Cup of Coffee: August 16, 2024

Good morning!

There was what we now consider to be a very long game yesterday and Major League Baseball is considering a dumb rule. Christian Yelich is out for the year. Las Vegas is “rounding third and heading for home” on the Athletics, which makes them the slowest base runner ever. Barry Bonds and Greg Maddux break down an epic showdown, and San Antonio politicians think the taxpayers are stupid.

In Other Stuff: I don’t know what jobs are anymore, a reminder that this election is insane, sometimes you can’t be on the ballot even if you identify as a guy named “Tex,” and a so-called socialist utopia that doesn’t sound appealing even to a guy like me.

And That Happened 

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Athletics 7, Mets 6: So I’m in New York for the weekend. I flew in yesterday afternoon. The landing pattern into LaGuardia, as usual, took us right past Citi Field. I was on the side of the plane facing the park and could see right in there as the game was going on. As I looked at the fans in the stands I thought to myself, “too bad I’m too late getting in to pop over and watch it.” Seems, however, that I might’ve been able to make it anyway because this game turned out to be the longest regular season nine-inning game since the advent of the pitch clock.Three hours and 45 minutes. Which, sure a couple of years ago might’ve been any three games on a random Thursday, but that’s a hell of a slog in this Brave New Era. For reference, nine-inning games this season are averaging two hours and 36 minutes.

Thirteen runs in a game is above average, but it’s not insane, of course. Many games each week feature that many. The reason this one took so long was because the teams combined to throw 425 pitches, the bases were constantly full of runners, and the pitch clock runs longer when men are on base. As for the numbers: the A's had 14 at-bats with runners in scoring position, stranding nine runners, and the Mets had 11 at-bats with runners in scoring position, stranding five. I’m sure all of this was a function of some curse being placed over the proceedings by virtue of the Hawk Tuah girl throwing out the first pitch.

As for the highlights, the Mets had a 5-0 lead early but JJ Bleday hit a grand slam and Shea Langeliers reached base five times. Which he did on Tuesday too, and he went 4-for-4 last Saturday. Hell of a week for Langeliers. The A’s took two of three from the Mets.

Tigers 2, Mariners 1: A first-inning bases-loaded walk put the M’s up early and stood as the only run in the game until Javier Báez played the hero and hit a two-run homer in the eighth. The Tigers complete the three-game sweep and take five-of-six in the two series between these teams in the past two weeks. As I said yesterday — or was it Wednesday? I dunno — Seattle is really gonna kick themselves for dropping all of these games to Detroit.

Brewers 6, Dodgers 4: Jackson Chourio and Wiliam Contreras homered in the first inning but the Dodgers came back and took a 4-3 lead by the sixth. Milwaukee rallied in the eighth, however, with a Willy Adames game-tying RBI single and a couple of run-scoring groundouts. Devin Williams saved the game again, closing it out by striking out Mookie Betts and Shohei Ohtani. You’ll recall that on Wednesday Williams retired Ohtani, Betts and Freddie Freeman in order to preserve the one-run win. Those are a couple of games he’ll be telling his grandkids about one day.

Giants 6, Atlanta 0: Logan Webb tossed seven and two-thirds shutout innings and two relievers finished the four-hitter to help the Giants snap a four-game losing streak and to avoid the sweep. Grant McCray, who debuted the night before, hit his first career homer. Casey Schmitt hit a two-run shot.

Orioles 5, Red Sox 1: Zach Eflin pitched six impressive innings, allowing just one and striking out eight. Gunnar Henderson and Cedric Mullins homered as the Orioles pulled into a first-place tie with the idle New York Yankees.

Phillies 13, Nationals 3: Phillies left fielder Weston Wilson hit for the cycle and scored three times and Alec Bohm and Nick Castellanos hit back-to-back homers in the first and the Phils rattled off 17 hits in all.

Twins 3, Rangers 2: It was a 2-2 game from the second until the top of the ninth when Carlos Santana hit a sac fly which held up through the bottom half.

The Daily Briefing

MLB considering a six-inning minimum for starting pitchers 

For many years now Major League Baseball — and a lot of fans, myself included — have lamented the fact that the role of the starting pitcher has been diminished. Guys don’t go as deep into games, bullpens are far more prominent, and the whole idea of a game being a matchup of two pitchers has increasingly been tossed out the damn window. And, because starters aren’t going as deep, hard-throwing relievers, knowing they’ll only have to toss one inning at most and thus throw pure gas at max effort, have come to dominant the proceedings. Strikeouts are way up, action is way down, and baseball has, increasingly, become a drag, aesthetically speaking.

For my part I’ve left it as a mere lament, because what can you really do about it? The data is pretty clear that starters going through the lineup three times is bad news, even if they’re good starters. Guys throwing gas an inning at a time are effective. You can’t just change the rules to keep teams from doing what makes logical sense to them.

But what Rob Manfred and his merry men presuppose is: what if you can? From ESPN:

The commissioner's office wants starting pitchers to spend more time on the mound -- pitching deeper into games -- and less time in the operating room undergoing surgery on their arms. Baseball also wants more balance in a sport that has revolved around strikeouts in recent seasons . . . The league has discussed a limit to the size of pitching staffs and the double-hook DH, according to sources familiar with the discussion. There is some belief around the game, however, that one idea could be a panacea: requiring starting pitchers to go at least six innings every time they take the mound.

Your first thought — what, you’re gonna make guys who suck just wear it for six innings and while throwing 120 pitches? — is a good one! But the report says that they are talking about building in exceptions to the any six-inning minimum rule which would allow managers to yank pitchers short of six if . . .

• They throw 100 pitches;
• They give up four or more earned runs; or
• They get injured, with a required IL placement to prevent guys from faking injuries.

If they do actually put such a rule forward, it’d be many, many years down the road. They’d want to do what they did with the pitch clock and start it in the minors or even in the partner independent leagues whose players MLB has used as guinea pigs for other radical rules changes in the past. The idea would be that, by the time it was actually a rule in the majors, nearly everyone affected will have come up through the system playing under such conditions, making it less of a shock.

I can see how, in theory, this might be something that would encourage pitchers to sacrifice stuff and velocity in order to work more efficiently, go deeper into games and, most importantly, lower the risk of injury. In practice I’m super skeptical that it would work, however. I mean, for years advocates of the pitch clock — of which I was always one! — thought that pitchers having to work more quickly would cause them to ease off to avoid fatigue and that has manifestly not happened. Pitchers know velocity, spin rate, and sick movement = money and teams know that it equals dominance so they’ve all been willing to take whatever risks they can in order to maximize that stuff under whatever rules are in play.

While doing such a thing under a six-inning mandate would be harder for pitchers, I could totally see them deciding to just bulk up more in an attempt to power through. Some would be successful, even if many more would hurt themselves, but athletes are all wired to believe that they would be the ones to come out on top rather than be the ones who blow their shoulders and elbows out.

This is also just dumb philosophically speaking. It’d represent micromanaging of the most intrusive and artificial kind, far more akin to the Manfred Man and the three-batter minimum rule than anything else. It just seems so heavy-handed and anathema to what baseball is and always has been. Indeed, it’s anathema to the very thing it purports to encourage: the old style battle-of-the-starters. Because a big part of that was not just seeing guys go deeper into games for its own sake but seeing them fighting to stay in or managers having to decide whether to take them out. It was about the building drama, a good deal of which is removed if there is no chance of a guy getting yanked early.

I don’t profess to have any easy answers to the problem — if I did I would’ve offered them up years ago — but it strikes me that the best answer probably lies in limiting pitchers on the roster or something, which would then encourage teams to find the best ways to get the most out of their limited number of pitchers which would, in turn, encourage starters going longer.

Christian Yelich to have back surgery and miss the rest of the season 

In late July the Brewers placed outfielder Christian Yelich on the injured list because of inflammation in his lower back. He saw a spine specialist and was trying to rehab in an effort to make it back this season but yesterday he and the team announced that that’s not happening. He’s going to undergo season-ending surgery. He said he expects to be 100% for 2025.

Yelich had a great season going until his back gave out, hitting .315/.406/.504 (153 OPS+). When he went on the IL he was leading the league in batting and on-base percentage and had just earned his third All-Star Game nod.

The Brewers have actually added a couple of games to their division lead since Yelich went on the IL, so his absence hasn’t hurt all that much, but you’d obviously prefer to have him in the fold, especially come postseason. Tough break, both for him and the Brewers.

Las Vegas “rounding third and heading for home” on the Athletics

Steve Hill, the head of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, said yesterday that there are three things which need to be accomplished before construction can begin on the proposed A’s stadium. They are (a) the execution of the lease; (b) the execution of a non-relocation agreement; and (c) the execution of a development agreement. Which seem like three pretty damn important agreements that should’ve been executed a long time ago, but what do I know?

"We're rounding third and heading for home," Hill said after the board’s meeting yesterday, promising that this will all be done by December 5 (!). They could’ve gotten this all done faster if this metaphorical base runner was Yasmani Grandal.

Bonds, Maddux break down an epic showdown

This dropped on Wednesday but I didn’t see it until yesterday. It’s a video clip from an upcoming MLB Network documentary on Greg Maddux. In it, both Maddux and Barry Bonds are shown a video of a matchup between the two of them in 1998 and it’s amazing.

It starts with the interviewer handing Bonds an iPad with the at-bat loaded on it. Bonds jokes, “I’m 60 years old, I can’t remember back that far.” And then without missing a beat completely breaks down the damn thing and talks about both his thought process during the at bat and what he believed Maddux was thinking during the at bat and of course he’s absolutely right. It’s interspersed with Maddux being shown the same video — they’re not together — and wouldn’t you know it, Maddux sees the matchup and breaks it down in almost exactly the same terms as it unfolds. One of them, of course, miscalculated 26 years ago, but both of them understand exactly what was going on on the same level that your medulla oblongata understands breathing. It’s so goddamn engaging.

I am confident that there is no living pitcher and no living hitter who understood their craft better than Greg Maddux and Barry Bonds did and continue to do long into retirement. The fact that I got to watch both of their very long careers unfold, basically simultaneously, from the time I was 13 years old until I was in my mid-30s is one of the great blessings of my life.

They think you’re stupid, San Antonio

When I met Allison she lived in San Antonio. I visited her there several times. On a couple of occasions we went to a San Antonio Missions game. They were then, as now, a Double-A affiliate of the Padres, though they were briefly the Brewers’ Triple-A club in between then and now. Throughout this entire period they have played at Wolff Stadium, which is eight miles west of downtown.

As far as minor league stadiums go Wolff is . . . a minor league stadium. I’m sure when it was planned and opened in the early 1990s it was considered nice, but the state of the art for upper-level minor league parks has radically changed since then and Wolff, in my experience, was a little on the sad side, even if I had fun there. Cold tallboys sold by a dude with a big cooler and mascots like Ballapeño and Henry the Puffy Taco go a long way.

San Antonio is a very large city, of course, so there have been rumblings for years about getting an upgrade. Attracting a permanent Triple-A club, as opposed to the transient one they had, would all but require it. For what it’s worth, the team’s relatively new ownership group — which includes Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan and San Antonio Spurs legend Manu Ginóbili — has been angling to get one built downtown to attract more of the tourists and convention-goers who hang out on the Riverwalk drinking overpriced margs.

San Antonio, while large, is by no means a rich city, so trying to get taxpayers to pay for a new ballpark is a challenge. The owners of the Missions are savvy, however, so they’ve hit on an idea: get taxpayers to pay for it but lie about the fact that taxpayers would be paying for it.

This local news report, found via Field of Schemes, says it pretty damn plainly, even if it doesn’t realize it’s saying so. After leading with, “City leaders emphasizes taxpayers will not be footing the bill” and “if current plans hold, taxpayers wouldn’t be on the hook” the report drops this:

Funding for the new ballpark would primarily come from a $34 million team equity contribution from the Missions. The rest, about $126 million, would be paid for by bonds issued by the newly created San Pedro Creek Authority, with a pledge from the Houston Street Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ). Those are taxes collected under a state law which are used for economic development projects.

Folks, if $126 million dollars for a $160 million stadium comes from “taxes collected,” I assure you, taxpayers are “footing the bill” and are “on the hook.” It doesn’t matter if the taxes come from special tax district or scheme or authority or whatever. It’s public money. That’s what “taxes collected” means. Even when it comes to sports facilities.

Other Stuff

I don’t know what jobs are anymore

Seen on the internet:

Cucumber salad TikTok recipes are going viral as a fresh and easy way to eat an entire cucumber, thanks largely to cucumber salad influencer and TikTok creator Logan Moffitt

I read things like that and then I, somehow, have to find it within me to encourage both of my kids to study hard and figure out a career path when they go back to school next week.

Of course, the fact that I make a fairly decent living ranting about J.D. Vance and making silly jokes in a newsletter I write from my couch undercuts any advice I might give them anyway, so maybe I should just let it go.

A reminder

Seen in the wild:

Truth. Hard to believe sometimes, but it’s truth.

That said, based on how things are trending of late, I am increasingly confident that it will not be a particularly close race by the time November rolls around. Indeed, I am cautiously optimistic that we are watching the death throes of the Trump Era in real time.

OK, Tex

There’s a law on the books in Ohio going back to the mid-90s which requires that any candidate for office who has legally changed their name within five years before appearing on the ballot must disclose their old name as well. I don’t know the basis for the law, it’s just there. And ss far as laws go it was probably one of the sleepiest, least-used ones in the state for a couple of decades.

But in the past year Republicans have used it as a weapon to go after Democratic candidates for office who are trans. Their argument — which has been successful in at least one case — is that a trans person who does not disclose their deadname should be removed from the ballot. This is partially a power play, of course — any weapon at hand to defeat a Democrat — but it’s obviously part and parcel of Republicans’ shameful advocacy of anti-trans bigotry and hatred.

The thing about such tactics, however, is that they can be turned on you. As Jake Zuckerman of Cleveland dot com reports, a rising Republican star is in the process of learning that lesson:

In the summer of 2020, Austin James Fischer, by order of the Mahoning County Probate Court, legally became Austin James Texford Fischer.

When he was appointed to the Ohio House earlier this year, the 28-year-old former political consultant was introduced to the public as “Tex” Fischer, which is how his name will appear for the first time on the ballot in his House district in November . . . But Chris Anderson, chairman of the Mahoning County Democratic Party, filed a complaint with local election officials Tuesday based on the name change.

You will not be surprised to learn that “Tex Fisher” did not disclose his name change on his campaign documents. You will be further unsurprised to learn that he believes this complaint to be completely unfair because his name change is different than a trans person’s name for, um, reasons. Reasons he can’t really articulate, of course, but you know how Republicans think: there must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind and out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. The 1995 law is supposed to go after bad trans people, not good Republicans, Tex Fisher’s defense will no doubt argue, if only implicitly.

However that all shakes out, can we all agree how sad yet telling it is that a then-24 year old young Republican from goddamn Youngstown, Ohio adopted the secondary middle name “Texford” specifically so that he could refer to himself as “Tex” as a means of getting fake good-old-boy cred in a political culture that venerates good old boys for some reason? It’s the same impulse which inspired a wealthy Jewish guy from a fancy Cleveland suburb to fake a southern accent while campaigning for Senate a few years back.

I’d like to say that phoniness is what cost that guy the election, but given that he was beaten by J.D. Vance, I don’t suppose the voters were all that concerned with penalizing phoniness.

Wanna visit a “socialist utopia?”

I mean, maybe I would. But maybe not this “socialist utopia”:

North Korea will resume international tourism to its northeastern city of Samjiyon in December, and possibly the rest of the country, tour companies said on Wednesday. The move is a sign that the reclusive country is readying to reopen borders to bigger groups of foreign tourists after years of strict COVID border controls . . . North Korea has been building what it called a "socialist utopia" in Samjiyon, a city near the Chinese border, and "a model of highly-civilised mountain city" with new apartments, hotels, a ski resort and commercial, cultural and medical facilities.

I’m all for socialist utopias, but I feel like Kim Jong Un and I have conflicting definitions of “utopia.” And, for that matter, “socialist.”

Have a great weekend everyone.

Make a Comment