Cup of Coffee: July 22, 2024

Good morning!

Today we talk about the Hall of Fame inductions, Max Fried's injury, Clayton Kershaw's return, some truthful anti-Yankees smack talk, and the Oakland A's layoffs.

As for Other Stuff: I had written 3,300 words on the movies “Twister” and “Twisters” — yes, seriously — and planned to run it today. I even teased it a bit on Twitter and, weirdly, many of you said you were eagerly awaiting it. Probably because I’ve been depressing as hell lately and you’re getting tired of it. I get it.

But, as you no doubt saw, Joe Biden wrote a letter yesterday that was kind of a big deal. Given that the newsletter creaks and groans if you go past 5,000 words — and that, if I ran the “Twister” stuff, talked about Biden, and did the usual baseball stuff, we’d be over 7,000 words, I decided to just bump “Twister” until tomorrow. I promise, though, that none of my trenchant commentary on a 28 year old movie and its sequel will suffer for your having to wait 24 hours to read it.

So let’s hold off on entering the suck zone until tomorrow and get on with the big news today.

And That Happened 

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Phillies 6, Pirates 0: As soon as the Biden news broke yesterday I was certain that Nick Castellanos would hit one of his patented calamity home runs:

*puts my life savings on a "Castellanos hits a homer today" prop*6:13 PM • Jul 21, 2024894 Likes   76 Retweets  15 Replies

He only doubled in his first post-announcement at bat but I’ll be damned if he didn’t deliver later. No, I didn’t actually put any money down on it, but I wish I had. Anyway, four Phillies pitchers tossed a six-hit shutout, the Phillies snapped a three-game losing streak, and the world is healing.

Brewers 8, Twins 7: Jackson Chourio’s seventh inning solo homer tied things up at five, Rhys Hoskins’ two-run shot in the eighth put Milwaukee up 7-5, and Eric Haase’s ninth inning solo shot gave the Brewers enough breathing room to withstand the Twins’ attempt at a late comeback. The Brewers sweep the rare two-game weekend series.

Nationals 5, Reds 2: There were a lot of big late homers yesterday. James Wood’s tie-breaking three-run bomb in the bottom of the eighth was one of them. It sealed a three-game sweep for the Nats as well.

Cardinals 6, Atlanta 2: Paul Goldschmidt, Alec Burleson, Lars Nootbaar and Willson Contreras all hit homers for the Cardinals to give them the rubber match of the series. To add, um, injury to injury, Atlanta second baseman Ozzie Albies was knocked out of the game with a fractured wrist. More on that below in the Daily Briefing.

Oh, and enough people were speculating online about whether or not the Cardinals were doing Trump-inspired celebrations after home runs yesterday that it led to The Athletic to write a story about it. For what it’s worth the Cardinals players denied it. I don’t know. I don’t really care either. Given how most ballplayers roll politically I assume the dugouts are full of Trump guys anyway. If and when any of them make a show of it — if that’s even what the Cards were doing here — it doesn’t tell me much I don’t already presume.

Rays 6, Yankees 4: Like the Cardinals, the Rays won thanks to four homers. They came from Richie Palacios, Jose Siri, Randy Arozarena and José Caballero. Also like the Cardinals: at one point in the game Rays infielder Taylor Walls raised a fist and mouthed the words “fight, fight,” similar to what Trump did right after his assassination attempt. The linked tweet showing that is followed by a bunch of replies from people saying that they’re now gonna buy a Walls jersey and that he’s their new favorite player. Dude is hitting .160 and has a 47 OPS+ and at age 28 ain’t getting any better, but I’m sure you’ll look good staning a guy whose jersey will make everyone ask: “who?”

Blue Jays 5, Tigers 4: George Springer hit two home runs — a leadoff job and a two-run shot in the third — Ernie Clement hit a tie-breaking RBI single in the sixth, and Daulton Varsho made a damn fine catch near the wall in the eighth to help the Jays avoid the sweep.

Marlins 4, Mets 2: Jazz Chisholm Jr. hit a three-run homer in the fourth, Jake Burger hit a solo shot in the seventh, and the Miami bullpen gave ‘em four and a third runs of scoreless relief. The Marlins have the worst record in the National League but they’re 5-4 against the Mets this year.

Padres 2, Guardians 1: Kyle Higashioka’s two-run double in the second inning held up thanks to Michael King taking a no-hitter into the seventh and two relievers helping to complete the two-hitter. This came a day after Dylan Cease and two relievers threw a combined one-hitter Saturday. More teams should hold their opponents to 3-for-55 jags over a couple of games. It gives you a great chance to win. You’re just tempting fate if you don’t do that. San Diego takes two of three.

Royals 4, White Sox 1: Seth Lugo tossed a complete game, allowing just one run on three hits while striking out six and the Royals strung together RBI singles from Hunter Renfroe, Maikel García, and Dairon Blanco in the eighth to give him the win. Lugo is now 12-4 with a 2.38 ERA (174 ERA+) on the season.

Cubs 2, Diamondbacks 1: Seiya Suzuki singled in the tying run in the ninth and Nico Hoerner — who had doubled and then scored on Suzuki’s hit — drew a walk with the bases loaded in the bottom of the tenth for the walkoff win. Shota Imanaga got a no decision but he struck out ten dudes and gave up just one run on two hits in seven frames. The Cubs avoid the three-game sweep.

Rangers 3, Orioles 2: Jonah Heim’s three-run homer in the fourth was all the offense the Rangers would get but it was all they’d need. Anthony Santander’s two-run homer in the eighth was all the offense the Orioles would get but it was less than they’d need. The world is just unfair sometimes. Andrew Heaney pitched two-hit ball over five scoreless innings and the Rangers avoided the three-game sweep.

Giants 3, Rockies 2: Jorge Soler doesn’t always connect, but when he does th hits ‘em far. Here he led off the game with a 478-foot homer, which is the longest anyone has hit one this year. A golf-job straight to dead center:

Later Tyler Fitzgerald led off the third with a homer of his own and Matt Chapman scored on a passed ball in the fourth inning. That put San Francisco up 3-0 and, though they didn’t know it at the time, that was enough to win. The Giants salvage one in the three-game series.

Soler’s homer notwithstanding, the highlight of the day was Giants Bob Melvin getting ejected. Before the game. Lol.

Angels 8, Athletics 5: Oakland took a 5-2 lead into the eighth but the Angels rallied for five that inning with Kevin Pillar’s two-run double breaking the tie. This was the Angels’ final game ever in the Oakland Coliseum. Assuming these two juggernauts don’t meet in the ALCS or somethin’.

Mariners 6, Astros 4: Luke Raley hit a three-run homer in the sixth, turning a 3-2 game into a 6-2 game which eventually translated to a W. Yordan Alvarez hit for the cycle in a losing effort. The Mariners’ surrendered first place in the AL West to the Astros on Saturday night but they it back up with this win. Well, the Astros lead by a game in the loss column, but you get the idea. Kinda crazy that they’re so close given that Seattle had a ten-game lead in the division on June 18. Oh, and bad news for Seattle: Julio Rodríguez left the game in the sixth inning after he leapt for a flyball and appeared to twist his right ankle against the pad of the center field fence (that’s what gave Alvarez the tripe in his cycle, BTW). X-rays came back negative. The Mariners are saying it’s a sprain and that Rodríguez is day-to-day.

Dodgers 9, Red Sox 6: Shohei Ohtai didn’t quite get to Jorge Soler’s level today but he did hit a 473-foot homer, and that’s pretty amazing. Freddie Freeman (417 feet), Teoscar Hernández (372 feet), Gavin Lux (379 feet), Austin Barnes (399 feet), and Jason Heyward (369 feet) hit relative baby homers. The Dodgers complete the three-game sweep.

The Daily Briefing

Adriá Beltré, Joe Mauer, Todd Helton, Jim Leyland inducted into the Hall of Fame

The Baseball Hall of Fame inducted its four newest members yesterday: Adrián Beltré, Joe Mauer, Todd Helton, and manager Jim Leyland. BBWAA's Career Excellence Award winner Gerry Fraley and Ford C. Frick Award winner Joe Castiglione were also honored yesterday.

Beltré and Mauer were first-timers on the ballot. As you may recall from January, they received 95.1% and 76.1% of the vote, respectively. Helton, in his sixth year on the ballot, got 79.7% of the vote. Leyland was elected by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee, which is one of the devolved branches of what was once the Veterans Committee.

The Hall of Fame inductions consist of speeches — both introductory speeches by baseball figures who are close to the inductees and speeches from the inductees themselves — that sort of defy narrative descriptions, so the best bet is to simply watch them if you missed them yesterday. You can do that here:

• Jim Leyland’s speech, which I think was the best. He’s a pretty emotional guy and he didn’t disappoint when it came to putting his very long career in the game of baseball into perspective;
• Joe Mauer’s speech;
• Adrián Beltré’s speech, the highlight of which was David Ortiz touching his head, which you may recall Beltré absolutely hates. He had a momentary reaction but nothing like he did back in his playing days; and
• Todd Helton’s speech.

It also appears that, in addition to those four, Thanos, the Mad Titan, was also inducted:

Some people didn’t think he’d make it, but I always thought his induction was . . . inevitable.

Seriously, though, congratulations fellas.

Ozzie Albies out for eight weeks with a broken wrist, Max Fried goes on the IL with nerve issue

It was a bad day for Atlanta on the injury front yesterday as they lost both their best starting pitcher this year, Max Fried, and their second baseman, Ozzie Albies.

Fried was placed on the 15-day injured list yesterday morning due to left forearm neuritis. The move is retroactive to Thursday. Which was two days after Fried tossed one scoreless inning for the National League in the All-Star Game and seemed alright doing it, though he said yesterday he felt some discomfort while warming up that evening but decided to pitch anyway. Which, um, OK. Fried is 7-5 with a 3.08 ERA (135 ERA+) in 18 starts this season for Atlanta.

Forearm neuritis is a nerve issue. It happens then the ulnar nerve, which runs down your forearm to your pinky finger, gets enflamed or compressed or something and can cause problems with one’s grip or hand/arm strength and can cause some pain or numbness as well. It’s tricky stuff that can come and go quickly or can linger, so it makes sense that Atlanta has not mentioned a timeline for Fried’s return.

Albies was placed on the injured list yesterday after fracturing his left wrist while trying to apply a tag in the ninth inning of the club’s loss to St. Louis. He’s expected to be out eight weeks, which would put him on track to return sometime in mid-September.

This is Albies’ second trip to the IL this year, as he missed 10 days with a toe fracture in April. He entered play yesterday batting .255/.308/.403 (97 OPS+) and eight home runs in 89 games.

Atlanta has already suffered season-ending injuries to both MVP Ronald Acuña Jr. and ace Spencer Strider. Now key contributors Fried and Albies have gone down. Not what you want.

Clayton Kershaw to make his 2024 debut on Thursday

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said over the weekend that Clayton Kershaw will make his first start of the season on Thursday against the San Francisco Giants.

Kershaw, of course, missed the entire first half after undergoing surgery on his left shoulder in November. He has been making rehab starts. On Friday night he went four innings, allowing three runs on six hits with two strikeouts and no walks for Triple-A Oklahoma City. That came a month to the day after he was temporarily shut down after experiencing shoulder soreness following a rehab start at Class-A Rancho Cucamonga, so he’ll no doubt be on a fairly short leash and under watchful doctors’ and trainers’ eyes going forward.

J.T. Realmuto is back

Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto was reinstated from the 10-day injured list on Saturday. He went 1-for-3 with a walk that night. He had the day off yesterday.

Realmuto was placed on the IL on June 11 and underwent meniscectomy surgery on his right knee the next day. The Phillies went 17-15 without him.

Truthful smack talk is the best smack talk

The Mets and Yankees play tomorrow and Wednesday. While I sorta feel like the Yankees-Mets rivalry is at a bit of a lull these days, a current Met and former Yankee did his best on Friday to light a bit of a fire under everyone.

That’d be Luis Severino who, much to his disappointment, is not scheduled to start either of this week’s games. But he’s still trash talking:

"We have a group chat, the guys who've been through the Yankees and stayed with the Yankees. They talk shit about me, like, 'You're afraid of us.’ I said, 'I'm not afraid of you guys. Right now you only have two good hitters.' I can walk those two guys.

Harsh! But where is the lie? As CBS’ Mike Axisa noted the other day, in the 19 games between Giancarlo Stanton going down in late June and the All-Star break, Aaron Judge and Juan Soto hit .291/.431/.575 with 11 home runs. The rest of the Yankees — the entire roster! — hit .214/.283/.354 with 16 home runs.

Severino may have been talking shit, but you sure as hell can pitch to seven of the nine hitters currently in the lineup. On the bright side, Stanton could be back late this week.

One of the costs of the A’s move

The San Francisco Chronicle reported late last week that the Oakland Athletics have begun giving their non-baseball operations people notice of their impending layoffs due to the move to Sacramento. “as many as 50% of their non-baseball operations staff that they will be out of work starting Oct. 31,” the Chronicle reports, with ticket services, finance, stadium operations, marketing, sales, legal, and community relations hit especially hard.

This is not a surprise, of course. Many of those jobs are location-specific and many of those roles are already filled by people who already work at the stadium in Sacramento. But it still sucks. And it makes it a good time to remember that John Fisher and Dave Kaval are doing all of this by choice in order to enrich themselves and they don’t give a shit about who it hurts.

Other Stuff

First . . .

Before we talk seriously about this stuff, I would like us all to laugh at the latest “how it started”/”how it’s goin” to drop.

Here’s CNN’s Wolf Blitzer at 12:47PM yesterday afternoon:

Here he was less than two hours later:

People talk about the sources of political bias all the time, but I think “dude, you totally ruined my brunch” is pretty high up there as a motivator. Look for Wolf’s commentary to skew sharply pro-Trump going forward.

OK, let’s talk about Biden dropping out

Contrary to what many believe, a political party growing concerned with the viability of its leader, discussing whether or not they should be replaced, and then moving to replace them, be it via a pressure campaign or some other mechanism, is not unusual or unhealthy. It’s actually pretty logical and practical. It’s how political parties that want to win elections do it all of the time in just about every country. It’s for this reason that I had little patience for those who were mad at the mere fact that the replace Biden discussion was happening or thought that it was somehow inappropriate, unethical or, to hear some people say it, possibly illegal to be talking about it. Hogwash.

That being said, American political parties tend not to act like political parties elsewhere. Campaigns here are far more about specific people and the party is more about branding than anything. Because of that, talk about replacing a candidate here quickly becomes personal and anything that becomes personal can quickly grow toxic. That’s why I became more worried and anxious the longer this will-he-or-won’t-he/should-he-or-shouldn’t-he business dragged. Indeed, by Saturday I felt like we were tipping into that toxicity so I’m glad that Biden dropped out when he did.

It’s also worth noting that powerful people in this country almost never give up power voluntarily, even when doing so would be far more beneficial for everyone involved. A lot of people in Biden’s position would’ve said “screw the haters” and pressed on and into certain defeat due to their ego or their stubbornness. Biden quitting may have seemed like the obvious move to me and to many of you and in hindsight I suspect it’ll seem like it was the inevitable move, but this could’ve gone very differently. That Biden didn’t dig in for very long is a good thing and a smart thing, so kudos to him for doing it.

Some thoughts about Biden and his decision:

• I’m sure that, over time, we’ll get a fuller story about what went into this. We’ll get a full tick-tock of the three weeks after the disastrous debate which kicked all of this off. There will be scenes of him with his family and his close advisors or whatever. My guess, however, is that polling will prove to have been the determining factor. People convinced Biden that he was heading toward defeat and dragging down Democrats who actually have a chance to win their races and that’s the kind of thing that makes decisions for people;
• Yes, I realize all polls have their faults, but things were trending badly for Biden in the states the Democrat needs to win. In politics, everyone’s personal arguments are eventually rendered moot by the numbers. “Scoreboard,” don’t you know. Better to figure that out on July 21 than on November 5;
• I encountered a lot of ride-or-die for Biden people online in the past couple of weeks. I could not tell if they were truly Biden loyalists, which would be weird, because while Biden is a lot of things, “person who inspires passion” is not usually mentioned among them. Maybe they just don’t like it when mommy and daddy fight so they were plugging their ears and going la-la-la-la or what have you. I don’t know;
• Either way, I’m not sure if there will be recriminations and back-biting from people upset that Biden bowed out as the days go on or if, now that it’s done, they’ll drop it. All I can really say to those people is “see the earlier bullet point about polling.” Even if one thinks that polls going the wrong way over the last three weeks was the result of an unfair pile-on, or a coup, or a media feeding frenzy, or whatever, they were going the wrong way. Ultimately, the “why” doesn’t matter. The debate disaster happened. People, understandably, got freaked out. Once that started no one was going to be able to stop it except for Biden via a forceful showing of his vitality and vigor and he simply couldn’t do that;
• While “the polls are the polls” is almost all that mattered here, I am personally still curious about Biden’s health. It’s probably worth remembering that he said last week that he’d only bow out if he had a medical diagnosis which counseled he do so. That same day he got COVID. I’m guessing he’s not bowing out because of COVID. Maybe he’s not even going to cite a medical diagnosis when he speaks to the public later this week, as he said he would. Part of me is genuinely concerned that he has a serious illness, however. It’s unseemly to speculate about such things and I’m loathe to even bring it up in an otherwise breezy set of bullet points, but he is neither physically or mentally in the same place he was even six months ago and I’m wondering if we’ll eventually hear that there was more to all of this than Biden just losing his fastball due to age. Sorry if my mentioning that comes off as crass, but I can’t get it out of my head. We can put a pin in that for another time, however.

Now some thoughts about Kamala Harris and what comes next:

• Biden endorsed Harris yesterday. For several reasons, some of which I wrote about recently, it strikes me as insanity to go with anyone else. It’d be a slap in the fact to Harris personally and it’d be a middle finger to a lot of women and a lot of people of color. And that’s before you get into the stuff about the campaign money and the possibility that Republicans would try to ratfuck things with litigation or what have you. For all of these reasons — and because I think she’d be a good candidate over the next three and a half months — I think it’d be madness for her to not be the nominee;
• That being said, there is no mechanism for Harris automatically becoming the nominee in a new election. Biden’s delegates aren’t obligated to support her. They have theoretically pledged their loyalty to him and his request that they back Harris might cause many if not most of them to do so, but it’s not a given. Like, there was some talk bubbling up over the weekend about people like Nancy Pelosi trying to get someone else. We’ll see over the next few days if that was just news vacuum-filling chatter or if there’s something to it;
• All of that said, my gut feeling is that the Democrats will quickly line up behind Harris. The paralysis/uncertainty period is over. Now things matter. If I had to guess, I’d say that whatever intrigue was afoot before will die out really quickly;
• To that end: Harris was smart yesterday saying she was happy to be “running for the nomination” or words to that effect, as opposed to proclaiming herself anything. I would assume that, in the next few days, anyone who would even be remotely credible will bow out and/or voice support for Harris. Democrats are not master tacticians and they have a tendency to step on their own dicks, but I’d be shocked if they don’t realize how destructive an open convention or a brokered convention, with a nearly one-month leadup to it, would be.
• That being said: the media will 100% try to talk up the possibility of an open convention as a good thing. A throwback to the days of old-timey politics! Don’t buy it. It’d be chaos. The media would love it because it’d be fun to write about and it’d make for great TV and great TV ratings. Republicans would love it because of the chaos. It’d do nothing good for the prospects of whatever nominee arose from all of that a month from now;
• Donald Trump wanted to campaign against Joe Biden. The entire Republican campaign apparatus, official and unofficial, has been gearing up for it for four years. The F-Joe Biden merch is everywhere and Trump’s stump speeches have been all about “Sleepy Joe” for a very long time. I am guessing that they did not start thinking about how to campaign against Kamala Harris at all until a couple of weeks ago. And I am almost certain that, whatever one could say about Harris in a campaign against her, Trump specifically and a huge number of his surrogates and supporters will settle on a campaign of explicitly racist and misogynistic attacks. It’s who Trump is and it’s who his supporters are;
• When that happens — and I’m guessing it’ll begin today if it hasn’t begun already — it’ll be important to call them out on it. And to make sure the media does too. Not merely in a “hey, that’s not OK” way. But in a way that highlights, in no uncertain terms, that they’re saying this because that’s what modern Republicanism is all about: racism and sexism and all of those ugly things;
• This should be done partially because it’s accurate and the way you go after bigoted bullies is with all barrels firing. It should also be done because it’s the right thing to do tactically. As the past several election cycles have shown, suburban voters, women voters, and the sorts who may be on the fence at this juncture love tax cuts and stuff that benefits them personally, but they are really, really turned off when they’re reminded that the people promising them that stuff are awful people. The devoted base may eat that crap up, but it embarrasses the swing voters to be associated with bald bigotry and misogyny. If Trump goes into the gutter it’ll go badly for him. As long as he’s hit back in a way that highlights his odiousness.

I think that’s all I got on this for now. I promise I’ll run the stuff about “Twister” tomorrow. It’ll be far more enjoyable and far less stressful, that’s for sure.

Have a great day everyone.

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