Cup of Coffee: April 16, 2024

Good morning!

Today we talk about the end of the John Sterling era in New York, slick baseballs, Diamond Baseball Holdings, motivational shoes, and the death of Ken Holtzman.

In Other Stuff we talk about Donald Trump going on trial and my hangups with victim impact statements at sentencing hearings which I find to be problematic even if Pink Floyd is involved.

And That Happened 

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Guardians 6, Red Sox 0: Will Brennan hit a pinch-hit, two-run homer in the seventh and José Ramirez and Gabriel Arias each added an RBI double while Red Sox batters were held to just three hits. It was an even tougher day at the office for Red Sox outfielder Tyler O’Neill who ended up with eight stitches above his left eye and a trip through concussion protocol after colliding with third baseman Rafael Devers while they each chased a popup in the eighth. We’ll likely hear more about his prognosis today.

In other news, the starting pitchers in this one were named Xzavion and Kutter. I just thought you should know that. Today the Red Sox will face a pitcher named Tanner and on Wednesday they will start a pitcher named Tanner. As an old person this is all sorts of disorienting for me, but I become OK with it when I realize that in like 30 years a bunch of middle aged people will be remembering their salad days when people had conventional names like Xzavion, Kutter, and Tanner and lamenting what is then new. Sort of like how I feel when I remember when there were once a lot of pitchers named Bob. There really aren’t any Bobs anymore.

Orioles 7, Twins 4: Cedric Mullins had himself a good day. For one thing he homered and drove in three runs. For another thing he did this:

Jordan Westburg drove in two runs on a three-hit day as well, but ain’t nothin’ gonna beat that Mullins catch.

Phillies 2, Rockies 1: Aaron Nola and Cal Quantrill had quite a duel, each allowing just one run in seven and a third and in six innings, respectively. Michael Toglia hit a solo shot for the Rockies’ run and Bryce Harper singled in the lone run for the Phillies in regulation. In the bottom of the tenth the Manfred Man was sacrificed to third base after which Christian Pache singled him in for the walkoff win.

Giants 4, Marlins 3: The Giants overcame an early three-run deficit thanks to a three-run seventh inning to sink the Marlins. Jung Hoo Lee had two hits, including a tying single in that seventh, Patrick Bailey hit a sacrifice fly and Wilmer Flores knocked one in that inning as well. That wasted an excellent Edward Cabrera start. He struck out 10 and allowed just one run on five hits over six innings before the Miami bullpen and the San Francisco bats blew it. Home plate umpire Laz Díaz ejected manager Skip Schumaker in the bottom of the eighth. I presume he was arguing balls and strikes. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if he was simply raging at the cosmic predicament in which he finds himself these days by virtue of managing the Miami Marlins.

Rangers 1, Tigers 0: Michael Lorenzen, making his Rangers debut, and three relievers combined on a five-hit shutout, supported only by a Marcus Semien run-scoring groundout in the fifth. The Tigers had their chances, putting runners on in the third, fourth and fifth innings, but the Rangers turned double plays in each of those innings to put out the fires.

Angels 7, Rays 3: A five-run eighth inning, powered by a two-run homer from Mike Trout, handed this one to the Halos. Matt Thaiss added a three-run double and Taylor Ward hit a two-run homer in the ninth. Miguel Sanó, who I forgot existed there for a minute, had three hits. The Rays’ bullpen has been terrible this year. Which is not a thing that a team built like the Rays can really allow to have happen if they wanna go anywhere.

Blue Jays 3, Yankees 1: Isiah Kiner-Falefa drew a bases-loaded walk and Alejandro Kirk scored on a wild pitch in a two-run second inning and Kirk doubled in a run in the third. That ended up being all Toronto needed given that Chris Bassitt allowed just one run while working into the seventh and three relievers no-hit New York the rest of the way. This is the first time all season the Yankees have lost consecutive games.

Mets 6, Pirates 3: New York was down 3-0 in the sixth but they scored three that inning and then put up three more in the eighth, highlighted by three stolen bases and a Harrison Bader tie-breaking two-run double. That was punctuated by Pirates reliever Aroldis Chapman getting ejected afterward for beefing about balls and strikes. You hate to see it. Except you love to see it. The Mets have now won eight of 11 following their 0-5 start and are back at .500.

Royals 2, White Sox 0: Seth Lugo shut out the hapless White Sox on four hits over seven and a couple of relievers finished the job. Vinnie Pasquantino homered in the fourth and Kyle Isbel singled home a run in the fifth. The Royals are 11-6 and have allowed a major league-low 48 runs this season. Of course playing and beating the White Sox five times so far helps those matters a lot.

Padres 7, Brewers 3: A six-run fifth, powered only by singles, a groundout, and a passed ball, pushed the Padres to victory. Their other run scored on a fielder’s choice in the fourth. Death by a thousand cuts, man.

Atlanta 6, Astros 1: Five Atlanta pitchers combined to scatter seven hits and to allow just the one run while, until the ninth anyway, Houston kept pace, making it a 2-1 game until the final frame. That’s when Atlanta put up a four-spot thanks to RBI singles from Austin Riley, Orlando Arcia, and Marcell Ozuna and a Michael Harris II fielder’s choice. All four of those runs came off of Josh Hader, who now has a 9.39 ERA to kick off an Astros tenure for which he signed a five-year, $95 million deal.

Cubs 3, Diamondbacks 2: Michael Busch tied a franchise record by homering in his fifth straight game. That dinger led off the scoring for Chicago, who wouldn’t score again until the top of the ninth inning when Nico Hoerner scored a run on a wild pitch all the way from second base to tie things up to force extras. In the tenth Hoerner struck again, knocking in the Manfred Man with an RBI single to give the game to the Cubs.

Cardinals 3, Athletics 1: Sonny Gray was excellent again, tossing six shutout innings while striking out six and picking up his 100th career win in the process. He was backed by RBI singles from Nolan Arenado and Jordan Walker and an RBI double from Willson Contreras. Contreras doubled twice, actually. Only 5,508 souls witnessed this one, and even some of them were disguised as folded-up seats.

Mariners 9, Reds 3: The Seattle offense finally woke up, scoring more runs in this one than it has in any game since late last August. Jorge Polanco and Mitch Haniger homered and drove in three. Luke Raley hit an RBI triple. George Kirby allowed two runs over six.

Nationals 6, Dodgers 4: Mitchell Parker made his major league debut against what’s supposed to be the best team going in that team’s home park. It didn’t faze him. He allowed just two runs over five innings, out-pitching Tyler Glasnow and picking up the win. He was helped in his cause by Luis García Jr., who hit a three-run homer, and CJ Abrams who hit a solo shot. Joey Gallo doubled in a run as well.

The Daily Briefing

John Sterling retires

Longtime New York Yankees radio broadcaster John Sterling announced his retirement yesterday, effective immediately. There will be a pregame ceremony prior to Saturday’s Yankees-Rays game to honor him and make it all official.

Sterling, who is 85, cited health concerns for his retirement, though some who know him well, such as YES TV voice Michael Kay, say it’s not an emergency thing born of a pressing health issue as opposed to Sterling simply being old and kinda over it. His original thinking was that he’d broadcast this year and then call it a career but after a couple of weeks he just realized that it was time to hang ‘em up. Replacing Sterling in the short term will be Justin Shackil and Emmanuel Berbari, each of whom were scheduled to call the majority of the road games this season, as Sterling had committed to only working from New York.

Sterling has been the voice of the New York Yankees since 1989 and he became a fixture during the Yankees dynasty which began a few years later and, in some respects, continues to this day. As the voice of the Yankees he became known for his personalized home run calls for Yankees players and his signature “Thuuuuuh Yankees win!” after games in which the Bombers emerged victorious.

Though Sterling will forever be associated with the Yankees, he had a long and rich broadcasting career before taking over the Yankees mic in 1989. Most notably, Sterling spent nine years in Atlanta calling Atlanta Baseball club games between 1982 and 1987 and Atlanta Hawks NBA games from 1981 through 1989 for TBS. This, for what it’s worth, was where I first encountered Sterling, making him the only generational/institution-type announcer who I remember from before he took the job that gave him his greatest fame. It’s sort of like knowing Ernie Harwell when he broadcast Brooklyn Dodgers or Baltimore Orioles games or something. It’s kind of weird in that respect, actually. And it makes me feel rather old.

Sterling was not always my cup of tea. He had a pretty bad habit of not, actually, doing a great job of letting you know what was on the game at any given time, which is sort of a problem for radio. But the thing about listening to a team for years and years is that you realize the specifics of the call are not always the most important thing. Ballgames on the radio are about familiarity. Comfort. About visiting with your old friends a hundred or a hundred and fifty times a year and knowing that when you hear their voice you’re in your happy place.

Sterling did that for Yankees fans for over three decades. And he will absolutely be missed by those people for whom he has long been the sound of the summer.

The White Sox sign Tommy Pham

Free agent outfielder Tommy Pham has signed a one-year, $3 million contract with the Chicago White Sox. It includes $1.5 million in incentives.

Pham hit a combined .256/.328/.446 (111 OPS+) while splitting time between the Mets and the Diamondbacks last season. He was better with the former than the latter. He’s also generally considered a head case, which explains why a lot of teams have stayed away from him to date. The White Sox, however, have suffered a rash of injuries in the early going and they weren’t all that stocked with talent to begin with, so Pham will likely represent an improvement for them.

Seriously, though, there are few players who are less inspiring than Tommy Pham, so putting him on the White Sox, who are perhaps the least inspiring team in major league baseball this year, is like some sort of brilliant Inception kind of deal.

Kenley Jansen decries slick baseballs 

After Sunday’s Red Sox-Angels game, Sox closer Kenley Jansen, who got the save but was shaky in doing so, complained that the baseballs are too slick this year. He says they have not been properly rubbed up and that it makes control close to impossible:

"I got to get better, but also if you're playing in the cold weather, windy, and you get pearls balls out there that's not rubbed well, I don't know where the ball's going . . . Any balls that came, I just throw it back till when I find a good ball. And it's just brutal . . . It's embarrassing. It's been a while I've been playing in this league and, from the beginning of my career until now, it's getting worse . . . It's been an issue the whole year. I've been talking to a lot of my teammates, and they feel the same way. First pitch, get out of my hand, I don't know where it's going. Second pitch, the same thing. Then, I tried to throw a ball down the middle, just keep going down. It's tough trying to make an adjustment and also you have the clock ticking."

Obviously quality control with respect to the baseballs has been an issue for a few years now. Most of the conversation about that has surrounded whether the balls were too lively or too dead, but the smoothness of the ball’s exterior and the changes the league has made with respect to who rubs the balls with mud before games has been discussed as well.

It used to be the umpires. Now it’s usually clubhouse staff, and that has led to some inconsistencies. So much so that, two years ago, MLB had to send out memos to all teams about it because it was finding that the rubbing process was not being handled in uniform fashion. One wonders if the Fenway Park mud-rubbers have been handling that properly and whether it’s time for another memo. Or if, rather, Jansen is just looking for an excuse.

Inside Diamond Baseball Holdings

Major League Baseball took over minor league baseball in 2020, eliminating 40 affiliated clubs, leaving 120. Since then 32 of those clubs have been purchased by a single private equity-backed company, Diamond Baseball Holdings. The men who run DBH are close to Rob Manfred and, alongside Manfred and MLB executives, they have sought to corporatize minor league baseball with national sponsorships, merch deals, and the rest. And DBH does not plan to stick with 32 teams. They’re willing to buy more if and when more are put up for sale.

Yesterday The Athletic wrote an in-depth piece about Diamond Baseball Holdings. And, contrary to what you might expect, there have been a lot of positives involved in what is, essentially, a corporate takeover of once independently owned minor league teams.

DBH almost always keeps all of the staff of the acquired team on the payroll. They have changed a few teams names and they have invested pretty heavily in park upgrades to keep up with MLB’s new facility requirements that were imposed following the 2020 takeover. But the book on DBH, even from executives and staff from non-DBH clubs, is that they’re professional, thoughtful, and easy to work with. They talk a lot about all minor league owners being in this together. And of course they have big money backing them so the sorts of things minor league clubs may have had to break the bank to accomplish — special events, park renovations, and things like that — come more easily to DBH.

To the extent there is a concern it’s that DBH’s power consolidation and its close relationship with Rob Manfred and MLB brass may mean bad things when the current Player Development League agreement — the contract which manages the relationship between MLB and the minor league clubs — is up in 2030:

The current PDL contracts expire after the 2030 season. Some minor-league owners expressed concern that, in seven years, MLB could further contract the minor leagues, removing the affiliation of another 30 teams — leaving three levels per Major League organization — and again raising the standards so that smaller operators will have a harder time meeting the requirements.

“We’re worried about getting squeezed out,” one minor league owner said.

The clear implication that DBH would assume an even more prominent role in the minor leagues if that were to happen. DBH denies it has any interest in that and, in fact, opposes further minor league contraction. So, for now at least, the horribles remain theoretical and, for the most part, people seem to be happy with DBH.

I don’t have to tell you all that I tend to be skeptical of increased corporatization in most contexts, especially when it’s backed by private equity which is always looking to take its ton of flesh. Moreover, I believe that Major League Baseball’s fixation on corporate partnerships and the monetization of almost everything during the Rob Manfred Regime has been bad for the game. That being said, there’s a danger in romanticizing the old, especially with something as steeped in history and nostalgia as minor league baseball. Contrary to what popular memory may suggest, minor league operations were not exactly charming, rural mom-and-pop affairs before 2020. That stereotype is ages old, actually. The men, women, and ownership groups who owned the teams DBH purchased were a lot more corporate or corporate-looking than they wanted you to believe. And a lot of them were simply cheap. I don’t carry a brief for Rob Manfred when it comes to just about anything — and I was and remain in disagreement with MLB about the contraction of the minor leagues — but his desire to up the game of the minor league franchises which still exist is not an unreasonable one, and I can imagine a lot worse than DBH handling all of that.

But, as always, we’ll see. I never want to be right about corporate interests and private equity ruining everything, because it’s bad for things to get ruined, so I’m at least trying to hold out a little hope that the minor leagues won’t be ruined by this sort of corporate consolidation. And there is at least some reason to believe they won’t be. At least for now.

Motivational shoes

Tigers prospect Max Clark was the third overall pick of the 2023 draft. He’s still just 19, he has only played 32 professional games, and he’s down in A-ball this year so we won’t be seeing him for a bit, but the he’s making news already. For his clothing more than his hitting. Via Ben Weinrib of MLB dot com:

If you can’t see it, the red shoe shows real social media posts in which people talked crap about him. The blue shoe contains posts which featured words of praise.

I always say that athletes are wired differently than the rest of us and this, I think, is a good example of that. Specifically, I think almost all of us would pretty much never wanna see the smack talk, let alone put it on our shoes. But hey, whatever works for ya Max.

Ken Holtzman: 1945-2024

Ken Holtzman, who enjoyed an excellent 15-year career in which he tossed two no-hitters and was a part of four World Series-winning teams has died at the age of 78.

Holtzman pitched nine of his 15 seasons with the Chicago Cubs, with whom he broke into the bigs in 1965. His first no-hitter came in August 1969 against an Atlanta club which would go on to win the NL West title. It was an odd no-hitter too, in that Holtzman did not strike out a single batter in the game. The second no-no came two years later against the Cincinnati Reds in June of 1971. He punched out six that time.

Holtzman would win 74 games during his first stint in Chicago, but was traded to the Oakland Athletics for Rick Monday prior to the 1972 season. In his four seasons in Oakland Holtzman would win 77 games and serve as a rotation mainstay for an A’s club which would win three straight World Series titles. Holtzman won 21 games in 1973 and made his only two All-Star teams during that run as well, in 1972 and 1973.

Holtzman became a journeyman after 1975, getting shipped to Baltimore along with Reggie Jackson as a part of Charlie O. Finley’s big anti-free agency fire sale just as the 1976 campaign was getting underway. Then, a couple of months later, he’d move on to the New York Yankees in a massive trade which gave the Orioles a huge part of the core which would extend their 1960s-70s dynasty into the early 1980s, with Rick Dempsey, Tippy Martinez, Scott MacGregor, Rudy May and others heading back to Baltimore. Holtzman would earn his fourth World Series ring with New York in 1977, though he did not appear in the postseason. He was traded back to Chicago in the middle of 1978 for Ron Davis. He’d finish his career with the Cubs, retiring following the 1979 campaign.

In all Holtzman won 174 games, lost 150, and posted a career ERA of 3.49 (105 ERA+) while tossing 31 shutouts, including the two no-hitters. Holtzman, who was Jewish, would later coach for a short time in the Israeli baseball league. He’s also the answer to a great trivia question as he is the all-time record holder for wins by a Jewish pitcher. If you asked a bunch of baseball fans I bet almost all of them would say Sandy Koufax but nope: Holtzman had him beat by nine wins. Keep that one in your back pocket in case you wanna stump people the next time you’re talking baseball at your corner bar.

עליו השלום Ken Holtzman. May his memory be a blessing.

Other Stuff

Trump on Trial

Donald Trump’s criminal trial over falsifying records to hide hush money he paid to women he had sex with started yesterday. It’s the least odious or dangerous of the crimes of which he is accused but it’s also probably the only case for which he faces criminal charges that will go to trial before the election so I suppose we have to take what we can get.

The feeling that I can’t shake with respect to this trial is that, given the likelihood of his conviction, Trump has every possible incentive to act like a total loon and get a mistrial declared. If he does that, at least in a way that does not feature him being perp-walked to a holding cell on a contempt of court beef, he can simply, albeit disingenuously, declare victory. He can claim that corrupt Democrat cities can’t handle basic governmental functions. Then he’ll fundraise like crazy off of the idea that (a) he’s the victim of a witch hunt; and/or (b) “I sure stuck it to those losers, didn’t I?” Chaos has always worked well for him so he should probably try to create chaos. It’s the smartest political play for him!

Of course, to create chaos, you actually have to, you know, do something, and early returns on that are not very good for our friend Donald:

Yeah, that could be a problem for him. But hey, at least he’s not . . . woke.

Anyway, I fantasize about Trump being convicted and, even if the penalty is small, I fantasize about him at least temporarily placed in handcuffs and frog-marched someplace, even if I doubt they’d do that to him. Hell, I could see him getting convicted and still winning the election. If that happens the best I can fantasize about his his foreign policy being upended because his dickhead probation officer won't let him leave the country. Maybe it can turn into a remake of the movie “Straight Time” with Trump in the Dustin Hoffman role. Great picture. You should watch it.

So I suppose we’ll sit back and see what happens. Maybe things will go great and, for the first time in his life, Trump will face accountability of some kind. Maybe that whole deal in which he has started making the January 6 rioters central to his campaign — he has taken to opening his rallies with a recording of defendants singing the national anthem from their jail cells — will start to be seen in a new light. One in which Trump, while certainly still using all of that in the service of promoting authoritarian fantasies, is trying to get his mind around what it’s like to be a convicted felon. Maybe it will be the first step of some desperate effort to form alliances on the inside so he doesn’t get shanked the first day in the prison yard.

A boy can dream, can’t he?

A few words on victim impact statements

You’ll recall the murder case arising out of the shooting on the of set the movie “Rust” back in 2021. It’s the one in which Alec Baldwin, thinking he was holding a gun with blanks, shot and killed the film’s cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounded the movie’s director.

Yesterday the armorer for that film — the person in charge of all of the prop weapons — Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was sentenced to 18 months for involuntary manslaughter. Prosecutors alleged, and the jury believed, that Gutierrez-Reed was “sloppy, negligent, and reckless” in her duties and because of that allowed a live round to be inserted into the gun. For what it’s worth Baldwin, also charged with involuntary manslaughter, goes on trial this summer.

Gutierrez-Reed’s 18 month sentence, the maximum possible sentence, was leveled in part because of post-conviction recordings of telephone calls from jail in which she called jurors “idiots” and “assholes” and blamed a bunch of other people for Hutchins’ death. So, yeah, it was hard for her to push back against the claim that she had shown no remorse. But this part, talking about the pre-sentencing victim impact statements, tripped me up:

Hutchins’ mother spoke in a pre-recorded video filmed in her native Ukraine. In it she sobbed as she recalled her life without her daughter saying, “It’s extremely difficult without her.”

“There are no words to describe, time does not heal,” she added.

The prosecutors concluded their presentation with a slideshow of photos of Hutchins set to Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here."

I’ve only been a part of a small handful of criminal trials. They were all white collar deals and they did not involve victim impact statements because banks and state governments and pension funds tend not to offer such statements. But I gotta say, I’ve not heard of one in which a photo/musical montage was played. That seems . . . odd.

Maybe that’s just me, though, as I am generally skeptical of victim impact statements in their entirety. And yes, I realize this isn’t the most popular opinion I’ve ever taken.

I understand why victim impact statements exist. There has long been a push, accelerated in the “get tough on crime” era which truly got rolling in the 1980s, to center victims in the criminal justice process. It’s understandable to some degree, as crime victims and families of crime victims have often felt like they were out-of-the-loop in the cases with which they were involved and that their wishes were insufficiently heeded.

Victim impact statements are problematic in my view, however, because they risk injecting another level of inequality into the system. One in which the better one is able to articulate one’s grief, the greater the punishment the defendant is likely to receive. A well-spoken, well-presented — and in the case above, better produced and stage-managed — victim statement carries more weight. In contrast, cases in which victims either cannot or do not wish to make an impassioned presentation in open court are likely to lead to lesser sentences for the same sorts of crimes.

What if the victim or their family is an immigrant who speaks little English? What if they are less educated and have less of a flair for public speaking or, dare I say, the dramatic? Add in all of the sorts of biases that already come with the perception of public speakers and it’s not hard to imagine a situation in which justice becomes increasingly unequal depending on how much charisma or emotion or other sort of appeal a given victim is capable of projecting. Seems bad!

Victim impact statements are just one of the many things pushing our criminal justice system more and more into the business of retribution in the name of victims as opposed to incapacitation or rehabilitation of criminals. It’s the elevation of “eye for an eye” considerations which formed the basis of ancient systems of justice at the expense of the more dispassionate and, as the cliche goes, blind justice system which had steadily developed over the decades and even centuries since. It’s a dynamic which threatens to transform the criminal justice process from one in which crimes are seen as offenses against the state and against public order to one in which crimes are seen as offenses against specific persons, which is not what it’s really set up to be.

I don’t mean to suggest that victims should not have an active role in the prosecution of those who committed crimes against them. They obviously should. At the very least they should be informed — particularly about when the criminals who harmed them are released and what their rights are in such situations — and prosecutors should take their wishes into account as they proceed with their cases. And, of course, to the extent victims testify they should not be reined in any more than any other witness when giving their answers and that can and should include their impressions and feelings and emotions about what happened to them.

But I don’t much care for the formal process of post-conviction victim impact statements. They seem like theater. They risk unfairness. I think they harm, rather then help, the process of seeking justice. And that’s the case even if part of that process involves playing stone cold bangers before sentencing.

Have a great day everyone.

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