👋 Good morning! Let’s compare the round-trip public transportation prices from downtown to the stadium during the World Cup this summer.

Bravo to everyone involved. It helps that the stadium is located four miles from Center City, as opposed to in New Jersey or Foxboro. But still, that is awesome.

Alright, let’s get right to it. You can reach me at [email protected]

🟠 ⚫ Flyers 3, Pittsburgh 0: It feels like 2012 all over again, getting two in Pittsburgh! Dan Vladar was the Flyers’ MVP this year, but in this amazing, out-of-nowhere season, the Czech netminder had not recorded a shutout. Well, not anymore. Perfect timing.

We will have much, much more on the Orange and Black below.

⚾ Chicago (NL) 5, Phillies 1: I could give you fire and brimstone every night, but that would get old fast.

Jomboy had a good video yesterday afternoon about a trend that I mentioned in yesterday’s newsy: The Phillies’ tendency to score all of their runs in one inning, and then put up zeroes the rest of the way. It feels like they do that every night.

Well, Jomboy actually looked it up. As of yesterday, the Phillies had scored runs in multiple innings in only 10 of their 21 games (48 percent). That is dead last in baseball, and 29th place had scored runs in multiple innings 59 percent of the time. So no, our eyes are not deceiving us. They go to sleep more than anyone.

Guess what the Phils did last night? Scored in only one inning, courtesy of Justin Crawford. That is now 10 of 22 games with runs in multiple innings (45 percent). The Cubs made some excellent defensive plays last night, but that is hard to believe Harry.

And it was a tale of two 9-hole hitters in the second inning…

Six losses in a row, none of which felt all that competitive. I dunno, maybe the goose turns this around.

Here is Orange and the Black and Man I Need for your listening pleasure on a Victory Tuesday.

I wrote about this yesterday, but it is wild how ofter Porter Martone is in the right place. Rick Tocchet called this one “a goal-scorer’s goal.”

And it is also wild how well both the Flyers and Martone played this rookie season. Remember, there is a portion of the fan base who looked at Danny Briere and Keith Jones skeptically for how the whole Quitter Gauthier situation went down. And here they were faced with a difficult situation with Martone.

Martone could have made the Flyers out of training camp, but that was not viewed as a slam dunk at the time. So, here were his options:

The AHL was not an option, so Martone and the Flyers agreed that he would go to Michigan State. And while some may wonder if Martone could have been doing this all season with the big club, I do not necessarily view it that way. A few weeks ago, Jackie Spiegel had a nice article about Martone’s time in East Lansing.

Martone accomplished a lot there in such a short time.

The process of how his whole season was handled seemed really good. Martone and the Flyers are now reaping the rewards.

Outside of Martone, the Flyers played a great defensive game. I really enjoyed Jim Jackson and Brian Boucher’s righteous indignation on the broadcast over some of the calls that Pittsburgh was getting early on. I was right there with them! But the Flyers penalty kill, which has been more up-and-down this season than in past seasons, went 5 for 5 on the evening. Vladar made some timely saves and the Penguins missed the net a whole bunch, but it was a job well done up and down the lineup. Sidney Crosby has a big ol’ goose egg through two games.

That leads us to Owen Tippett.

During his 4.5 years in Philly, Tippett has been an up-and-down player. He has and developed into a fine second-line winger. But even when the Flyers were missing the postseason the last few years, the thing about Tippett is that there are five or six times a year that he is the best guy on the ice by a mile. There are nights when he uses his elite speed and makes two or three plays that nobody else can make.

Well, Tippett was the best guy on the ice in this one. The play that The Red Rifle made to set up Garnet Hathaway’s second goal was nothing short of outrageous: Skates all the way around the goal to retrieve the puck along the board, passes it to himself blind around a defender, makes Kris Letang look 1,000 years old and then makes a perfect pass to Hathaway for a slam-dunk goal.

That was like Mike Richards’ famous shift against Montreal, but just in a much shorter time span. Awesome.

By the time Luke Glendenning put the final empty-netter away, you could hear a pin drop in that place. Needless to say, the atmosphere across the state on Wednesday night is gonna be a little bit louder. Can’t wait.

The news and notes of the day…

Schefter Slop, Part 1: Stop me if you heard this before, but it sure looks like A.J. Brown will be a New England Patriot sometime after June 1st. Adam Schefter gave A.J. and the Eagles top billing in his draft week notes column. That is some pretty good real estate.

Schefter said the trade is “still tracking to happen on or after June 1,” which as everyone in the Delaware Valley knows by now, means that the $43 million dead cap hit gets split into two seasons and becomes a more manageable $16 million dead cap hit for this year. This whole saga has turned us all into amateur capologists.

Anyway, that part is only interesting because Schefter is saying it. Before yesterday, I think every Eagles fan that was not lying to themselves would have said that A.J. getting dealt to New England was the likeliest outcome here. To me, the most interesting part of the Schefter report was this paragraph.

In general, it seems like teams are not too jazzed about this draft. Clearly the Bengals are not, after dealing the No. 10 pick for Dexter Lawrence. You gotta be careful of leaning too hard into the pre-draft “good draft/bad draft” narratives, but to make a post-June 1 deal, the Eagles would have to take back future compensation. Howie Roseman has done this before, as the third-round pick he got back for Haason Reddick was two years out. Not bad for a guy who was going to Haddon Heights football games while holding out from the Jets.

Plus, New England has the 31st pick this season. Odds are they will continue to be good with Drake Maye, but give us a 1 with a little more upside than that!

Schefter Slop, Part Deux: Schefter also linked the Eagles to Vikings EDGE Jonathan Greenard, “who they’ve checked in on at various points of the offseason.”

That makes some sense. Outside of safety, you can argue that the Eagles have mostly “draft-proofed” their roster heading into a week in which they would ideally make some future-looking picks on the offensive side of the ball. But as we saw the last two years, EDGE is a spot where you ideally could use three players in Uncle Vic’s system. Nolan Smith and The Cornell Comet are fine as two of those players, especially if Smith can stay healthy. But as we saw last year, adding Jaelan Phillips made a real difference.

So, what’s the deal with Greenard?

I do not know about premium, but the Eagles have three Day 2 picks right now. One of them is No. 68, an early third from the Reddick trade. We will see if there is any more movement on this front.

Bird seed: The links, the links, the links…

Emil Andrae: One small change for the Orange and Black last night, as their skilled but undersized third pair defenseman was out with an upper-body injury.

Noah Juulsen, who feels like he should be an e-cigarette spokesperson, took Andrae’s place and acquitted himself well. Next man up.

Joel is lifting weights: The Sixers told the writers covering The Boston Massacre that Joel Embiid “has started his strength and conditioning program post-appendectomy.”

That’s cool. Does it mean anything, though?

You could make a coffee table book of Jeff Stotts’ analysis of Sixers injuries throughout the years of The Process era. And from his post on Joel’s appendectomy, Stotts wrote the following…

We are currently 12 days post-appendectomy. Game 3 would be 15 days. Game 4 gets you right around that median number, 17 days. Unfortunately, two more games without Embiid sure seems like two more losses.

It seems like coming back from appendicitis is more a matter of it being safe to play (are your body’s internal tissues fully repaired?) than risk tolerance (should you play on an 80 percent knee post-meniscus surgery?).

I certainly do not question Joel’s toughness in the playoffs — Game 3 against Miami in 2022 is an underrated warrior effort from him. But such a quick return-to-play timeline would be a departure from a 2025-26 season in which it has at least felt like his recoveries from various ailments have been on the conservative side.

It’s at least good to hear that Joel is healthy enough to start working out.

The Sixers get the pick! The 22nd pick, that is.

One of the benefits of being out of work for the last three months is that I did not have to write about The McCain-alypse in real time… especially because I would have been more sympathetic to Daryl Morey than the average Sixers fan. Not for the annual tax 🦆, and certainly not for the public comments that he was “selling high” (Daryl, wyd?), but for the sheer asset play.

I am not gonna lie, the first few weeks post-trade were rough for The Daryl Defenders. The last month or so, not as much. But still, tough sledding to get to this moment.

Anyway, the Sixers got Houston’s first-round pick in what looks like a pretty strong draft for McCain. It was not entirely a money-saving move, that’s all. That pick is a real asset. And since the Rockets tied with Cleveland, the NBA settled the tiebreaker today. And…

🥳🥳🥳 THE SIXERS WON THE HIGHER PICK 🥳🥳🥳

We are living right with these tiebreakers in Philadelphia.

Game 2 thoughts: There was a lot of heat for Nick Nurse after the Sixers got embarrassed on Sunday, as there has been a lot of this season. I thought the Sixers’ offensive approach early on was the worst version of Nurse ball, too iso-happy. My friend Kyle Neubeck said that Nurse’s “fundamental coaching philosophy on offense is get out of the way.” That works when you have Joel Embiid at the peak of his powers, not as much with this crew.

Nurse’s lack of offensive creativity can be an issue. Maybe it ultimately gets him sent packing to play guitar in some cover band. That said, let’s be real: Nurse is not working with a whole lot at the moment right now.

Joe Mazzulla seems like he is doing a great job this year, but let’s not pretend like the current personnel is even close to equal in this matchup. Mazzulla has very modern lineups at his disposal, five-out offenses and switchable 1-through-4 defenses. Nurse does not. The Celtics can get to a lot of their beautiful passing sequences because they have apex predator wings matchup hunting and creating advantages against the Sixers’ smaller guards. In Game 1, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown even drove past Kelly Oubre and Paul George, who the Sixers actually want defending them. The Sixers do not have the same advantage creation or shooting. Oubre, who actually had one of his best years shooting the ball, bricked five wide-open 3s in Game 1.

With an acknowledgement of the Sixers being outgunned here, two obvious things I would like to see from Nurse tonight:

There are other things I would like to see (fix the transition defense, make shots, etc.). But those seem like the two most obvious things.

I enjoyed this final moment of The Rights to Ricky Sanchez: Spike said it would be nice to lose by seven and Mike said, “That would be great.”

Yeah, it honestly would be.

(*Sigh*)

Sixers (7:00 p.m., Peacock and NBC Sports Philly) and Phillies (NBC Sports Philly) tonight. I am just showing what was listed on both team websites, someone is lying.

Let’s make it a good one.