Polling the Polls: Who’s Predicting Greatness for the Phillies This Season, and Who Is Wrong and Stupid?

Will Bryce Harper lead the Phillies to greatness? We check in on the projections around the league for Opening Day. / Photograph via AP Photo/Matt Slocum

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Polling the Polls: Who’s Predicting Greatness for the Phillies this Season, and Who Is Wrong and Stupid?

That whole Portal discussion has reawakened the perennial “Can we have nice things in Philadelphia?” discussion around here. One nice thing we’ve gotten used to around here is baseball.

According to a new poll of USA Today readers, Citizens Bank Park is the best place to watch a game in all of Major League Baseball. CBP also ranks second in the paper’s Best Baseball Stadium Food poll.

And these are USA Today readers. They’re from all over the USA. Today!

Polls are nonsense unless we win, and we won, so let’s say these are high honors for a ballpark 21 years into its lifespan. Two decades into the Veterans Stadium era and the crew was already deploying cats to deal with its rodent problem and carting injured players off its awful, toxic turf. I do miss the drunken brawls in the stands on opening day. That place really knew how to fight.

But what about the Phillies? How are they expected to do this year? Let’s survey the surveys.

• The Athletic: Third place in the NL East, 90-72
• ESPN: Third best team in MLB, 89-73
• Bleacher Report: Playoffs, 91-71
• Jim Bowden (New York Times): First in National League
• Fangraphs: Second in NL East
• Baseball Prospectus/PECOTA: Third in NL East
• Baseball America: Second in NL East
• The Ringer: Third in MLB, 97-65
• CBS Sports: Two of six critics predict World Series wins
• MLB.com: Wild Card

The Phils play the Nationals this afternoon. First pitch is at 4:05 p.m.

Flyers Fire Coach Because He Wants to Win

This morning the Flyers announced the firing of head coach John Tortorella. It’s the end of a cursed and confusing era that had its moments but did not go as expected at almost any point.

Torts — who has more wins than any other American-born coach, and twice won Coach of the Year — was hired to lead an aging core of talented scorers on one final push toward to victory.

But soon after he got here, we started losing those players, one way or another, and the Flyers pivoted to launching its first ever “complete rebuild” in franchise history. (Unless you count the time we traded the whole team for Eric Lindros.)

None dare call it a “process,” but Torts suddenly found himself in charge of young, injured, and mediocre players as the team took on bad contracts and started collecting draft picks.

Occasionally he found ways to pull competence from the jaws of collapse through disciplined play and strict asset management — even though this was not in the franchise’s long-term best interest. Hell, we sort-of almost made the playoffs last year. Which would have been pointless. But a coach like him, he’s not going to tank.

Sometimes John Tortorella benched players because they weren’t playing well. Sometimes he benched them for reasons nobody could understand. He even benched himself a few times.

Torts has said he’d retire from coaching once his stint with the Flyers was over. After yesterday’s game he basically said he was sick of how bad the Flyers suck. “I’m not really interested in learning how to coach in this type of season, where we’re at right now.”

Today GM Danny Briere thanked him for “his tireless work and commitment to the Flyers.”

John Tortorella ended up with at 97-107-33 as Flyers head coach, meaning that, if you overlook overtime losses, he had a winning record until a couple weeks ago. He won a Cup with Tampa in 2004. He had a winning record and took his team to the playoffs almost everywhere he coached until he came to Philadelphia.

The Psychic Didn’t Mention the Fire?

I don’t know what a “psychic dinner” is, but the Westmont Diner in Haddon Township hosted one on Tuesday night and then caught fire the next day. Says 6ABC:

Betty Szymanski stopped by when a friend told her about the fire. “We were here last night. They had a psychic dinner,” she said.

This is why you have to ask very specific questions when you talk to psychics, mediums, telekinetic wraiths, etc. I always ask them up front: “Are you a firestarter?”

Luckily nobody was hurt and the diner is expected to reopen soon. You may recall that the place also burned in 2014, back when it was called the Crystal Lake Diner.

Little Bits

• Will Smith was in town for his long-overdue street dedication — they slapped his name on a block of North 59th Street in West Philly — and in his speech he thanked his teacher Mrs. Brenda Brown at Overbrook High for crowning him “Prince Charming” all those years ago. Says Fox 29: “She called me Prince, and I added the Fresh because it was hip-hop slang,” he said. “The name ‘The Fresh Prince’ was coined in that building.”
• The Philadelphia Parking Authority says it will use “cutting-edge, state-of-the-art cameras” to keep people from spending too long in loading zones. They also say they’re going to require PPA employees to park only in “legal, safe parking spots that don’t block bike or car traffic.” J/k. They didn’t say anything of the sort.
• This NJ couple was pulled over in Delco because an Eagles logo was obscuring their license plate. Then the cops smelled weed. Then they searched the car and found a gun for which the couple didn’t have a permit. Go Birds.
• Somebody took Councilwoman Kendra Brooks’s miniature poodle, Buzz.
• Hey look, the Portal is back. We’re tired of writing about the Big Round Mute Zoom, but if anybody in Dublin sees a poodle walk by, let us know.