Cup of Coffee: August 28, 2024
Heyward signs, Hill is called up, Sasaki may not be posted, the minor league squeeze, gatekeeping Oasis, Escobar's hippos, and the North vs. the South of England
Good morning!
In today’s newsletter: We have a new team in first place in the AL Central, Jason Heyward signs, Rich Hill is called up, Rōki Sasaki may not be posted this year, the minor league squeeze, my book has a new cover that I do not understand, more about gatekeeping Oasis, Pablo Escobar's hippos, and we compare and contrast the North vs. the South of England
And That Happened
Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:
Royals 6, Guardians 1: It took a more than two-hour rain delay, but the Kansas City Royals won their third straight game over the Guardians and in doing so have moved into a tie for first place atop the AL Central. They trailed Cleveland by seven games at the All-Star break — by nine games as late as June 26 — but have gone an American League-best 23-13 since then. Paul DeJong hit a two-run homer and picked up three runs in the seventh on RBI singles by Maikel Garcia and Michael Massey and a run-scoring wild pitch.
Tigers 6, Angels 2: Detroit did its damage in the middle innings with Riley Greene and Kerry Carpenter homering in a three-run sixth. Carpenter also singled in a run in the fourth. The Tigers have won five straight. The Angels have lost six straight and 12 of their last 14.
Cubs 9, Pirates 5: Seiya Suzuki hit a game-tying two-run homer in the fourth, Niko Hoerner followed it up with a go-ahead double and Dansby Swanson added a two-run homer in the fourth and drew a bases-loaded walk in the fifth. Pete Crow-Armstrong was also walked in a run and Miguel Amaya finished off the big inning with a two-run single which put the game out of reach at that point at 9-2. The Cubs, winners of five of six, are back to .500 for the first time since late May.
Phillies 5, Astros 0: Aaron Nola was fantastic, working seven while not allowing a run and striking out six and two relievers finished the six-hit shutout. Trea Turner singled home a run in the third ahead of Nick Castellanos’ three-run homer. Philly has won nine of 13 and four in a row. They maintain a six-game lead over Atlanta despite their midsummer swoon.
Athletics 5, Reds 4: Cincinnati clung to a 1-0 lead heading into the seventh but then the A’s broke out the lumber with Max Schuemann and Lawrence Butler each hitting two-run homers in the top of the inning and Zack Gelof going deep in the eighth. The Reds’ comeback in the eighth and ninth fell short. They’re swooning, too, losers of eight of 11.
Nationals 4, Yankees 2: They Yankees are one of the best teams in the game and they’re capable of hauling out the lumber on any given night but here Patrick frickin’ Corbin of all people shut them out over six innings while allowing just two hits. Meanwhile, Andrés Chaparro and José Tena' took Gerrit Cole deep in the fourth to give Washington a lead they’d not surrender. Dylan Crews got the first two hits of his career for the Nats.
Red Sox 6, Blue Jays 3: Jarren Duran led off with a homer, Masataka Yoshida added a two-run single in a three-run first, and David Hamilton, Triston Casas and Wilyer Abreu also drove in runs as the Sox snap their four-game skid. Duran, his stupid homophobic suspension notwithstanding, is having a hell of a season. As the gamer noted, he is the first player in the majors since at least 1901 to reach at least 40 doubles, 10 triples, 20 home runs and 30 stolen bases in a season. He actually has 75 extra-base hits on the year, which puts him within striking distance of the Sox’ team record of 92, set by Jimmy Foxx in 1938.
Atlanta 8, Twins 6: Atlanta built a 4-0 lead by the fifth thanks in part to a Michael Harris II homer but blew it between the seventh and eighth thanks to a couple of run-scoring hits by Trevor Larnach. A four-run tenth inning put them back on top, however, with Matt Olson driving in the go-ahead run on a fielder’s choice, Travis d’Arnaud adding an RBI single, and Ramón Laureano’s two-run single capping the rally. Barves have won eight of ten.
Padres 7, Cardinals 5: St. Louis held a couple of leads here but the Padres have been close to inevitable of late, so Jake Cronenworth’s tie-breaking RBI single in a two-run seventh was not really shocking. Manny Machado homered for San Diego and Luis Arraez had three hits. The Padres have won three of four. The Cardinals have lost three of four.
Giants 5, Brewers 4: Mike Yastrzemski’s two-run homer in the seventh put the Giants up by one and there it stayed. Matt Chapman and Grant McCray homered earlier for San Francisco. Thairo Estrada nearly homered in the fifth, but Milwaukee center fielder Blake Perkins ranged way back to left center, reached over the wall and robbed him. The Giants bullpen turned in four shutout innings.
Marlins 9, Rockies 8: Miami rallied for five runs in the top of the ninth capped by Jesús Sánchez’ three-run homer to secure a wild, very Coors Field win. The Marlins trailed 6-0 at one point and were down by four entering the ninth. If the two worst teams in the NL have to play one another, at least it was exciting.
Mets 8, Diamondbacks 3: Sean Manaea struck out 11 while working into the seventh. Indeed, he allowed just one hit until the seventh when he clearly ran out of gas and gave up a couple of dingers, but a nice outing against an otherwise hot team. The Mets broke things open in the fifth, scoring six runs while sending 12 batters to the plate and building an 8-0 lead. After that it was just about holding on and they more than held on. That ends Arizona’s six-game winning streak. New York has alternated wins and losses over the last five.
Rays 3, Marlines 2: Like way, way too many games this year the Mariners got great pitching but no offensive support. Specifically, Logan Gilbert struck out ten over six shutout innings and, when the book was closed on him, the M’s clung to a 1-0 lead thanks to Víctor Robles scoring on a throwing error. The Rays got a two-run homer from José Siri in the seventh and a solo shot from Yandy Díaz in the eighth and that was enough. Jeffrey Springs tossed five shutout innings for Tampa Bay and five Rays pitchers completed the game in which Seattle batters struck out 17 times.
Orioles 3, Dodgers 2: Ramón Urías hit a go-ahead, two-run homer in the fifth inning and Ryan O’Hearn also went deep. The Dodgers had chances to tie or go ahead in the eighth and the ninth but just couldn’t get a timely hit. And frankly, if the Dodgers are gonna put “the MLB” on their scoreboard they don’t deserve to win anyway:
(photo by Dennis Price)
Rangers vs. White Sox — SUSPENDED:
🎶 Above the planet on a wing and a prayer
My grubby halo, a vapor trail in the empty air
Across the clouds, I see my shadow fly
Out of the corner of my watering eye
A dream unthreatened by the morning light
Could blow this soul right through the roof of the night
There's no sensation to compare with this
Suspended animation, a state of bliss
Can't keep my mind from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted
Just an earthbound misfit, I 🎶
The Daily Briefing
Astros to sign Jason Heyward
The Houston Astros are reportedly signing Jason Heyward. He was DFA’d last week and released by the Dodgers on Monday. Heyward has hit .208/.289/.393 (91 OPS+) with six homers in 197 plate appearances across 63 games this season.
The Astros have struggled to find outfield production this year in the wake of Kyle Tucker’s shin contusion/bone bruise/whatever it is that has kept him out of action since June 3.
Heyward is probably capable of better play than he showed in L.A. this season — last year he was actually pretty dang good — but this is obviously a zero-cost move for the Astros so it’s worth a try, right?
Rich Hill is getting called up
The Red Sox signed 44 year old journeyman pitcher Rich Hill on August 15. He reported to the club and made a two-inning appearance at Triple-A Worcester the other day and now he’s being called up to the big club. I guess you don’t take a lot of time when you’re dealing with the elderly, as the elderly don’t have a ton of it to waste.
Hill pitched for the San Diego Padres and Pittsburgh Pirates in 2023, posting a 5.41 ERA in 27 starts and five relief appearances. That’s not great but the Red Sox are pitching starved and are trying to stay in the Wild Card picture, so you do what you gotta do.
Forty-four year olds tend not to improve from one year to the next, but I’m always gonna root for the old guys, obviously.
Also:
Jesus Christ.
Rōki Sasaki may not be posted this winter
Jeff Passan reported yesterday that the Chiba Lotte Marines may not post pitcher Rōki Sasaki, after the 2024 season.
Sasaki, 22, had asked to be posted last winter and had his request rejected. It was generally assumed that the Marines would post him this winter — indeed, there were reports out of Japan suggesting he has a provision in his 2024 contract that would force Chiba Lotte to post him — but based on this report that appears not be the case.
If Sasaki is posted, there will be all manner of MLB clubs looking to sign him. Partially because he’s considered a top-of-the-rotation talent. That being said, there would be drawbacks for both Chiba Lotte and any signing MLB club if Sasaki were to be posted now. Under MLB rules, international players under 25 and with fewer than six years of service time are considered “amateurs,” which means that teams would have to devote monies from their international bonus pool to sign him. A team may still use most if not all of that pool to get Sasaki given his talent, but if they did so they’re basically punting on international signings for a year. At the same time, given the way the posting system works, Chiba Lotte’s take is partially a function of Sasaki’s annual earnings on his first contract with a major league club and that portion of things would be thus limited. If they wait until after November 2026, when Sasaki turns 25, the dollars would be way better for them.
Sasaki has hit triple-digits with his fastball on numerous occasions and holds the NPB record for the fastest pitch ever thrown in a game at 102.5 MPH. On April 10, 2022, he pitched a perfect game in which he struck out 19 batters, at one point striking out 13 batters in a row. The MLB record for consecutive strikeouts, by the way, is ten, with three pitchers having done so (Corbin Burnes, Tom Seaver, and Aaron Nola). Perhaps even more impressive than that perfecto is that in Sasaki’s very next outing he pitched eight perfect innings, striking out 14 batters. He was pulled after eight, however, do to concerns about his workload.
The dude can shove, man. The only question is who he will be shoving for in 2025.
The minor league squeeze
In yesterday’s item about the Mexican League I noted that part of the reason it has taken a step up in quality is that a lot more guys with major league and high-minor league experience have moved down there to play. The reason a lot of them are doing that is because minor league contraction has cut out many of the minor league roster spots which they’d otherwise fill. Mexico may not be their first choice but for many it’s their best option.
Yesterday at Defector Richard Staff wrote way more deeply about all of that. He describes how, thanks to the contraction and the 2022 Collective Bargaining Agreement which put a hard cap on the number of minor leaguers each club can employ, a lot of minor leaguers who would otherwise have jobs are playing in Mexico, in independent ball, or have been pushed out of baseball entirely. The guys being pushed out tend to be older, more expensive, and have more experience, leaving younger, less experienced players in their positions at Double and Triple-A.
One result of that: it’s been harder for the top prospects to make the jump to the big leagues because they are facing lesser competition in the high minors than ever before. An example Staff cites is Jackson Holliday, who was the consensus top prospect in the game entering this year and got an early callup, only to appear overmatched in his first big league cup of coffee:
As those veterans and Major Leaguers are cast aside, the only way to fill those spots is to aggressively move prospects up into those holes. Suddenly the first big league-quality slider that a Jackson Holliday type faces isn’t Robert Stock’s in Norfolk—it’s from Kutter Crawford at Fenway Park.
Holliday was sent back down after ten terrible games. He’s back up now and he’s still struggling. Not everyone in his shoes is having the same problems he is, of course, but Staff spoke with a number of ballplayers who believe that the roster limits have degraded the higher minor leagues and have negatively impacted player development. A couple of front office executives believe that to be the case as well. It certainly makes sense.
It’s a good article that, while based on anecdote and general observation rather than data, provides what seems like a plausible assessment of the minor league contraction fallout. And as a bonus, ack Cust is prominently quoted. Remember Jack Cust?
Other Stuff
I’m not sure what to make of this
My publisher emailed me yesterday to tell me that my book Rethinking Fandom is being translated into Chinese for the Taiwanese market. She sent me the cover they plan to use, asking for my approval:
I don’t know if that title translates directly, but I sorta hope it’s a weird and unwieldy title now like, “Sports make us crazy and crazy is bad so FIGHT SPORTS!” or something. The more Mr. Sparkle this turns out to be the better as far as I’m concerned. Viva chaos.
I also do not know who the person in the stands is. They probably just used a stock image of “dissatisfied sports fan” or something. I’m guessing any Taiwanese people who buy the book will assume that’s me, but I’m gonna tell anyone who asks that it’s J.D. Vance.
Even Oasis is gatekeeping Oasis
In yesterday’s newsletter I made fun of some guy for lamenting that younger people are excited about the Oasis reunion and arguing that allegedly REAL Oasis fans should get first dibs on tickets. I saw more of that yesterday morning. There’s a lot of it going around.
I didn’t think that whoever is handling ticket sales for the Oasis tour dates would be doing the same thing, yet they are. Given the crazy demand, they’re doing a lottery to see who gets to purchase tickets in Friday’s presale. To register for the lottery, you have to answer questions. Like this one:
This would be no more on-the-nose as far as shitty Gen-X gatekeeping goes if they had said “Oh, you wanna buy Oasis tickets? Name three of their non-singles from ‘Standing on the Shoulder of Giants.’”
Pablo Escobar’s hippos are completely out of control
In the early 1980s, Colombian cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar built a gigantic compound near the Magdalena River. As part of his efforts to insulate him from law enforcement he attempted to become something of a Man of the People and turned the compound into a tourist attraction, with artificial lakes, park and picnic facilities, and a bull ring, among other things. He also put together a menagerie of wild animals, including elephants, giraffes, zebras, ostriches, and kangaroos. Also on the property: four hippopotamuses. Three females and one male.
After Escobar was killed in 1993 Colombian authorities seized the compound and most of the animals inside it were placed in zoos. But not the hippos. They were too dangerous to capture and move. They hung around, they bred, and now there are an estimated 160-200 hippos roaming the Magdalena River basin. It is estimated that, if nothing is done to kill, capture, or otherwise neutralize them, there could be 1,400 of them by the year 2040. Which is a big problem because, in addition to wreaking havoc on an ecosystem that is not set up for massive herbivores like hippos, they are extraordinarily dangerous. Indeed, hippos are among the most dangerous forms of megafauna in existence. In their native Africa they kill hundreds of humans every year.
Joshua Hammer of Smithsonian Magazine traveled to the Magdalena River to check out the hippos and to report on the efforts being taken to do something about them. There are no easy answer. They are extraordinarily difficult to tag and tranquilize. Most zoos do not want them due to the massive costs and hassle involved with housing hippos. They tried simply killing them but once the first one was taken down there was a massive public outcry about it because you know how people are about animals. At present there is a program to surgically castrate the males, but that’s no easy trick either and such efforts have been pretty spotty to date. Experts believe that, ultimately, they’ll have no choice but to shoot as many of them as they can, though there are doubts they’ll be able to get them all.
The world is a crazy place, man.
The difference between southern England and northern England
As a hopeless anglophile who has been to the United Kingdom several times, I am often asked about the country by my less-traveled American friends. One thing that these conversations have revealed is that many Americans assume a general homogeneity of the place, based no doubt on its relatively small size and based on what they’ve seen on prestige TV and Oscar-bait movies featuring posh British people with fancy accents living on splendid estates.
This is highly misleading! At most 45-50% of the English population is landed gentry with inherited titles. Far more people serve as governesses, climbing boys, live in workhouses, or are press-ganged into the Royal Navy. There are likewise a considerable number of people who have been assigned to imperial outposts in India, Burma, and Darkest Africa, where they serve as colonial administrators while the rest of the His Majesty’s subjects are either members of cheeky-but-brash rock and roll bands or participate in cerebral yet esoteric comedy troupes. It’s a land of contrasts, England, but everyone does their part.
But seriously, Americans do get a misleading sense of England from pop culture and there are many actual differences across England’s various counties and regions. The most stark differences can be seen between those who live in the southern parts of the country on the one hand and those in northern England on the other. For example:
- There are countless British accents, almost none of which sound like what you might hear on the BBC or an episode of “Downton Abbey,” and these accents change nearly every 20 miles you travel. Roughly speaking, the father north you go, the more unintelligible the English accents become;
- There are likewise differences in people’s habits, tastes, and culture depending on where in England they live, with the south being wealthier, better-educated, and more white collar, generally speaking, while the north is, generally speaking, poorer and more working class;
- The cost of living — particularly housing prices — is likewise vastly different, with the south being prohibitively expensive in most areas while the north is broadly affordable; and
- As a result of that socioeconomic divide, historically the north has much more greatly supported the Labour Party while the south has leaned far more Conservative. This has changed pretty radically since the Brexit referendum which occasioned — or, as some believe, served as the culmination of — a pretty significant political realignment, though the traditional divide still maintains to some degree, at least as far as suburban areas go in the south and urban areas go in the north.
Ultimately, though, there is one factor that stands above all others in helping one differentiate between the south and the north of England: whether the World Gravy Wrestling Championships are held there:
Hundreds of wrestling fans turned out to cheer on the competitors taking part in this year's World Gravy Wrestling Championships. The wacky annual bank holiday event saw contestants wrestle in a pool of gravy for two minutes, with points scored for fancy dress, comedy effect and entertainment.
Punters filled the Rose ’N’ Bowl in Bacup to watch the hotly anticipated show and cheer on the competitors in their best fancy dress. Those who took the plunge this year included a milkman dressed as Rambo, an animal lover in a dog costume, a 'Gravy Baby', a Barbie, leprechaun and Borat.
It seems fun:
Anyway, if you find yourself in England and you are not sure of where, exactly, you are, just remember: “If kings and horses you easily see, in the south you surely must be, but if wrestling in gravy is what you spy, in the north you are, my lucky guy.”
Have a great day everyone.
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