Cup of Coffee: February 16, 2024
Manfred's retirement, the O's bad day, more uniform backlash, the Nats pick a fight, Brian Cashman, stadium renderings, DeSantis, Depp, supergroups, and the Overground
Good morning!
Rob Manfred claims he’s retiring in a few years, the Orioles had a very bad day yesterday, player backlash against the new uniforms intensifies, the Nationals are picking a weird fight with Stephen Strasburg, I’m not sure that Brian Cashman knows how phones work and, in the future, every city will release stadium renderings for 15 minutes.
In Other Stuff: Ron DeSantis has a sudden but not shocking change of heart, Johnny Depp is a useful idiot, an idea for the worst ever supergroup just dropped, and we talk about what happens when secondary public transportation systems in other countries allegedly go woke.
The Daily Briefing
Rob Manfred says he’s retiring in 2029
Commissioner Rob Manfred met the press yesterday and, in the course of his comments, he said that he plans to step down from the job when his current contract ends in January 2029. He said “You can only have so much fun in one lifetime . . . I have been open with [the owners] about the fact that this is going to be my last term." Because nothing says “I’m having fun” more than Rob Manfred’s commissionering over the past nine years.
It’s probably worth noting at this point that Manfred’s predecessor, Bud Selig, claimed he was stepping down at the end of a contract on multiple occasions, only to change his mind while claiming that the owners practically begged him to stay on. I actually believe that in his case, even if he was probably overstating it. Selig was a lot of things but he was definitely a consensus guy who managed to keep the owners together better than most people who have held the gig. The same cannot be said for Manfred who, whatever his strengths, is not every owner’s cup of tea. He certainly isn’t going to impose his will on the owners like Selig did at times. And if there was any question about Manfred’s standing, he’s the last guy who would or could mount a charm offensive to change minds. Which is to say, I’m willing to take Manfred on his word on this and I’m willing to believe we’ll have a new commissioner five years from now.
It’s far too early to speculate about who the next commissioner would be, though I suspect that Manfred will try to lay the groundwork for one of his lieutenants, such as Morgan Sword, to take over. Not that that would be a gimme, again, because Manfred has never had the sort of relationship with the owners which suggests that he’d be allowed to name his own successor. Whatever the case, 2029 is a long time from now and a million things could happen which could change the calculus between now and then.
I’ll say this much: subscriber Lou Schiff told me in a text message last night that he’s throwing his hat into the ring. In his favor: he’s a judge, just like Kennesaw Mountain Landis was. What’s more, he’ll only be 73 when Manfred steps down, which makes him (a) younger than Landis was when he croaked in office; and (b) younger than most of the people who make all the damn decisions in this country, unfortunately. In the interests of full disclosure, I’ll acknowledge that Lou offered me the MLB general counsel’s job so, yeah, I’m gonna back Lou on this.
Of course, if I had that job Lou’s commissionership would be the most glorious six weeks in baseball history, at the conclusion of which I’d be run out of town on a rail and he’d be forced to step down in disgrace for having placed me in a position of authority. It’d be amazing.
The Orioles had a very bad day on the injury front
It was carnage at Orioles camp down in Sarasota yesterday.
First up: the club announced that starter Kyle Bradish has a sprained UCL and, while he’ll begin throwing soon, he will start the season on the IL.
Bradish had a breakout year last season, going 12-7 and posting a 2.83 ERA (146 ERA+) in 168.2 innings and clearly emerging as the O’s top starter. This year, with the addition of Corbin Burnes, it was expected that he’d be the 1A guy in a great one-two punch, but that’s out the window now, at least in the early going. And, given how often you see guys with downplayed UCL injuries eventually go under the knife anyway, it’s not insane to think that his entire 2024 season could be in jeopardy.
Also revealed yesterday: reigning AL Rookie of the Year Gunnar Henderson has an oblique injury that will delay his spring training. They’re saying right now that he’ll still be ready for Opening Day, but obliques can be stubborn so it’s too early to say that with any degree of confidence, I figure.
Finally, starter John Means is reported to be a month behind his throwing schedule due to some sort of an elbow injury. This despite Orioles GM Mike Elias saying last fall that Means would be “full go” for camp. Means, you’ll recall, just came back from Tommy John surgery late last year.
I realize that it can be quite difficult to get the hang of Thursdays, but this was a particularly bad Thursday for Baltimore, eh?
Player backlash against the new uniforms intensifies
A day after the reveal of the new Nike-designed, Fanatics-manufactured MLB jerseys, more players are beefing about just how cheap and crappy they are. From The Athletic:
Nike claims the new jersey is softer, lighter and stretchier than the previous model. Many players say it’s worse. In clubhouses around the league on Wednesday, they criticized the jerseys’ poor fit, cheap look, inconsistent quality and small lettering.
“It looks like a replica,” Angels outfielder Taylor Ward said. “It feels kind of like papery . . .
. . . At his locker, Angels reliever Carlos Estévez was in a tizzy over the new threads. He pulled out a couple tops and pairs of pants to show that the shades didn’t match. He laughed at the spacing and shrunken nature of the lettering on the back of the jersey. And he bemoaned the fact he can’t customize his pants to his preference, the way pitchers once could, tailoring the fit to their big dumpers and tree-trunk thighs.
“When I wear my pants, I feel like I’m wearing someone else’s pants,” Estévez said.
“I could see Estévez (flexing),” Ward said, “and it just ripping in the back.”
Dansby Swanson noted that the blue on the new Cubs uniforms is different than traditional Cubbie blue. Everyone hates how tiny the names look on the back, with a smaller font and no outlined stitching. Many have compared the look to knockoff merchandise you find being sold outside of stadiums or to the sort of quality one usually finds with shirseys.
Pitchers are particularly angry that the pants are not custom-tailored as ballplayers’ pants long have been. Some guys wear ‘em baggy. Some guys, like Robbie Ray, wear them skin-tight. Nike and Fantatics have decided that the players can’t have what they want anymore in this regard, however, so clubhouse staff are now going around them and tailoring some players’ pants for them.
It’s a big stupid mess. Just a completely unforced error, almost certainly aimed at Nike and/or Fanatics wanting to reduce the costs of producing official on-field uniforms and so that they can realize higher margins when they sell them to fans for the same price, or a even a higher price, than the old ones.
I cannot imagine that this will hold, however, because the backlash has already extended beyond the players and onto social media where fans are savaging the new look. The MLBPA is reportedly getting involved as well because, at some point, messing with players’ uniforms in certain ways probably begins to touch on collectively-bargained working conditions. My guess is that MLB will ask their partners Nike and Fanatics to make considerable changes to these things before Opening Day. To be sure, they won’t say anything about it so as to save face, but I bet they do it anyway.
Why do the Nats care about Stephen Strasburg being in camp?
Stephen Strasburg will never throw another pitch again. On this everyone agrees. After years of attempting to rehabilitate serious injuries that not only impacted his athletic future but which pose a serious risk to his day-to-day health, Strasburg said last summer that he could not go on. The Washington Nationals quite obviously agreed with him, going so far as to announce a day honoring Strasburg and his retirement this season and promising an ongoing role for him in the organization. That announcement was premature, however, as it seems the sides have yet to agree on how to handle the final three years and $105 million left on his contract. But the idea that he’s done pitching is settled.
Despite that, the Nationals expect Strasburg to show up for spring training like everyone else. From MASN:
. . . because Strasburg and the Nationals have not been able to agree to the financial details of his retirement, he remains on the club’s 40-man roster. Which means he still gets a locker. Which, it appears, the organization now believes he is obligated to use.
Do the Nats actually expect Strasburg to come to West Palm Beach this spring?
“Yeah, he’s invited like every other guy on our 40-man roster,” general manager Mike Rizzo said. “He’s got until Feb. 24 to be here, and, yeah, I expect him to be here.”
Feb. 24 is the mandatory reporting date for all players invited to major-league spring training, per the collective bargaining agreement between the league and the players’ union. Those who do not report by that date without being excused by the club can be subject to discipline.
What would happen if Strasburg doesn’t report on time?
“I’m anticipating he will be here,” Rizzo said.
Rizzo goes on to talk about how he thinks Strasburg should be mentoring younger pitchers and serving as a generalized clubhouse presence. Which, sure, I’d understand if his retirement was actually settled upon and the Nats had actually hired him for such a role. But they haven’t. He’s just a player who is physically unable to pitch and who the Nationals have no intention of making even go through the motions of pitching.
Between the aborted retirement plan from last August and this stuff about reporting to camp, it’s pretty clear what’s happening here: the Nats want Strasburg to take less than the $105 million he’s owed and, in an effort to do so, they’re keeping him on the 40-man and seem content to cast him as uncooperative or disloyal or something in order to pressure him.
Except that’s pretty obviously not going to work. I mean, what’s the next step here? Strasburg doesn’t show up by February 24 and they start docking his pay? That’d lead to a grievance hearing which Strasburg would almost certainly win given that all involved know he actually cannot pitch. What’s more, there is considerable history in which players in the state he’s in are not expected to show up for mere face time. Indeed, the Nats didn’t make Strasburg himself come to spring training last year. Now they’re gonna? Or they think someone or something will make him? Please.
All this is accomplishing is alienating the hero of the club’s one World Series-winning club and making it more likely that he’ll not do anything for the franchise going forward. All so Mark Lerner can save some money.
Great Moments in Brian Cashman
Brain Cashman was asked about whether or not the Yankees planned to make any more personnel moves. This is what he said:
Has anyone explained to Cashman that the phone works both ways? And that, actually, teams usually reach out to free agents and potential trade partners when they want to make a deal rather than sit around and hope someone calls?
Renderings for everyone!
We’ve seen White Sox and Royals stadium renderings in the past week. Salt Lake City, Utah doesn’t even have a team, but now they too have released renderings:
More info on that effort here.
My guess is that this is in service of landing an expansion team at some point down the road, which is something Rob Manfred has said he’d start exploring once the A’s and Rays stadium situations were settled. Though, honestly, if Las Vegas ends up not working out for John Fisher and the A’s — and I’ll once again note that the A’s have not yet released any stadium renderings for their new place there — I suppose having stuff like this at the ready as a fallback could get Utah a big league club in a different way.
Other Stuff
Oh, so now irresponsible censorship is bad
A couple of years ago, when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis decided that he was gonna ride book-banning and other acts of culture war to the White House, he got his obsequious tools in the Florida legislature to pass a comically broad book-banning statue which (a) allowed anyone and everyone to complain to school boards about various books with basically no limit, no standards, and no requirement whatsoever that those who complained actually had children the school in question; and (b) made teachers and school administrations subject to felony charges if they did not ban the books in question.
Critics complained that not only was the premise of the law anti-democratic, hostile to schools, school children, and the very idea of education in general, but that was comically overbroad and would lead to chaos in practice. DeSantis and his supporters completely ignored these criticisms and, going further, cast the critics as some foaming at the mouth woke mob hellbent on destroying America with porn and gayness and whatever else guys like DeSantis consider to be a threat.
Flash forward to the present, mere weeks after DeStantis’ incompetent presidential campaign crashed and burned, and we find DeSantis admitting that the book ban statute has, indeed, caused chaos by allowing right-wing activists with no children in public school to mass report books and put schools and teachers in peril. Just like everyone said it would. He now says the law needs to be changed.
It’s almost as if DeSantis’ book bans and related measures were more about trying to boost a culture war-based presidential campaign than they were about enacting prudent and necessary public policy! It’s almost as if he cynically enacted such laws without care or concern for what they actually meant for the educational process because he figured he’d win over a sufficient number of right wing rubes that he’d find himself in the Oval Office this time next year while Florida became someone else’s problem.
You know, I’m starting to think that I should be skeptical about the motivations of politicians.
Johnny Depp: useful idiot for a murderer
Vanity Fair has a story about how Johnny Depp and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, have become close friends.
It started when MBS and the culural/sports propaganda operation he employs in order to distract from the fact that he and the regime he heads are rank, violent criminals, invested money in a movie Depp was shooting a few years ago, leading to them meeting. Now it’s progressed to this:
Over the past year, Depp has spent more than seven weeks in Saudi Arabia, staying in royal palaces and camps, traversing the country by yacht and helicopter, and even flying to London and back on MBS’s personal 747 for a quick trip to attend the Jeff Beck Memorial Concert at the Royal Albert Hall.
In that time, Depp and MBS have become real friends. “They made a genuine connection,” says a friend of Depp’s. “It’s a shock to many of the people who know [Depp], but it’s what happened.” Insiders say Depp is now weighing a seven-figure annual contract to promote Saudi Arabia’s cultural renaissance.
Vanity Fair refers to their friendship as a “bromance.”
The transactional nature of this, and all manner of other Saudi efforts to purchase, import, and/or influence western culture, is transparent. Depp’s movie, “Jeanne du Barry,” which Depp’s personal production company was co-producing, was tightly budgeted and was experiencing overruns which MBS paid for. Saudi Arabia’s film authority, controlled, like everything else in the country by MBS, is likewise financing Depp’s next film.
It’s also the case that Depp is persona non grata in certain circles these days following accusations of abuse from his ex-wife and the protracted litigation which ensued. That whole affair led to some unseemly elements on the political right allying themselves with Depp, further sullying his reputation. That, combined with the fact that Depp was experiencing major financial problems even before all of that happened certainly makes the seven-figures-a-year deal MBS is now apparently giving him hit different, as the kids say.
Depp claims this is all about his personal friendship and his awe at the alleged cultural transformation Saudi Arabia has experienced since MBS came to prominence. Whether that’s a flat out lie, told in order to distract from the fact that Depp is being bought and paid for by MBS, or a function of Depp just being kinda stupid is an open question. For what it’s worth, it’s claimed in the article that Depp asked MBS about the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and that he believed MBS when he falsely claimed he didn’t order the hit. So if it’s not stupidity it’s rooted in some of the most craven calculation and disingenuousness I’ve heard of in some time.
They say that everyone has a price. I’d like to think that’s not true but it probably is. I would hope, however, that the nature of the person paying that price matters and that it would be much, much harder for a cold-blooded murderer to buy someone like this. Guess not.
This is a threatened hate crime
From Consequence of Sound:
While chatting with Howard Stern this week, Billy Joel revealed one major bucket list item he has yet to achieve — forming a supergroup with some of his favorite fellow musicians.
Currently in the midst of an ongoing tour, Joel explained, “I thought about putting together a band: Me, Don Henley, and Sting, and maybe John Mayer on guitar.”
I realize that we, as a society, have moved beyond the sort of toxic musical gatekeeping that was endemic when I was younger and that that has been a good thing. I also realize that a group consisting of Joel, Sting, Henley, and Mayer would sell out stadiums all over the country and in many other parts of the world. A lot of people would like it and we should not judge people for liking what they like.
But sorry. In this instance I’m gonna pretend it’s 1994 again, that I’m standing in a campus record store, and state emphatically that if such a super group were to come to pass I’d commit crimes in order to keep from seeing or hearing it. Moreover I would judge — and judge harshly — each and every one of you who expressed interest in such an enterprise. And then, when I was done judging, I’d report everyone responsible for putting the group together to The International Court of Justice at The Hague. Which I believe in this instance and this instance only would agree to reinstitute the death penalty.
You may think I’ve gone too far here. If so, I ask you to imagine a medley of “Walking on the Moon” sung by Joel, “Hotel California” sung by Sting, and “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” sung by Henley, with Mayer doing a five-minute white-man-scrunched-up-face guitar solo in between each movement. I assure you, once you witnessed that you would believe in Hell and would want damnation for those who unleashed it upon you.
“This is the . . . Mildmay Line . . . ?”
Most people know about The London Underground, which is London’s subway system, typically referred to as The Tube. There’s also a newer, secondary rail system in London known as The London Overground, which primarily serves the suburbs and areas outside of Central London where the Tube doesn’t go and connects with the Underground closer into the city. As the name implies, The Overground is an at-grade or in some places elevated train system.
Unlike the Underground, which features a number of named lines such as the Victoria Line, the Jubilee Line, the Central Line, the Northern Line, the Elizabeth Line and others, each with dedicated colors, the Overground is just sort of a mess of orange on the map, all of which is called “The Overground.” Starting later this year, however, that’s going to change. The individual lines are going to get individual names, like the Underground lines have, along with new colors. From the New York Times:
The new names are: Lioness, named after the English women’s soccer team; Mildmay, honoring a small East London hospital with a pivotal role caring for patients during the AIDS crisis; Windrush, after the ship that brought some of the first migrants from the Caribbean to Britain; Weaver, which travels through an area once known for its textile trade; Suffragette, after the movement that fought for women’s right to vote; and Liberty, which references the historical independence of the people of the Havering borough.
You’re not gonna believe this, but some guy with one of those double-barrel British names posh types and/or conservatives often posses takes offense:
Not all morning commuters expressed support.
At the Dalston Kingsland station in North London, Louis Fulford-Smith, 27, said he thought that the new names sounded “woke.” The worst of the new names, he said, was Liberty, adding that it felt “very American” and was “scraping the bottom of the barrel.”
In this you see the difference between American and British dipshits.
British dipshits are able to both bash a public transportation improvement that acknowledges women, minorities, labor, and other marginalized people as “woke” while simultaneously noting that “Liberty” in this context is a hackneyed concept. In contrast, American dipshits would convince local authorities to actually ban all the “woke” names — which they’d totally do — while retaining the “Liberty” line and renaming the others to the “Freedom Line,” “Eagle Line,” “Our Troops Line,” and the “Reagan Line.”
Haha, just kidding. Most places here don’t have any real public transportation to speak of, let alone one which we’d actually seek to improve.
Have a great weekend everyone.
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