The most important Philly sports moment of the year, perhaps. Thankfully, we have Keith Pompey to write a whole column about it:

But in a way, Tuesday night’s draft lottery in New York is perhaps bigger than the actual draft.

“I think the lottery day itself is a benchmark of sorts for where we go from here,” Colangelo said at the NBA draft combine. “It’s going to determine the course of action in some cases to what we might do. We got a scenario.”

No shit!

Ben Thompson brought up an interesting concept on Stratechery last week that news outlets would provide more value by sometimes just telling readers that there’s nothing going on rather than using filler. That’s what I try to do here (why some days there are only 3 or 4 posts). So you might say that Philly.com subscribes to the opposite of that philosophy, partly becayse a lack of content is antithetical to their business incentive of more, more, more.

Let’s hit it!

 

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The roundup:

Bob McLure, perhaps the worst pitching coach in baseball who has consistently overseen league-bottom pitching staffs through three different teams, railed against Cameron Rupp for calling for fastballs against Bryce Harper on Saturday, one of which Harper deposited into the seats for the win:

“If you can’t recognize that, you know, I’ll tell you what: [Saturday] night is a perfect example,” McClure told Andersen. “Harper comes out of his shoes on a fastball up. I mean, out of his shoes because he’s got one thing and only on his mind: I just signed this contract and I’m going to show these fans I’m worth it, right? He comes out of his shoes on a high fastball and just misses it. If that ball is eight inches lower, it’s a home run on the first pitch instead of the second pitch.

“So if I’m pitching or if I’m catching, there’s no way I’m throwing him a fastball. I don’t care if it’s down and away – I’m not throwing him a fastball. Whatever I’m throwing, I’m throwing down and away, but it ain’t going to be a fastball. It’s going to be a change-up or a curveball. Not only that, our pitcher knows that lefties are hitting [.071] against him on breaking balls when they put it in play.

“Those things combined, and a catcher not being able to lead him into the right direction, is a major problem.”

First of all: Flames. Second: No one seems to get better under McLure, but his critique is fair. Leslie Gudel wrote about modern catchers not getting experience calling games in college. Rupp, perhaps an airhead, is certainly one of those guys. As usual, everything with the Phillies sucks.

 

Brian Baldinger with just the most old-school take one can possibly have (completely devoid of context):

This from a guy who walks around with a perpendicular pinky.

 

What the fuck happened to Lenny Dykstra? For real, he’s been off his rocker for a while and is a noted Grade A piece of shit, but what is actually going on here? And what sort of bet did these kids lose to sit there and face the very real possibility that Dykstra would snap and actually hit them?

 

What’s the record for consecutive seasons where someone is poised to have a breakout year? Even Darin Ruf was eventually like “naw, fuck this shit” and went to Japan.

 

Dallas officially bid on the NFL Draft.

 

What if Jayson Werth had stayed in Philly? It hurts my brain parts to even think about this, but his $126 million contract, though laughable at the time, turned out to actually be pretty good. Of all the hitters on the WFC, Werth is the only one still contributing in any meaningful way. Is he great? No. Has he had injuries? Yes. But has he been a steady contributor and valuable leader on a good team for basically seven – SEVEN – straight years? Yep.

When he signed his deal, Werth said he had learned a lot from Raul Ibanez, who reinvented himself and did away with his bad habits as a youngster and learned to take care of his body and prolong his career. Werth, who was a late bloomer without a lot of miles on his body, did just that. He’s a dickhead, but I guess I wish I could say he was our dickhead… even if Rube would’ve traded him for 10 cents on the thousand dollar bill in 2012.

 

I would rather punch myself in the face than read this Mike Lupica column about Derek Jeter.

 

Here are the Sixers’ odds of getting their own pick (or pick swap with Sacramento) and the Lakers’ top-three protected pick:

The remainder of the Pompey column we talked about earlier spelled out the Sixers lottery odds… something I just did in two screenshots.

from LotteryBucket.com

 

The weirdest question NBA draft prospects have been asked by teams.

 

Shelley Smith had a scare at the Warriors game.

 

Richard Deitsch has info on Mike Greenberg’s new show:

The show is scheduled to debut the first or second week of January, tied to either the college football playoff semifinals on Monday, Jan 1. or the college football national title game (which airs Monday, Jan. 8).

Breaking up the Mikes means ESPN has a large radio slot to fill; Mike & Mike has been a revenue-driver for the division for a decade-plus. It’s also the signature show for ESPN in many radio markets across the country. Trey Wingo, who has experience on ESPN Radio and is one of the network’s signature NFL hosts, is expected to soon be formally announced in the role.

 

We talked about ads on jerseys on the podcast this morning. Add another one to the list:

Russ: “I don’t like the idea of StubHub as a sponsor… get me an auto sponsorship.” Nailed it.

 

SNL‘s Echo Silver skit was really good.

 

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