Cup of Coffee: April 5, 2024

Good morning!

We had a light schedule yesterday but, as always, we recap it. And today I won’t forget the Orioles game because there was no Orioles game last night.

As for the news, the A’s made the move to Sacramento official, and owner John Fisher’s announcement of that move was, predictably, embarrassing and pathetic. The uniforms continue to be bad but neither Major League Baseball nor Nike seem to give a crap. A young, budding ace is going under the knife. Alex Verdugo has been forced to rein in his bling, but I can’t really bring myself to care. It was a really random day yesterday, frankly.

In Other Stuff some fish spilled, an institution is being debased by needless corporate sponsorship, there was a big heist, and I’m actually starting to get worried about the mental health of right wing reactionary culture warriors.

And That Happened 

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Tigers 6, Mets 3; Mets 2, Tigers 1: 2018’s top draft pick Casey Mize made his first appearance in a game that counted in nearly two years. His stuff looked good — good zip on the fastball and great movement on his splitter — but he only lasted four and a third leaving with the Mets up 3-0. Detroit came back, scoring on a sac fly, a wild pitch, and a Riley Green solo shot. Colt Keith hit an RBI double in the 11th to break the deadlock after which Gio Urshela hit a two-run single. Ballgame. On the back end, the Mets were down 1-0 heading into the ninth when Pete Alonso homered to tie things up and Tyrone Taylor singled in the walkoff run to give the Mets their first win on the young season.

Cardinals 8, Marlins 5: Nolan Gorman had three hits on the day with his two-run double capped off a five-run seventh-inning rally for the Cards. Ivan Herrera hit his first major league homer. Masyn Winn added a run-scoring triple. All of that helped overcome two Jake Burger homers for the still winless Marlins, who fall to 0-8 on the year. If it makes anyone feel better, they started 5-20 in 1995. Two years later they won the World Series!

Guardians 4, Twins 2: Tanner Bibee and four relievers combined to strike out 15 Twins batters and strand nine Twins runners. That ain’t gonna get it done.

Pirates 7, Nationals 4: Pittsburgh set the tone with a four-run first inning and later Connor Joe homered. Michael A. Taylor had three hits and Rowdy Tellez, Oneil Cruz and Bryan Reynolds each had two. The Pirates went 6-1 on their season-opening road trip. I know they’ve only played two dogshit teams so far, but the Buccos seem a bit frisky. Kinda like it.

Royals 10, White Sox 1: I wasn’t watching any games last night. I was thinking about other silly things and wondering why I’ve been so preoccupied with death lately, and half watching the gamecast of this one, less because I cared about it and more because, if it ended early enough, I could do the recap last night, set the newsletter to launch at 6am, and try to sleep in this morning (note: I am physically incapable of sleeping in). I went back to the live box score a couple of times and it seemed like it was in the bottom of the seventh forever. Except the live box score I was looking at was glitching or something and not showing any change in the score. I felt like I was struck in some unruly eddy in the space-time continuum. Then the screen sort of fixed itself, showed that the Royals put up an eight-spot and that the competitive phase of this game was over. It was quite a journey.

The Daily Briefing

The A’s formally announce the move to Sacramento

I mentioned that report that the A’s were moving to Sacramento after this season yesterday. Welp,the A’s themselves made it official later in the morning. Like all of the club’s social media posts, however, they turned off the commenting. Crazy that they don’t want to hear all of the congratulations and well-wishes from their adoring fans!

Early in the afternoon owner John Fisher appeared at the stadium in Sacramento to announcing the move to the public. When he took the stage he lauded the team’s move to what he called "the most intimate park in Major League Baseball,” which, no offense to Sutter Health Park itself, is definitely polishing the turd he’s pinched off here. He added — and I am not making this up — that he cannot wait to watch MLB's top stars “like Aaron Judge” hit home runs there. The man literally owns a major league baseball team and he’s promoting them by talking about opposing players who are gonna take his pitchers yard in 2025. Crazy.

Another fun fact: Various reports came out in the wake of that announcement saying that the A’s plan to call themselves just “the Athletics” or “The A’s” while in Sacramento. No city attached. This is probably not a big deal for most people. I mean, the Angels have almost exclusively called themselves just “the Angels” for several years even if they are technically the “Los Angeles Angels.” It will be a bit of trouble for people writing about them because you always wanna have that alternate reference to keep things from getting repetitive. As I am a low-level pain in the ass with no boss and no expectation to maintain a consistent journalistic style I can just make up second-reference descriptors for the club. I’ll come up with some fun ones by this time next year, I tell you what.

Anyway, the announcement referenced the team’s ultimate destination of Las Vegas in 2028. But not long after that Jeff Passan tweeted that the A’s have an option to play in Sacramento in 2028 as well. He added that this “gives the team flexibility if its stadium in Las Vegas is not complete. Originally, the A's wanted to be in Vegas by 2027. Then it was 2028. Now it could be as late as 2029.” This is the first time anyone who knows anything or talks to people who do has suggested that 2029 is a possibility.

Know what I think? I don’t think they’ll ever actually move to Las Vegas. I think John Fisher’s famous fecklessness is gonna cause him to get curb-stomped by some anti-stadium interest or some other competing business interest in Nevada. I think that will put the kibosh on the move. If that were to happen he will either seek to sell the team or will be forced to sell the team. The least-pathetic case scenario under such circumstances would be for the Sacramento move to be well-received at which point Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadivé buys them, builds them a new park, and keeps them in town. Alternatively: someone from one of the handful of expansion candidates — Salt Lake City? Nashville? Raleigh? Charlotte? Portland? — buys them and moves them there while whoever is left gets the next couple of expansion teams. Or hell, someone buys them and takes them back to Oakland.

Maybe I’m wrong about that, but betting on Fisher not pulling shit off seems like the safest bet these days.

Maybe just stop using them?

The Athletic published a story yesterday about the shitty new Nike/Fanatics jerseys the players are being forced to wear.

Initially the see-through pants and the tiny letters for player names were the most obvious part of an overall poor design, but as players have worn them more the biggest issue are the comically obvious sweat-stains they show, which discolor everything. Not that there was uniform color to begin with, as everyone’s road grays seem to feature mismatched jerseys and pants. Like I said yesterday, it’s a total embarrassment.

What are Nike/Fanatics/MLB doing about it? A hell of a lot of nothing besides offering deflecting, boilerplate statements. Regarding the sweat stains:

Nike acknowledged that they had received feedback from teams and are “testing different options to lessen the moisture-related aesthetic color differences.”

Regarding the mismatched colors:

“We have isolated the issue,” Nike said, “and are exploring a solution to minimize it.”

Here’s MLB, offering a statement regarding the overall jankiness of the uniforms:

As part of this significant transition, Nike will continue to explore necessary adjustments to certain elements of the new uniforms to meet the needs of MLB Clubs and players.”

The article makes it clear that Nike has basically done nothing to change the uniforms despite complaints arising two months ago when spring training began and, beyond those non-responses above, has said almost nothing.

Meanwhile, it’s abundantly clear that Major League Baseball — which no doubt sets the baseline of what is required in a uniform and presumably has final approval of what players wear — doesn’t think this is all that significant. If it did it’d be cracking skulls and demanding changes. Instead all its doing is kinda pointing at Nike and saying, essentially, “don’t ask us, ask them.”

Hell, they’re even standing in the way of improvement. Remember how the Royals switched back to the old lettering style during spring training? Well, they’re back to the tiny letters for the regular season because MLB told them they have to. Clearly not upsetting Nike is more important to the league than having players look like professionals. Back in spring training Rob Manfred said “I think after people wear them a little bit, they are going to be very popular.” That still seems to be the league’s line, however deluded it is.

Fanatics, while objectively sucking as a company, is actually the least-culpable party here. According to the article they notified Nike about the mismatched gray problem when the fabric Nike specified showed up at the Fanatics plant last fall. Nike blew off the concern and told them to just use it. So Fanatics is just doing what it’s told told. Though, as the article notes, it appears to be backed up on uniform production, causing delays in the rollout of teams’ usual jersey options such as the Mariners’ and Twins’ cream alternate uniforms, which may not be ready until June.

Nike and Major League Baseball have completely fucked up the uniforms. Their official line is that it’s in the name of “performance” but no one was complaining about he “performance” of the uniforms before. And no one seems to want to acknowledge that uniforms have purposes apart from “performance,” the most important of which is to be . . . uniform. And, on some level, to be aesthetically pleasing and impressive. To brand the big leaguers as big leaguers. To create an image of professionalism.

These uniforms utterly fail in this regard. And for all of the talk of “performance” it seems like cutting corners and costs is the actual imperative. Because if it wasn’t, they’d simply go back to the old uniform specifications, with which everyone seemed to be happy. That, somehow, is completely off the table.

Eury Pérez to have Tommy John surgery

The Miami Marlins 2024 campaign has started off as disastrously as could be. They’re 0-8 on the young season and teams that start that poorly tend not to fare too well over the long haul. But things got even worse yesterday when the club announced that righty Eury Pérez will undergo Tommy John surgery. He will, of course, miss the rest of the 2024 season and will get a late start in 2025.

Pérez, who doesn’t turn 21 for another ten days, emerged as a bright young star in 2023, posting a 3.15 ERA (142 ERA+) in 19 starts and finishing in the top-10 of the Rookie of the Year voting.

Pérez was initially diagnosed with mild elbow inflammation after leaving a spring training start in mid-March. He saw specialists who decided that surgery was not recommended. After some rest he began throwing again but felt discomfort that led him back to those specialists who, this time, found a torn UCL and punched his ticket to TJ Land.

When does Dolphins camp open?

Alex Verdugo ordered to rein in his bling

First they took his ugly-ass red beard. Now they’re taking away his chains:

During his time with the Boston Red Sox, Alex Verdugo frequently played with several gaudy chains bouncing around his neck. He packs at least six for every road trip, and he’s lost count of how many he owns.

In his first season with the famously clean-cut New York Yankees, Verdugo has been given an order by manager Aaron Boone: only one chain per game.

“It’s kind of been hard, man,” Verdugo said. “Because usually I’m used to wearing like three of four.”

This is hard news for me to process. Because on the one hand, I greatly dislike the Yankees retrograde personality policing and wish they’d just let players be themselves. On the other hand, I greatly dislike Verdugo and find any effort to discomfit, inconvenience, or annoy him to be time well spent.

Honestly, there are no winners here.

Other Stuff

Overboard

From the New York Times: “About 100,000 live salmon spilled off a truck in Oregon, but most survived by flopping into a nearby creek. They are heading toward the ocean.”

When I just saw the summary of it I assumed they were going to a cannery or something and that this truck accident leant itself to a heroic escape. But then I learned that the salmon in question were actually trying to get back to the ocean from their hatching grounds but had been stopped by dams and that the transport operation was to help them all to get to the ocean anyhow.

There were losses, of course:

About 25,525 smolts that were thrown onto the creek banks “were not able to flop down into the water,” Andrew Gibbs, the department’s fish hatchery coordinator for eastern Oregon, said in an interview on Wednesday.

“But the silver lining for me is 77,000 did make it into the creek and did not perish,” Mr. Gibbs said. “They hit the water running.”

Running salmon? I think the buried the lede.

The Bank of America-a-thon

The Boston Marathon is the world’s oldest annual marathon, dating back to 1897. It’s, as everyone knows, a storied and prestigious race. When it runs its 2024 edition in ten days its finishers will, as they have every year for more than 40 years, receive a medal with the famous golden unicorn logo of the Boston Athletic Association on it. For most finishers it will represent the greatest athletic achievement of their lives.

And they’ll know, forever, that it was brought to them by Bank of America:

This is Bank of America’s first year as the marathon’s primary sponsor. It is also the first time that a corporate logo has appeared on the front of the medal. It’s not going over well.

From the article we learn that, “representatives for Bank of America did not respond to a request for comment.” Of course they didn’t. Because what could they possibly say? The only truthful thing would be “we honor and revere nothing but the latest opportunity to engage in brand-building that, even if no one will likely respond to it positively, cannot possibly be forgone due to what we have all convinced ourselves are the imperatives of capitalism.”

Gross.

Heist

I love a good heist. And boy howdy was there a good one in Los Angeles last weekend. From the L.A. Times:

In one of the largest cash heists in Los Angeles history, thieves made off with as much as $30 million in an Easter Sunday burglary at a San Fernando Valley money storage facility, an L.A. police official revealed Wednesday.

The burglary occurred Sunday night at an unnamed facility in Sylmar where cash from businesses across the region is handled and stored, according to L.A. Police Department Cmdr. Elaine Morales.

I was today years old when I learned that there were things called “money storage facilities” that weren’t, in fact, banks. Sorta changes how I’ll be looking at nondescript warehouses and distribution centers from now on, but I guess learning stuff is always fun.

Anyway, according to the story the alarm didn’t go off and there were no obvious signs of anyone breaking into the safe. Which has to mean it was an inside job. If everyone who works there comes up clean, though, I’d advise the cops to look for someone wearing $150 slacks, silk shirts, $800 suits, a gold watch, and a perfect, D-flawless three carat ring. Look for someone who changes cars like other guys change their fucking shoes. Look for a thief. Someone who’s been in prison, all right?

Are the reactionaries OK?

Saw this:

This person, like all people of the right wing/reactionary/cultural warrior persuasion, is freaking out because a character that is typically portrayed by a white actor is now being portrayed by a Black actor, and oh no, we can’t have that. It doesn’t matter that the character in question is not a real person nor based on a real person. I mean, they’ve gotten angry over mermaids and fairies not conforming to whatever they believe to be “normal” for those sorts characters.

It likewise doesn’t matter that the example that they’re using as tradition — or in this case “history” — was itself a fantastical interpretation of traditional source material. Unless I’m missing the part in Shakespeare where the Capulets and Montagues were crime families who fought with guns in a modern American city.

I think someone should make a Romeo and Juliet movie in which Juliet is played by a man. That’s how Shakespeare staged it, after all. How do you think the allegedly tradition-preserving jackwagons would take that?

I feel like I’ve been angry and weird this week. Have I been? Feel like I’ve been. I’ll try to shake it out over the weekend.

Have a great weekend everyone.

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