Extreme Philly Sports Forum

It's not massively negative, -.7, but it's negative.

The good news is that Embiid's net rating just keeps getting better and better.  It was +6.4 in December (7 games), and is +9.9 so far in January (9 games).

If Embiid makes it to the playoffs healthy, he's a good bet to play each and every game.

The bad news is that he will probably play less than half our total minutes for the remainder of the season.

Can Maxey carry us to a 500 record when Embiid is out?  The trendline is worrisome to be honest.  We started off 10-6 without him, but have lost the last 3 games he didn't play.

Oubre being back should stabilize us better when Embiid is off the court.  He's arguably our best tough bucket getter even when Embiid is playing. 

Bona and Drummond haven't been analytically great of late, but they haven't been terrible either.  Barlow and Drummond have been an epically bad pairing to date, and I don't see it getting better.  Nurse is gonna have to figure out how to keep the 2 apart even when Embiid is being load managed.

Yuuup

To be fair, "group think" does seem to work well for rating NFL draft prospects, due to the abundance of tape and data that millions of pros and amateurs process in real time.

But when it comes to rating baseball prospects, it's largely people repeating what a small number of midwits concluded based on outdated data.

When Alwaysphil says a prospect is good, that's as good a take as what some glorified bloggers working for Baseball America has to say on the matter.

I was hoping for Bichette as any fan would, but will come right out say this, I'm grateful to the Mess for taking Louis Robert. Why? I think there's a chance we'll see this year. Painter, Crawford (majors) and Miller (AAA) may show why DD was close to throwing the baby out with the bathwater although we don't know how close any kind of trade was. The Mess snatched Bichette, the real prize, but they put a guy in CF who has had one successful half season. He's cheap ($20 million and can't believe I said cheap), Cohen throws that kind of money out for tips, but i'm more happy this club will give these kids a real shot (for now). There is a chance DD can still do something dumb but am hopeful. Fingers crossed. Got a good feeling on at least two of the three and very hopeful about Wood and Escobar (Nos 4 and 5 Prospects). My sleeper isWen-Hui Pen, coming off TJ surgery when a 2024 trip to the AFL was sacked and had surgery late 2024. They say he's healthy. I saw him for Threshers in 2024, he throws up to 99, has a crazy a$$ splitter in the mid 80s and apparently had a swing/miss rate on it at 63% the year I saw him. He rocketed up from A to High A and on his way to AFL when he was derailed.

For better or worse, our short term prospects are dependent on our actual prospects coming through next season.

I'm a big fan of Pen too.  I actually figured he'd be respected enough league wide (despite his nonsensically low online ranking) to fetch us a good player in a trade, but I'm glad we kept him. 

We invested a couple of high picks on college pitchers in the last draft, presumably in hopes that both would be big league ready by no later than the end of this season.

I still hate that we traded O'Hoppe AND Tait, but I also stilll believe in Marchan.  Realmuto at this point can't be asked to catch 100+ games, can he?

Bellinger signs for 5/163

DD really shanked it this off-season.

but you said he hated philly fans??

Believe it or not, you can love the Eagles and hate Philly fans.

Frank maybe but Doug would never come back as an OC. I don’t think anyway.

Doug actually said he'd come back to Philly to help any way he can.

There are nights when zone is the answer.

And Nurse refuses to play a lick of zone on those nights.