Oracle Park, house of horrors

👋 Good morning! I have been saying it for years, I hate that stupid ballpark in San Francisco so, so much.

Tyler had quite a stat in his post-game recap: The Phillies are 3-18 in their last 21 games in San Francisco. Feels high, the last regular-season win that I honestly can remember was Cliff Lee’s debut back in 2009. If you would have told me that the Fightins were 0-fer in that place since then, I would have believed you.

Think about how cursed that ballpark has to be. The Phillies’ worst full season over the last six years was an 81-win team. The Giants’ second-best season during that span was an 81-win team. And yet, when these two teams meet in that stupid stadium, the Giants turn into the ‘27 Yankees and the Phillies turn into the ‘25 Rockies.

The Phils invent ways to lose in that place. It makes we wonder if the Giants have a Jobu-type, Phillies-themed voodoo doll. It makes me wonder if the Phillies need one themselves. To recap the last few nights…

I will talk about my frustration with the bullpen below, but there is a lot to get to from my little hiatus. And not all of it is bad!

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

Cam York, locked up: As it turns out, Cam York is gonna be here longer than John Tortorella. Much longer, in fact. The Flyers inked York to a five-year deal with an AAV of $5.15 million. The links…

Seems like a decent deal for the Flyers. Bill, who is not the biggest Cam York fan in the world, could not even argue with it. The tl;dr version of this contract: The AAV (average annual value) provides solid value, but the term raises some questions.

I do think it is funny to praise a front office for negotiating $500k less (gasp) in AAV than some of the projections. But in a sport that requires you to roster 20 players within a hard salary cap, $500k adds up! It feels like Danny Briere has done well negotiating the AAVs for the Flyers’ three key restricted free agents this offseason: Tyson Foerster, Noah Cates and now York.

Now, the big difference between the Foerster deal and latter two is that Cates and York’s contracts are firmly in The Danger Zone that the Flyers and Briere do not like to be in. York’s contract will end when he is 29, and Briere is on record that handing out long-term contracts to players for their 30s is when mistakes happen. But who knows, maybe that just shows the Flyers are not fully sold on York as long-term piece. He seems eminently tradeable on this deal.

And speaking of Foerster…

Weird Tyson Foerster injury: Briere said that Foerster got injured at the World Championships in May, and came back stateside with an infected elbow. And the (in)fected elbow was (af)fected so badly that Foerster then needed a procedure on it. And now… we wait. Foerster could miss time into the season.

I should have known something like this would happen. As soon as the Flyers and Sixers came together on an arena deal, the Flyers started inheriting Sixers-style weird injury situations. That’s synergy baby! As Charlie pointed out, there is currently one wing spot available in the Flyers’ opening-night top-nine. And if Foerster is out for the beginning of the season, that number becomes two. Speaking of that…

A tale of two wings: Charlie did yeoman’s work at development camp over the past week. And you know what, you are just gonna have to read Charlie’s final dispatch from Voorhees to get his thoughts on Jack Nesbitt’s skating, Shane Vansaghi’s physicality and all of the other prospect musings.

But I am gonna leave the newsletter focus to a pair of forwards who are competing for that open winger spot. And no, I do not mean Maxim Shabanov, who is a clear bust waiting to happen.

I am talkin’ ‘bout Alex Bump and Porter Martone. Much different pedigrees — Bump was a fifth-round pick, while Martone was the sixth-overall pick — but also much different experience levels. Bump is three years older than Martone, already having played two years at Western Michigan and even for the Phantoms a little bit.

According to Charlie, that experience level showed at development camp.

Bump was the best player in camp, on a completely different level from everyone else. If this were NBA summer league, Bump would have been pulled after one or two games for being Too Good. Charlie said that he basically did everything well. Silky little move on the breakaway below, that is for sure.

Martone was apparently good, but not great. The passing really popped, the skating was better than advertised (which is a relief), but he did not shoot or finish plays at a crazy-high level. That is a little disappointing, because Martone was billed by many as the most NHL-ready prospect in the draft.

Let’s say Foerster is healthy and Bumpy makes the team. That will leave Martone in an interesting spot. He will have a few options, which Charlie and Bill went over on the pod. Basically, there are three levels that Martone could play at this upcoming season.

The issue is that once Martone signs a contract with the Flyers, the NCAA no longer becomes an option. It is either pro hockey or juniors in that case. It will be very interesting to see how he and the Flyers handle this decision, because Martone has been linked to Penn State.

Speaking of that…

Gavin McKenna! See, we have a Penn State banner and everything. Our guy Kevin Negandhi got the interview.

This move had been rumored for a while, but now it is official. Penn State is gonna have a No. 1 overall pick in a major sport next year, and it sure ain’t gonna be Drew Allar. This kid apparently does not own a ring light, but his hockey highlights are legitimately insane. This is a Crosby or McDavid-level prospect who will be draft-eligible next year, and he is gonna be playing in Happy Valley of all places. Not BU, BC, Denver, North Dakota or some other traditional hockey power. Penn State.

There is some reporting that Penn State offered McKenna a cool $700k to play there. The poor people of Medicine Hat, Alberta just cannot compete with that B1G money.

Dave Dombrowski, Most Interesting Man in Philly Sports: Last night officially sent me over the edge. This bullpen is so bad that Dave D now has the title.

Orion Kerkering was not available, and the Phils had already used Tanner Banks, Max Lazar (pitching pretty well!) and Matt Strahm. So, Rob Thomson and Caleb Cotham needed to get two innings from the rest of the bullpen. And Thomson went…

Romano threw two absolute meatballs, and the game was over. He really throws the meatiest meatballs you will ever see. A bunch of people will place the blame on Topper in these situations, but Seth Johnson and Joe Ross were the other available pitchers. Maybe Topper should have tried them, but I am looking at Dombrowski and this front office (Jose Alvarado, too). Those options stink.

The Phillies are 53-39, which is awesome. We have seen some terrible baseball before in this town, and this is far from that. But at the same time, I am also frustrated with this front office. The lineup can be pretty underwhelming for long stretches, and the bullpen is a legitimate disaster. They had some financial limitations this offseason, which is looking pretty poor at the moment. Max Kepler and Romano have both been busts, and even Jesús Luzardo is leaking some oil.

Because of those aforementioned holes, this Phillies team is kinda wasting some truly special starting pitching. Not entirely, but this team should have closer to 60 wins because of three stud pitchers who were acquired before Dombrowski showed up. I know some starters will move to the ‘pen in the postseason, but this is a big trade deadline for Dombrowski. Need better from him.

All Stars: Last year, the Phillies sent a whopping eight guys to the all-star game. They basically had the entire starting infield, three starters and two relievers. It was nice. This year, they are only sending two guys to (*checks notes*) Cobb County, Georgia. And one of them is from Georgia: Zack Wheeler.

Wheeler is really the closest thing I have seen in a Phillies uniform to Halladay. He has always been incredible, but since the start of June, the man has been completely unhittable. That complete game on Sunday was as good as it gets.

Kyle Schwarber is the other all-star. Well-deserved. They wasted his clutch bomb into McCovey Cove last night.

That means the Phils have some legit snubs: Cristopher Sánchez, Trea Turner and Ranger Suárez. I guess Ranger did not pitch enough innings, but “Best Pitcher in the NL for Two Months” is a pretty compelling case. Sánchez has pitched enough innings, and he has been a complete horse. And Turner might be the biggest snub, as he has arguably been the best shortstop in the NL. Oh well, there are other snubs. Up in Queens, $765 million and a .908 OPS apparently cannot get you an all-star berth.

I usually do not care to argue all-star selections. MLB has a rule that every team gets a representative, which throws things out of whack a bit. Mike Lieberthal was in the game once upon a time. But it would be nice to see at least one of the other guys get in as a replacement.

Andy Painter, struggling: Not a great week for my, “The Phillies have the best major-league starting pitching depth ever” takes from the past month. Mick Abel gets sent down to Triple-A, where Andrew Painter is… struggling.

In 11 games at Triple-A, Painter has a 4.97 ERA. Not great, and he gave up three dingers in his start last night. I have no idea how much of these issues have to do with the effects of Painter coming back from Tommy John or if he is working on a few things down there (and if that is the the case, I would work more on “getting outs”).

I thought Painter would be breezing through the minors. He was completely dominant in Double-A, and that was three years ago. But Painter is not breezing through the minors right now. All offseason, Dombrowski pegged “July-ish” as when Painter would reach the bigs. Feels like that will become “August-ish,” at a minimum.

Two more signings: One good, and one not-so-good.

Let’s start with the good. For a two-way signing, Walker seems to be about as good as you can do. He is just 23 years old, played in 188 games over the past three seasons, and has a real NBA skill-set in his switchability and rebounding. In the process, Walker became somewhat of a cult favorite for the true NBA sickos that watch Portland on League Pass. He plays really hard. The general sentiment from NBA people was surprise that the Sixers were able to get Walker on a two-way.

Now, why was Walker available with a two-way contract? A lack of size on the defensive end, but more than that, his lack of a shooting threat. Walker made 39 percent from deep on limited volume last year, and he is gonna need to keep that up (and bump the volume up with it) to stick as an NBA rotation player. But it is a no-risk signing, since two-way players do not impact a team’s salary cap sheet.

I think Walker also signed this deal because he thought to himself, “If I can make some 3s, I might even be able to start at the 4 on this team.” And while I would not favor Walker to do so, it would not be a crazy thought. It should be crazy, because he is on a two-way. But the Sixers are using real NBA roster spots on THIRTY-NINE year-olds who should not see the floor under any circumstance.

Let’s first be clear that I was unenthused with the Eric Gordon signing. But there are two reasons that I at least find it understandable…

Entering the offseason, Kyle Lowry possessed neither of those things. And just know that the following hurts me to type, because I am a Kyle Lowry Appreciator. One of the smartest NBA players of the past decade, and as a bonus, he carried the Philadelphia Catholic League banner for two decades… just in time to pass the mantle over to Thomas Sorber. Lowry is a ‘Nova legend, and a massive Eagles fan to boot. What is there not to like? Do not answer that, Temple and St. Joe’s alums.

But on this team, which is gonna have four promising young guards, I do not know how you can justify bringing Lowry back. Unlike with Gordon and Andre Drummond, the Sixers did not have to do this. Did Daryl Morey not spend the whole offseason talking about getting younger and more athletic? Then how are you burning a roster spot on a 39-year-old that cannot move?

The best-case scenario is that Lowry never takes off his warmups and serves as a mentor for the young guys. He seemed to have a lovely friendship with Jared McCain last year, for instance. The Udonis Haslem role, basically. But even in that situation, you are burning a roster spot on an assistant coach. And do you trust Nick Nurse to not play Lowry an unnecessary amount? I certainly do not!

VJ Day: Pull-up, self-created jumpers are hard shots. I was super impressed by VJ Edgecombe drilling five of these babies in his summer-league debut. He did not really do that at Baylor! The guys podded about the debut here.

Summer league is not always misleading. Evan Turner’s first summer league raised some alarm bells, in large part because he could not separate athletically. Turner had played three years of college ball, too.

But it can be misleading. You might not remember, but Jared McCain was not very good at this time last year. He shot 29 percent from the field in the summer, and then went on to kill it as soon as the NBA season started. One thing I did like about McCain’s summer, though: He more or less emptied the clip, hoisting up 105 shots in eight games. McCain did not make shots, but he created them.

28-10-4-2-1 for VJ in his debut! And sure, he took 27 shots to get those points, but getting up 27 shots is not easy to do. In these low-stakes games, I primarily want to see a player that can get to his spots athletically. VJ did that and then some. For a guy who spent so little time on the ball in college, that was an encouraging start. And for the cherry on top, he outplayed that loser Ace Bailey.

And then VJ immediately suffered a thumb contusion and missed the next two games. He is a Sixer, after all.

Nashville SC 1, Union 0: Tough loss, never like playing in Tennessee no matter the Philly team. The Union actually had 30+ minutes with an extra man and just could not get the job done. No big, flush that one and keep it moving.

Cavan Sullivan got his first start, though. Just 15 years old. Pretty cool.

One more loss in San Francisco, and the Union play the Red Bulls.

Your tentative Wednesday schedule at ​PHLY​:

Let's make it a good one.

Rich Hofmann
Daily Newsletter Editor
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