Is this the same Stephen Smith who is the loudmouth who usually is talking about basketball on ESPN? He is quite possibly the most annoying regular television personality going right now.

Whether or not he, this is the usual "gotta blame somebody" article. You can hardly fault Ed Wade for the moves he has made. Thome, Wagner, and Millwood were all great pickups, and it certainly isn't Wade's fault that Millwood and the other pitchers have drastically underperformed.

As for Bowa, we can argue if he or Art Howe deserve to be canned. Perhaps we can pull off a trade. Actually, when you think about it, each might be a better fit for the other team. The Phils might do with a more laid back manager, while the Mets seem to need a guy who will light a fire under them.

Stephen Smith is a fraud, and is out of his element commenting on baseball.

Steven A. Smith is selling attitude, not intelligent analysis, and I ain't buying. ESPN, on the other hand, is.

To add to the chorus of Smith-bashing, yes, it's the same guy who yells about hoops on ESPN. If you think that's bad, you should live in Philadelphia and have to read his stuff in the Inquirer on a regular basis. It's awful prose. What David doesn't mention above is that after pointing his finger at Bowa and Wade, he then smacks team president David Montgomery. I guess Stephen A. has a point somewhere, but damned if I can find what it is.

If you cut through the noise, his actual content (in basketball) is actually more accurate than that of most analysts. He's certainly better at basketball than Kruk, Reynolds and Suctcliffe (sp?) are at baseball.

Stephen Smith is the black Bill Conlin, uses prose over fact and induces tons of things they won't say directily. They are typical of the Philly media in general, Smith forray into baseball is an interesting one. Soon I'm sure he'll lash out against the Phils for some sort of unseen racism, then lash out at the black ballplayers in his follow-up.

re: Stephen A Smith, Ed Wade, Larry Bowa & Phils

Dave Pinto's post on this issue is a welcome outside view to those of us who reside in the Philly area and have to deal with the philly media on a daily basis.

It seems to me that Dave has cut through the horse manure and made an excellent point, that if you add up all of the white noise, there is a general agreement that Bowa is making mistakes as manager or at least not optimizing the Phillies' chances to win as manager.

As far as Rolen, I don't know exactly what went down and I don't recall if that was on Lee Thomas' watch or not. Lee Thomas was a pretty strong GM and the Thomas-Fregosi team was a good one; we haven't had that kind of leadership in a long time.

Wade never played baseball and neither is he a moneyball guy. so what is he really?

--AJK