Former general manager and current first base coach Ruben Amaro will return to the scene of the crime tonight and coach first base for the Red Sox at Citizens Bank Park… because he’s a first base coach. A former GM, now a first base coach. Got it? Good.

Anyway, Amaro knows he’ll get booed and wishes you would just remember HOW GREAT HE WAS AT HIS JOB that one time he inherited a World Champion and systematically bastard-fucked them into a hollow abyss. From Philly.com:

He does not expect a warm welcome from Phillies fans.

“But that’s OK,” Amaro said. “They have short memories. It is what it is. I loved being with the organization. I love the people there. I keep in touch with a lot of people there still. … They’re all like family.”

Short memories?

“Well we had a really good run there,” Amaro said. “Probably the best run the franchise ever had. So I was proud of that, being part of that. It doesn’t matter. It’s the past.”

Yeah, Rube, you see the thing is that we actually have long memories, and what most people remember around here was that you took over the WFC and stepped them down every year until they were completely out of the playoffs, sellers at the trade deadline, and now one of the worst teams in baseball.

I’ll be the first to admit that I applauded the Cliff Lee signing, but this came after Rube inexplicably traded him for Roy Halladay the year before, quite possibly costing the Phils a shot at winning the 2010 World Series, featuring Cliff Lee! Granted the Phillies were the best team in baseball in 2010 and 2011, but they also lacked the well-rounded roster, crafted by Pat Gillick, the team had in 2008. Amaro continuously reached for stars until the situation became completely untenable and the team was left in tatters. And yet he still, in 2017, he wants us to remember the good times. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

FiveThirtyEight managed to stop writing about President Clinton* for a few days and has a piece up about how the shift killed Ryan Howard’s career:

When the shift is on, defenders move from one side of the infield to the other to give themselves a better chance at cutting off batted balls from hitters who consistently drive the ball in one direction. Howard was a great candidate for the maneuver because he pulled groundballs 66.5 percent of the time, compared to this year’s league average of 53.8. While some hitters try to overcome the shift with well-timed bunts or tactical changes, Howard always stubbornly refused. “All you can do is continue to swing,” Howard said in a 2015 interview with MLB.com.

That stubbornness proved to be Howard’s downfall. Against the shift, Howard posted a batting average of .282 and slugged .361, good for a weighted runs created plus that was 29 percent worse than average. When he wasn’t staring down the shift, Howard was a fearsome hitter with a .424 batting average, a .553 slugging percentage and a wRC+ 62 percent better than average (that wRC+ is identical to the one he posted in 2006, his MVP year).

…

Ortiz made an effort to adapt; Howard kept plugging away the way he always had. In the first eight years of his MLB career, Howard produced 21.6 wins above replacement.2 Over his final five seasons — a period during which use of the defensive shift increased exponentially — Howard was worth an astonishing 2.2 wins below replacement. Injuries also limited his productivity, but even when he was healthy, he was ineffective. As a slow, defensively-challenged first baseman, he relied on his bat to be useful. When the shift neutralized Howard’s hitting, he lost his value to a major league roster.

OK, all of that just made me angry at Ryan Howard again. But the article’s ultimate conclusion – that Howard could’ve been a hall of famer if not for the shift – is a gross oversimplification which reads like it was written by someone who didn’t live and die with each Ryan Howard-runners-in-scorin-position whiff.

The shift certainly hurt Howard, and the numbers bear that out, but he was also impacted by at least three other things: stubbornness, injuries, and a loss of power. As stated here, Howard refused to adjust to the shift. His approach at the plate not only didn’t improve, but perhaps got worse over the years. He struck out a league-leading 190 times in 2014. He also suffered multiple, substantial lower-body injuries starting in 2011. And as a result, he failed to eclipse 25 home runs every season since, this after six consecutive seasons of at least 30 or more home runs. His home run rate from was, for a few seasons, less than half of what it was at his peak.

Now, the shift can certainly be blamed for perhaps prematurely ending Howard’s career, since he became somewhat useless once he lost his fearsome power. But I do not buy the argument that it cost him a shot at the hall of fame or was the lone reason for his downfall these past few years.

Howard it seems never even attempted to change his approach at the plate. From 2006-2011, he was able to mask his weaknesses in the middle of a fearsome lineup. Once the pieces around him – Chase Utley, Jayson Werth, Pat Burrell – were stripped away, Howard became much easier to pitch to. He couldn’t run, couldn’t field, and couldn’t get on-base, only partly because of the shift.

*To be fair, FiveThirtyEight was one of the few sites that gave Trump a chance to win before the election.

Mike Schmidt and Larry Brown should be friends. They could get together in the late afternoons (for the early-bird specials) and discuss how things used to be, 70s fuck parties, and kids these days. Because just a day after Brown called the Sixers morons for their decision to play their freak-ish superstar at point guard, Schmidt opined on Odubel Herrera.

At first, when I heard Schmidt made headlines, I just figured that he had a crotchety take on Odubel’s antics, which would’ve been fair game. BUT NOPE. Hispanic descent.

Here’s Schmidt on WIP today when he asked if you could build a team around a player like Odubel:

“My honest answer to that would be no because of a couple of things,.” Schmidt said. “First of all, it’s a language barrier. Because of that, I think he can’t be a guy that would sort of sit in a circle with four, five American players and talk about the game. Or try and learn about the game or discuss the inner workings of the game. Or come over to a guy and say, ‘Man, you gotta run that ball out.’ Just can’t be — because of the language barrier — that kind of a player.”

OK, first of all: DAS RACIST. Second, it’s worth pointing out that 27% of Major League players are Latino. When Schmidt played, the number was less than half of that.

This isn’t a particularly good look for anyone, let alone a guy who’s a team broadcaster. And you know you DONE NOT GOOD when the bow tie man himself, little baby Kenny Rosenthal, chimes in:

It’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, the Phillies do about Schmidt, the club’s racist uncle who always has something to say.

Side note: I wish he had said this in the presence of T-Mac, just to see his reaction as he tried to squirm out of that and implore Schmidt to modify his statement with a qualifier only for Schmidt to say something completely off the wall like, “Do they even let Hispanics vote, Tom?”

UPDATE: Schmidt issued a statement, seemingly directly to CSN, the network for which he broadcasts:

Leave it to the Mets.

Only they, handed a 17-34 record by the “rival” Phils, who are themeselves attempting to stake their claim as the biggest laughingstock in all of sports, can manage to take that ball and grease-fuck it into the sewer.

After injuries to Yoenis Cespedes and Noah Syndergaard, a Dark Knight who was too hungover to answer the call of the bat signal, and more general ineptitude, last night it was Mr. Met, who decided that he had enough and would flip off an unsuspecting fan:

If there’s one thing they teach you in mascot school – ONE THING – it’s don’t flip anyone the bird. You can squirt hot chicks with a water gun, try to get one of them to lift their shirt, and even occasionally grab an ass, but you don’t, under any circumstances, dare allow your middle finger to stand out from the crowd, especially when directed at a fan. Unbelievable.

The poor Mets PR person, who is maybe only surpassed by Sean Spicer in schadenfreude, had to issue a statement on the ordeal:

The Mets: Fuck you!

Hey, remember when everyone wrote off Chase Utley’s career just a month ago after a disastrous start? Well! do I have some news for you– Chasey is hitting .306 with 2 doubles, 2 triples, 3 home runs, 13 RBIs and 3 stolen bases in 74 plate appearances in May. More: he’s been walked 8 times and hit by 2 pitches. His .333 batting average, .423 on-base percentage, and 1.029 OPS would be leading all Phillies hitters for the month.

He did it again last night, with a single, double, triple and hit by pitch:

I’d call it hittin’ season, if that phrase didn’t bring a tear to my eye. Miss you, Chase. And love you, too.