Cup of Coffee: February 9, 2024

Good morning!

Today: Adolis gets a deal, the A’s need a home, the White Sox are drawing pictures, Rays extensions, the 2028 Olympics, and a year in digital media hell.

In Other Stuff we have a unique item from the crime blotter, another masterful gambit, and a real bummer of some celebrity news.

 The Daily Briefing

Rangers, Adolis García reach a two-year deal 

Adolis García and the Texas Rangers were set to go to an arbitration hearing next week but that’s off now. So too is any potential arbitration hearing next year. That’s because the sides agreed to a two-year, $14 million contract yesterday. There are, in Jon Heyman’s words, "a ton of escalators” in the deal as well.

García, 30, was the 2023 ALCS MVP and set a postseason record with 22 RBI this past fall. For the year he hit .245/.328/.508 (123 OPS+) with 39 homers, 107 RBI, 108 runs, and nine steals.He had had requested $6.9 million in arbitration while Texas offered $5 million. While that was a pretty big gap as far as these things go, the Rangers met him most of the way to his side.

This deal still leaves García with one potential arbitration year as he won’t be eligible for free agency until after the 2026 season. Of course it’s possible once the details of the deal come out that there’s a mechanism in place to cover that season as well via some sort of vesting something or other.

Manfred: the A’s need to figure out where they’re playing in 2025

The Oakland A’s will play in Oakland in 2024. That much we know. They plan to play in a new Las Vegas stadium beginning in 2028. That much they’re hoping for anyway. Their lease in Oakland ends after this coming season, however, and they currently have no plans in place regarding where they’ll play in 2025, 2026, and 2027 while the new joint is, hopefully, being built.

Yesterday Rob Manfred, in response to a reporter’s question outside of the owners meetings, said that he's hoping for clarity about that “in the next few months.” He helpfully added that "it's clearly going to be some place in the west." Glad that’s been narrowed down.

There are a lot of possible options here:

• They could work out a short term lease to continue playing in Oakland, though the optics of a nearly empty, soon-to-be-abandoned zombie park skew a tad . .. funereal;
• They could hammer out a deal with the Giants to share Oracle Park, sort of like how the Yankees and Mets shared Shea Stadium in the mid-70s while Yankee Stadium was being renovated. Not sure the Giants would go for that, though given how dickish they were about territorial rights for so long, which led to the relocation, they sort of owe the A’s one;
• If that’s not in the cards they could try for a somewhat different deal with the Giants and work out a way to play in Sacramento;l
• There’s also the option of them playing in the minor league park in Las Vergas where their own Triple-A affiliate resides as well, but man, how embarrassing would it be if they didn’t even draw there?

None of these are ideal options for various reasons, but they’ll have to figure something out. Not that figuring things out has been John Fisher’s m.o. thus far in this process.

The White Sox release renderings of their potential new park

A few weeks ago the Chicago White Sox announced their intention — or at least their desire — to move to a new ballpark in the South Loop. Yesterday the club released renderings of a possible new park there.

As is the case with all renderings, these images are sunshine-out-the-butt optimistic and almost none of the coolest things anyone can I.D. in the mockups will actually make it into the final product, if indeed the Sox get what they want and there is a final product.

Still, as a kid who used to have his parents buy him huge pads of graph paper on which he’d sketch out imaginary football and baseball stadiums of his own, I always fall for this crap:

It’s always the locals who can call the best bullshit on these kinds of things. Like when the MLS’ Columbus Crew first released renderings of their current stadium a few years back. It showed fireworks going off over the field following a Crew win in front of a packed house with the sun setting over the downtown skyline. Except the downtown Columbus skyline is to the east of the stadium, so the rendering either made no geographical sense or it actually was a sunrise and the Crew started their game at 4:30 in the morning:

So tell me Chicagoans: what doesn’t add up here? I’d love to know.

Rays extend Kevin Cash, Erik Neander

The Tampa Bay Rays have agreed to a contract extension with manager Kevin Cash and President of Baseball Operations Erik Neander. There’s been no official comment or release of details, but Rays officials are expected to discuss the extensions at a spring training-opening presser next week.

Not that it’s any mystery as to why they’re doing this.

Cash, who is about to begin his 10th season as the Rays’ manager, was heading into the final season of his current contract. Cash won back-to-back American League Manager of the Year awards in 2020-21 and finished third in the voting in 2018, 2019 and 2023. The brass seems to like him a lot, the players seem to like him a lot, and he’s been successful, so you do the math. He’s already the logest-tenured manager in his current gig and he’ll likely keep that going for many years.

Erik Neander also signed a contract extension. He’s still only 40, but he’s been with the Rays since since 2007, when he was hired as an intern. He was promoted to president of baseball operations in September 2021 and the Rays have, basically, failed to miss a beat despite their chronically low payroll.

Could major leaguers play in the 2028 Olympics? 

The Athletic reports that MLB owners heard a presentation on Wednesday about how MLB players could play in the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

Potential ideas: turning Olympic baseball into a five or six-day tournament in mid-July, which could be accommodated by slicing off some games or punting on the All-Star Game for a year. Or, possibly, incorporating the All-Star Game into the Olympics somehow.

This part is potentially fun:

Were a reduction in regular-season games necessary, it would likely be a very small number of games — perhaps down to 158 games or so. The World Baseball Classic could also potentially be used as a qualifier for nations to make it into the Olympics. (The next WBC is scheduled for 2026.)

No decision is near, and a huge number of hurdles and logistics would need to be accounted for. Any plan would require the approval of the players’ union.

It’ll be a hoot when the owners propose an Olympics plan that slices games off the season while concurrently demanding a reduction in pay for all players, regardless of whether or not they’re participating in the Olympics. Because you know damn well that’s coming. Assuming any of us are still alive in 2028, I’m sure I’ll have some opinions about that, so stay tuned.

A year in digital media hell

I haven’t followed football for a very long time, but I’m familiar with NFL writer Mike Tanier and his work, as we’ve both inhabited the same sort of digital sports spaces for many, many years. I don’t know him personally or anything, but I’ve read his work and all of the smart folks whose opinions I respect say great things about him.

Like a lot of folks in digital media, Mike has had a rough go of it of late. His longtime gig at Football Outsiders went up in smoke earlier this year, his secondary gig, writing for the New York Times, likewise went poof, and then last week he was one of the hundreds of casualties when The Messenger imploded like a billionaire’s hubris-powered deep sea submersible. Oh, and it closed AFTER Mike had paid for a non-refundable plane ticket and a hotel room for Super Bowl week for which now he’ll never be reimbursed.

Over at Defector Mike chronicled his shitty, shitty previous 12 months, and in doing so explained in the clearest possible terms just how rough it is out there for journalists these days:

The media industry is a carcass getting picked clean by scavengers. The business models that made sense even five years ago no longer work. There are too many entrepreneurs seeking riches that were never there, too many SEO farms covering every web search with unreadable kudzu, too many social-media moguls treating links outside of their fiefdoms as an act of treason. The whole system is now so gamed that readers have a hard time finding good information or entertainment, while informative and entertaining people cannot find readership. It’s a hostile environment for consumer and producer, and it’s not getting better.

But now he has a way forward:

I love this work. I am good at it. But I cannot afford to sign on with another hedge-fund dink who has startup capital burning through his cargo shorts and some vague ideas about scale. I can’t bear another round of thanking readers for reaching out on social media after another employer slipped out of town in the dead of night. I cannot stomach another morning waking up to do a job that I am not even certain will still exist by the end of that day. My only choice, as I see it, is to work for someone I can trust not to sell the farm out from under me: myself. 

The “Myself” is a link to his new newsletter, Too Deep Zone. Yes, it’s on Substack but don’t hold that against him. It’s really the easiest way to get this sort of venture going, even if it’s worth looking for ways to get off of it later.

If you’re a football fan who likes good, smart football writing, please give Mike a chance. Every journalist who gets off the burning hamster wheel that is corporate-owned media is a victory for sanity, humanity, and grace.

Other Stuff

What a turkey 

A professional bowler was arrested last week. That’s not necessarily news, as people in every single profession have been arrested for something at some point. But the timing of this bowler’s arrest was something:

Brandon Novak, 36, of Chillicothe, was arrested by U.S. Marshals on Feb. 1 in the middle of the tournament at Royal Pin Woodland in Indianapolis.

Charles Sanso, deputy U.S. Marshal for the Southern District of Ohio and a member of the Southern Ohio Fugitive Apprehension Strike Team (SOFAST), said that Novak had an active arrest warrant out of Ross County, Ohio . . . The 11th Frame, a digital daily newspaper dedicated to news about bowling, reported Novak's arrest. The publication said marshals took Novak into custody during the second portion of the tournament, but before he could bowl to pick up a spare.

The best part: the dude, despite being pinched mid-frame, still scored high enough overall to finish in the money, winning $1,500.

Which, apparently, was not enough to go his bail, because at press time he was still sitting in a jail cell, awaiting extradition back to Ohio. Which, thankfully for someone of Novak’s particular persuasion, does not have a three-strikes law.

Masterful gambit, sir!

To review:

• Elon Musk takes over Twitter;
• Elon Musk actively encourages Nazis and other extremist hate-mongers to post on the site, going so far as to even un-ban thousands of them who were previously banned for posting violent, threatening, and/or otherwise abhorrent content;
• Large corporations who had, for years, gladly paid to advertise on Twitter objected to that content and pulled their advertising;
• Now Musk is encouraging and underwriting totally meritless lawsuits against the advertisers which pulled out.

I feel like spitefully suing one-time advertisers when they cease advertising with you for very reasonable reasons is not gonna do much to encourage future advertising on your platform. But maybe I’m just naive. Maybe my thinking in this regard is why I’m not a multi-billionaire.

Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires are splitting up

News broke yesterday morning that singer/songwriters Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires are getting a divorce.

Celebrity breakups are a dime a dozen, but Isbell’s and Shires’ lives and careers have been almost inextricably intertwined over the past 11 years. Isbell’s career and probably his life was saved by his sobriety, his sobriety was largely a function of his meeting and falling in love with Shires and her urging him to go to rehab and get healthy, after which the two of them both served as the other’s most important creative collaborators on their various albums and tours over the years. And of course both of them, but particularly Isbell, have written a hell of a lot of songs about their marriage, their daughter, and their lives together. Indeed, Isbell’s signature song — and probably his best — is 2013’s “Cover Me Up” which is explicitly about Shires and his journey into sobriety which would not have happened without her.

It's never a good idea to get into parasocial relationships with celebrities. We do it all the time, but we shouldn’t. And no matter how open people are about themselves publicly — and Isbell and Shires have let people see way deeper into their private spaces than almost any celebrities I can imagine — you still never truly know them and what’s going on in their lives and you shouldn't assume that you do.

Still, this one is a bummer. Not gonna lie. This one punched me in the gut.

Have a great weekend everyone.

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