murray are both up for retention this year. Judge Roscioli has been on for 20 years. Judge Murray has been on for ten years. Both come highly recommended for another term by basically every lawyer I know in the county. They’re qualified, they’re competent, neither has done anything stupid or embarrassing to the community up there. Their colleagues speak highly of them. Give them another term.
Now here’s the only reason I’m writing about this- voting on these questions can be confusing. First off, the retention votes aren’t on the same part of the ballot as the votes for open judicial seats, so you have to go and find them and vote yes. Second off, a lot of money is going to be spent telling people to vote yes or no on other judicial retentions. Those are completely separate, more partisan races. I’m voting yes on those too, but maybe your politics are different than mine. Even if that’s the case, Democrats and Republicans alike approve of these judges. Vote yes to retain them.
With the brief exception of right before the election, Donald Trump has been historically unpopular for ten years now. Most Presidents have a period of time in which they are very popular with the public, at a minimum after their inauguration. Trump never got there. He’s the first and only President to win twice and lose the popular vote twice, and not hit 50% in any of three runs. Many Democratic policy positions are reasonably popular, and even now they are winning on most issue polling. Most ballot initiatives, from expanding health insurance to protecting abortion rights, to funding schools, to protecting the environment, to legalizing weed, and so on, pass even in red states. Democrats may even win in both New Jersey and Virginia, not to mention the NYC Mayoral race and Pennsylvania Supreme Court retentions this Fall. There are a lot of reasons to think that Democrats could have a very good midterm, and Republicans could have a very bad one. And yet, there’s a lot of reasons to not think that too.
Anecdotal evidence on the ground here in Pennsylvania shows GOP gains in the turnout battle for 2025. There have been weak polls and anecdotal evidence in New Jersey of similar sluggishness in the Democratic Party. Talk to most professionals and they’ll tell you online fundraising has not picked back up since the 2024 Election. The enthusiasm isn’t great. It’s not a sure sign of defeat. It’s problematic though.
Polling on the Democratic Party, rather than their positions, suggests that just about everyone reviles this party right now. Conservatives and Republicans hate the Democratic Party, obviously. Leftists and Democratic Socialists hate the party too, for not radicalizing. Centrist and moderate Democrats generally think the party has lost it’s mind and doesn’t know how to win. Most of the major national figures in the Democratic Party are at least partially controversial to the Democratic base, if not the whole country. Many of the key national policy fights right now, such as “law and order,” immigration, trans-rights, and Gaza are fights that divide Democrats and tend to poll favorably for the GOP. This is astounding given the deep cuts to health care, the environment, student loans, and education that were just carried out in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” but Trump is managing to push these issues to the forefront through over-the-top actions.
A lot of people in the Democratic tent want to take this time to argue about ideology and “the Overton Window,” and all kinds of largely academic fights that don’t mean anything and won’t change our fortunes right now. Tweaking our position on student loans or health care really isn’t going to change matters very much. Democrats have two main macro-sized problems that are going to drown out any nuance anyway.
Voters don’t like who they think we are. This is sort of self-explanatory. Conservatives think Democrats are a bunch of wimpy nerds who want to make them eat kale, listen to some scientist tell them every decision to make in their lives, and want them to believe that terrorists, criminals, and illegal immigrants are the good guys, but the cops in their town are the bad guys. Leftists and Democratic Socialists think Democrats are a bunch of wimps who will either roll over and play dead in any policy fight, or are bought already and will sell out, or worse yet, are just a bunch of rich privileged kids that want to stay important. Then there’s the rank and file Democratic voter, who generally thinks we’re concerned with matters that don’t matter enough to people’s lives, and are losing elections because we attach ourselves to niche cause we can.
Voters are unenthusiastic at best about the product we’re selling them. We have spent a lot of time fighting about whether we should have more or less identity in our politics, more or less economic ideology in our politics, or that we’re just packaging both wrong. Here’s the reality- a guy who is not popular with the overall public continues to grow his vote share in each election. We can argue about whether it was dislike directly toward Hillary and Kamala, or dislike with our policies, or something else, but voters do not like what we are offering them. I hear a lot of activists saying we can’t morally re-consider even what positions we talk about, much less moderate on them, but the reality is that what we’re doing now doesn’t work. The guy who was perceived as the most moderate candidate beat the crap out of 20 or so Democratic primary candidates and then won a majority to defeat Trump. Once he was seen as feeble and compromised to the party, we have had nothing. Clearly re-running the last decade isn’t going to work.
It is entirely possible that the Democrats can win in 2025 and 2026 without really changing anything. They almost certainly won’t win the Senate, as Democrats hold exactly zero seats right now in states Trump won all three times, and they would need to claw back seats in places like Iowa, Ohio, and Florida, which maybe they do once, but not across the board. In the House though it’s close, and most of the GOP members did take a vote to gut Medicaid. The Republicans were deeply unpopular in 2010 and won over 60 seats. Of course, they lost two years later. It wasn’t until they found a standard bearer that motivated voters and was “different” than the Bush Era GOP that they took back the whole government.
This is really unpopular with some of the most motivated Democrats, but here’s the reality- Democrats should run fairly normal (to regular people, not us), frankly successful people for office, and they should run on things that voters care about and agree with us on. No, I’m not saying you have to change your position on protecting trans kids from bullying, nor do I think you should. I am saying campaigning on broad amnesty for illegal immigrants or defunding the police is stupid and will lose us elections. Saying the War in Gaza should end is fairly easy and mostly agreeable, but don’t defend Hamas or say “Globalize the Intifada.” It’s a loser position. Raising the minimum wage, fixing the student loan system, making more people eligible for overtime, funding schools, building more affordable housing, legalizing marijuana- these are things that most people can support. If it sounds like I’m avoiding some of the bigger social fights, I’m not necessarily. I think we can win running on abortion rights and really most fights that involve protecting the rights of an individual to live how they chose. I think lecturing America about every social ailment it has though has gone piss poor for us, and has backed us into a political corner. So yes, I would try to run a product that people might relate to or even want. If that means talking a little differently to voters, I think the evidence is pretty clear we need to do that.
Well, Red October is here, and it starts with a bang. The Dodgers and their four (at least?) future Hall-of-Famers arrive in the Cradle of Liberty to kick off their best-of-5 NLDS this afternoon. It is a heavyweight fight between two of the consistently highest spending franchises in baseball. The Phillies have won the last couple of season series between the two. The Dodgers won the 2024 World Series. The Phillies had the better record and won home field for this series, and a bye to get here. The Dodgers won the NL West and swept Cincinnati.
Most teams would kill for most of either of these rosters, so there’s not many weaknesses. Both teams have been able to get to the others bullpens this year. I still think the bullpens will decide this series though. Dave Roberts does not push his starters super deep into games, which makes sense given their health. It’s hard to flip the switch on that in the postseason, even though they are healthy. Meanwhile the Phillies are built around their starting staff. Even without ace Zach Wheeler, they are the more durable staff, when on.
Both lineups are going to have their moments in this series. I’m assuming both teams will have reasonably decent starting pitching though. So this comes down to the bullpens. I think both probably lose at least one. I think the Dodgers blow two. Those guys, even with Sasaki and Kershaw out there, just aren’t good. For that reason, I’m saying the Phillies win this series. I’m going to say they do it in four.
In the other series, I’ve got Brewers in five, Yankees in five, and Tigers in five.
Meet Shrek. I mean, Senator John Fetterman. Once upon a time, he was a Democratic Socialist. Then he ran for Senate, and we got this. Most recently he’s been telling us how he won’t defend your health insurance. Sure, big dog, sure.
Apocalypse Vibes 