The long road to the 2030 men’s World Cup, and Mauricio Pochettino’s second term as U.S. men’s soccer team manager, will kick off in late September.
FIFA this year combined the September and October windows into one long stretch in which teams can play up to four games. The U.S. will play all four, against a combination of familiar regional rivals and visitors from South America.
Up first will be Peru on Sept. 26 in Orlando. Then it’s off to the Midwest to face Chile on Sept. 29 in St. Louis. Both of those games will be played at the local MLS stadiums.
Next up will be a renewal of the U.S. team’s most famous rivalry, against Mexico, on Oct. 3 in Glendale, Ariz. That gets an NFL stadium stage for the 80th edition of the matchup, and the first since last year’s Concacaf Gold Cup final.
Mexico beat the U.S. in last year’s Concacaf Gold Cup final.
Because the nations cohosted this summer’s World Cup, they didn’t have to qualify. That meant there were none of what are usually the best clashes, on each team’s home turf in World Cup qualifying. And they might not return, because the World Cup’s expansion to 48 teams means Concacaf’s qualifying groups are spread out.
So we will be left with friendlies and hopes for meetings in the Gold Cup and Concacaf Nations League, which officially are neutral-site games, even though they’re always in the United States.
The last game of the slate will be against Canada on Oct. 6 in St. Paul, Minn. That will give the U.S. a chance to renew acquaintances with an old friend, the Canucks’ Wisconsin-born manager Jesse Marsch. The Princeton alumnus undoubtedly will relish that, as he so often relishes tossing barbs across the border at a U.S. program that spurned him when it first hired Pochettino.
Who will play in the games is an interesting prospect. Though the stars from the World Cup teams might sell tickets, many fans hope to see a new era of younger players get a shot. Potential call-ups include the Union’s Cavan and Quinn Sullivan, Frankie Westfield, and Neil Pierre; Red Bull New York’s Adri Mehmeti and Julian Hall; and Real Salt Lake’s Zavier Gozo.
Cavan Sullivan played for the United States at last year’s under-17 World Cup. He could get a shot with the senior squad this fall.
It’s notable that MLS is playing a full round of games during the FIFA window, on Sept. 26 and 27. We’ll see how that affects Pochettino’s selections, and if he can get all the MLS-based players players he wants. (Europe’s leagues will be off.)
Keep an eye on goalkeeper, too. One of the U.S. pool’s top prospects, Diego Kochen, went on loan from Spanish superpower Barcelona to Denmark’s Lyngby — a team part-owned by the Union — for the upcoming European season.
Though none of the venues are near Philadelphia, they might at least make a nice quick escape for fans looking for a trip. Presales for U.S. Soccer members start Wednesday, and sales to the general public start Friday.
After the September-October window, the U.S. will enter the 2026-27 Concacaf Nations League in the November window. That will be a home-and-away quarterfinal series, and the opponent will be determined by first-round contests during that September/October window. The top four teams in the region got a bye to the quarters: the U.S., Mexico, Canada, and Panama.
The 2027 final four will be played in its usual window, next March, at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif.
SoFi Stadium hosted two of the United States’ group stage games at this summer’s World Cup.
USMNT schedule (all times Philadelphia time)
Saturday, Sept. 26: vs. Peru at Inter.co Stadium, Orlando, 4:30 p.m. (TNT, truTV, Telemundo 62, Universo, HBO Max, Peacock)
Tuesday, Sept. 29: vs. Chile at Energizer Park, St. Louis, 8 p.m. (TNT, truTV, Universo, HBO Max, Peacock)
Saturday, Oct. 3: vs. Mexico at State Farm Stadium, Glendale, Ariz., 10 p.m. (TNT, Telemundo 62, Universo, HBO Max, Peacock)
Tuesday, Oct. 6: vs. Canada at Allianz Field, St. Paul, Minn., 8 p.m. (TNT, truTV, Universo, HBO Max, Peacock)
WASHINGTON — In a Pennsylvania election where a few thousand votes could make all the difference, the last-minute entrance of a Green Party candidate with a background in Republican politics has sparked the second allegation of election meddling in three months and complicated one of the nation’s most competitive U.S. House races this fall.
But the emergence of a third-party candidate has alarmed both Democrats — who have long claimed that Green Party candidates pull votes from their nominees — and the Green Party of Pennsylvania, which said it does not know the person now representing its platform in one of the state’s highest-profile races.
“It sounds a lot like somebody’s just fooling around and trying to use the Green Party name, which is a well-known thing that happens in many states,” said Tim Runkle, cochair of the state party.
Andrew Tupone, 37, of Northampton County, filed his nomination papers with the state last week ahead of a Monday deadline for third-party candidates. He was the only candidate to file to represent the Green Party in a Pennsylvania race for Congress.
Unlike the Green Party’s endorsed candidate for governor — Tony Dastra of Lancaster County — Tupone does not have a long association with the party or its left-leaning policies. In 2021, he was the Republican nominee for a Northampton County magisterial court seat. Voter registration records show he changed his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat in February, and then from Democrat to Green in April.
In an interview, Tupone rejected accusations that he remained affiliated with the Republican Party or that he was asked to run in a way that would draw votes away from the Democratic nominee. He described a leftward shift in his political views after voting for President Donald Trump in 2020, though he said he could not recall whom he voted for in the 2024 presidential race between Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
“A lot of people are disillusioned with both parties,” Tupone said. “They’re sick of all the stuff that’s going on.”
Tupone also said he did not pay anyone to help gather signatures for his nominating papers, which he turned in with upward of 9,000 signatures — more than twice as many as required. Runkle said Green Party members encountered paid canvassers for Tupone who declined to say who was funding the effort.
According to a copy of the nominating papers obtained by The Inquirer, only one of the 22 individuals who gathered signatures is from Pennsylvania. The rest are from all over the country. Multiple have worked for Republican campaigns, according to public records.
Colin McEvers, who gathered signatures for Tupone in Lehigh County, is a Republican candidate for the Maryland General Assembly who is also listed as the contact for the Maryland White Republican Council. Others — including individuals from Illinois and Michigan — have been paid to canvas for GOP campaigns, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Tupone said he had no knowledge of anyone paying his canvassers.
“I went around and I gave a lot of my nominating papers to friends to give to other people, and I sent it to them as well,” Tupone said. “And as I went around, I recruited people and asked them.”
While the signatures appear to be based in the district — which stretches from the cities of Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton into the more Republican-leaning Poconos — the other candidates have until Aug. 10 to challenge their legitimacy.
Such challenges are common, and the Brooks campaign is reviewing its options to decide whether to bring a challenge, according to a source familiar with the campaign’s thinking.
‘No one’s paying me to run’
Jenna Kauffman, Brooks’ campaign manager, in a statement described the situation as a GOP-initiated and “desperate scheme to meddle in this race.”
She connected it to a last-minute $1.7 million advertising campaign against Brooks in the May primary that appeared to be run by Democrats but was actually funded by a Republican political organization.
The spending, by a political action committee called Lead Left, was aimed at boosting another Democrat who observers considered to have a worse shot at beating Mackenzie in the November election. But the effort was anonymous, and records that became public only after Brooks won show that it was funded by the Conservative Americans PAC.
The effort to prevent Brooks from emerging from the Democratic primary came as he coalesced support from across the ideological spectrum with high-profile endorsements ranging from moderate Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind., Vt.), a democratic socialist.
“Voters deserve to know who is paying for this effort and whether Ryan Mackenzie and his Republican backers are involved,” Kauffman said, painting Tupone’s candidacy as a continuation of the move in the primary.
Mackenzie’s campaign did not address that comment when asked about it Monday.
Tupone said that the inference was “just false,” and that he instead likes the values of the Green Party, which he said included supporting the environment, social justice, and “stopping the corruption and also the genocide in Gaza.”
“No one’s paying me to run. No one’s asked me to run for this office. I’m running on my own, hopefully with a lot of hope from everyone who wants to volunteer,” Tupone said. “I’m not associated with the Republican Party anymore. I’m not a candidate for them.”
For years, Democrats have voiced concerns about the Green Party and other third-party candidates “spoiling” elections, from Jill Stein in the 2016 presidential race that first put Trump in power to the 2024 U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania, when Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey lost to Republican Dave McCormick by about 15,000 votes. In that 2024 election, a Green Party candidate won about 66,000 votes, a Libertarian candidate won almost 90,000, and a Constitution Party candidate won more than 23,000.
In the 7th District in 2024, Mackenzie defeated incumbent Democrat Susan Wild by 4,062 votes out of more than 403,000 cast. That was the narrowest margin out of any of the state’s 17 districts, making it a key tossup district this year.
That margin is also significantly different from the one Shapiro potentially faces during his reelection campaign this year as he maintains a sizable lead over Republican Stacy Garrity, and as a Green candidate officially filed to run on Monday. Shapiro defeated Republican Doug Mastriano in 2022 by almost 793,000 votes; the Green Party candidate won just over 24,000 votes.
Runkle said that nobody solicited the Green Party’s endorsement in a Pennsylvania congressional race this year, and that a conversation he had with Tupone left “a lot of questions.”
He said the party is concerned about its reputation and about being targeted in ways that do not lift up its platform, which focuses on environmental protections and liberal positions on healthcare. But he also pushed back on concerns that the party should be considered a spoiler.
“I do solidly believe that the Green Party policies and the values we represent has a solid bloc of voters,” Runkle said. “If people think that’s spoiling the race, then they should try harder to speak to the issues that we speak to.”
SPOKANE, Wash. — A man charged with intentionally setting a wildfire that’s destroyed hundreds of buildings in and around Washington state’s second-largest city was contacted by law enforcement about two fires last year, though he wasn’t charged in either, court documents show.
Aaron F. Farinacci, of Spokane, was arrested Monday and booked on suspicion of first-degree arson in connection with the Old Trails Fire, the biggest of three blazes that have destroyed at least 700 buildings and forced tens of thousands of people from their homes. According to court records, he denied setting the fire. His bond was set at $1 million and he was due in court later Tuesday.
Authorities haven’t said what caused the other two fires burning around Spokane. No deaths have been reported.
Farinacci, 37, served about a decade in prison after killing his father in Arizona in 2010. Last year, authorities questioned him about two fire-related cases in Spokane, according to a probable cause statement filed in Spokane County Superior Court.
One involved several “bus-sized” fires in an area near Farinacci’s apartment in July 2025, police records in that case say. The other involved a wildfire in a state park that prompted evacuation notices the following month. In neither case was he arrested.
A tip leads to an arrest
On Saturday, a 64-year-old man who lives in a rural neighborhood northwest of Spokane was driving with his grandson when he saw a man standing along some railroad tracks and looking toward nearby trees, sheriff’s detective Michael Drapeau wrote in the probable cause statement. About 10 minutes later, as they were returning home, the man was still there, this time bending over as he faced the tree line. He stood up and acted “nervous” as the vehicle passed, the man told police.
Soon after they returned home, the man’s daughter noticed smoke rising from the area and called 911. The man drove back there and gave a police officer a description of the man he had seen — bald, white, wearing a green shirt, and carrying a backpack.
A responding sheriff’s deputy saw a man matching that description walking more than a mile away and detained him. Another deputy also responded, and the man who reported the tip showed up to identify the person in custody — Farinacci — as the one he had seen in the area of the fire, the document states.
Farinacci had a backpack and a fanny pack, in which he had a pack of cigarettes, waterproof matches, and a butane lighter, it says. He told the deputies he didn’t start the fire and he denied having been in the area where it started. He was wearing a green T-shirt that read, “Who needs luck I have charm,” the detective wrote.
The deputies were unaware of Farinacci’s prior fire-related contacts and the cause of the Old Trails Fire hadn’t been determined yet, so they released him to continue working on evacuation efforts, Drapeau wrote.
But the following day, a wildland fire investigator for the state determined that the fire had started in the same area where Farinacci had been seen, the document says. The investigator ruled out other possible causes, including sparks from electric wires or passing trains, and police arrested Farinacci on Monday.
“As it happens in so many critical cases, it was citizens who were paying attention to their surroundings, being aware, and willing to step up and say something that led to the relatively quick apprehension of Mr. Farinacci,” Sheriff John Nowels told reporters Monday.
Farinacci remained jailed ahead of Tuesday’s hearing. The Spokane County Public Defender’s office will represent him during the appearance, and a lawyer will be assigned to him afterward if it’s determined he needs one, said its director, Colin Charbonneau. In an effort to get comment from Farinacci’s family, the Associated Press sent a message to a possible social media account for a brother.
Police contacted him about earlier fires
A detective investigating the Old Trails Fire ran a criminal history check on Farinacci and found that he had been contacted by law enforcement twice before during fire investigations.
Spokane police responded to reports of several fires on July 8, 2025, near Farinacci’s apartment. The area near the Spokane River involved several “bus-sized” fires and prompted a significant emergency response, according to a police record.
The Washington State Patrol made contact with Farinacci the following month while pursuing a suspect in a wildfire at Riverside State Park. They found him on a park bench, “seemingly out of breath from possibly running.” They took photos of him. He was wearing a green T-shirt just like the one he was seen wearing on Saturday, the document says.
Convicted of manslaughter
Farinacci, then age 21, shot and killed his father in Mesa, Ariz., during a 2010 argument about washing dishes, police said. Farinacci also shot himself but survived.
He was charged with murder but pleaded guilty in 2012 to manslaughter and aggravated assault, records show.
A judge in 2011 found that Farinacci was mentally fit to assist in his own defense, though defense lawyer Jose Colon continued to raise questions about his mental health and noted that he had been hospitalized multiple times for psychiatric treatment, court records show.
In a letter to the judge, Beth Farinacci, who had married Farinacci’s father, said second-degree murder, not manslaughter, would have been a more appropriate way to resolve the case. But she went along with the plea deal because she believed a trial wouldn’t be beneficial to her family.
“Manslaughter is for when someone accidentally kills another person. It is not for someone who intentionally points a loaded gun at their father and shots him in his face and back,” Beth Farinacci wrote.
Farinacci was released from probation in Arizona in early 2024. A probation officer said Farinacci maintained a stable residence with his girlfriend and her family in the previous year, but also noted he hadn’t completed a mental health evaluation or domestic violence treatment.
Residents return to destroyed homes
The fires were among dozens across the Western U.S. that have stretched the ability of federal, state, and local agencies to fight them. More than 1,000 firefighters, many from outside of Washington state, were in the Spokane area Tuesday, and that number was expected to rise.
Winds died down Monday and Tuesday, aiding the efforts of firefighters, but the weather was expected to get hotter by Wednesday.
In one neighborhood, blackened vehicles, a boat twisted by the heat and melted plastic recycling bins remained. Across the street, lawns were still green and houses were spared, as residents continued to run hoses or sprinklers to water their properties.
Some residents who had to flee blazes over the weekend returned to find homes that had been burned to the ground. In some cases, only chimneys were left standing.
“There’s nothing to save,” Miriam Sim, 76, said as she and her husband, Daniel Sim, surveyed the ruins of the home where they had lived since 2005.
What started as a routine car stop in Philly quickly evolved into a mystery concerning the fate of two missing women — and a boarded-up home in Olney that contained a confounding set of clues.
In June, police encountered 44-year-old Eugene Horsch with a woman near Independence Mall, carrying drugs, illegal guns, and fake IDs. One of them featured the name of Blair Tonzelli, a woman who has been missing for three years.
That led local and federal investigators to Horsch’s twin house in Olney, where they unearthed an array of disturbing evidence, including vats of chemicals, notes describing serial killings, and Tonzelli’s bank cards. Tonzelli’s case also resurfaced questions about Amy McHale, who was last heard from at the Olney house in 2016 and is the ex-wife of Eugene Horsch’s deceased father, Raymond “R.C.” Horsch.
Eugene Horsch remains in jail on illegal gun and drug charges, as well as one count related to carrying fake federal law enforcement credentials. No bodies have been found, and police have not charged him with any crimes related to the women.
Despite the disturbing evidence found in the Olney home, the investigation is clouded by the unusual lives and predilections of Eugene Horsch and his father, who was an erotic filmmaker and photographer obsessed with depicting sexualized violence against women in addiction — many of whom he lured to his home studio with drugs.
To unravel the backstory behind the case, The Inquirer interviewed more than 30 people familiar with the Horsch family, reviewing hundreds of pages of police documents, court records, newspaper clippings, and archived interviews. The result is a portrait of a thrill-seeking criminal artist and his son as they navigated seaside New Zealand, rural Bucks County, and the drug markets of Kensington.
Here are five takeaways from our weeks of reporting:
Raymond ‘R.C.’ Horsch’s directorial debut was a violent pornographic film financed by a Philly mob associate
Raymond Horsch was a bookish engineer from Bucks County who underwent a sexual awakening during the so-called Golden Age of Porn in the 1970s. His 1973 film, The Erotic Memoirs of a Male Chauvinist Pig, was financed by Philly mob associate Sam “The Barber” LaRussa, a nightclub owner and friend of Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo, who went on to run the Philadelphia-area Mafia.
The low-budget movie depicts rape, bondage, underage sex, and the titular character’s violent relationship with a drug-addicted woman.
These hypersexualized themes would become a constant fixation of Raymond Horsch’s later life and artistic works.
Raymond and Eugene Horsch have long criminal histories.
In the late 1970s, Raymond Horsch was busted for printing counterfeit money, and then a few years later for running a methamphetamine lab. He skipped bail after the second arrest and absconded to coastal New Zealand after stealing the identity of a real-life chemist.
He married a longtime girlfriend, who gave birth to his son, Eugene, while Raymond Horsch was an international fugitive. Raymond Horsch worked in the port city of Timaru at a chemical plant thanks to his adopted alias and a forged Stanford diploma.
He was ultimately caught in New Zealand with five fake passports and fled back to the U.S. He was apprehended in Florida and returned to Philadelphia, where he was sentenced to federal prison.
Raymond Horsch recruited dozens of women in addiction by trading drugs if they agreed to appear in his pornographic art.
Between stints as a porn actor and director, Raymond Horsch searched the streets of Kensington for women in addiction to use, in his description, as models. He asked one of his son’s high school friends to star in one of his films. He recruited another woman with a classified ad for a housekeeper. He offered them cash and drugs in exchange for sexual favors and to appear in films or photographs, which often featured simulated acts of violence or death.
After he was arrested in the 2000s on another drug charge, he lost his home in Chalfont. Both father and son moved into the home in Olney, which they had inherited from relatives, and Raymond Horsch allowed some of the women he recruited to reside in the home, sometimes for years.
At least five women connected to Raymond Horsch died of accidental drug overdoses.
Krista Killen lived off and on in the Horsches’ Olney house from 2016 until her death last year at the age of 47. Killen, who had been estranged from her family, told friends that Raymond Horsch was never violent toward her and that she cared deeply for him.
But she told friends that she was scared of Eugene Horsch. She told two friends that one night, she was asleep when Eugene shattered her bedroom door and threatened to kill her. Raymond, then 80, had to pull his son away.
In late 2024, within a span of a few months, doctors had to amputate part of Killen’s leg, her beloved tabby BabyCat died of a brain tumor, and Raymond Horsch died of a lung condition, leaving her alone in the Olney home with Eugene. Three months after Raymond’s death, Killen died of an overdose. Eugene Horsch shared the news on Killen’s own Facebook page. He wrote that he and Killen were in love and had planned to get married, something her friends said was not true.
Raymond Horsch said his art blended facts with his violent fantasies, and he wanted people to wonder what was true.
Investigators are reviewing Raymond Horsch’s films and self-published novels, some of which depict various ways to murder women. He casts himself in some of the stories as an “empathetic” serial killer who preys on addicted women and kills them to end their suffering. The books are billed as true stories that include both real details from Horsch’s improbable life story and passages that he concedes are fictitious — noting that he wanted readers to parse fantasy from reality.
In a scene from one of his novels, Raymond Horsch describes how he dissolved a body with chemicals in a bathtub. Is it just another of his violent fantasies? Complicating that question is the fact that a woman told investigators that Eugene Horsch told her he knew how to dissolve a body with chemicals, making it small enough to flush down a toilet.
HARRISBURG — Hidden deep in more than 600 pages of state budget documents, Pennsylvania lawmakers last month quietly repealed an unenforced 1929 law that allowed traditional midwives, the main group of midwives delivering home births, to practice.
Now, traditional midwives — who differ from midwives usually found in hospitals, are not medically trained, and often serve religious minorities like the Amish — are worried they have no legal standing to work in Pennsylvania and are challenging the repeal and a new lawin state court.
The 1929 law had been on the books for nearly a century, asking traditional midwives to submit a paper application and a $10 fee to get a state certificate. But it had not been enforced for decades, and Pennsylvania, which has one of the highest rates of home births in the nation, was counted as one of 13 states that did not regulate the practice at all.
Meanwhile, other forms of midwifery — such as nurse midwives and certified midwives, who are medically trained and are formally affiliated with a doctor or health system — are highly regulated by the state and its medical board. But these affiliations often prevent nurse midwives and certified midwives from offering home births, as the health systems see them as possible risks for medical malpractice lawsuits.
The practice of traditional midwifery dates back to the Old Testament and has lived on through centuries of community knowledge and traditions. It can include Amish and Mennonite midwives, who are limited in the amount of education they are allowed to receive, as well as other unlicensed midwives who say they take only low-risk pregnancies.
Some Pennsylvania traditional midwives say their practice is more necessary than ever, citing the United States’ maternal mortality and morbidity rate and cesarean section rates that outpace most of the rest of the Western world. They see their work as more holistic and personal than the American medical system, offering more personalizedcare to the new parent and baby for weeks after birth, as well as an answer to maternity care deserts as more hospitals and birth centers close.
Medically trained midwives and physicians, who receive licenses from the state,argue the practice of traditional midwifery is potentially unsafe for mothers and babies, and requires little to no oversight in comparison to their medical training and licensure.
A new law, and legal uncertainty
There is no state law regulating home births — which are chosen by a variety of families for different reasons, from Amish who have religious beliefs about delivering at home to Black and brown women who have felt underserved or discriminated against by the modern healthcare system. But if traditional midwives — the primary group delivering babies in home births — cannot practice, some argue, home births will become inaccessible.
The legal fight over midwifery began earlier this year, when the General Assembly approved changes to a separate law to include another class of midwife: certified midwives, who have all the same education training as nurse midwives except the nursing degree.To receive a certification from the Pennsylvania Board of Medicine, nurse midwives and certifiedmidwives must provide proof of education and a collaborative agreement with a physician or medical institution.
The law, the Midwife Modernization Act, was written to protect traditional midwives’ ability to practice, its author, Sen. Rosemary Brown (R., Monroe), said in a statement.
Kate McHugh, a nurse midwife who has worked for a decade with lawmakers on updates to midwife regulations, said stakeholders approached traditional midwives during earlier iterations of the bill to see how they would like to be regulated. The different groups of traditional midwives could not agree, so the nurse midwives and certified midwives moved forward on their own.
But the changes to Pennsylvania’s laws created a legal gray area, some midwives argued in a lawsuit filed last month.
An anonymous group of two traditional midwives, a nurse midwife, and an Amish man whose family utilizes traditional midwifery filed a lawsuit in a state appellate court, challenging Brown’s law as unclear about their ability to practice, and asking the state to enforce the 1929 law already on the books.
After the lawsuit was filed, legislators repealed the 1929 law as part of an overall state budget deal, creating more uncertainty for traditional midwives, according to their amended filing. Some lawmakers said they did not know they had voted to repeal the law, as the state budget is drafted in closed-door meetings among top leaders and fast-tracked through the legislative process with little time for rank-and-file members to review what they are voting on.
The law was repealed as part of a request by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration, according to a source briefed on budget conversations. The administration works closely on legal matters with Republican Attorney General Dave Sunday’s office, which is defending the state in the case. Shapiro’s office declined to comment.
“It’s not fair the way [the budget] is done,” said Rep. Dave Zimmerman (R., Lancaster), who said he unknowingly voted in support of the bill that repealed the 1929 law in an omnibus bill.“It concerns me a little bit that we repeal something in the fiscal code rather than right up front where it’s transparent.”
“You have people in the Amish and Mennonite community that this is what they do. We have midwives that have been doing this for 30 and 40 years, They’re probably as good as anyone else doing it, certified or not,” Zimmerman added.
The lawsuit
The group oftraditional midwivesfiled the lawsuit anonymously out of fear of retribution from the state for continuing to practice, said the group’s attorney, Jonathan Goldman, of the Goldman Law Team, based in Fort Washington. The midwives spoke with The Inquirer on the condition of anonymity for the same reason.
One of the midwives, who serves south-central Pennsylvania with a largely Amish and Mennonite clientele, said she has delivered 1,600 home births over 38 years. She had practiced traditional midwifery in other states, before similar certifications were required there. At one point, she said, she was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor for continuing to practice home births in New York.
Unlike medically trained nurse midwives and certified midwives, traditional midwives are prohibited from practicing medicine, which could mean dispensing medication or conducting medical procedures as simple as stitches. They have historically been investigated by state boards of medicine if this is called into question, making the group even more distrustful of state oversight.
One of the anonymous traditional midwives, who has delivered an estimated 600 births around eastern parts of Pennsylvania, said her clients are often religious and want traditional models of care, such as no lab work and one ultrasound — a very hands-off approach compared to the highly surveilled pregnancies in modern medicine.
The midwife, who delivered four of her 10 children in the hospital before finding an interest in home births, said her faith as a born-again Christiandrew her to the “completely different model of care” that does not rely on pharmaceuticals, with a comfortable home setting and few restrictions like in a hospital.
“In the hospital, it’s a fractured system. There are several midwives and physicians, you never know who you’re going to get, who is going to be on call,” said the midwife, who works with Amish and Mennonite populations in south-central Pennsylvania. “We are the community midwives. We know the secrets, we know the stories, we know what kind of care works. We know the family intimately. And it improves outcomes because knowing them intimately and emotionally allows us to provide that kind of specialized care.”
Sunday’s office, defending the state in the suit, said in a July 24 filing that the midwives’ claims are a “misreading and misunderstanding of the current law,” and that traditional midwives “can continue to practice as lay midwives without certificates.” Sunday’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
The case is scheduled for a preliminary injunctionhearing to block the law from going into effect on Wednesday, where Brown and other lawmakers may be called to testify and a judge is expected to rule whether current laws prevent traditional midwives from practicing.
Outside the medical system’s framework
Obstetricians in hospitals and birth centers routinely work with certified midwives, who have an advanced degree in midwifery, and nurse midwives, who have a nursing degree in addition to specialized midwifery training.
“As an OB-GYN physician, I absolutely respect somebody’s right to make a medically informed decision about how they take care of themselves in their pregnancy, and who they request assistance from in birth, and where they give birth to their babies,” said Holly Cummings, an OB-GYN in Philadelphia and chair of the Pennsylvania section of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, a leading physician organization. “But I do also believe a hospital or an accredited birth center is the safest place to give birth. I don’t think in the U.S. in 2026 we can currently safely, uniformly support home birth.”
ACOG does not support traditional midwives, who can also be known as lay midwives.
But traditional midwives maintain they should be able to continue their work outside the medical system’s framework, citing it as a religious tradition and safe practice, and hope the judge rules in their favor.
“Pennsylvania has a rich history of midwifery,” said the midwife listed in the lawsuit who serves parts of eastern Pennsylvania. “We have some of the highest home-birth numbers in the country. … It would be sad to see Pennsylvania not acknowledge the heritage in midwifery that we have here.”
Staff writer Sarah Gantz contributed to this article.
Doug Reeser first came to St. Peter’s Village as a youngster, running along the rocks at French Creek, like so many locals and tourists still do. As an adult, the charm of the quirky little village drew him and his partners to open a branch of their cidery business there three years ago.
He’s one of many wondering what could change when the village goes up for auction in September, with more than a hundred home lots and a smattering of businesses available to the highest bidder.
“There’s lots of positive energy around what’s happening, so I think generally everybody would love to be able to see that continue,” said Reeser, owner of Excursion Ciders at the Snug. “I know personally we’d love to stay there. We anticipate some changes with new ownership. We hope that we can absorb them, but obviously, it’s not unlimited change that we can handle.”
The auction, scheduled for Sept. 30 at 2 p.m. at the Desmond Hotel Malvern, will put up for sale roughly 83 acres of the historic 19th-century village that sprung up in the Gilded Age, thanks to its rich mineral resources and its proximity to the creek. It became a recreational destination, one that people are still drawn to because of its scenic location. Visitors are able to take a dip, hike the nearby trails, and enjoy the artsy downtown.
Nestled in Warwick Township — which has a population of roughly 2,600, according to newly released estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau — the small village could see a bump in residences, if initial development visions are seen through. The land, zoned for residential and neighborhood business, offers 121 subdivided home lots for development. A commercial core — which boasts dining and retail — is composed of both privately owned businesses and leased storefronts that will be picked up by the new owner. Thirteen commercial buildings, totaling about 43,500 square feet, are included in the auction, according to the site.
The auction site teases mixed-land use development potential “suitable for major builders, venture capitalists, historic preservationists, and entrepreneurs.” The auctioneer, Douglas Clemens, said previously they had seen thousands of messages of interest — but who ultimately purchases the property remains to be seen.
And concepts of high- and low-density housing from the previous owner — the Piazza family, which runs the Piazza Management Co. and owns multiple Main Line car dealerships, is listed on associated parcels — haven’t exactly come to fruition, and the site could be a challenge for new owners given its rural location.
Reeser is among the renters who would love to see current businesses stay, and some rehabilitation of the historic buildings that have suffered some neglect in recent years, he said. He doesn’t think anyone would be opposed to more foot traffic in town, but too much could tip the scales.
“There is this rural charm there, and that is part of what the village has built its reputation on over the years,” he said. “So, if development could be done with an eye towards preservation and minimal impact, I think that would be great.”
The 83-acre St. Peter’s Village — a historic destination in Chester County will be sold at an absolute public auction to the highest bidder in September.
What could residential development look like?
The property offers an opportunity for someone to develop housing to the north and east on the available land, said Matt Edmond, executive director of the Chester County Planning Commission.
Land development plans available through the auction site previously have laid a densely populated housing development near the commercial core on roughly 36 acres. Generally, that’s a good thing, Edmond said.
“Our villages are kind of like small towns, and when they have a walkable commercial core, you want more dense housing in and around there to support those businesses to increase foot traffic,” he said of Chester County.
An aerial view of one proposed development — which the current owner envisioned as a densely populated townhouse, twin, and single-family neighborhood — shows several completed homes.
Eight buildings are unfinished, Clemens said. One finished building is occupied, and the lease would move over to the new owner.
In the county’s comprehensive plan, there are areas called “rural centers,” built around larger villages, Edmond said. There are similarities among those places: a commercial corridor on a main road, with streets fanning out for walkable neighborhoods. St. Peter’s could become a rural center, if the previous vision was fulfilled. The growth would be somewhat akin to Marshallton or Unionville, other Chester County villages that people enjoy visiting.
St. Peter’s scenic, rural location offers a bit of a unique problem. Though the village isn’t far from Elverson or Pottstown, it’s still a bit out of the way. Reeser, the business owner, has found the village to be seasonal, with business bolstered by an occasional social media post. In the winter, the cidery, open on Saturdays and Sundays, is frequented by locals.
The 83-acre Saint Peter’s Village, a historic destination in Chester County, will be sold at an absolute public auction to the highest bidder in September.
“The whole village, by and large, is somewhat off the beaten path. It’s not really near a highway. It’s certainly not near transit. There isn’t a whole lot around it,” Edmond said. “That’s probably one reason why the current owners couldn’t quite make it work, because the market just wasn’t quite there yet to do that sort of thing in that sort of place.”
But just because the village has had challenges with finding footing for residential development, that doesn’t mean it’s ripe for other types of development — such as a data center, other industrial sites, or even a major shopping center.
The village is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which doesn’t necessarily safeguard it from demolition. But it provides some protections, particularly if government funds are being used.
Plus, its current zoning would have to be changed, and the infrastructure and conservation easements don’t “lend itself towards intense development,” Edmond added.
“I think a lot of people are worried about that because they do see other parts of the county developing more intensely,” he said. “Every community is different, and Warwick Township is still very rural, and so it wouldn’t be surprising if a new owner tried to develop consistent with the character and the nature of Warwick, and certainly Warwick leaders would be looking for that type of development within their boundaries as well.”
The 83-acre St. Peter’s Village, July 2026.
Rich in natural resources
The auction site notes the property’s “valuable subterranean mineral rights, including documented iron ore deposits, adding a rare investment dimension.” Those materials once bolstered the village’s economy, transporting its iron to Philadelphia. But it also became a place of leisure: a getaway for city workers, a majestic retreat to a scenic place.
The village is surrounded by outdoor recreation, with state game lands adjacent to the property. French & Pickering Creeks Conservation Trust holds easements on a portion of the land. The easements are perpetual, and must be honored.
Karl Russek, conservation director at French & Pickering Creeks Conservation Trust, anticipates the organization will be in conversation with the prospective bidders, working closely with future owners “to help them understand those limitations, and [we] are open to seeing what they have to offer and how the conservation value of the property might be improved.”
But “much remains to be seen” for what could come to the land, he said.
“St. Peter’s Village, and the area around it, is a very special place and has been a very special place for generations of families in this area. I took my kids down there when they were little. My peers remember spending time there when they were younger,” Russek said. “It’s a community hub in many ways, and so obviously many folks in the area are very invested in what ultimately happens, as are we as an organization.”
Reeser hopes to see a purchaser who understands all of what makes it beloved — its natural beauty, its historic buildings, and its unique setting.
“Change is inevitable, most likely, in this situation,” he said. “But if we could keep sort of what’s made it special alive, I think that would be great.”
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I want to root for a restaurant like Side Eye. There’s the quirky name, of course; a tribute to the owners’ beloved late dog, Sheba, whose legacy lives on in the many pooch pictures posted around the space and which has fostered a strong pull from the city’s canine-centric crowd, my family included. What a perfect place to catch up with our dog Buttercup’s veterinarian over steak fries and a peppercorn burger! And was that the (human) mom of Buttercup’s playmates sipping a glass of wine at the long bar? Yes, it was. Philly’s dog lovers are an easy demographic for any new restaurant to target, especially one with a pet-friendly 10-seat patio outside its Queen Village restaurant’s storefront.
But there are other reasons to wish for Side Eye‘s success, including its aim to be an affordable neighborhood bistro when soaring prices are on everyone’s mind. In an era when $35 chicken entrees and $20-plus cocktails are not uncommon in local restaurants, Side Eye’s half bird is selling for $25 and nearly every cocktail and glass of wine is $13 or less.
Given that Side Eye’s co-owner, Hank Allingham, is a numbers guy, having previously spent his career in finance for large restaurant companies, including the Patina Group in New York and Nando’s Peri-Peri in D.C., it’s no surprise he’s using fair prices as a draw for this new venture, launched in February with his wife, Katherine Hanson.
The exterior of Side Eye on Thursday, July 23, 2026 in Philadelphia.Side Eye co-owner Hank Allingham inside the bistro coming to Sixth and Bainbridge on Friday, January 23, 2026.
But value is a relative concept. What good are house-baked buns if the inexperienced kitchen frequently scorches them before sending a burger out to the dining room? Does it really matter that the roast chicken is relatively inexpensive if the skin on those commodity birds is underseasoned and flabby? (It’s also set over borlotti beans — a nice idea until the beans were overcooked to a sticky paste.) Also, does Side Eye make the worst cocktails in Philly? The drinks at our first visits ranged from watery and muddled to raggedly boozy, providing a reminder that you sometimes get exactly what you pay for.
That is, until recently, when I’ve finally begun to detect some needed improvements on multiple fronts. One key has been a shift in the front house staff, essential to maintaining the warm neighborhood mojo at the Queen Village space that once housed beloved Bistrot La Minette, which called it quits in 2024.
The service during my early visits ranged from chaotic — with more plates landing simultaneously at our little table than it could possibly hold (and the server impatiently waiting for us play to Tetris to somehow find space) — to borderline hostile.
“Ok, now who‘s ordering here?!” snapped the waiter at my second meal, scolding me for ordering fries for the table when it apparently wasn’t my turn to speak. He’s coincidentally no longer with the restaurant, Allingham said, before I could even mention it.
The Lipstick Stain and Bulldog Cooler, right, at Side Eye on Thursday, July 23, 2026 in Philadelphia.
What a difference the calming presence of a pleasant server such as Tessa Draper can make, righting the mood as weekend sunshine poured through the windows into the cobalt blue room, and we settled into a lovely brunch. It was highlighted by a perfectly fluffy French omelette rolled around house-made fromage blanc, topped with roasted mushrooms, and finished with a dessert of crêpe Suzanne, sweetly named for the chef’s mom. The warm crêpes bundled around that same cheese, all topped with brandied warm caramel and juicy orange segments.
The crepe Suzanne at Side Eye on Thursday, July 23, 2026, in Philadelphia.
The meal was far from perfect. The cucumber-gin Breakfast Cup cocktail had too much bitterness from the lime peel. The avocado toast was not especially green. And this kitchen burned the slender toast “soldiers” served alongside its soft-boiled eggs. But we loved the poached shrimp and fresh-dressed cod rillettes salad that came on the side. The lemony hollandaise for the Parisian ham Benedict served over house-baked brioche was extremely tasty.
It felt like Side Eye had finally found a comfortable groove, enough for me to return for one more dinner.
With Draper once again tending to our table, the improvements continued, especially with new vegetable-forward dishes that turn out to be a strength for chef Finn Connors, 26, an alum of Osteria, Wilder, and Sally. He cooks a range of diverse ingredients but also concedes, “I mostly eat vegetables.”
The tomato and honeydew salad at Side Eye on Thursday, July 23, 2026, in Philadelphia.
His tomato and honeydew salad makes the most of summer’s bounty, winding luscious tomato chunks inside ribbons of shaved honeydew that added a textural snap and juicy burst of bright sweetness. Snappy batons of zucchini are roasted with just a touch of char, dressed with basil oil, and paired with a creamy dip of that ricotta-like house-strained cheese for another simple but memorable starter. A classic ratatouille, with separately stewed eggplant, red peppers, and zucchini finished with saucy tomatoes, sherry vinegar, and herbs, was one of menu’s most confident nods to a French canon the chef had never previously cooked before.
Connors bakes a very respectable French baguette, a nice wink to the standby offering at La Minette. I just wish they offered more than a stubby little heel of it for $5. That bread may be at its best diced-up into croutons that give the delicious French onion soup a sturdy, spoonable body and an irresistible dome to be gratinéed; delicious even when they occasionally burn it.
The French Onion Soup at Side Eye on Thursday, July 23, 2026 in Philadelphia.
When it comes to cooking proteins, Side Eye has work to do. They struggled to nail a medium-rare doneness on the burger (twice overcooked, once underdone) but also need some basic seasoning to boost the flavors of the Camembert and peppercorn aioli garnish. The coarse-chopped beef tartare was both unpleasantly chewy and overwhelmed by the sharp garnish of crumbled Gorgonzola cheese.
An intriguing early menu item of a stuffed cabbage filled with braised short rib suffered from some less-than-tender braised meat. This kitchen also got too clever with a usually no-brainer pot of mussels marinières, swapping out the shellfish’s natural liquor for a Miller High Life-infused dashi mixed with crab fat and a hunk of not-especially-tender pork belly. Not only was the dashi lacking focused flavor, there wasn’t nearly enough of it, leaving the bowl so dry that the high percentage of empty shells was obvious.
A simple plate of flaky hake with chili-spiced piri-piri broth and herbed potatoes (reminiscent of the similar retro hit at Meetinghouse) offered minimalist satisfaction. The dish was recently updated to seared cod with a summery garnish of couscous in a tomato-tinted velouté Aurora sauce. I’ll order that next time.
The Lasagna at Side Eye on Thursday, July 23, 2026 in Philadelphia.
Fresh pasta is consistently one of Side Eye’s better moves. I enjoyed the early menu’s tagliolini with Café de Paris butter and shaved Mimolette cheese. But this summer’s lasagna is one of the kitchen’s best dishes to date; a low rise double stack of fresh pasta sandwiching the fresh cheese with artichoke hearts, topped with a crispy pasta lid that gets gratinéed with Manchego cheese and scattered with a fistful of peas.
As inconsistent as the drinks were at my early meals, something also clicked in the glass for our final visit. The refreshing tequila and Aperol-fueled Lipstick Stain and a solid Old Fashioned hit the spot. For $12 to $14 a pour, an accessible wine list of independent French producers of picpoul de pinet, Anjou rouge, and a cinsault-syrah blend from Les Enfants Sauvage proved to be among the restaurant’s better values.
The bar at Side Eye on Thursday, July 23, 2026 in Philadelphia.
When it comes to dessert, Side Eye serves-up an olive oil cake trifle layered with lemon curd and a fluffy marshmallow crown torched for drama. But we couldn’t resist the low key crème caramel, a fresh take on the standard that gives the silky sweet custard a modern update with a crunchy dusting of bittersweet cocoa nibs and flaky Maldon sea salt.
The effect of those bold contrasting flavors and textures — when perfectly fine-tuned — compels your spoon to return for another scoop. It was an irresistible finale for a meal that finally gave a hint of what this restaurant can be. Side Eye still has plenty of wrinkles to iron out to reach its full potential, but I’ve seen enough signs of progress lately, and I’m hopeful that can continue.
Side Eye
623 S. 6th St, Philadelphia, PA 19147, 267-807-1164; sideeyephilly.com
Dinner, Sunday through Thursday, 4-11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, until 1 a.m.; Brunch Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m.-3 p.m.
Dinner entrees, $14-$25.
Wheelchair accessible.
About half the menu is gluten-free or can be modified.
Menu highlights: Dinner: French onion soup; tomato-honeydew melon salad; roasted zucchini with fromage blanc; ratatouille; bread and butter; triple cooked steak fries; artichoke-pea lasagna; cod. Brunch: French omelette; Benedict variations; crêpes Suzanne.
Drinks: Cocktails and affordable French wines (all $14 or less a glass) drive the program. Reasonable prices are the draw, but craftsmanship on cocktails has been shaky. There are some thoughtful non-alcoholic options and the beer list has several worthy choices, from local Forest & Main and Monk’s Flemish sour to La Fin du Monde.
The dining room at Side Eye on Thursday, July 23, 2026 in Philadelphia.
The Korean-owned yard’s leaders thought they had found just the place, four miles by barge down the Delaware River at the New Jersey-funded Paulsboro facility, vacated by the offshore wind industry when President Donald Trump killed that program. In December, Hanwha agreed to take over the lease.
Philadelphia Shipyard as seen from southbound I-95 expressway in 2024.
This despite the fact Hanwha’s proposal enjoyed support from federal, state and local officials and even made it into the U.S. military budget for fiscal year 2026, which called for $110 million “to support shipbuilding industrial capacity” and steel fabrication in a manufacturing facility “formerly used for offshore wind manufacturing.”
Paulsboro Mayor John Giovannitti estimates that on a given day, there are fewer than 50 workers at the port.
Leo Holt, whose century-old company runs ports in Gloucester City and South Philadelphia, said he’s not completely averse to manufacturing around the Paulsboro terminal after his family’s plans to beef up container and bulk shipping there accelerate.
Hanwha declined to comment, confirming only that the shipyard is still looking for space “in the U.S.”
A rendering of a 600-acre shipyard that the Port of Tampa Bay has offered to build for Hanwha.
What went wrong?
Since the early 2010s, New Jersey borrowed and spent more than $500 million building a Paulsboro wharf, highway ramps and other facilities to attract big employers to the port. It replaced lost oil industry jobs and also compensated for nearby Camden’s loss of piers due to Holtec Inc.’s redevelopment in that city’s aging port district.
In borrowing documents and news releases, the public spending was justified by predictions that the port would draw hundreds, even thousands, of port and industrial jobs, which in more than a decade have yet to arrive.
Paulsboro sublets the facility to Holt as the port operator. Holt paid $1.6 million to use the property last year.
At the urging of then-Gov. Phil Murphy, then-State Senate President and iron workers union leader Steve Sweeney, then-Paulsboro Mayor John Burzichelli and other officials, Holt in 2020 agreed to let EEW, a global pipemaker based in Germany, build supports up to 400 feet long and 40 feet across for the federally subsidized offshore wind-electric generation facilities that its Danish partner Orsted planned to locate off the New Jersey coast.
Orsted canceled in 2023, citing rising costs. Trying to cut his company’s losses, EEW executive vice president Esben Strandgaard began looking for new tenants, attracting more than 200 inquiries and initiating talks with Hanwha.
Hanwha needed the landlord’s permission to take over the lease. Hanwha Defense USA President Tom Anderson, a retired Navy rear admiral, and the Holts met last fall to discuss the proposal.
Instead of approving, the Holts sued, challenging EEW’s authority to pick a replacement and demanding control of the facility.
Hanwha, aided by its political supporters, tried to make a deal, but Holt stood firm. In March, Hanwha canceled the agreement.
What the Holts want
“The north star for redevelopment at Paulsboro has been marine terminal operations,” said Leo Holt, president of the Gloucester City-based company. “We stretched to assist the state in any way we could,” but “Hanwha was never a part of the plan, nor was shipbuilding.”
Holt spoke of the failed industrial proposals — wind, shipbuilding, and others to build power plant equipment on site — as an obstacle, not a goal.
“The detour imposed on New Jersey is over, and the road is clear to the Paulsboro Marine Terminal,” he said. “We were glad to see that the page was turned on the detour.”
Holt Logistics, which has been expanding containerized cargo facilities on both sides of the river, has shipped containers to Paulsboro and hopes to augment Paulsboro’s current port tenants, Holt said.
Those include Novolipetsk Steel (NLMK), owned by Russian billionaire Vladimir Lisin, which due to Ukraine war sanctions stopped importing Russian steel through the port for its plant in Farrell, Pa., and has switched to steel from Latin America, East Asia, and other countries, according to Holt.
The port also ships containers to the U.S. Navy base in Rota, Spain, and to ports in Cyprus, Israel, and other Mediterranean countries.
More than a container port
New Jersey has spent more than half a billion dollars improving the Paulsboro site with a wharf, highway connections to I-295, and other public works, the mayor said.
“I’m not aware of Paulsboro people, Gloucester County people, working there right now,” said Burzichelli, now a state senator and a supporter of both the wind and the Hanwha projects.
New Jersey invested in the BP site to make it more than a container port, Burzichelli says.
“That [state-built] wharf was designed to handle any industry, and the public investment was designed to create the maximum amount of high-paying jobs that can be created,” he said.
The port section “was always intended to be a bulk port,” requiring plenty of longshoremen’s labor, and “certainly not a container port,” which “take up a lot of space but don’t generate big jobs,” Burzichelli said.
“They don’t pay taxes the way an [industrial] building will pay,” he added.
The Holts’ “choices and the interest of the state of New Jersey, the interests of Gloucester County, and the interests of the borough of Paulsboro, are not aligned, at this point,” Burzichelli said. “I hope we can get them aligned.”
Mayor Giovannitti said, “We thought we had a deal last year with Hanwha” but are left with “a $750,000 hole in our budget” — the annual payment, in lieu of taxes, that EEW and its partners paid the borough while it was operating. The town’s annual budget is $13 million.
Instructors and graduates of the union-backed preapprenticeship program Global Skills Union Pathways Project at Philly Hanwha Shipyard in February.
What Paulsboro could offer
Strandgaard says he’s not surprised Hanwha decided not to “waste any more of their time” on Paulsboro: “They could not see themselves working with a hostile landlord.”
It’s an ideal site for shipbuilding or any other industry that needs a deep water port, he said. But “Holt Logistics really controls what comes in and out. This was very upsetting, for us and Hanwha, that Hanwha with the support of the Navy did not have enough leverage.”
Other East Coast sites would take a year or more to prepare. “The beauty of Paulsboro is they could start the day after” concluding a deal, Strandgaard said.
He said he was surprised the new administration of New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill didn’t make landing Hanwha a priority.
Sherrill was “disappointed that EEW could not reach an agreement with Hanwha or other parties despite the state’s efforts to facilitate discussions and bring stakeholders together,” spokesperson Maggie Garbarino said in a statement.
Holt’s goal: A modern marine terminal
On any given day, between 500 and 900 Holt employees are moving cargo at the company’s South Jersey operations, Holt said. He declined to estimate how many of those were in Paulsboro.
According to tax records, the port handled about 250,000 tons of cargo last year. That’s less than one-tenth of all South Jersey Port Corp. cargoes.
Holt called the state “vital partners in the renovation of the facility. We are working to have both marine operations and manufacturing operations. But we cannot be deterred from taking it where we promised: to be an active modern marine terminal.”
He said he expects the Sherrill administration will prove to be more congenial to the Holts’ vision for the property — “manufacturing, distribution, or anything” that makes sense to his family.
South Jersey officials say they haven’t given up. “The people of Paulsboro were told this was about jobs, jobs, jobs, and those would be manufacturing jobs. Not stacking containers four high with automated forklifts,” Giovannitti said.
Burzichelli still hopes Hanwha and Holt can be brought to the same page. “Many of us still don’t think we are done with manufacturing,” he said.
At 3:30 p.m. Monday, Bryce Harper stood on the grass in shallow center field and uncorked throws from as far as 120 feet to coach Paco Figueroa on the right-field foul line.
With that, the Grand Experiment began.
Make no mistake, that’s what this is. The Phillies made their big trade-deadline move for Luis Arraez, a three-time batting champion whom they deemed the most impactful hitter available even though his preferred position (second base) was occupied. They also added relievers Caleb Kilian and veteran lefty Brooks Raley.
But they couldn’t line up on a package for any of the 13 — count ‘em, 13! — starting pitchers of note who got traded, leaving one of the Phillies’ chief needs unfilled.
Were they unwilling to pay the prices for the one subset of an extreme seller’s market that featured abundant supply?
Or were they unable?
“Both,” Dave Dombrowski said after the 6 p.m. deadline passed. “In some cases, I’d say some clubs felt we were unable to match others, but not in many cases. The top of our farm system is very well-regarded. I think it’s a little deeper than what people think it is once you start talking to them. But others may not.”
Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski (center) made two notable trades before Monday’s deadline.
As a rival team official said, “Dave was in a really tough situation,” trying to find bullpen help, a right-handed bat, and a starter with “only three legitimate pieces” in the farm system. Dombrowski cashed in one of them — 20-year-old righty Ramon Marquez — for Arraez, a pending free agent.
But the Phillies’ biggest asset turned out to be Harper’s unfulfilled desire to win a World Series.
If Harper wouldn’t go back to right field, where he hasn’t played since April 2022, the Phillies couldn’t have set off the chain reaction of positional changes — Alec Bohm to first base, Bryson Stott to third — that opened up second base for Arraez.
For years, Harper told everyone that he would make a temporary move to the outfield if it enabled the Phillies to add a hitter. They never came close to taking him up on it, even as Dombrowski went on a four-year search for outfield bats that turned up Austin Hays, Max Kepler, Harrison Bader, and Adolis García.
“I know everybody thinks it’s crap when I say it,” Harper said Monday. “But it’s not.”
Just in case, Harper stuffed an outfielder’s glove in his travel bag for the road trip last week. Then, at Dombrowski’s request, Don Mattingly struck up a conversation before a game. It went like this:
“Hey, are you serious?” Mattingly said.
“Yeah,” Harper said.
And that was it.
“I think him being willing to do that — and being serious about it — was the key to being able to open your mind to different things,“ Mattingly said. ”It could get away from an outfielder and open your mind to different guys.”
Luis Arraez, acquired Monday by the Phillies at the trade deadline, is a three-time batting champion.
The clincher, though, came Sunday night. Dombrowski was “pretty far along” in talks with the Giants about Arraez when he got a text from Harper.
“He said, ‘If there’s any truth to the rumors that you’re getting Arraez, I’d be happy to move to the outfield to add him to the ballclub,’“ Dombrowski said. “His volunteering it opened up the door for us to go ahead.“
Never mind, then, that the Phillies began the week last in the majors in on-base percentage (.280) and OPS (.644) from the right side of the plate. In their estimation, lefty-swinging Arraez will improve the lineup more than righty-hitting outfielders Jo Adell and Taylor Ward.
They’re probably correct. Arraez is a modern Rod Carew. What he lacks in power (career-high 10 home runs in 2023), he makes up for in contact skills. To put his 21 strikeouts this season into context, 102 players struck out as many times … in July alone.
But Harper, Stott, Trea Turner, and Bohm — from first base to third — have comprised the infield for four years, including Monday night in the 113th game of the season. Now, the only one who will stay put is Turner, the worst defender of the group.
It’s a lot of chess pieces to move around on Aug. 4.
Mattingly, a nine-time Gold Glove first baseman, was asked if he’s ever seen anything like it.
“I can’t say that I have,” he said. “Not that I remember. No, not really.”
And Dombrowski, who has led front offices for nearly 40 years and been in the game even longer?
“Probably not positional player-wise,” he said.
Bryce Harper is expected to return to first base after this season.
The Phillies are among the worst defensive teams in the majors. Dombrowski thinks they could be better in the new alignment. Can they get worse?
Harper, in particular, but also Stott are expected to return to their regular positions after the season. Until then, it’s a gambit.
“I think sometimes you have to take a little bit of an adventurous look at your club when you look at moving positions around,” Dombrowski said. “We think it will work for us.”
But they’re asking Harper and Stott to condition their arms to make longer throws. And it’s not like they have spring training. They’re expected to be at their adopted positions Tuesday, when Arraez joins the team.
“Obviously I’m going to need to get my arm going a little bit more,” Harper said. “Long toss, arm care, all that stuff. … I would say that and maybe a little bit of the legs as well. But at 33 right now, it’s the best I’ve felt in a long time. I feel healthy. I feel strong.
“I’m at a spot in my career where I don’t have to do that, right? Like I don’t have to go and play a different position. I’m very comfortable at first base. I love first base. I love being on the infield, you know? It’s something I’m doing just for the team. That’s how I feel about that.
“But I want to win. You guys know that I want to win more than anybody. So, go out there hopefully it helps.”
It won’t fill the fifth-starter spot, get any outs in the eighth inning, or boost the production from the right side of the plate. But at the trade deadline, Harper’s championship thirst was the best thing the Phillies had going for them.
What does disaster look like? Well, let’s start with what it sounds like, because it sounds a lot like Dombrowski’s voice.
“Our first goal is to make the playoffs,” the Phillies president said Monday, prefacing an answer about the potential postseason impact of a day headlined by the acquisition of free-agent-to-be Luis Arraez for fast-rising pitching prospect Ramon Marquez, “so, I hope we’re dealing with clubs in the postseason.”
Luis Arraez has won three batting titles and is leading the National League with a .324 average going into Monday’s games.
The words that followed don’t really matter. What matters is the qualification. I have written this plenty of times before. Hope is not strategy. It is a lack of options, one that is usually a function of decisions made prior.
Dombrowski has been the man in charge of making the Phillies’ baseball decisions for five-and-a-half years. Five-and-a-half years into Andrew Friedman’s tenure with the Dodgers, he was en route to his first World Series win, after having already lost two, one in seven games. He’d salvaged Max Muncy from the scrap heap, signed Justin Turner and Chris Taylor, traded for Kiké Hernandez, and then Mookie Betts, drafted Will Smith, Andy Pages, and Walker Buehler. Just as important, he’d swung a series of minor league trades that helped lay the groundwork for the Dodgers’ recent acquisition of two-time defending AL Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal.
Long story short, Dombrowski has reached a point where the problems he must solve are all of his own making. He did not draft Alec Bohm or Bryson Stott, but he did not pivot off them, either. He signed Trea Turner to a $300 million contract. He oversaw the move of Harper from right field to first base. Four years ago, he could have leveraged top prospect Logan O’Hoppe in a trade for a young, cost-controlled right-handed hitter, or a young, cost-controlled pitcher instead of Brandon Marsh. He did not lose the trade. But, in the grand scheme of things, given the circumstances, did he win it?
The circumstances are this:
It isn’t necessarily a disaster to ask three-fourths of your infield to change positions midseason so that two players can continue to play a position where they aren’t the best defensive option.
As a result of the trade for Luis Arraez, Phillies first baseman Bryce Harper will move back to right field.
It isn’t necessarily a disaster to move one of those players from the infield to the outfield, where he hasn’t played more than eight games since 2021. Nor is it to move another of those players (Stott) from second base to third base, a position where he has started just 12 games since high school.
It isn’t even necessarily a disaster to do all of these things in order to add another lefty bat to a lineup that already suffered from a glut of them. Nor it is necessarily a disaster that the new left-handed bat is a top-of-the-order bat, and thus does little to remediate the lack of middle-of-the-order thump behind Harper and Kyle Schwarber.
Don’t get me wrong. Any one of these things could be a disaster. One might argue that, in sum, the odds are strong that they will be a disaster. But these are perfectly defensible moves in isolation, and maybe even in sum. The Phillies can, did, and will continue to argue that Arraez is exactly the kind of bat their lineup needed. They can, did, and will continue to argue that he can play good enough second base to warrant the downgrade there along with the question marks at third base and in the outfield.
The real disaster is that the Phillies found themselves in a predicament where they needed to make these moves. The real disaster is that these moves so preoccupied their energy and resources that they failed to address what were arguably their two greatest needs. The real disaster, above all else, is the desperation premium that the Phillies and Dombrowski were forced to pay just for the hope that it might somehow work.
Marquez may never amount to anything as a major leaguer. As devastating as his changeup is — the minor league strikeout rate is absurd — the fastball and the health are what matter first and foremost. He is 20 years old. He is befuddling class-A hitters. But the success or failure of the Arraez trade isn’t just a matter of who Marquez will be as a major leaguer. It is also matter of who else the Phillies might have traded him for.
This past offseason, Arraez signed a one-year contract with the Giants worth $12 million. That’s roughly $2 million more than the Phillies paid to Garcia, for whom nobody would be trading, even if healthy. They did the same thing last season, albeit at a far lower price, acquiring Harrison Bader to help replace free agent mediocrity Max Kepler. In fact, the Phillies have done the same thing every season of Dombrowski’s tenure, to one degree or another. They are the little boy at the leaking dam, their fingers outnumbered by the holes they must plug. It is losing math, even before you factor in the market.
Second baseman Bryson Stott will move over to third to make room for Luis Arraez in the Phillies’ infield.
Dombrowski and his minions will argue that they could not have simply signed Arraez for $12 million. They had Stott at second base, after all. And they had Bohm at third. They couldn’t move either because they had Turner at shortstop and Harper at first. And yet, here they are.
For nearly six years they’ve been here. Each of the last three have been as obvious as the last. Bohm, Stott, J.T. Realmuto, Justin Crawford, Marsh, Garcia — none of them has underperformed any realistic expectations. And yet, here they are.
“We added the top hitter in the league to the offense, a different type of hitter than we have,” Dombrowski said of Arraez. “Somebody that gets on base, sets the stage for some of our big guys, doesn’t strike out as often, who can do things with the bat.”
These are helpful things, no doubt.
More helpful is to build an organization that avails you with those things before the panic sets in.
