👋 Good morning! Let’s recap the last week of Philadelphia sports.

Congrats are in order for the Philadelphia 76ers, who “won the week” with a 1-3 record and two frustrating crunch-time losses. Well, only way to go from here…

And there is only one place to go this morning: Wawa.

Is there any better deal than Wawa’s Big $5 Deal? From 5 a.m. to 11 a.m., you can get a Sizzli, coffee (hot or iced) and a hash brown for just $5. Wherever you are in the area, there is a Wawa near you. Take advantage today!

As always, you can reach me at [email protected]

Never want to hear about Zoom meetings again. Never want to hear about how close Dunedin is to Clearwater again. Never want to hear about Bo Bichette’s relationship with Don Mattingly again. That man did you dirty, Donnie Baseball!

OK, I am done venting. Somewhat more calmly, let’s unpack A Series of Unfortunate Events on Friday for the local baseball team. First, the links…

Jamie and Tyler’s live reaction here is also pretty funny.

One detail that I had forgotten about over the years: When John and Leigh Middleton were wooing Bryce and Kayla Harper on the Las Vegas Strip in 2019, Harper received an offer from the Los Angeles Dodgers: four years, $180 million. After plugging a few digits into the calculator, that comes out to a $45 million AAV. Short-term, big money.

Instead, and thankfully, Bryce chose the Phillies’ offer: thirteen years, $330 million. More digits into the calculator reveals a $25.3 million AAV. Long-term, a whole lot of money overall, but less money on a per-year basis.

Yeah, that era is over.

Over the last week, the Phillies’ willingness to go long-term on their contracts was sold as an advantage in The Bo Bichette Sweepstakes. As it turned out, it was the exact opposite. The Phils reportedly offered Bichette seven years, $200 million, which is a good offer. That would have ran around $60 million total this year with the ol’ luxury tax payment. Again, a good offer. My guys at MLB Trade Rumors predicted eight years, $208 million at the outset of the offseason.

But “good” does not cut it, not in this day and age. Dodgers POBO Andrew Friedman has a pretty well-known quote that gets brought up at this time of year: “If you’re rational about every free agent, you will finish third on every free agent.” At this specific point in time, I would quibble with that and change it to: “If you’re only kind of rational about every free agent, you will still finish third on every free agent.”

Yeah, you have to be straight-up irrational at the top of the free-agent market. The Mets offered Kyle Tucker four years, $220 million. They finished second. And so, despite not particularly needing a third baseman, here is what Steve Cohen turned around offered to Bo Bichette, the best hitter left on the board:

Is that the most player-friendly contract in the history of sports? Who knows what rules the next CBA brings when we resume baseball in 2030, but if Bichette has a great season, he can get right back on the open market. If he stinks, you are paying him $42 million each for the stinky year and the next year. The Phillies were not really that rational about Bichette, but compared to Uncle Stevie, they were pinching pennies. Uncle Stevie got Bichette.

League-wide, players are taking short-term, high-AAV contracts because they have seen other players do well with those deals. Just this offseason, Alex Bregman and Pete Alonso cashed in with five-year contracts for over $155 million each after taking the short-term, high-AAV deal with an opt-out after the first year. Deep-pocketed teams like the Dodgers and Mets, the two franchises that clearly just have more spending power than the Phillies, are happy to a pay premium for a player’s prime years.

And here the Phillies are, with their preferred contract structure now mostly out of favor. Harper has already grumbled about his contract over the past few years, and he knows that he is currently the 38th highest-paid player in baseball in 2026... and he will get passed a few more times over the next few weeks. I have little sympathy for Harper on this subject, mind you. He signed the huge contract, opting for stability, and is set for life and then some. But it would be naive to think that he and Scott Boras do not have their current reality on their minds.

So, where does this leave the Phillies? I am of two minds on this one…

The negative side: Well, they certainly got played to a degree. There was much fanfare about the Phillies signing Bichette over the past week. Most national reporter and insider-y types pegged them as the favorite. Until, you know, they were not.

The selling points for signing Bichette now loom as missed opportunities. He represented the rare ability to get an impact right-handed bat to protect Harper and balance out the lineup. He represented a chance to introduce a new character into a core that has experienced a ton of playoff disappointment. He would have provided Phillies fans a new character on their favorite television show.

There has been a lot of consternation thrown at John Middleton over the past few days, a lot of sarcastic “I want my trophy back… but on a budget!” type of digs. I understand that to a degree, but I would also look at Dave Dombrowski. There is $38 million of Taijuan Walker and Nick Castellanos on the books this year, as well as $24 million of Aaron Nola on the books this year. Hopefully Nola rebounds, but Dombrowski has handed out some deals that turned questionable before they should have.

And look, losing Bichette is one thing. But losing Bichette to the Mets? That really hurts.

The less negative side: Notice I did not say “positive.”

At this time last year, there was a lot of doom and gloom when the Mets made Juan Soto The $765 Million Man. There were a lot of people disappointed that Middleton did not sign him to that insane number. There were plenty who thought the Mets had already bypassed the Phillies.

Well, despite Soto being quite good and that house of horrors in Queens being cursed, the Phillies clinched the division faster than any other team this season. For one year, the Mets had certainly not bypassed the Phils.

I can spin the Bichette signing, too. Let’s rattle ‘em off:

OK, that’s seven. Back to reality…

The Phillies can still sell themselves as a good baseball team. I have enjoyed watching them every summer, and I would imagine that I enjoy watching them again this summer.

But this sustained run of success is not guaranteed moving forward. Everyone is a year older. The outfield looks shaky on paper, to say the least. Zack Wheeler’s health scare turned him from the surest thing in sports to a wild-card. Ranger Suárez is in Boston. The Phillies are relying on Justin Crawford and Andrew Painter to give them something right away. Is Alec Bohm gonna be pouting all season, like even more than usual?

And the biggie, if they are fortunate enough to get there: Who on earth trusts this lineup in October?

With all of that in mind, yes, it would be nice to have Bichette. For the second straight year, the Phillies are now banking on this same core group of players to make the summer feel better than the winter. And they might. But right now, it’s admittedly a tough sell.

Michael Clay, stickin’ around: After he interviewed for the Tampa Bay special teams coordinator job, Michael Clay is staying around in Philly. He received an extension.

“The Bucs are a great organization, but I could not in good conscience leave Joe Peezy,” Clay was quoted as saying*.

(*Clay did not say that. He was probably thinking it, though.)

EJ has more here. The Eagles’ special teams numbers have been below-average the last two seasons, but it’s hard to know how much of that is Clay’s fault. He has not been handed a ton of Chris Maragos-types, and it’s certainly not his fault that Jake Elliott is missing so many kicks. I give this move a solid ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Jeffrey and Howie, doin’ some talkin’: Tomorrow will be dedicated to The Great Offensive Coordinator Search of 2026. I wanted to get some baseball talk in today.

But we know that Jeffrey Lurie and Howie Roseman like to use these OC searches to talk to as many people as possible. To recap some of the names in the early going:

And then two of the likely frontrunners — Mike McDaniel and Brian Daboll — will reportedly interview for the position at some point. Adam Schefter is also reporting that the Eagles are requesting to interview Bobby Slowik as well, and he is a decent rebound candidate. Bo brought up Slowik’s case here, the idea of “buying the dip.” I mean, Slowik did oversee C.J. Stroud’s crazy rookie year. Did you see C.J. Stroud yesterday?

Speaking of that…

🏈 Quick weekend takeaways: I enjoyed this weekend’s games. Two wild ones at the beginning and end, the 49ers getting blown out and a memorably sloppy game in New England. And as a bonus, Seattle played well enough to convince me that the Eagles had no chance of making the Super Bowl.

We saw the fine line between aggressive and reckless with Josh Allen and C.J. Stroud. In a game where he did plenty of Josh Allen Things, Allen’s fumble at the end of the first half was a mistake that just cannot happen under any circumstances. And of course the Bills end up losing the game in overtime. Meanwhile, Stroud’s first half was up there with one of the worst playoff performances you will see. I was trying to think back, maybe Favre against the Rams, Delhomme against the Cardinals or Herbert against the Texans? Stroud had four interceptions in the first half and could have thrown three or four more. He was looking like Nathan Peterman out there. The pick-six was as brutal as it gets.

The Eagles clearly went too far in the other direction this season, but this weekend was a reminder that aggressive/reckless can be a difficult balance to strike.

Seattle feels like the best team. The Seahawks play such good defense. And in particular, their ability to play nickel against anyone feels like a huge advantage. The Eagles certainly used that blueprint last year.

I think this year’s champion comes out of the NFC. After the Rams survived Caleb Williams’ miracle throw (two years in a row that LA gets a snow game in the divisional round), we get Rams-Seahawks Round 3.

New England’s easy path: Mike Vrabel has done a nice job this year. Drake Maye is a current and future star. And New England is a good team, no question about it. I hate all of it. But you are telling me that after the Patriots played statistically the easiest schedule of the past 25 years, these are their playoff opponents:

This is outrageous! Bo Nix makes some big-time throws to send Buffalo home, and then he gets hurt at the last possible minute! Anyway, this was a good social media post.

NY Rangers 6, Flyers 3: We have officially hit rock bottom for this Flyers team. Six losses in a row, and this one was a catastrophe at home against a bad team. Post-game pod is here.

So, I turn on the game on Saturday afternoon and am excited to watch. And early on the Flyers take the lead, Travis Konecny with a perfectly-placed shot off a perfectly-weighted saucer pass from Trevor Zegras. We were feeling good.

And then the Rangers took three shots, their first three shots of the game. They scored on all of them!

Dan Vladar has been the pleasant surprise of the Flyers season, basically giving the Orange and Black average starting goaltender production. But once Vladar hits the shelf for a few weeks, the Flyers are immediately in crisis mode. Sam Ersson is ranked 61st out of 61 qualified goaltenders in save percentage, and we basically have two full years of evidence that he is not even an NHL-caliber backup.

And then Aleksei Kolosov gets called up, having to play some games. He responds by giving up three goals on three shots and getting pulled. I am not sure I have ever seen that before. Two of them were not particularly well-defended plays, but the middle one? It just has to get stopped.

The Flyers’ upcoming road trip is brutal, too: Vegas, Utah and Colorado. I will have more in-depth writing on the Orange and Black later this week.

J.T.’s huge contract: Immediately after the Phillies lost out on Bichette, they handed J.T. Realmuto three years, $45 million with $5 million in potential incentives each year. Tyler’s reaction is here.

There was some reporting, including from Jimmy Steaks, that Realmuto had some interest from Tampa Bay. After the Phillies did not sign Bichette, I do think it made sense to bring J.T. back. They needed a catcher, and he was the best one available on the market. He is a mainstay in the locker room and he does seem to handle the pitching staff well.

But J.T. will turn 35 years old in spring training and his offensive numbers have been going the wrong way for four straight years. The idea of paying him for three more years, after the Phillies not-so-subtly signaled a willingness to go into The Catcher Wilderness if they landed Bichette, is just not very exciting. Low-upside, pretty high-downside.

Understandable, but not exciting. The Phillies will not be beating the Run It Back allegations this year.

🎋🇺🇸 Bamboo Brad, Team USA: Brad Keller will pitch for Team USA in the WBC, joining Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber on the squad.

📈 The Man, movin’ on up: I have probably been too late on this story, but Chase Utley might want to clear out his calendar for July 2027. He could be makin’ a trip to Cooperstown, and that is not just wishful thinking.

Ryan Thibodaux’s public tracking reveals that Carlos Beltrán and Andruw Jones might get in the Baseball Hall of Fame this year… along with Jeff Kent, who got in via one of those weird committees. Beltrán and Jones are both in a pretty good spot. But with half of the ballots known, Chase is clearly third among all eligible players with 67.9 percent of the vote. As a reminder, you need 75 percent to get in.

But Uncle Mo is typically important in this voting from year-to-year, and Chase has it on his side. He has gone from 29.8 percent in Year 1 to 39.8 percent in Year 2 to 67.9 percent in Year 3. That is a big jump, and often that type of rise is enough to get the player in question over the finish line in subsequent years.

It is kinda ironic that Chase Utley, perhaps the throwback-iest player of his era, Mr. Fundamentals and Hard Baserunning, is likely gonna get in The Hall because his new-age WAR is much more impressive than his old-school counting stats. Thank you, nerds!

Cleveland 117, Sixers 115: Tough loss, especially because the Sixers responded and played better than they did on Wednesday. Specifically, Tyrese Maxey and Joel Embiid cleaned up the two-man game and the Sixers forced a million turnovers.

Unfortunately, the Cavs shot 17-34 from beyond the arc and “Jaylon Tyson” went 13-17 from the field for 39 points. When you also add in that Maxey struggled shooting yet again, that is a tough one to lose by a bucket. The crunch-time defense was just not good enough. Harmful loss in the Eastern Conference standings, too. Post-game pod is here, Kyle’s observations are here.

Jared McCain’s sad sophomore season: Johni Broome, who looked more overmatched at the NBA level than any Sixer I have seen in a minute, scored 50 points in the G-League on Friday. No offense to Broome, but they really do not play much defense in the G-League. Most NBA players go down there and put up numbers.

Well, Jared McCain got sent down this weekend, which I think was a good move by the Sixers. Get him some reps. In his first game, McCain unfortunately shot 5-18 from the field with six turnovers and zero assists. Ugh, nightmare season for him.

Happy MLK Day! You will probably be watching the national championship game, but Sixers-Pacers (7:00 p.m., NBC Sports Philly) and Flyers-Golden Knights (8:00 p.m., NBC Sports Philly+) are also on for your viewing pleasure.

Phil Martelli Jr. coaches VCU against St. Joe’s today too, which is cool.

Your tentative Monday schedule at PHLY:

Let's make it a good one.

Rich Hofmann
Daily Newsletter Editor
PHLY SPORTS