Cup of Coffee: September 16, 2024

Good morning!

The Mets lost and, to add injury to insult, might be without Francisco Lindor for a while, the White Sox did something they had not done for nearly three months, Alex Cora admitted that the Sox were throwing at Aaron Judge on Saturday, the Texas Rangers extended a key member of the team, Tyler Glasnow is out for the year, David Bell is on the hot seat, Postseason batting helmets will have ads on them, and a broadcasting legend is retiring.

In Other Stuff, J.D. Vance is even dumber than I thought and I talk about my Pulp weekend in New York.

And That Happened 

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Phillies 2, Mets 1: It was quite a pitcher’s duel between Cristopher Sánchez and David Peterson, each of whom were scoreless through seven before giving up a run each in the eighth. Tied at one in the bottom of the ninth, Edwin Díaz struck out Bryce Harper and gave up a single to Nick Castellanos who subsequently stole second. With two out and JT Realmuto down to his last strike, the Phillies catcher singled home Castellanos for the walkoff win and the series victory. Worse than just the loss for the Mets: Francisco Lindor, who was forced out of Friday's game with back soreness and who, on Saturday, missed his first full game of the season, exited this one in the second with a recurrence of back discomfort. After the game he said he's going to undergo an MRI. One has to assume he’ll miss more time, which in addition to being bad for its own sake is super bad news for a Mets club in a dogfight for an NL Wild Card.

Nationals 4, Marlins 3: James Wood hit two homers, solo shots in the fifth and eighth, and MacKenzie Gore pitched six innings of two-hit ball to give the Nats three of four in the series. Washington went 11-2 against Miami this year. Which is a big reason why the Marlins officially clinched last place on the NL East yesterday. Another reason they clinched last place was because, due to a ton of trades and the use of something like 44 pitchers this year, the Marlins basically turned themselves over like three times in-season. Roster stability can be overrated, but the Marlins were like the goddamn Ship of Theseus in 2024 and that ship sure as hell was never gonna sail.

Padres 4, Giants 3: Heliot Ramos homered in the bottom of the ninth to force extra innings, and it was a McCovey Cove splash hit, which I read had never been done before by a right-handed hitter before, so that was cool! Seems crazy to me that that park has been around for 25 seasons now and it’s just now happened for the first time, but I believe everything I read on Twitter, so here we are. The coolness, unfortunately, stopped there for the Giants as the Padres picked up two in the tenth via a Manfred Man-scoring single and a Luis Arraez double followed by a Donovan Solano RBI single. The Giants could only manage one run in their half of the tenth, costing them the game and giving the Padres the series sweep. It was a pretty ugly weekend for the Giants, with manager Bob Melvin saying on Saturday that "It almost feels like it's cratering here.” I think that’s putting things too strongly, really. Saying that a baseball team is “cratering” implies that it was playing good baseball before. The Giants have been mediocre all year. Hell, they’ve been mediocre for most of the past decade.

Tigers 4, Orioles 2: Riley Greene homered twice — a two-run shot in the third and a solo shot in the eighth — to help give the Tigers the series, two games to one. Tigers starter Keider Montero tossed five scoreless. Adley Rutschman hit a two-run shot in the eighth but it wasn’t enough. Detroit wins its third series in a row and remains two and a half behind the Twins for the third Wild Card spot.

Twins 9, Reds 2: Twins rookie Brooks Lee drove in five via a two-run single in the sixth and a bases-loaded triple in the seventh. Carlos Santana hit a two-run shot and Ryan Jeffers had two hits and scored two runs. Minnesota avoids the sweep but they now start a seven-game road trip that has them facing division-leading Cleveland and then Boston, so they’re not safe from the Tigers and the Mariners just yet.

Yankees 5, Red Sox 2: New York took an early 4-0 lead thanks to homers from Gleyber Torres and Aaron Judge and never looked back. Giancarlo Stanton drove in two. Carlos Rodón worked effectively into the sixth. My plane leaving LaGaurdia to take me back to Columbus took off over the Bronx and I could see into the stadium while this one was going on but I suppose that’s neither here nor there. The Yankees took three of four from Boston and now have a three-game lead over the Orioles in the AL East with 12 to play.

Pirates 4, Royals 3: Isiah Kiner-Falefa had three hits including a go-ahead single in the fifth, Bryan Reynolds doubled in Kiner-Falefa as well, and Rowdy Tellez drew a bases-loaded walk as the Pirates avoided a three-game sweep. Oneil Cruz left the game with a bum ankle, sustained when the new outfielder slipped while going after a ball. It didn’t seem super serious as Cruz stayed in the game for a while after he hurt himself before it stiffened up, but it’s worth watching.

Blue Jays 3, Cardinals 2: Davis Schneider hit a two-run homer in the fifth, Lars Nootbaar’s solo shot in the seventh tied things up, and Nathan Lukes drove in the go-ahead and eventually winning run with a double in the eighth. Toronto completes the three-game sweep. The Cardinals have lost six of nine — not nice! — to fall below .500

Guardians 2, Rays 0: Guardians starter Ben Lively tossed five shutout innings, allowing four hits, and four Cleveland relievers combined for four no-hit innings to finish things off. Brayan Rocchio had an RBI single. Angel Martínez scored the second run on a delayed double-steal attempt, with José Ramírez getting thrown out at second base on the play. The clubs split the four-game set. Cleveland has a four-game lead in the Central.

White Sox 4, Athletics 3: Gavin Sheets and Bryan Ramos each hit homers and Chicago starter Sean Burke was effective over five to pick up his first career win. Two-game winning streaks aren’t really a thing but they are for the White Sox because, Jesus, have you seen them? It’s the first time they’ve won back-to-back games since they won three in a row against Atlanta and Colorado from June 27 through June 29. It’s their first series win in 20 series.

Cubs 6, Rockies 2: Michael Busch had a go-ahead RBI single in the third, then hit solo homers in the seventh and ninth innings to help Chicago snap their three-game losing streak. Pete Crow-Armstrong hit a two-run shot as well.

Mariners 7, Rangers 0: George Kirby was dominant, allowing just one hit over seven shutout innings and two relievers finished off the 105-pitch one-hitter. Mitch Garver hit a three-run homer in the first against his old club, Randy Arozarena homered in the seventh, and two sac flies and an RBI single rounded out the scoring. Seattle takes three of four in the series and they’re now tied with Detroit, two and a half out of the Wild Card

Astros 6, Angels 4: Ronel Blanco shut the Angels out for six and while the Angels rallied late they didn’t rally enough. Jason Heyward homered and singled in a run. Jeremy Peña, Mauricio Dubón, and Jake Meyers singled in runs. Another scored on a passed ball. Houston completes the three-game sweep and wins its fourth in a row.

Diamondbacks 11, Brewers 10: This was a wild one. Arizona had a 5-0 lead after three but blew it by the sixth thanks to Jackson Chourio’s three-run homer, Eric Haase’s two-run shot, and Willy Adames’ two-run double. Sal Frelick made it 8-5 with a seventh inning double but the Snakes came back with two in the seventh and one in the eighth to force extras. The Brewers bounced back again, getting two runs in the tenth when Chourio knocked in two with a triple. The Diamondbacks had one last rally in them, though, with Adrian Del Castillo singling in the Manfred Man, after which Milwaukee reliever Jared Koenig giving up two straight singles to load the bases and then plunked Christian Walker to tie the game. Eugenio Suárez walked it off with an RBI single. Arizona avoids the sweep. Whew.

Dodgers 9, Atlanta 2: Atlanta scored two in the third and the Dodgers tied it up thanks to Shohei Ohtani doubling home runs in the fifth and seventh. It remained that way until the ninth when the Dodgers decided to bust out the whuppin’ sticks. Mookie Betts hit an RBI single and then Freddie Freeman singled and two runs scored when Jarred Kelenic let a slow grounder squirt through his glove. The big guns came out after that with Teoscar Hernández hitting a two-run shot followed by solo homers from Tommy Edman and Max Muncy. Just a late-inning shellacking.

The Daily Briefing

Alex Cora admits that the Sox were throwing at Aaron Judge on Saturday

Saturday’s Red Sox-Yankees game had a bit of spice to it as Gerrit Cole hit Rafael Devers in the first, after which Devers had himself a great game, leading the Red Sox to victory. Prior to yesterday’s game Boston manager Alex Cora pretty much admitted that, after the Devers plunking, the Sox tried to hit Aaron Judge in retaliation.

Specifically, Cora was asked if he considered Devers getting hit was “a closed case.” Cora said, “it was closed yesterday around the sixth inning. We had our chance. It didn’t happen and we have to move on.” That “we had our chance” comment pretty clearly refers to Sox pitcher Brayan Bello throwing one behind Judge’s back and one inside during Judge’s sixth inning plate appearance. Judge lined out to center and Bello was immediately taken out of the game.

We all know this sort of thing happens all the time, but it’s been some time since I’ve heard a manager more or less admit that, yeah, his guy was throwing at the opponent’s slugger in retaliation for something, complete with a “dammit, we missed” sentiment thrown in for good measure, underscoring the whole unwritten rule in which retaliation should happen fairly soon after the transgression for which retaliation is deemed appropriate.

As the J.D. Vance item down in Other Stuff shows, yesterday was a big day for people just coming out and admitting stuff no one ever really admits. What in the hell is going on with this world? Doesn’t anyone know how to lie anymore?

Rangers Extend Chris Young

The Texas Rangers announced on Friday that they've signed general manager Chris Young to a multiyear extension. Young also got a new title: he’s now the Rangers’ President of Baseball Operations. 

Young had been the general manager of the Rangers since December of 2020, when he was originally hired to work under then-team president Jon Daniels. Young took over as the head of baseball operations when Daniels was fired in August of 2022. In 2023, of course, they won the franchise’s first World Series championship and a lot of people gave Young credit for that.

The Rangers have yet to be formally eliminated, but they will miss the playoffs this season. There is a lot of talent in the organization, however, and they no doubt trust Young to be the man to develop it and to add on whatever pieces they need to get back into contention.

Tyler Glasnow is out for the year

The Dodgers have dealt with a ton of pitching injuries and another one hit over the weekend: Tyler Glasnow suffered a strained elbow while warming up to pitch a simulated game on Friday. Glasnow had been attempting to come back from elbow tendinitis that has kept him out since August 11, but now the Dodgers have shut him down completely. Dave Roberts told reporters on Saturday that it's "highly unlikely" Glasnow will return this season. Which, given that the season only has two weeks left in it likely also means the postseason.

Glasnow was effective while healthy this season, having posted a 3.49 ERA with 168 strikeouts in 134 innings across 22 starts. But given his track record — Glasnow had Tommy John surgery in August 2021 and has never pitched more innings than he did in 2024 — it was probably optimistic to hope that he could be the team’s workhorse.

The Dodgers can’t really hope for anyone to be a workhorse at this point. They have seven guys who, at one point or another, were supposed to figure in the Dodgers 2024 rotation mix. They just got Yoshinobu Yamamoto back and he’s great, but he’s also never pitched on short rest in his career and October is all about short rest. Of course the Dodgers haven’t had a starting pitcher top 150 innings for three seasons now, so this is becoming a common problem for them.

You can buy a lot in major league baseball. But you can’t buy pitcher health, it seems. And if the Dodgers don’t make a deep postseason run, a lot of people will be asking what it is specifically about the Dodgers and how they handle their pitchers which causes this to keep happening.

And now I will share, probably for the third time this month, a tweet from my former NBC colleague Patrick Daugherty which moots every single column about the Dodgers pitching that has been written in the past five years or will be written in the foreseeable future:

David Bell is on the hot seat

The Cincinnati Reds finished over .500 last year, they have a decent core of talent, and they do not play in what most folks would consider to be a tough division. Yet they took a step back in 2024 and will finish under .500 and well outside of the postseason picture.

Against that backdrop, on Friday Reds general manager Nick Krall spoke to MLB.com's Mark Sheldon about manager David Bell’s status and said, “He's got a contract for next year. As of right now, we're going to evaluate everything at the end of the year and see what we have to do to move forward."

Not exactly a vote of confidence! Hell, that’s even short of the “dreaded vote of confidence.” And that’s before we even get to the part where Bell is under contract through 2026, not just “next year.” Although that extra year may mitigate against the Reds firing Bell, even if they think he’s the problem, as that’s not a club that likes to spend more money than it has to spend. Indeed, if there is any ownership group which would rather stick with what they feel is a suboptimal management team rather than pay for two managers at once it’s the Castellini family, I reckon.

All of this is separate and apart from whether one considers Bell to, actually, be the problem. I can’t say I watch the Reds enough to say whether he does a good job or a bad job, but (a) the club is underplaying its pythagorean record this year which suggests some bad luck; and (b) I don’t hear a lot of Reds fans complaining about him. Which, no, is not scientific, but in my experience consistent fan complaints about a manager tend to be a rough approximation of bad managing over a sufficiently long period of time.

Postseason batting helmets will have ads on them

MLB announced on Friday that it will place stickers on all batting helmets in the playoffs to promote Engelbert Strauss, a German manufacturer of works clothes. The ads will be roughly 5”x1” stickers on the side of every helmet featuring the words "STRAUSS" alongside the company's ostrich logo:

Strauss also will appear on the helmets of the 120 minor league teams, all season long, from 2025 to 2027 and on MLB helmets in regular games played outside of the U.S. and Canada over that period.

This is just the latest example of literally everything being for sale, always, under Rob Manfred’s stewardship of MLB. It doesn’t matter what the ad looks like. It doesn’t matter what the ad is even for. If someone is willing to throw money at Major League Baseball and its owners, Rob Manfred will take it and do whatever the hell you want in exchange. I’m not the world’s biggest traditionalist or anything, and I get that professional sports are a business, but so much of this is just gross.

Joe Castiglione is retiring

Longtime Boston Red Sox radio broadcaster Joe Castiglione is retiring at the end of the season. He made the announcement during yesterday’s game against the New York Yankees. In his official statement, released by the team, he said "After 42 seasons with the Red Sox and more than 6,500 games, I have decided it's time to retire from a regular broadcast schedule. While I feel I am at the pinnacle of my career ... it's time to spend more time with Jan, my bride of almost 53 years, my kids, and grandkids."

Castiglione, 77, was the radio voice in Cleveland from 1979-80 and again in 1982 and he called games for the Milwaukee Brewers in 1981. His tenure with Boston began in 1983, when Carl Yastrzemski was still playing and the team was still thought of by some to be cursed. But over the course of his four-decade career in Boston he got to call the games of four World Series championship clubs.

Castiglione was inducted into the Red Sox Hall of Fame in 2014 and received the Hall of Fame's Ford C. Frick Award for excellence in broadcasting last July. In 2022 the Fenway Park radio booth was named in his honor. The club announced that he will remain with the club in an ambassador capacity.

Happy trails, Joe Castiglione.

Other Stuff

J.D. Vance is even dumber than I thought

I’ve mostly left the Springfield, Ohio business alone over the past week or two because, even though Springfield is less than an hour down the road from me and even though I know a fair amount about the situation on the ground there, the whole affair disgusts me and the thought of writing about it depressed me. I’ll definitely say, however, that J.D. Vance going on national television yesterday and admitting that he has been knowingly spreading vile, racist, and demonizing lies about it all surprised even me.

To be sure: I knew they were lies, and you knew they were lies, and even he knew they were lies, but Vance admitting publicly that he was lying is something new, isn’t it?

I say that because one of the foundational principles of American politics over the past decade or so has been the idea that Republicans can tell the most blatant lies possible, constantly, and the political media will simply let them do so as long as they never admit they're lying. If they simply lie without acknowledgment of the lie, their statements are almost always offered without much if any pushback until paragraph seven of a nine-paragraph piece, if that. Sometimes there’s no pushback at all until some column comes out two days and two news cycles later after everyone has moved on. Even when GOP pols’ statements are given a formal fact-checking, most of the national press who engages in that business tends to hedge, claiming that even the most blatant lies are simply statements which “lack context” or they are otherwise sanewashed to make the statements appear somewhat reasonable when they are anything but.

That whole deal has made for a pretty great setup for mendacious politicians. They can say whatever they want at any time and they know they can get away with it. But yesterday’s news shows that Vance can’t even stick to that insanely good deal. As a result he’s getting an unprecedented amount of negative press for the sort of Sunday morning talkshow appearance during which politicians are normally free to spew whatever bullshit they’d like. Even the New York Times is calling him out on it and that paper has never met a bald-faced lie that it couldn’t soften as an “alleged falsehood” or a “controversial statement.” Places with actual standards for scrutiny of political figures are going all-in on him.

All of this reminds me of those cartoons in which Wile E. Coyote runs of the ledge of a cliff and stands there suspended in mid air until the moment he notices where he is, at which point he falls. When it comes to politicians, the truth works much like Looney Tunes gravity. As long as it’s never acknowledged, it doesn’t matter. J.D. Vance is so dumb that he forgot that. He looked down and now he’s falling.

Pulp in New York

Allison and I flew to New York this past weekend to see a couple more Pulp shows. I’m now gonna ramble about some of the highlights from the weekend.

We got in on Thursday and went to see Cole Escola’s play, “Oh Mary,” in which Escola plays Mary Todd Lincoln in the days leading up to Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Escola plays Mary as a frustrated cabaret performer who is bored to tears in the White House and spends her days drinking as the Civl War winds down. Abe Lincoln is stressed to the gills, is a less-than-devoted husband to Mary and, at the risk of massive understatement, the events at Ford’s Theater play out a bit differently than actual history did. “Oh Mary” is a nearly-unhinged laugh-packed spoof/farce that is brought home in a tight 80 minutes and if you have the chance to see it before it’s gone in November you should absolutely check it out;

We’ve both been in New York a lot over the past year so we didn’t really feel like doing anything touristy. Indeed, other than “Oh Mary” and the two Pulp shows — more on those below — the only New York stuff we did was eat. As most of you know, Allison has celiac disease. There is a much wider availability of good gluten-free food these days than there was even ten years ago, there are so damn many great options for gluten-free dining in New York that Allison and I always make sure to have a pretty packed restaurant itinerary when we go. There was a lot of Italian this time around:

Bistango: Dinner before “Oh Mary” on Thursday. It’s attached to the Kimberly Hotel on 50th. It’s not some foodie destination or anything. It’s just a solid Italian restaurant. But it rates very, very highly on all of the celiac apps and forums for gluten-free options and for having staff that is extremely well-trained about celiac disease, other food allergies, and cross-contamination stuff. That business is often more important than the restaurant’s culinary reputation. When you’re dealing with dietary restrictions it’s always better to eat solid food at a place that knows what the hell it’s doing than going to some dining mecca where they either don’t know or don’t care how they handle such things;

Rubirosa: Lunch on Friday. A pretty fantastic Italian place with great pastas and pizzas, with its “Tie-Dye Pizza” being a particularly famous item. Think a Margherita pizza but instead of fresh basil they drizzle the best damn pesto I’ve ever had all over it. Yeah, they do it gluten-free. The thing with gluten-free pizza, even at places that do a decent job with it, is that unless it’s a high-volume item, the crust is rarely super fresh The crust on Rubirosa’s gluten-free tie dye was the freshest I’ve ever tasted. We also split a plate of Cacio e Pepe. And had some fried rice balls. And drank a decent amount of wine. Which is why we spent the entire afternoon before the Pulp show that day laying around our hotel room like beached whales, watching “Suits” reruns on Netflix. Someone remind me to write a rant about “Suits” lately. It’s the absolute worst representation of the legal profession in entertainment history, yet I cannot stop watching it.

Thai Farm: When you have celiac disease you can almost always do Thai food, Indian food, and steakhouses. Everything else requires substantive investigation. This is a little family owned joint in Brooklyn where we met friends Jay Jaffe of FanGraphs and Emma Span of The Athletic who live near there and who were also going to the Pulp show Friday evening. By the way: we did not actually buy tickets to see the show with Jay and Emma. We just happened to learn we were going to the same show after the fact and decided to meet for dinner beforehand. We discovered during dinner, however, that Jay and Emma were seated right next to us for the show, by sheer coincidence. I’d say “what are the odds of that?” but I’m guessing some of you out there can figure the odds of any two sets of two tickets being next to one another at a roughly 3,000-seat venue, even if it’s way above my head.

Senza Gluten: Dinner on Saturday. As the name suggests, it’s an all-gluten-free Italian restaurant. It’s in Greenwich Village and has a separate bakery by the same name. Allison and I first found it on a trip there in 2016 and we go there almost every time we’re in New York. They do a lot of traditional things well, ranging from the basics like chicken parm to lobster ravioli and everything in between. I had a great espresso martini. It was only the second espresso martini I’ve ever had, the first of which was literally one week previously, when I was in Chicago. I tend not to do trendy drinks and I had resisted espresso martinis for some time out of principle, but dammit, I like them. I cannot tell you how flummoxed about this.

Modern Bread & Bagel: Think of how bad grocery store refrigerated bagels are. Now imagine how bad grocery store refrigerated gluten-free bagels are. The Trader Joe’s version of them are the best of a bad lot, but they’re all pretty terrible, and unlike most other restaurant styles, you are not finding gluten-free bagel places in most cities. Modern Bread & Bagel is thus heaven. We first found it several years ago. These days Allison gets a dozen of their bagels at a time by mail order and freezes them. So of course we stopped in to the 14th Street location before leaving town yesterday for fresh-as-hell gluten-free bacon, egg, and cheese bagels. I snagged a chocolate babka to take back home with us on the way out.

Enough about food. Let’s talk about the Pulp shows.

Pulp played the Kings Theatre on Flatbush in Brooklyn. It was my first time going to the Kings, but it was fantastic. The Ryman Auditorium in Nashville is probably the best venue I’ve ever been to, but even after only two shows, the Kings is a strong contender for number two. We’ll see what happens once the recency bias wears off, but the place is clean and comfortable, the people who work there are super nice and accommodating, the sound is excellent, entrance and egress is smooth, and it’s simply gorgeous inside. Most any venue you go to, even places you like, are lacking in one of those areas but the Kings was great all around. If an act we like goes on tour in the future, if they’re not coming to someplace driving distance from Columbus, and if multiple otherwise equal out-of-town options are on the table, one of the shows being at the Kings Theatre would definitely be the deciding factor

After the Friday night show I got a chance to meet several subscribers in person who happened to be there too and who either I spotted or who spotted me on the sidewalk outside the theater afterward. That was great fun! As someone who has worked online, in my home, for 15 years I don’t interact with anywhere near as many flesh-and-blood human beings as most people, so I always enjoy it whenever I get a chance to actually say hello to a real face as opposed to a virtual one.

We were in seats for Friday night’s show though, to be sure, everyone stood for the whole show anyway. For Saturday’s show we did general admission/floor and watched the show from an actual standing area in front of the seats. I’d call it “the pit” if it wasn’t a decidedly graying-at-the-temples crowd. “The pit” sounds way more hardcore than this assemblage actually was, and I say that even if Pulp did their song “This is Hardcore” both nights.

We actually made some new friends on Saturday. It was a couple named Ashley and Victor. They’re from Florida, and Pulp was a bucket list concert for them. Also: they’re baseball fans, with Ashley backing the Red Sox and Victor being a Yankees fan so that’s probably a fun household. And Victor subscribed to Cup of Coffee while we were all hanging out, so welcome Victor! No one tell him about most of my exhausting bullshit yet, OK? It’s fun to watch people figure that out for themselves in real time before they unsubscribe. In the meantime, here are the four of us during Saturday’s show:

As for actual music: They were wonderful. Jarvis Cocker turns 61 this week yet he’s every bit as energetically theatrical as he’s always been. The band was once again tight. Here’s Friday’s setlist. Here’s Saturday’s. Allison was pleased as hell that they played “O.U.” which is an early single in the band’s repertoire. “Like a Friend” was in all three shows we saw over the past week but it was a favorite of mine. I’d say that it was great fun to sing along with the common people, but those were pretty expensive tickets so it was not exactly a proletariat crowd. Still, you get the idea.

Bucket list item achieved.

Have a great day everyone.

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