Cup of Coffee: April 30, 2024

Good morning!

One last missive from Texas, as I’m flying home a little bit later today. As mentioned, there may not be a newsletter tomorrow depending on how crappy my travel day is and whether anything newsworthy goes down.

As for today: a veteran was DFA’d, the Mets are missing some pants, the Rays have some new duds, and we learn that remembering some guys can be good for you.

In Other Stuff: I’m working in the worst time zone, the GOP is comically broken, and we learn about how to help the aged.

And That Happened 

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Orioles 2, Yankees 0: Gunnar Henderson homered in the first and scored on an error in the eighth while Grayson Rodriguez threw five and two-thirds shutout innings with three relievers taking it the rest of the way home. As is often the case in low-scoring games like this, one team left 10 men on base and was 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position. That happened to be the Yankees here, though you likely weren’t unclear about that.

Nationals 7, Marlins 2: The Nats complete a four-game sweep of the lowliest of the lowly Miami Marlins. CJ Abrams hit a two-run homer. Ildemaro Vargas had two hits and an RBI. Jesse Winker drew a bases-loaded walk. It’s hard to describe how bad this Marlins team is. It’s just ugly stuff. The Nationals, however, are doing pretty swell. One of my Washington Nationals correspondents messaged me last night to inform me that, with this win, the Nats are 14-14. That makes them a .500 team. And that’s the first time Washington has been at .500 since July 2, 2021, when they were 40-40..

Cubs 3, Mets 1: Luis Severino took a no-hitter into the eighth and . . . the Mets still lost. He ran out of gas that inning and left with a couple of men on. He was then lifted and, thanks in part to a poor decision by Joey Wendle, who attempted to turn a double play rather than nail the lead runner at home, one of ‘em scored. That made it a 1-1 game and Christopher Morel hit a two-run homer in the ninth to seal it for Chicago. It’s a game of inches, man.

[Editor: I thought football was a game of inches]

It’s all inches, man.

Blue Jays 6, Royals 5: Justin Turner hit two homers — one in the first and one in the third — to dig the Jays out of an early 2-0 hole and into the lead. It’s a lead they would not relinquish even though Kansas City played ‘em close all the way until the end. Danny Jansen also homered for Toronto, Vlad Guerrero doubled in a run, and Davis Schneider had an RBI single.

Twins 3, White Sox 2: Two in the first for the Sox, two in the second for the Twins and then nothing until the top of the ninth when Byron Buxton hit a leadoff double and Max Kepler singled him in a few pitches later.

Rays 1, Brewers 0: Ryan Pepiot tossed six shutout frames and three relievers completed the three-hitter. Isaac Paredes hit into a double play that scored a run in the first and that was all the offense there was to speak of, assuming you speak of such things as offense.

Reds 5, Padres 2: Nick Lodolo gave up an early homer to Jurickson Profar but after that he was aces, going seven innings, allowing just that one hit, and striking out 11. As he shoved the Reds scratched across just enough, with Elly De La Cruz homering, Spencer Steer doubling one in, Santiago Espinal singling one in, and getting a run on a balk.

Athletics 5, Pirates 1: Tyler Nevin homered, singled and a hit a sac fly wile starter Joe Boyle and two relievers allowed just two hits. Shea Langeliers and Max Schuemann hit sacrifice flies too. It was just a sac fly party in Oakland last night.

Mariners 2, Atlanta 1: Max Fried pitched no-hit ball for six, Pierce Johnson continued the no-hitter through seven, and one more reliever kept it a two-hit shutout through eight. Bryce Miller was nearly matching them, going seven, allowing just one run on two hits and striking out ten. With the score at 2-1 Atlanta, A.J. Minter came in to close it out in the ninth, But he did not close it out. He gave up a first-pitch single to Jorge Polanco and then battled Mitch Garver for five pitches before Garver deposited one over the wall in left center to walk it off.

Dodgers 8, Diamondbacks 4: The results are the results and Will Smith homered and blah, blah, blah but the real takeaway here was that the Dodgers did not strike out once in the entire game. That’s the first time in 18 years they’ve done that. And I’m gonna guess it’s been, on average anyway, around that long for every team. I’ll be damned.

Angels 6, Phillies 5: The Phillies took a 3-0 lead in the first inning but the Angels came back. Jo Adell homered and they scored two runs on a wild pitch-E2 combination. The Halos snap a four-game skid.

Cardinals vs. Tigers — POSTPONED:

🎶 In the twilight glow I see
Blue eyes crying in the rain
When we kissed goodbye and parted
I knew we'd never meet again

Love is like a dying ember
And only memories remain
And through the ages I'll remember
Blue eyes crying in the rain

Some day when we meet up yonder
We'll stroll, hand in hand again
In a land that knows no parting
Blue eyes crying in the rain 🎶

The Daily Briefing

Angels DFA Aaron Hicks

The Los Angeles Angels have designated Aaron Hicks for assignment. It’s understandable: Hicks was just 8-for-57 with the Angels and had only one hit in his last 19 at-bats.

Hicks signed a one-year deal with the Angels, but Jo Adell has, at long last, broken out this season and has taken over as the starting right fielder. In light of that there’s really no reason for Hicks to be on the club.

Hicks spent his first three seasons in the bigs with Minnesota, but he’s most closely associated with the Yankees for whom he played from 2016 and into the 2023 season. New York released him late last May and he latched on with Baltimore, where he experienced something of a resurgence. Whatever bounce that gave him has petered out, unfortunately, and now it seems like his 12-year career is nearing its end.

Why the Mets haven’t worn their blue or black alternate jerseys yet

On Sunday evening we learned that MLB is stepping in to fix the Nike uniform clusterfuck. That’s good! In the meantime, however, there will still be some offshoots from the clusterfuck. Such as the Mets not being able to wear their solid blue or black alternates because they can’t get the white pants they wear with those.

We learn that from a Newsday article from Sunday night in which Brandom Nimmo talked about it:

“There’s a serious problem when a $13 billion industry is having a tough time getting pants from a worldwide industry that is supposed to be at the forefront of apparel and whatnot. We can’t wear our blacks, we can’t wear our blues because we don’t have our pants, and I hear that it’s a problem with other teams as well . . . It’s one set of pants for two jersey tops that we can’t wear in a major-league season because they don’t have it available. It’s a problem that they need to solve for sure. And not a small problem, either.”

Newsday says that the white pants are supposed to arrive by some time next week. Which is not a promise I’d rally rely on given how uniforms have gone this year.

The Rays unveil their City Connect uniforms

Keeping with uniform news, the Rays are the latest team to roll out new City Connect ensembles. They’re not bad:

The cap is pretty sweet:

But the sweetest part is probably this skateboarding uniform patch:

Thematically speaking, the Rays uniforms are, per the official press release, supposed to represent a balance of "grit and glow" and elements “meant to highlight the unconventional nature of the organization.” It goes on:

The "grit" comes from the willingness to do things differently as an organization, while the "glow" is focused on the vibrance of Tampa Bay, according to Warren Hypes, vice president of creative and brand with the Rays. The design celebrates the city's "counterculture scenes," which include skate, street art, streetwear, tattoo and music . . .

I’m still not super comfortable living in an era in which uniforms have a philosophy, but I have no basis for disputing any of that so, hey, good for them.

The Therapeutic Value of Remembering Some Guys

From Defector, an article about how simply reminiscing about baseball serves as useful therapy for Alzheimer’s and demential patients:

There’s light-centered therapy or music therapy. Farrell, the retired vascular surgeon, specifically mentioned art therapy, which becomes ideal for some patients who might become more reluctant to talk as the disease progresses. (As dementia progresses, speech can become impaired and some patients do become nonverbal.)

But there’s also something called reminiscence therapy. The idea is that by recalling past events, usually those associated with happy times, dementia patients can be more cheerful and sociable. The phrase used a lot is “come out of their shells.” 

And now SABR members have initiated a program in which reminiscence therapy is focused on baseball memories. “Remembering some guys” as people often refer to it online, but at heart it’s about centering positive experiences from one’s youth. And seems to have positive effects for patience.

I totally get that. And I can totally imagine that simply talking with someone about baseball would be grounding and comforting and all of the good things when those are the things I’d need.

Other Stuff

Not that you care much, but . . .

In the nearly four years since I launched Cup of Coffee, I have written it from all four continental U.S. time zones and from the United Kingdom. Here are the rankings as far a how easy it is to write a baseball newsletter that publishes by 7AM Eastern:

1. UK time

2. Pacific time

3. Eastern time

4. Mountain time

5. Central time

It's mostly about doing the recaps. My usual, Eastern time habit is to write the recaps of the east and most of the Central/Mountain time games before I go to bed soon after they end. The next morning I wake up and handle the west coast games and any Central games which lagged or were rain delayed or whatever.

The UK or any European location is actually ideal for publishing a 7AM Eastern newsletter. With that I can sleep in as late as I’m able and then have until noon, local time, to write things up. It’s like having a regular job or something, except it’s a shorter day.

Pacific time, while fairly disorienting if you’re trying to keep up with an Eastern schedule, is not that tough because all of the games are over by a reasonable hour, I can recap before bed, and set the thing to go live by 4AM. Mountain is similar, though a slightly tougher stretch.

Central time zone is the worst of both worlds. Last night the six earliest games were all done by a little after 9PM central, where I am. The five west coast games were all in their early stages. Which means I could recap the five early ones before 10PM or so but then I have a choice of staying up fairly late to recap all the late games or waking up at 5AM to do it given the 6AM Central publication time. That’s doable but hard, especially when you have to do it multiple days in a row. It’s pushing it a step beyond the comfortably doable.

Anyway, this is me whining about working from Texas. And to signal to you all that if for some reason I end up moving to the Central or Mountain time zone some day I may be inspired to change the newsletter’s publication time to accommodate it.

I’m not sure how you fix this

Georgia Republicans would do well in North Korea:

A legitimate political party is bigger than one person and can easily move on when its leader passes. When Trump dies, however, he will leave behind a Republican Party that has sold out every single belief it has in exchange for blind, irrational fealty to him. Someone should probably tell them that a cult of personality without its personality doesn’t fare well, but I suppose they’ll have to learn that lesson the hard way.

What a drag it is gettin’ old. But what my book presupposes is . . .

BBC Science Focus has an interesting article about anti-aging medications and therapies which are apparently more viable and closer to general availability than most of us realize.

In this the article is not talking about some miracle drug or something that will usher in immortality. Rather, it’s stuff that prevents or at least delays any number of biological processes which lead to chronic illnesses, such as the accumulation of mutated cells that can lead to cancer or the things that lead to greater brittleness of bones or other forms of frailty. It’s not about extending the lifespan as such as it’s about extending the period during which someone is generally healthy before all of the usual stuff associated with aging takes hold. In referring to that more active and ailment-free period of life, the article uses the phrase “healthspan” as opposed to lifespan. Though, of course, being healthier and more active longer in life is greatly associated with lifespan extension as well.

At the moment the big promising thing is the drug Metformin, which is a drug for people with diabetes. Thing is: diabetics taking Metformin live longer than non-diabetics who don’t, which has inspired greater testing among non-diabetics to check its off-label efficacy. That seems promising. Beyond that, much of the progress in this area is being realized in studies with mice and stuff.

But there is a conceptual/administrative problem related to research into anti-aging medicines that hadn’t occurred to me:

According to the current medical paradigm, ageing is not something that needs to be treated. Along with hangovers and nuisance phone calls, ageing is viewed as a grim inevitability of life.

If the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other medical regulators are ever to approve a drug for ageing, they would first need to recognise that ageing is a preventable condition that can be targeted therapeutically. “We don’t want to call ageing a disease,” says Barzilai. “The people we want to help don’t want us to call them sick, but ageing does need to be officially recognised as an ‘indication’ that is treatable.”

It puts me in mind of that motivational speaker from “The Natural” who talks about how “losing is a disease . . as contagious as polio.” Roy Hobbs walked out, convinced that he was full of shit, but maybe we just hadn’t recognized losing as a preventable condition that can be targeted therapeutically!

Seriously, though, I find this kind of stuff fascinating. Immortality doesn’t interest me, being young again doesn’t interest me, and fountain-of-youth-style fantasies always struck me as more sad than hopeful. But allowing a 55 year-old person to live a better 55 year-old life or a 75 year-old to live a better 75 year-old life is pretty cool. Especially when you realize how many older people define their lives by their ailments and limitations as opposed to other, better things. I’m guilty of that myself sometimes. Wouldn’t it be nice to do less of that?

Of course there’s always some jackass who is gonna focus on something other than the nice things. Such as this tech/biomed CEO, who should be thrown down a well for this shit:

“If we had a drug that adds even one or two healthy years onto the lifespan, it would have trillions of dollars of effect on the world economy, because people would be productive for longer and they wouldn’t have all these morbidities that cost our healthcare systems so much,” says Jim Mellon, chairman of the longevity company Juvenescence.

The only thing that makes me madder than hearing someone talk about the benefits of longevity being things that economically benefit companies and employers is the realization that that promise, as opposed to simply improving humanity, is what is going to drive research and draw financial resources to crack the aging nut. But I suppose doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is better than not doing the right thing at all. At least I tell myself that a lot.

Have a great day everyone.

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