Cup of Coffee: February 23, 2024

Good morning!

The Mets got some awful injury news yesterday but, hey, at least Mets fans are used to that and know well how to assume the fetal position in response. The Marlins and Tigers signed dudes. The Pirates extended a dude. Trevor Bauer was given a chance to explain why a Major League Baseball team should sign him and he failed miserably. Wander Franco is in more trouble. And yes, there are more photos of the awful see-through pants Rob Manfred, Nike, and Fanatics think the players should be wearing.

In Other Stuff: the English may not be just like us but their billionaire sports owners are a lot like ours. A journalist some of you may know has been arrested and charged with federal crimes for, it appears anyway, committing acts of journalism. And, finally, we consider naked judges.

Oh, please. Like you haven’t thought about naked judges before.

 The Daily Briefing

Kodai Senga has a shoulder injury

The New York Mets announced that starter Kodai Senga has a “moderate capsule strain” in the back of his right shoulder. He is being shut down until the symptoms he’s experiencing — arm fatigue primarily — have subsided. There’s no timeline for that, however, and team president David Stearns said that Senga will start the season on the injured list as a result.

Senga, 31, is entering season two of a five-year $75 million contract. He impressed last year, going 12-7 with a 2.98 ERA (142 ERA+) in 29 starts. He made the All-Star team, came in second in the Rookie of the Year balloting, and got some Cy Young votes as well.

The Mets revamped their rotation in the offseason, signing Luis Severino and and Sean Manaea and acquiring Adrian Houser. They really, really, really were counting on Senga to be the rotation’s anchor, however, and now they have no idea when he’ll be ready to pitch.

The Marlins sign Tim Anderson

The Miami Marlins have signed their first free agent of the offseason! Yay! It’s shortstop Tim Anderson, who has agreed to a one-year, $5 million deal.

Anderson, 30, had a horrendous 2023, putting up the worst season of his career. He hit .245/.286/.296 (60 OPS+). His OPS was the worst among all hitters who qualified for the batting title. He played absolutely brutal defense as well. While injuries can certainly be blamed for some of the falloff — he had a sprained left knee and some right shoulder issues — it was nonetheless a worrying campaign. The White Sox, not surprisingly, declined the $14 million option they had on him for 2024.

All of that being said, Anderson has a good opportunity in front of him with Miami. He should be handed the everyday shortstop position out of camp and there shouldn’t be a ton of pressure on him. Of course the Marlins will probably look to flip him at the trade deadline should be rebound and should they be out of contention. That’s just how this sort of thing goes.

The Tigers sign Gio Urshela

The Detroit Tigers have signed infielder Gio Urshela to a one-year, $1.5 million contract. He can earn $500,000 in incentives as well.

Urshela hit .299/.329/.374 (91 OPS+) in 228 plate appearances with the Angels last year before suffering a fractured pelvis in June. He’s an elite defender who, while primarily a third baseman, has seen action at first, second, short, and even a couple of games in the outfield. Which is to say he’s likely poised to be a super utilityman who, at least in camp, could push for regular playing time at third.

The Pirates, Mitch Keller, agree to a five-year extension

A day after the big Athletic article about how much of a cheap-ass Pirates owner Bob Nutting is, he decided to spend some money. Specifically, the club and pitcher Mitch Keller agreed to a five-year, $77 million contract extension. Keller still had one more year of arbitration-eligibility after this season and was poised to become a free agent in November 2025.

Keller, 27, has had some ups and downs over the years, but last year was his best overall campaign. He went 13-9 with a 4.21 ERA (105 ERA+) while striking out 210 batters in a career-high 194.1 innings. He made the All-Star team too. While none of what he has done has screamed “ace of a winning team” he would certainly belong somewhere in the rotation of a contender. The Pirates have a lot of pitching in the pipeline at the moment, so having Keller locked up as an innings eater with some upside while the younger arms mature is a decent plan.

Trevor Bauer pretends to answer an owner’s questions

The Los Angeles Times ran a really weird but nonetheless interesting and ultimately telling interview with Trevor Bauer yesterday.

It was weird because, rather than a straightforward Q&A, the reporter, Bill Shaikin, pretended to be the owner of a major league baseball team questioning Bauer as he considers whether it’s worth signing him. Bauer and his agent, Rachel Luba, played along with it, answering Team Owner Shaikin’s questions.

You will not be surprised to hear that I don’t think Bauer did a great job with it. It’s his usual dance:

• I’m sorry — I won’t say for what! — but I won’t do it again. Oh, and I did nothing wrong;
• This is mostly the media’s fault but, yeah, I actively courted publicity by filing a half dozen lawsuits because I needed to clear my name. But no, I never thought I’d win the lawsuits anyway;
• I have a video which proves my innocence. Yes, Major League Baseball and a neutral arbitrator saw that video too and then proceeded to give me the longest suspension since the advent of the sexual assault/domestic violence policy. But did I mention it was the media’s fault?
• I learned my lesson about not being an asshole on social media. Yes, I was an asshole on social media after I told everyone I learned my lesson, but that wasn’t me, it was the people I hired to run my social media accounts. Also, I have a large platform via which I can connect with fans. But I’m off social media too somehow?

All of it reads like someone who thought he had some pretty good talking points but who has never, ever been truly challenged before and once that challenge came he pretty much crumbled into incoherence. In this he’s like so many other people in positions of power and/or fame — politicians, the super wealthy, celebrities — who only do friendly interviews with reporters who don’t push back. The moment that push came here — and Shaikin didn’t let Bauer off the hook easily — you could almost smell the flop sweat through your computer.

The thing about it is that this was actually a great opportunity for Bauer. I’m guessing, as Shaikin suggests in his “owner’s” questioning, that there actually are several teams who would sign Bauer if they felt like the blowback would dissipate in just a few days. Indeed, I bet at least a few decision makers around baseball were eager to read the article, treating it like something of a test run as to how it’d play out if they pulled the trigger on Bauer. But he pretty much whiffed it. He made it clear that all of the same questions and criticisms which have dogged him — by his own doing of course — will continue to dog him. Because he is either unwilling or unable to provide satisfying answers to reasonable queries. Or both.

Put simply, he’s not being honest. And he’s not being honest because he’s, at heart, a bad guy who still doesn’t think he did anything wrong.

Wander Franco keeps digging a deeper hole for himself

Meanwhile, in the Dominican Republic, Héctor Gómez reports that the bank accounts of Tampa Bay Ray shortstop Wander Franco have been seized. According to Gómez’s sources, it’s because he has refused to pay his legal fees.

Everything we’ve learned about Franco since the story about his alleged criminality broke suggests that he has horrible, horrible judgment to say the least, so I don’t suppose this is all that surprising in hindsight.

Two balls no strikes on Schmitt . . .

NBC Sports Bay Area reporter Alex Pavlovic took a photo of Giants infielder Casey Schmitt and posted it to his Instagram story. It’s absolutely nuts. And I mean that literally:

It’s gonna be hilarious when Opening Day comes and everyone is wearing last year’s uniforms — or, per what one anonymous player in this story said, they go to Dick’s sporting goods to buy a pair for themselves off the rack — without the league saying a single thing about it. Indeed, I bet they’ll try to gaslight everyone and claim that nothing at all has changed and that we were just imagining these see-through jobs in the early going.

Other Stuff

The English: they’re just like us! Well, at least their billionaires are. 

One of the new owners of the Premier League’s Manchester United is a not-poor fellow named Sir Jim Ratcliffe. And when I say “not-poor” I mean he is generally considered to be the second-richest person in the United Kingdom, with an estimated net worth of around £30 billion. Which is to say, he is far more wealthy than even the wealthiest Major League Baseball or NFL owner.

For those who do not know, Manchester United plays in a stadium known as Old Trafford. It’s one of the most celebrated sporting venues on the entire planet. I’ve never been there so I do not know its condition or whether its fame outstrips its utility — I’m sure a United fan could tell us — but Ratcliffe believes it needs to be replaced. And you’re not gonna believe who he thinks should pay for it:

United have played at the 74,310-capacity Old Trafford since 1910, but Ratcliffe acknowledged it had become "tired and in need of refurbishment".

A new stadium could be built next to the existing ground in Trafford Park.

"It's about time someone built a national stadium in the north of England," said the British billionaire.

Ratcliffe added the potential project could be a "catalyst for regeneration" in south Manchester and would therefore warrant a "conversation" with the government about using taxpayers' money.

And yes, he’s trotting out the old, thoroughly debunked “a new stadium will give an economic boost to the whole area” argument:

"Trafford Park is where the industrial revolution began. If you look at that region of Manchester today - only a mile from the centre - it is tired and neglected and parts are quite run down. There is quite a big argument, in my view, for regenerating that whole south side of Manchester. The nucleus of it would be building a new world-class state-of-the-art stadium which could take England games, the FA Cup final, Champions League finals. It could serve the north of England.”

I don’t know if friend of Cup of Coffee J.C. Bradbury has the resources to mount a study of the economics of sports development in a whole other country, but maybe he has a counterpart over there who can do it. Someone with a like, “Professor J.C Bradbury-Gough-Calthorpe-Heathcote MBE” or some shit.

Tim Burke indicted, arrested

If you spend much time on sports-adjacent social media, or if you were a reader of old school Deadspin or the Daily Beast, you likely know who Tim Burke is. His most famous moment, or infamous moment depending on your point of view, was probably his breaking of the Manti Te’o catfishing scandal back in 2013. These days Burke — who uses the handle bubbaprog on Twitter — is a media consultant. He’s well known for having a crazy home video/computing setup on which he monitors and records terabytes of video streams for newsworthy content which, I presume anyway, he sells to media companies.

Last May federal agents raided Burke’s home and confiscated his cell phones, every computer in his home, and untold amounts of data and materials he uses in his consulting business. It was soon revealed that the raid was related to Burke’s obtaining unaired video of Kanye West making antisemitic comments to then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson, which was then reported on by Vice and other outlets, embarrassing Fox, West, and Carlson. Though details have only leaked out sporadically, it’s pretty clear that the government believes Burke illegally hacked Fox News’ servers.

Burke was not charged at the time of the raid. He then moved to get his equipment returned to him, arguing that no crimes were committed. Rather, he said, the material he released had been left on a website that was neither password-protected nor encrypted. It was simply sitting there under a publicly-accessible URL that anyone in the world could click on and see, at least if they knew where to look. A good explanation of this argument was provided by Burke’s attorney in an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review last summer.

While some of the seized material was eventually returned to Burke — mostly computers or phones that belong to his wife, who is a member of the Tampa City Council — the judge in the case denied the return of most of it, apparently agreeing with the feds that doing so would imperil a criminal investigation.

Yesterday, however, the hammer came down: Burke was charged with 14 federal counts: one count of conspiracy, six counts of accessing a protected computer without authorization, and seven counts of intercepting or disclosing wire, oral or electronic communications. The indictment alleges that Burke and an unnamed person used “compromised credentials” to access and save protected commercial broadcast video streams, then disseminated specific clips after taking steps to mask where they came from and how they were obtained. He was arrested and was scheduled to make his first court appearance yesterday afternoon.

I’ve known Tim for many years in that way people know each other on the Internet. I’ve met him in person and had coffee with him and stuff. We’re not close friends or anything, but it would completely shock me if he did what the feds are claiming he did. He knows the spaces in which he operates extremely well and he is well aware of the lines one can and cannot cross when accessing stuff online. While we can never know what happened until we truly and fully know what happened, if I had to guess I’d say that these charges are a function of the feds taking an overly-expansive approach to what “hacking” is, political pressure instigated by Fox in retaliation for being embarrassed, or some combination of the two.

Based on what we know at the moment, a journalist was doing journalism and now faces serious federal charges for it. That’s extremely chilling business.

Justice may be blind, but dear God let it not be naked

There’s been a bunch of dumb arguing back-and-forth about how much Donald Trump’s Palm Beach home/social club Mar-a-Lago is worth. This all came up in the course of Trump’s civil fraud trial, in which it was found that he greatly inflated the value of his holdings, including Mar-a-Lago. Trump and his sycophants believe the place is worth like a billion dollars. Others — including the tax authorities of Palm Beach — believe that it’s worth under $40 million. Given that there’s an entire industry devoted to the valuation of real estate and that I’d trust them about this sort of thing more than I’d trust Trump’s fan club, I’m not gonna engage the substance.

Others are engaging with great fervor, of course. Such as the woman who is almost certainly the dumbest person to ever be elected to the United States Congress:

Like I said, I’m not gonna argue about this. But I absolutely draw the line at demanding that judges be “disrobed.” For one thing, it’s indecent For another . . . have you seen most judges?

Feel free to Back me up here, Lou.

Have a great weekend everyone.

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