Cup of Coffee: August 12, 2024

Good morning!

There were four teams who had scheduled days off yesterday: the White Sox, Cubs, Cardinals, and Royals. I know they’re doing scheduled Sunday off-days once in a great while now, especially to facilitate dumb two-game interleague series, but it’s still weird. Indeed, I can’t recall many if any Sundays in which four teams had off. Oh well, it made the recaps shorter.

Anyway: today we talk about the games we did have, we look at baseball at the Bristol Motor Speedway, we find something new to complain about when it comes to the Oakland Athletics’ bosses, and we celebrate (?) the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the longest and most disruptive work-stoppage in baseball history.

In Other Stuff you would not believe who is calling someone else a “chameleon,” there is a 271-page dossier I’d love to get my hands on, a couple of studies have identified some pretty destructive consequences of legalized online gambling and, in a huge upset, some researchers have determined that the world is probably not in any worse a state of moral decline than it ever has been, even if it feels like it.

Oh, and today is the fourth anniversary of the launch of the Cup of Coffee newsletter. It went live with an announcement post on August 12, 2020, with the first substantive newsletter following five days later. Feels like yesterday! Thanks to all of you who have been here since Day 1 and to all of you who have joined the party since.

If you know anyone else who should join the party, by all means, tell ‘em about it:

Now let’s get at ‘er.

And That Happened 

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Angels 6, Nationals 4: Angels rookie starter Jack Kochanowicz worked into the eighth inning, allowed just two runs, and picked up his first major league win. I hope he has a long and successful major league career, but if he does I promise I will never learn to spell his name and will always just copy and paste it. Ask Marc Rzepczynski how that works. He debuted the year I started writing for NBC, played for a decade, and every single time his name came up — including this time — I simply copied and pasted it because I know my limits. Kevin Pillar hit a three-run double. I can spell his name, but he’s retiring so I won’t have many more chances to do so.

Astros 10, Red Sox 2: Alex Bregman hit a three-run homer in Houston’s five-run fifth inning. Yordan Alvarez hit a solo shot that frame as well. Jeremy Peña added a two-run homer and Yainer Diaz had a two-run double. Contributing bigly to the Astros romp was the fact that Boston starter James Paxton limped off the field after straining his right calf while covering first on a grounder in the first inning. He could barely walk, so my guess is that his season is done. The Astros sweep the three-game series and have won five in a row overall.

Also: Jarren Duran went 0-for-3 with three strikeouts. And then things got worse for him, as we’ll discuss down in the Daily Briefing

Athletics 8, Blue Jays 4: A six-run first inning, powered by homers from JJ Bleday and Zack Gelof, set the tone here. Lawrence Butler had two hits in the first and three in all. This was the A’s 50th win of 2024. That matches their total from last season. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. went 0-for-4, ending his hitting streak at 22 games.

Rays 2, Orioles 1: Albert Suárez blanked the Rays for six and two-thirds but he couldn’t get any run support and the Baltimore pen gave up one in the seventh and one in the eighth to allow the Tampa Bay comeback. The run in the eighth was charged to Craig Kimbrel, who started the inning, walked two of the first three batters he faced, and then issued an intentional walk after allowing a double steal to put runners on second and third. A subsequent Curtis Mead sac fly made Kimbrel the loser.

Marlins 7, Padres 6: Miami had a 5-0 lead after two, thanks in part to Jake Burger homering for the third straight game. They almost blew that lead, with the Padres pulling within one run, but then Jesús Sánchez hit a two-run homer in the seventh which made a 5-4 game 7-4. The Marlins hung on after Donovan Solano’s two-run shot in the eighth. And then they just barely hung on when Ha-Seong Kim came imere nches away from a game-tying solo home run with two outs in the ninth inning. The ball actually hit the top of the wall, bounced up, and then was deflected over the wall by left fielder Kyle Stowers. Initially called a homer, the umps gathered and then decided that, no, it was an automatic double, which was the right call per Rule 5.05(a)(8), which says: "Any bounding fair ball is deflected by the fielder into the stands, or over or under a fence on fair or foul territory, in which case the batter and all runners shall be entitled to advance two bases." The win ended San Diego’s seven-game winning streak and helped Miami avoid a three-game sweep.

Yankees 8, Rangers 7: Juan Soto homered twice, Giancarlo Stanton hit a three-run homer and had four RBI in all, and Aaron Judge his his 299th career dinger to help the Bombers out-slug Texas. Soto’s homers, by the way, were the first two he has ever hit against the Rangers, meaning that he has now homered against all 30 MLB teams in his career despite being only 25 years old. Otherwise, it was 8-3 New York until the eighth when the Yankees bullpen made things way more interesting than any Yankees fans wanted, but they jussssst held on. Like, Clay Holmes closed it out and used 45 pitches to do so. What the hell is that about?

Reds 4, Brewers 3: Santiago Espinal had two RBI and scored the go-ahead run on Spencer Steer’s seventh inning sac fly. Tyler Stephenson homered and the Reds bullpen put up three and two-thirds of shutout relief. The Reds avoid a three-game sweep and end Milwaukee’s five-game winning streak.

Guardians 5, Twins 3: Byron Buxton hit two homers and drove in three for the Twins but he didn’t have any help, as Tanner Bibee held Minnesota to one run while working into the sixth. José Ramírez and David Fry went deep for Cleveland, with Fry’s bomb being part of a four-run sixth. The sides split the four-game series, which means that the Guardians maintain their three and a half game lead over the Twins in the AL Central.

Rockies 9, Atlanta 8: Atlanta had an 8-2 lead entering the bottom of the 8th at which point Barves relievers Luke Jackson and Joe Jiménez decided to douse the joint with kerosene, toss a match over their shoulder and walk away. It was a seven-run eighth inning, featuring a Jake Cave two-run homer, a two-run single from Charlie Blackmon, an RBI single from Ryan McMahon, and a two-run double from Brendan Rodgers. It’s been a crazy-disappointing season for Atlanta, and this may be the club’s low point.

Tigers 5, Giants 4: Matt Vierling had missed the previous two games with a bad back but it was good enough to play yesterday. He homered and doubled in a run, and scored twice. Catcher Dillon Dingler also knocked in a couple via a two-run shot. Colt Keith singled in Detroit’s fifth run and the bullpen provided four innings of shutout ball. The Tigers avoid the three-game sweep.

Diamondbacks 12, Phillies 5: Merrill Kelly returned to the mound for the first time since April 15 and he was alright, allowing two over five. He only had to be alright, though, as the Dbacks lineup gave him plenty of support. Jake McCarthy continued his recent hot streak, rattling off three hits, including a triple, and four RBI. Rookie catcher Adrian Del Castillo added three hits and two RBI. Corbin Carroll hit a two-run homer. Philadelphia drops three of four in the series and has lost 10 of 14. They’re lucky the Mets and Atlanta have been fighting it themselves lately.

Dodgers 6, Pirates 5: L.A. had a 4-0 lead after two but then Andrew McCutchen happened. He hit two two-run homers, one in the third and one in the eighth which, combined with five shutout innings from five relievers forced extras. Pittsburgh struck in their half of the tenth with Bryan Reynolds singling in the Manfred Man to make it 5-4. The Dodgers made more of things in their half thanks to the Hernándezes, with Kiké doubling in L.A.’s Manfred Man after which Teoscar singled in Kiké to walk it off. A three-game sweep for the boys in blue.

Mariners 12, Mets 1: Cal Raleigh hit two homers: a two-run shot in the fifth to give the M’s a 4-0 lead and a three-run homer in the sixth to make it 10-1. A based-loaded walk and a bases-loaded plunking put two more runs on the board. Jorge Polanco homered earlier, but no matter what order you put it in the Mets got smoked. Seattle sweeps the series and has won four in a row overall.

The Daily Briefing

Jarren Duran used a homophobic slur toward a fan 

It was a bad day on the field for both the Red Sox and outfielder Jarren Duran yesterday. The team lost, Durran went 0-for-3 with three strikeouts, and, way worse than that, he yelled a homophobic slur at a fan during the game.

The incident occurred between pitches while Duran was batting during the sixth-inning. The fan was heckling Duran, yelling “Tennis racket! Tennis racket! You need a tennis racket!" Duran looked at the fan and could be heard on the game telecast saying, "Shut up you fucking [f-word homophobic slur]"

It’s worth noting at this point that this all went down a couple of hours after Duran was honored during a pregame ceremony as the team's recipient of the Heart and Hustle Award, which recognizes one player per team who "demonstrates a passion for the game and best embodies its values, spirit, and traditions." Whoops.

Last night Duran issued this apology:

“During tonight’s game, I used a truly horrific word when responding to a fan. I feel awful knowing how many people I offended and disappointed. I apologize to the entire Red Sox organization, but more importantly to the entire LGBTQ community. Our young fans are supposed to be able to look up to me as a role model, but tonight I fell far short of that responsibility. I will use this opportunity to educate myself and my teammates and to grow as a person.”

As far as athlete/celebrity apologies this one is pretty unequivocal, at least. Kudos to him [or the Red Sox P.R. people who helped craft it] for not using the old “IF I offended anyone” construction. For the reasons I mention below it’s not worth thinking too much about the apology as opposed to the judgment and action which necessitated it, but it does clear the very, very low bar for these sorts of things I suppose.

The Red Sox also issued a statement.

“The Red Sox addressed this incident with Jarren immediately following today’s game,. We echo Jarren’s apology to our fans, especially to the LGBTQ community. We strive to be an organization that welcomes all fans to Fenway Park, and we will continue to educate our employees, players, coaches and staff on the importance of inclusivity.””

It’ll be interesting to see if the team or the league suspends Duran for a game or two, which has been done in the past when players have used such slurs. The first one that springs to mind is Yuñel Escobar, who was suspended three games for writing a homophobic slur, in Spanish, on his eye black back in 2012. Cotillo notes that in 2017 then-Blue Jays outfielder Kevin Pillar was suspended by the team for two games for using a homophobic slur at an Atlanta pitcher, but I had no memory of that before he said it.

Whatever the case, it’s an obviously bad look for Duran. It says enough about someone when they use that word in what they think is private. But when you’re willing to just casually blurt that out in a stadium, where 30,000 people and TV cameras sending it out to hundreds of thousands more are looking right at you says a hell of a lot more.

The layout for the “MLB Speedway Classic”

Last week I wrote about MLB’s plan to play a game between Atlanta and Cincinnati at Bristol Motor Speedway next year. In so doing, I wondered whether the infield of a NASCAR short track raceway was big enough for a baseball field. The answer, at least if the renderings released by MLB late last week are accurate, is yes:

I still don’t understand the purpose of this setting — and I pity the people who shell out for the outfield seats which are approximately a gabillion feet from the action — but yes, it can be done.

Anyway, the game will be on Saturday, Aug. 2, 2025, and they’re calling it the “MLB Speedway Classic ‘25,” which implies that this will be an annual event. Gentlemen start your engines and whatnot.

The A’s won’t open up Mt. Davis for the final game in the Coliseum

Late last week the Oakland Athletics announced that their final game at the Coliseum, set for September 26, is sold-out. No matter how much ill-will John Fisher and Dave Kaval have spewed into the troposphere, people in Oakland still have good memories of their club and obviously want to say goodbye, so I totally get that.

More people could say goodbye, however, if the club decided to open up the seating area in center field known as Mt. Davis. You know, the hulking eyesore of concrete which was plopped onto the Coliseum for the Oakland Raiders many years ago, ruining one of the best views in all of baseball and more or less signifying the beginning of the end of the Coliseum as a useful baseball stadium.

The A’s almost never use the Mt. Davis seating, but they have on special occasions. The club last opened it up for the 2019 for the AL Wild Card game against the Tampa Bay Rays, allowing the A’s to draw over 54,000 fans to the ballpark, making for a raucous atmosphere. If they did so again for the finale they would be sure to sell it out, but they’re not gonna do it. Almost certainly because the A’s don’t want to have to staff that part of the park or to do whatever they have to do to open up the extra concession stands and restrooms which would be required.

So instead of 54,000 fans chanting “Fuck John Fisher” on September 26, it’ll only be 34,000 or so fans chanting it. Which, now that I write that, I suppose I understand why Fisher isn’t opening up Mt. Davis, separate and apart from the costs.

Happy 30th anniversary to the 1994-95 strike!

On August 11, 1994, there were nine games. Pretty typical for a Thursday, which is often a travel day. Fridays are almost always full slates. But on Friday, August 12, 1994 -- 30 years ago today -- there were no games at all. And there would be none for the rest of the season, with nearly 950 regular season games cancelled along with the playoffs and World Series. The 1994-95 Major League Baseball Strike had begun.

As was the case with the two-day 1985 strike I talked about last week, the 1994-95 strike was not something that merely began in 1994. Rather, it was the inevitable product of 30 years of labor battles in which one side grew in strength, from almost powerless to imposingly powerful, over time while the other side was initially dismissive, then caught off guard and then, out of panic, reacted in increasingly desperate and aggressive ways.

In chronicling what led baseball to where it arrived in 1994, one could go all the way back to the advent of the Reserve Clause if one chose, but we don’t have the space for that. For these purposes I’d choose to go back to 1966 when the players, angry at how their pensions were being handled by the owners, decided to hire a new, full-time executive director for their union. Their first choice was a Judge named Robert C. Cannon, but he asked for too much money, so they went with their second choice: a chief lieutenant in the United Steelworkers union named Marvin Miller.

Miller, as anyone who has read what I’ve written for a while well knows, changed everything. In his 16 years at the helm he navigated the players through two strikes and three owner-led lockouts with the players prevailing in every single way that mattered. During his tenure pensions were fully-funded, per diems were dramatically increased, free agency was achieved, and players’ average annual salary rose from $19,000 in 1966 to $326,000 in 1982. There had been no run of unmitigated success like that which Miller oversaw in this history of sports labor. Many, in fact, have argued that Miller made the MLBPA the most powerful and successful union in the country, bar none.

In the face of such staggering losses, it was only a matter of time before the owners pushed back. Which they did. In a profoundly stupid manner.

In October 1984 Peter Ueberroth, fresh off his triumph of putting together the last Los Angeles Olympics, began work as baseball’s commissioner. Not long after his election he held an owners meeting during which he called the 26 men in the room “damned dumb” for trying to improve their teams via free agency and implored them to focus on the bottom line as opposed to winning baseball games. Later, at a general managers meeting, Ueberroth said that it was “not smart” to sign long-term contracts.

The message was clear, and soon after that the owners set up a system in which they secretly agreed to limit position player free agent contracts to three years and limit pitcher free agent contracts to two years. They would later create an information bank in which all clubs would report on their ongoing negotiations with free agents in order to keep teams from attempting to outbid each other. Sometimes they just called each other sand told their fellow owners not to sign guys. For three successive offseasons the owners colluded with one another in this way to all but freeze player movement via free agency and to otherwise keep salaries down. And it was pretty successful, at least in the short run, with player salaries dropping 16 percent while owner profits increased by 15 percent between 1985-1988.

The players, now led by Miller’s successor, Don Fehr, filed grievances in the wake of all three offseasons -- known as “Collusion I,” “Collusion II,” and “Collusion III” -- that, eventually, resulted in rulings against the owners in all three instances. The arbitration cases led to a settlement in which the players would receive over $280 million in damages from the owners. It was largely because of the need to pay off these damages awards that Major League Baseball decided to expand in 1993 with the Marlins and Rockies and in 1998 with the Rays and Diamondbacks, but that’s a story for another day.

Beyond expansion, the most significant result of the owners’ collusion of the mid-to-late 1980s was the massive erosion of trust in the owners on the part of the players. To be sure, it was a trust which was always tenuous at best, but thanks to the owners’ massive, coordinated and fraudulent scheme, by the time the 1990s rolled around, their word wasn’t worth spit as far as the players were concerned. At the same time the owners, upset with what they felt was then-commissioner Fay Vincent rolling over during a brief spring training lockout in 1990 — and their anger at Vincent for chastising them for carrying out their collusion scheme — executed a coup and installed one of the hardline owners, Bud Selig of the Milwaukee Brewers, as acting commissioner. Selig and his chief ally, White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, spent the next couple of years convincing the owners that they had no choice but to break the union by any means necessary. All of that taken together meant that the next round of labor negotiations, set for 1994, were bound to be difficult.

Selig and the owners set the stage for the coming labor battle in the runup to 1994 by going on a media offensive in which they claimed that most teams were losing money and that baseball would go bankrupt and go out of business if player salaries weren’t capped. Their case was totally unsupported, of course, as baseball’s owners refused to share detailed financial information with the press, with the public or with the union, relying instead on anecdote and cherry-picked data. The public and most of the press bought it however. A narrative was formed that baseball was in dire financial straits and that the greedy players didn’t care. All they wanted, many believed, was to make their millions. The owners, likely emboldened by the way in which their preferred narrative was taking hold in the popular consciousness, got increasingly aggressive.

In January of 1994 they approved a new revenue-sharing plan keyed to a salary cap and simultaneously gave full negotiation power to Selig. They formally proposed the salary cap system to the players in June. The plan also eliminated salary arbitration and gave the owners rights to keep free agents who attempted to sign with another team as long as they matched the best offer. While the owners claimed that, in the aggregate, players would end up seeing more overall money under this plan than they had before, they refused to show their work or share detailed financial information, asking players to take them at their word. Their word which, again, was worth nothing due to the recent lesson of collusion and 30 years of horseshit.

The players rejected the owners’ offer. With the Collective Bargaining Agreement having expired the previous December, the players could strike at any time, but Don Fehr signaled that they’d hold off until September and keep negotiating. Around the same time owners -- seeking to pressure the players -- decided to withhold $7.8 million that they were required to pay per previous agreement into the players’ pension and benefit plans. Fehr attempted to get Congress to intervene by stripping baseball of its antitrust exemption, but Congress refused. With the owners intransigent and with no legal recourse available, Fehr set a strike date of August 12. That date came and the strike began.

And, as we all know, it dragged on and on.

Negotiations barely occurred that late summer and early fall and when they did happen they were unproductive. The 1994 season was later officially canceled and no postseason or World Series happened. In December the owners voted 23-5 to unilaterally impose a new Collective Bargaining Agreement complete with a salary cap. In January the owners voted to hire replacement players -- scabs -- with Selig declaring that, “We are committed to playing the 1995 season and will do so with the best players willing to play.”

The use of scabs caused the players to sue Major League Baseball for violating labor laws. Suit was filed on March 27, 1995. Four days later current Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor -- then a Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York -- issued a preliminary injunction against the owners, preventing them from playing the 1995 season with replacement players. The Court of Appeals refused to stay the order. The owners, now with no way to play the 1995 season without union ballplayers, had virtually no leverage. The players, armed with new leverage, agreed to go back to work. The sides played without a Collective Bargaining Agreement for some time, but one was eventually put in place. Labor acrimony would continue through the 2002 CBA negotiations, which themselves just barely averted another strike, but things got decidedly more peaceful after that and baseball would not see another work stoppage until the early 2022 lockout.

By most estimates, the 1994-95 strike cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $580 million in ownership revenue and $230 million in player salaries. It also cost the game an incalculable amount of goodwill with the public. It would take a few years for baseball to recover economically, but it did. A nice Cal Ripken Jr. moment and several years of ‘roided-up players hitting longballs certainly contributed to that, but all of that’s a story for another day as well.

Other Stuff

Great Moments in Self Awareness 

J.D. Vance, yesterday morning:

“Kamala Harris isn’t running a presidential campaign. She’s producing a movie. Everything is scripted everywhere she goes. She’s fundamentally a fake person who changes her tune depending on what audience she’s in front of.”

That’s a pretty bold statement coming from a dude from Ohio who pretends he's from Kentucky, who has gone by three different names, who is a Yale-educated Silicon Valley tech bro who portrays himself as a man of working class people, and who is now working for and carrying water for a guy he compared to Hitler a few short years ago. But hey, it’s a free country. You can say anything you want.

Also, this . . .

. . . coming a couple of days after this . . .

. . . is a hell of a thing.

But hey, I suppose it’s a good strategy if you’re trying to lock up the part of the electorate which lacks object permanence. You know, like toddlers. And Trump-pilled Republicans.

Craig Bait

I audibly gasped when I read this over the weekend:

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign said on Saturday that it has been the victim of a foreign hack, after the campaign received questions from news organizations about a lengthy vetting document on vice-presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) sent to the outlets . . . Politico was first to report the statement from Trump’s campaign Saturday. The news outlet reported that it had received messages starting July 22 from an anonymous sender offering proprietary information about the Trump campaign, including a copy of a vetting document related to Vance.

On Thursday, The Washington Post was also sent a 271-page document about Vance from a sender who called himself Robert and used an AOL email account. Dated Feb. 23 and labeled “privileged & confidential,” the document highlighted potential political vulnerabilities for the first-term senator. Two people familiar with the document confirmed it was authentic and was commissioned by the campaign from Brand Woodward, a law firm that represents a number of prominent Trump advisers in investigations by state and federal authorities.

You just can’t write things like this, people. Because then I read it and I spend hours on end fantasizing about being leaked the 271-page J.D. vance oppo file and how in the hell am I supposed to get anything done when I’m thinking about that?

I mean, sure, I’ve probably written the equivalent of, say, 150 pages of J.D. Vance oppo myself — it’s not hard! — but there’s probably some good stuff in there we don’t know about yet.

Legalized online sports betting has, predictably, been disastrous 

Ben Krauss and Milan Singh of the Slow Boring newsletter have gone through a couple of recent studies which looked at the effect of legalized online sports gambling in the United States. The findings of the two studies are not surprising. The first one looked at the personal financial impacts to be found in such states:

In states with legal gambling of any kind, average credit scores drop by 0.3% after four years. However, in states where online betting is available, average credit scores drop by 1%.

Among states with access to online betting, the likelihood of filing for bankruptcy increases by 25-30% after three to four years.

Collections on unpaid debts increase by about 8% in states with online betting.

Young men in low-income counties experience higher financial distress, with higher rates of bankruptcy, more usage of consolidation and unsecured loans, and more credit card delinquencies. 

The second one looked at people who live in states with legal online gambling and determined where the people who engage in legalized online gambling are getting their money from. The findings: people did not take money they had already been illegally gambling online or gambling in other ways such as through poker or whatever. Rather, they are diverting money that had been used for saving or investing:

Authors Scott Baker, Justin Balthrop, Mark Johnson, Jason Kotter, and Kevin Pisciotta analyzed consumer transaction data from over 230,000 households, comparing measures of financial stability, including credit card balances, credit card debt, and bank overdrafts. Overall, they found that “legalization leads to substantial increases in sports betting that do not come at the expense of reduced gambling or consumption.” In other words, gamblers weren’t replacing their weekly poker games with sports gambling, they were betting more overall. They also found that increased sports betting actually replaced investment in the stock market. Roughly, they estimate that $1 of betting reduces net investment by around $2. 

The effects seen in both studies have overwhelmingly impacted people on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale. And given how the gambling companies market themselves — heavy advertising during sporting events and the increased use of AI to push special offers that are tailored to a gambler’s pre-established habits, cannot be seen as anything other then predatory.

Great work, everyone. Glad we’ve made this possible.

The world is probably not going to hell, at least morally speaking

My default assumption for most of the past decade has been that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. And it may be for a number of reasons, but it’s probably not doing so morally speaking. At least according to a recent study.

That study, which I was hipped to by a column in the Wall Street Journal, looked at a number of previous studies about human nature and human attitudes going back more than 70 years. It found that while people have been decrying humanity’s putative moral and ethical decline basically forever, things actually haven’t changed all that much. Indeed, levels of empathy, kindness, respect, and generosity observed in others has remained more or less constant.

The study, titled The Illusion of Moral Decline, was conducted by Adam M. Mastroianni and Daniel T. Gilbert. From the abstract:

Anecdotal evidence indicates that people believe that morality is declining. In a series of studies using both archival and original data (n = 12,492,983), we show that people in at least 60 nations around the world believe that morality is declining, that they have believed this for at least 70 years and that they attribute this decline both to the decreasing morality of individuals as they age and to the decreasing morality of successive generations. Next, we show that people’s reports of the morality of their contemporaries have not declined over time, suggesting that the perception of moral decline is an illusion

Not gonna lie, this is a HUGE blow to the world view of pessimists, cynics, and misanthropes like me.

But hey, at least we still have climate change to reinforce our assumptions about humanity.

Have a great day everyone.

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