👋 Good morning! I quite enjoy watching Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz play in grand slam finals.

As a heads up, make sure you check out our “What If?” content this week. We have some good stuff prepped for everyone. That Sixers show might honestly take six hours.

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

Ever since Brian Barber became the Phillies’ director of amateur scouting in 2019, here have been the Phillies’ five first-round picks…

Five high school players, and once the Phillies got really good, two high school bats late in the first-round. And even before Barber, the high school route has mostly been the Phillies’ strategy. Since the legend Joe Savery in 2007, 15 of the Phillies’ last 19 first-round picks were high-school players. The exceptions: Aaron Nola, Alec Bohm, Adam Haseley, Bryson Stott.

Nothing is a guarantee, but college players typically provide more certainty. The Phils did get three regulars from those four picks, although Stott has been pretty dreadful at the plate for a while now. College players certainly do not need as long of a stint in the minors. But late in the first round, the Phils have generally tried to find more high-risk players that would be top picks in a few years if they did go to college.

We have seen both sides of the coin. In recent years, Painter and Miller look like savvy selections. In past years, well, there are a lot of misses. I was there for Cornelius Randolph’s opening press conference.

With all of that context, I thought it was pretty interesting that the Phillies did this in the first three rounds of the MLB Draft last night…

College pitcher, college pitcher, college pitcher. Makes sense, the Phils system quietly does not have a ton of pitching depth behind Painter and Abel after Moises Chace’s Tommy John surgery. I like a Jean Cabera, but the upside is fairly limited.

But the biggest takeaway here is that the Phillies selected Wood, who threw a no-hitter in the College World Series against Murray State. And yes, it was today that I learned Murray State made the College World Series. Good for the Racers. I am sure former Sixers Cam Payne and Isaiah Canaan felt a lot of pride during that run.

The first thing to know about Wood: He is a lunatic on the mound. Not like a Roy Halladay lunatic, either, a cartoonish lunatic. Some of these videos are incredibly funny.

Wood has only two pitches (fastball, curveball), but they are both nasty. And the early speculation, and it is all spec at this point, is that Wood might be a fast-track candidate. Like, a super fast-track candidate. Could we see this kid in the bullpen in October? In the words of Teddy KGB, that would be verryyyy aggressiveeee. But we will see.

The Ospreys return! When I fill in on an Eagles show, there tends to be one superchat that we get every single time: Do we have an Ospreys date locked in? Hey, inquiring sickos want to know.

Well, we now have a date. And not only that, we are headed to The House That Tailgate Ted Built. As Bo said, when our local monuments are ransacked by invading hordes, we can wallow in self-pity or we can rebuild that monument back even better. And that is what we are gonna do, with our flagship Eagles show. This one will have it all: Awards, songs and Zach being incredibly uncomfortable.

August 6th, at The Hard Rock. Be there, primarily to show Tailgate Ted that we stand up to bullies in Philadelphia. Register here.

Position rankings: Over at ESPN, Jeremy Fowler produces one of my favorite pieces of offseason #content. He asks a bunch of people around the league to anonymously rank the best players at their positions. Fowler averages them together, and puts together Top-10 and honorable mention lists. The series is not done yet, but here is what we have so far…

Pretty good roster! The Eagles will arguably have a top-ten player in the final four positions, too: Quarterback, off-ball linebacker, wide receiver, cornerback. We will check back in later this week.

The Vlad Man speaks: Lots of Czech Republic talk apparently from the Flyers’ new goaltender. I bet he is a fan of Jagr, too.

More Flyers talk scheduled for tomorrow.

Phillies salvage one on Sunday: The good news, everyone, is that I do not have to freak out about a sweep. Two annoying losses (not disastrous or poorly-played, but quite annoying) to start the weekend in San Diego, and then an agonizing 2-1 win on Sunday. That gives the Phils a half-game lead on the Mets headed into the break, with one of the tougher road trips of the season behind them.

The Phils won for two reasons. The biggest one was some more masterful pitching from Cristopher Sánchez, who had a busy weekend and who we will get to in a second. But the other guy who stepped up late was J.T. Realmuto.

Two weeks ago, I complained in this space for a few-hundred words about ol’ J.T. In fairness to me, his offensive numbers were offensive and he had just weakly grounded out to the shortstop four times in the same game.

In the ten games since I complained, Realmuto is hitting .439 with 18 hits… five of which have been doubles. On a team starved for power, J.T. occasionally chipping in with gappers is a huge deal. And of course this last double came off a righty. J.T. still has the bizarre reverse-splits this season, and I would much rather see him face righties.

Basically, what I am saying is: You’re welcome.

Sanchy gets his bonus: By the time we got to Friday night, I had crossed the Rubicon into losing my mind over Cristopher Sánchez getting passed over for the All-Star Game. That was when Milwaukee phenom Jacob Misiorowski, who is an electric young player but has thrown a grand total of 25 innings this season, got the nod over Sanchy.

The Phils unloaded on MLB in the locker room after their game on Friday. Nick Castellanos, who is seemingly incapable of having a moderately disciplined at-bat but is more than capable of dropping a fire quote, summed it up: “It’s turning into the Savannah Bananas.”

The big issue for Sánchez is that he pitched yesterday, which meant he would be unable to go for an inning on Tuesday. The MLB needs a bunch of pitchers to get through the game, so every replacement had to agree to pitch. There are two issues here…

There is a happy ending here, though.

Class stuff all the way from John Middleton, Mr. Mara approved. And then Sanchy threw 7.1 dominant innings on Sunday. Topper probably took him out too early and got away with it, but man, what a pitcher.

Zack Wheeler also decided to skip the All-Star Game, which is quite a move. Been there, done that.

Max Kepler is likely toast: I am gonna step out on a limb and predict that Justin Crawford will be in the lineup on Friday against the Angels. My evidence…

Speaking of Crawford, I thought Tyler’s podcast on Friday was pretty interesting. If you are being aggressive with your offers, could you maybe get both reliever Emmanuel Clase and outfielder Steven Kwan from Cleveland at the deadline? Both players have a few years of team control, they are not rentals.

The Young Guards: I have written a bunch about how thin the Sixers are at power forward heading into the season. The more positive spin on this uneven roster construction is that they are also loaded with young guards, assuming Quentin Grimes is back (and that is their plan). Tyrese Maxey, Jared McCain and VJ Edgecombe were all in Las Vegas over the weekend, and even if there will be some competition for minutes, they all seem to get along pretty well. Jared even hosted VJ on his visit to Duke.

Kyle wrote a great piece on their dynamic. And while there are interesting quotes in there from Daryl Morey and the three young guys, I was stuck on this paragraph that was mainly written to provide some context.

Sweet fancy Moses.

I feel like I am pretty zen on summer league injuries. I really am, even if they make the team pretty unwatchable. Edgecombe could miss the entire summer league, and I would be more than fine with it. But Morey also went on record saying of the No. 3 pick, “Yeah, so he hurt his wrist. Sort of a day-to-day thing.”

First, the injury was a thumb contusion. Then it was a thumb sprain. Now, it is his wrist. WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE? Can we please be normal with an injury just one time? Is that too much to ask?

Charlotte 96, Summer Sixers 94: Well, at least they did not lose by 40 this time.

Justin Edwards is struggling in summer league, and I am gonna reheat a take that I dropped on the Sixers pod last Friday. It is one in which I am simultaneously criticizing and complimenting Edwards. He definitely is a unique case.

Let’s start with the criticism. Through five games in Utah and Vegas, here are Edwards’ averages: 11.8 points (37/37/64 shooting splits), 1.6 assists to 3.4 turnovers (yuck), 2.8 rebounds, 0.8 steals. Pretty bad numbers for a second-year guy who played a bunch last season, which is normally a pretty bad sign. You would also think that Edwards, who was the No. 3 ranked recruit in his high school class, would love to have the ball in his hands. I assume that was more or less the case at Imhotep.

The NBA is littered with draft busts who were amazing high school players. That is often because that they cannot pull off the things they were amazing at in high school, while they also cannot perfect the duties of an NBA role player. Jahlil Okafor was a perfect example. He could score a little bit in the NBA, but not efficiently enough in the post to draw double teams consistently, not versatile enough to space the floor and not athletic enough to catch lobs on pick-and-rolls. You were not running any efficient offense through him. The problem is that scoring and offense were Okafor’s strengths in high school and college. His defense, which is what keeps the non-star centers in the league, was a legitimate disaster. Okafor was not good enough at the role player stuff.

The good news for Justin Edwards? He has worked very hard on the role player things. For example, Edwards’ release on his catch-and-shoot jumper is lightning fast. He knows how to make quick decisions when presented with an advantage on the second side. He plays hard on defense.

All of that buy-in is necessary, because Edwards clearly cannot be a top option. Even if this has been a rough few weeks, the good news is that it’s not what the Sixers are gonna ask of him if he sees any rotation minutes.

Union 2, NY Red Bulls 0: Doop it up, doop it up! Clean sheet for Andre Blake.

The Union are still atop the Eastern Conference standings. I do not know if we say “table” over here, but whatever it is, they are currently in the No. 1 spot by a point.

With the exception of Kyle Schwarber, the Phillies are off for the next four days. In the recent past, some players have headed down the shore during this week. Might as well, they are kinda busy the rest of the summer. Bryce Harper was once spotted at Uncle Bill’s, so maybe this is the year we see Edmundo Sosa on the Wildwood boardwalk and Orion Kerkering at The O.D.

More importantly, though, this means that we, the fans are off for the next four days. A break that I think we could all use. Do not get me wrong, I will be jonesing for some ball come Thursday. But for now, I will take the respite. Home run derby tonight (minus Schwarber), then the game tomorrow.

In the Midsummer Classic, MLB will be using the ABS (automated ball-strike) system that they were toying around with in spring training. I thought Tyler made a great point the other day: While the numbers say that umpiring has improved on the whole over the past decade, the bad umps are the big issue. Think about it: I go on Ump Scorecards, and I know a few of the most accurate umps. But Mark Ripperger and Junior Valentine (two of the top-four), I have never heard of. It is not like hoops and football, where I know Zach Zarba and Bill Vinovich.

And yes, I understand those guys are not wearing masks. But I think there is more to this phenomenon than that, because we can also look at the bottom-six umps: Rob Drake, Andy Fletcher, Laz Diaz, Hunter Wendlestadt, CB Bucknor and Bruce Dreckman. I know every single one of those guys! Anyway, I do not have any solutions here, but I thought that was interesting.

The Phils front office will not have the day off, though. Day 2 of the MLB Draft (11:30 a.m., MLB.com), rounds 4 through 20. Remember when this thing lasted 50 rounds? Were the front offices on auto-draft for the last five hours like I am for the final few rounds of a virtual fantasy football draft? No Summer Sixers either, please rest up that thumb VJ.

Your tentative Monday schedule at ​PHLY​:

Let's make it a good one.

Rich Hofmann
Daily Newsletter Editor
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