Nick Sirianni Apologized for the Wrong Thing

Happy Tuesday, Philly sports fans. You’ve got Eagles, Phillies, and Sixers discussion in today’s newsletter.

Nick Sirianni apologized for chirping his team’s own fans, but should he also apologize for… *gestures wildly at everything*?

If the Phillies shake up their roster, the outfield is where we’re most likely to see changes.

And uncertainty about Joel Embiid’s health looms over the upcoming Sixers season.

Let’s jump in:

In the email today:

• 💐 Nick Sirianni Apologized for the Wrong Thing

• 😵 Phillies Postmortem Series - Outfield

• 🗓️ Joel Embiid Might "Never Play Back-to-Backs" Again

  • 📆 This Day in Philly Sports History

  • 📊 Poll

  • 🔗 Links

  • 📺 Coming Up

Nick Sirianni was an unconventional hire by a fairly conventional organization. It’s been noted recently that given what was out there at the time, the Sirianni hire worked out pretty well.

The NFL is the ultimate results business, and Sirianni’s three consecutive playoff trips (one of them a Super Bowl appearance) probably serve as a capital reserve with Jeffrey Lurie and Howie Roseman.

Like a lot of capital, though, it’s easy come and easy go.

Sirianni’s decision to run his mouth at Eagles fans in the dying moments of (and immediately after) a desultory home win over a Cleveland Browns team that did not score an offensive touchdown was weird and unnecessary.

As night must follow day, Sirianni’s latest behavioral misstep was followed on Monday by something like contrition.

Yapping at the paying customers is never a good idea. You rarely see a chef come out of the kitchen to berate a dissatisfied diner. If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all, etc.

For our money, though, Sirianni has so much more to meaningfully apologize for:

• The Eagles have not scored in the first quarter of any of their first five games this season.

• They had two weeks to prepare for the Browns and could only manage 20 points.

• In the game before the bye against the Buccaneers, the Eagles trailed 24-0 early in the second quarter and were never really in the game.

• The win against the Saints and the loss to the Falcons were both marred by bizarre play calls.

• The 2023 season ended with six losses in seven games, including the ugly blowout playoff loss in Tampa.

We would have welcomed an apology for any of these objectively unacceptable outcomes that the coach’s fingerprints were all over.

Apologizing for acting like a dumbass after the Browns game was apologizing for the wrong thing.

It felt like the Phils never quite solved their outfield puzzle this season.

Nick Castellanos started every game in right field. But in center, there was a mix of Johan Rojas (who started 103 games), Brandon Marsh (35), Cristian Pache (18), and Cal Stevenson (6).

And eight different players started games in left: Marsh (77), Austin Hays (21), Whit Merrifield (20), Weston Wilson (14), Cristian Pache (12), David Dahl (12), Kyle Schwarber (5), and Kody Clemens (1).

The guys listed above posted a combined .710 OPS in LF (15th-highest in the majors) and a combined .644 OPS in CF (20th). Not good enough for a team with championship aspirations.

A closer look at the Phils' in-house options for 2025:

• Nick Castellanos (age 32, under contract through 2026)

  Castellanos' season totals do not fully capture the contribution he made to the team in 2024. After a slow start to the season--posting a .521 OPS in March/April and a .706 OPS in May--the rightfielder hit .279/.333/.483 (.817 OPS) from June 1 through the end of the season.

  He was also one of very few Phils hitters to show up in the NLDS.

  With two years and $40 million remaining on his contract, Castellanos is likely locked in at right field again in 2025.

• Johan Rojas (age 24, under club control through 2030)

  Rojas fits the Phillies' roster well in many ways. On a team full of sluggers, he's speedy and plays tremendous defense. His offense is passable at the bottom of the lineup. And the Phils paid him just $800,000 in 2024, a big help to the finances of an organization that recently handed out several enormous contracts.

  But if the club is looking for more offensive production, center field has to be part of the conversation. The right-handed Rojas' OPS against left-handed pitching was just .526, making a Marsh/Rojas platoon ineffective. The eye test tells us we'll probably never see Rojas get anywhere close to his 2023 numbers over a large sample size. And while there's a familiar refrain that Jo-Ro would be fine if the other hitters would do their jobs, all too often those other hitters did not.

  That's not Rojas' fault, but he may suffer the consequences.

• Brandon Marsh (age 26, under club control through 2027)

  Marsh had an unusually high batting average on balls in play (BABIP) in 2023, making a regression from the slash line he posted that year a near-certainty. And his 2024 numbers weren't bad.

  But as Tim recently wrote, Marsh isn't a great fit as a complimentary hitter to the stars in the Phillies' lineup, mainly because he offers more of the same: a low contact rate and a high strikeout percentage. And a .582 career OPS against left-handed pitching might doom him to a platoon-only role.

  Marsh still only has 347 career at-bats against lefties, meaning there's probably room for improvement there. But the Phils are not in a position to wait for players to develop new skills.

• Austin Hays (age 29, under club control through 2025)

  An All-Star in 2023, Hays was acquired from the Baltimore Orioles at the trade deadline. He mashes lefties to the tune of an .800 career OPS, making a Hays/Marsh platoon a very real possibility for 2025.

  Rob Thomson was interested in giving Hays a shot at an everyday role. But Hays never got an extended run, missing time first to a hamstring strain and later to a kidney infection.

• The Quadruple-A Guys

  We'll discuss the other outfielders when we get to our postmortem on the Phillies' bench. For now, we'll just note that there are no other in-house options poised to steal a job from Castellanos, Rojas, Marsh, or Hays in 2025.

Another day, another story about Joel Embiid’s health (or lack thereof). And this one is a doozy.

Here we have a player who very recently signed an eye-popping contract extension:

The extension putatively keeps Embiid a Sixer through 2027-2028 and includes a player option for the following season.

The Sixers knew Embiid’s injury history when they gave him the money. He played 39 regular season games in 2023-2024. He has never played more than 68 regular season games in eight NBA seasons.

Recent news reports on Embiid’s knees have sounded alarm bells. He’s not playing any of the Sixers’ preseason games. Only he really knows whether he’ll be ready for the regular season.

And now this:

Wait…WHAT?

Maybe that’s idle claptrap from a bored superstar who has a lot of time on his hands these days. If it’s not, though, the ripple effect is pretty wild.

• The Sixers have 15 back-to-backs on the schedule.

• Embiid plans to sit out one game in each back-to-back (apparently, which one he will miss will be decided case by case).

• If Embiid follows through on this plan, that leaves 67 regular season games he might play in.

• The NBA now requires players to play at least 65 games to be eligible for awards like MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, and All-NBA teams.

• It would probably be overly optimistic if not foolish to think that Embiid will miss 15 games out of the 30 subject to the back-to-back scheduling, and no others.

Then you have other considerations. The NBA has traditionally taken a dim view of superstar players scheduling rest, and now has rules governing same.

And while Sixers season ticket holders surely don’t care whether Embiid skips, for example, the December 21 game in Cleveland the night after he plays a home game against Charlotte, it’s not always going to be that convenient.

The true litmus test here will come very early, as the Sixers are home against the Knicks on November 12 and the Cavaliers on November 13. Both of those teams were in the playoffs last season. Is it really going to be OK for Embiid to choose to miss one of those games? And which one will/should it be?

The Sixers knew they were paying for compromised goods when they gave Embiid his most recent extension. We would love to know whether they knew the extent of the damage, and whether this was the plan all along.

Season ticket holders would probably like to know, too.

📆 This Day in Philly Sports History

On October 15, 2008, the Phillies beat the Dodgers to advance to the World Series.

📊 Poll

Results from Monday:

🔗 Links

• 🤮 The NLCS is headed back to New York tied 1-1.

• 👀 Paul George left last night’s preseason game with a hyperextended knee.

• 🚑️ Jordan Mailata is going to miss at least a few weeks with a hamstring injury.

• 📈 Penn State is ranked #3, the first time since 2017 the Nittany Lions have been ranked that high.

• 📉 Penn State’s strength of schedule is (scrolls down) 52nd.

📺 Coming Up

Games before our next send.

October 15, 2024

• Flyers at Oilers, 10:00 p.m., ESPN

Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.

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