Cup of Coffee: September 2, 2024

Good morning!

Three different teams scored 14 runs yesterday. That’s not a thing you see every day, at least when it’s not 1999 or whatever. Used to happen all the dang time back then.

Anyway, today we look at an amazing catch, an ace is injured again, the Royals will take whatever it is you’re sellin’, someone many of you likely still think of as a baby is now a major leaguer, and private equity is coming for youth sports.

In Other Stuff I talk about Nicolas Cage and A.I., about what introverts really want, and about the absurdity of us still having a penny.

And That Happened 

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Reds 4, Brewers 3: Pinch-hitter Santiago Espinal drove in Rece Hinds with a walkoff infield single that ricocheted off the pitcher in the bottom of the 11th. The game had otherwise been tied at three since the fifth but the Cincinnati pen was on top of things, and Brewers hitters went 0-for-21 from the fifth inning-on, with only four baserunners if you include their two Manfred Men. Milwaukee’s five-game winning streak ends. The Reds avoid being swept.

Cubs 14, Nationals 1: When you see a team put up two touchdowns you figure there’d be a grand slam or multiple two-run shots or whatever in the mix but nope. Neither team hit home run in this game. The Cubs did have 18 hits and drew four walks, however. Dansby Swanson had four of those hits, Isaac Paredes had three RBI, and Cody Bellinger, Nico Hoerner and Miguel Amaya each drove in two runs. The Cubs have won six in a row and have scored 99 runs in their last 10 games. They finish this road trip 8-1, though the games were against the Marlins, Pirates, and Nats. But hey, those are teams you’re supposed to beat and Chicago is at least in the Wild Card conversation now. They’re off to the side of that conversation, hovering near the bar while waiting for a chance to go talk to the host and thank them for the invite, but they’re there.

Cardinals 14, Yankees 7: Jordan Walker went 5-for-5 with a homer and three RBI and Lars Nootbaar drove in five via a bases-loaded double and a two-run homer. Luken Baker also went deep. After the game Walker said, “I think five-hit days are sick.” That’s not me doing a setup for a joke. Walker actually said that. He’s 22. That’s how Gen-Zers talk. The Cards take two of three from the Yankees and have won four of five overall.

Tigers 4, Red Sox 1: Spencer Torkelson and Riley Greene each hit two-run homers and Brant Hurter pitched five innings of one-run ball for the win. Detroit takes two of three from Boston and remains right on their tail for fourth place in the Wild Card race. Which, honestly, I think is going to end with the O’s and whichever the two contending teams from the AL Central don’t win the division, but again, the conversation.

Guardians 6, Pirates 1: This was Kyle Manzardo’s 31st big league game. He hadn’t hit all that well in the first 30 and that caused him to be sent down to my town, but he was called back up over the weekend. This was his first game back and he hit two homers. I can only assume he was powered by a productive stop at Grandpa’s Cheese barn and the Goasis travel center at the Ashland exit off of I-71. That always puts a spring in my step on the way to Cleveland. Otherwise, Alex Cobb did not allow a baserunner through the first six innings and more experienced hitters José Ramírez and Andrés Giménez went deep. Cleveland takes two of three.

Padres 4, Rays 3: San Diego took a 3-0 lead in the fourth, lost that lead in Tampa Bay’s three-run sixth, but then went ahead in the top of the ninth on a Xander Bogaerts sac fly. Jackson Merrill hit a two-run homer in the fourth. Rays pitchers walked ten Padres batters.

Astros 7, Royals 2: Yordan Alvarez hit two homers, giving him 30 on the year, and Jon Singleton went deep as well. Houston sweeps the four-game set and has won five straight overall. The Royals have lost five overall. They also made a flurry of roster moves over the weekend in an effort to overcome injuries and keep this improbably good season going. More on those roster moves down in the Daily Briefing.

Mets 2, White Sox 0: Sean Manaea pitched two-hit ball over seven innings and two relievers finished the two-hit shutout. Francisco Lindor went deep. The Mets sweep the three-game set and have won four in a row. Chicago loses its tenth game in a row, its 14th of 15, and its 107th of 138. In the process they have set a new franchise record for losses in a season. They still have nearly the whole month of September to play, during which they will break that record many, many more times.

Twins 4, Blue Jays 3: The Jays clung to a 1-0 lead from the first until the seventh inning when the Twins tied it up on a groundout. Toronto plated two more in the eighth on a bases-loaded plunking and a groundout of their own but Royce Lewis hit a go-ahead three-run home run in the bottom half and that lead held. Bailey Ober allowed a solo homer in the first inning but that was the only hit he allowed over six. Minnesota takes two of three.

Orioles 6, Rockies 1: Zach Eflin struck out nine over seven innings, allowing just one run, James McCann hit a two-run homer and four RBI singles from four different guys completed the Baltimore attack. The O’s take two of three and are just a half game behind the Yankees in the “no one really seems to want to win it” American League East.

Rangers 6, Athletics 4: Oakland had a 4-3 lead with two outs in the bottom of the tenth when Josh Jung hit a three-run homer off Mason Miller to win it in a walkoff. Oakland had gone ahead in the top half when Seth Brown hit a tie-breaking RBI triple and Zack Gelof followed with a double, but boom boom boom boom Jung shot ‘em right down. Texas takes two of three.

Marlins 7, Giants 5: The Fish bats got to Giants ace Logan Webb, who allowed six runs on eight hits in six innings. Kyle Stowers hit a three-run homer, Nick Fortes had three hits and scored two runs. The Giants mounted something of a comeback but the Marlins plated two more runs and won going away. Miami takes two of three from San Francisco. They’re a worse team than the Giants but there are few teams more disappointing than the Giants if that makes any sense. One huge, fluke season in 2021 notwithstanding, they’ve been spinning their damn wheels for a decade.

Angels 3, Mariners 2: Baseball’s first Caden — Angels starter Caden Dana — picks up a win in his major league debut, allowing two runs over six. Taylor Ward homered and Anthony Rendon provided the go-ahead hit with a two-run single in the fifth. Angels take two of three.

Diamondbacks 14, Dodgers 3: The Dodgers won two nail-biters on Friday and Saturday despite having a pitching staff that has taken more casualties than the median infantry platoon at the Battle of the Somme. At some point, however, the chewing gum and bailing wire gives out and this was that day. Randal Grichuk hit a three-run homer, Eugenio Suárez homered and had two RBI, and Geraldo Perdomo hit a two-run double as the Diamondbacks rode an eight-run second inning and 14 hits in all too easy a win. The Dodgers’ four-game winning streak ended and the Snakes avoid the sweep. L.A. maintains a five-game lead over both Arizona and San Diego.

Phillies 3. Atlanta 2: Nick Castellanos doubled two runs in in the sixth to tie things up at two and then he singled in the Manfred Man in the 11th for the walkoff. Philly takes three of four from Atlanta and now enjoys a seven-game lead over Atlanta.

The Daily Briefing

Michael Harris II’s amazing catch

As this newsletter is a weekday concern I don’t normally talk too much about what happened on Fridays and Saturdays, but Atlanta center fielder Michael Harris II made such a fantastic catch on Saturday night in Philly that I have to make sure anyone who may have missed it gets a look at it here:

The phrase “you just gotta tip your cap” is overused, but in this case you just gotta tip your cap.

Clayton Kershaw hits the injured list again

The Dodgers placed Clayton Kershaw on the 15-day injured list on Saturday. Kershaw left Friday's game against the Diamondbacks in the second inning due to discomfort in his foot and he was was diagnosed with a bone spur in his left big toe.

Dave Roberts said Kershaw’s toe was so swollen that he could barely move around. He said the club won't know for sure how long Kershaw will be out until the swelling goes down but that they are hopeful he'll return before the end of the season. Which, it’s Kershaw, so who the hell knows, as he hasn’t been consistently healthy for years. This year he didn't pitch until July 25 after having offseason shoulder surgery. Through Friday’s short start he is is 2-2 with a 4.50 ERA in 30 innings across seven starts.

The Dodgers, who, as mentioned in the recaps, have had a lot of pitching casualties, called up Ben Casparius and Brent Honeywell to replace Kershaw and reliever Joe Kelly, who himself was also placed on the IL on Saturday with right shoulder inflammation. They have a five-game lead and the teams chasing him have probably played their baseball of the year already, but this obviously isn’t great for the boys in blue.

Royals claim Tommy Pham and Robbie Grossman, acquire Yuli Gurriel 

The Kansas City Royals lost 106 games in 2023. This year they have been competitive for most of the season and entered play on Saturday in the thick of both the AL Central and Wild Card race. They also entered Saturday down a couple of bats with the loss of Hunter Renfroe to a hamstring injury and the loss of first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino, who broke his right thumb, requiring surgery and a six-to-eight-week absence.

On Saturday afternoon the Royals front office responded to those developments with a number of acquisitions: they claimed veteran outfielders Tommy Pham and Robbie Grossman off waivers from the Cardinals and Rangers, respectively, and they acquired first baseman Yuli Gurriel from Atlanta for cash.

Pham, 36, was acquired by the Cardinals from the Chicago White Sox at the trade deadline, but he did not hit well in St. Louis, the Cardinals did not improve, and they thus decided to dump him, DFA’ing him late last week. For the entire season Pham is hitting .254/.321/.378 (97 OPS+), though in the past he has gone on hot streaks after being acquired by contenders, so maybe getting back into an actual playoff chase may help him.

Grossman, 34, also played for the White Sox earlier this year, with the Rangers acquiring him in May. He’s batting .227/.333/.324 (90 OPS+) with three home runs in 71 games for Chicago and Texas.

Gurriel had played the entire season at Triple-A Gwinnett, hitting .292/.378/.485 with 12 homers in 75 games. That’s pretty good for a 40 year-old. Unfortunately for Gurriel, at this point in his career he can only play first base and DH, and Matt Olson and Marcell Ozuna are basically the only Atlanta players who haven’t been hurt all year, so there really wasn’t a need for him. Now he’ll have a hand in helping to replace Pasquantino at first base.

In an age in which “we like the depth we have in-house” is a fairly common cover for GMs who are unwilling to make moves, I sort of like the Royals’ “LET’S THROW SOME BODIES AT IT!” solution. Will it work? I dunno, all three of those guys have seen their best days. But it’s also the case that all three of them could, at least theoretically, go on a two-week tear that helps the club’s playoff chances. Even if it doesn’t work, hey, it’s more fun!

Nationals called up Darren Baker

It’s September and that means roster expansion and September callups. Most of them are of little to no consequence, but the Washington Nationals made a fun move: they’ve called up utilityman Darren Baker.

Yes, that Darren Baker. The son of former Nationals manager Dusty Baker. The same Darren Baker made famous when J.T. Snow saved his then-three-year-old ass during the 2002 World Series after Baker went to retrieve a bat while the ball was still in play and while David Bell was running toward home to score:

Baker, 25, was selected by the Nats in the 10th round of the 2021 Draft out of University of California. He has had a nice season at Triple-A Rochester, hitting .285/.348/.340 with 20 doubles, two triples, 49 RBI, 70 runs scored and 38 stolen bases in 112 games. I don’t think that really makes him a prospect, but he could certainly be useful as a big league utility player if the hitting keeps up. And, of course, he’s a hell of a story.

Oh, and he pinch-hit in the ninth inning of yesterday’s blowout and got a single. Welcome to the bigs, Darren Baker.

Private Equity Is Coming for Youth Sports

Last week the NFL voted to allow private equity investments in football teams. They have to be minority investments which entail no controlling interest and there are a bunch of other rules surrounding it. This is probably because, while the NFL and its owners want the cash injection that private equity can supply, they are well aware of what kind of damage private equity can do as it attempts to extract money from its host.

There is no such pushback in youth sports, however, where private equity is scooping up leagues, clubs, tournaments, and everything else that can be monetized in the youth sports sector. From Bloomberg, which frames its story with a private equity company’s acquisition of Cooperstown All-Star Village, which is a youth baseball facility/tournament operator in upstate new York:

David Blitzer and Josh Harris, a pair of private equity billionaires with deep ties to professional sports, took control of the village, paying $116 million for an 80% share. Since then, they’ve assembled a portfolio of more than a dozen companies built around youth sport—including baseball, softball, action sports and flag football—and spanning over 30 states from New Jersey to Oregon. Earlier this year, they formed an umbrella company called Unrivaled Sports LLC for their growing empire. 

Unrivaled is the most prominent development in a wave of mergers and acquisitions in the youth sports industry. Smaller clubs and leagues are combining to form regional powerhouses at the same time that private equity firms are scooping up camps, tournaments and other assets across the country.

May of you will know Blitzer and Harris’ names. Blitzer, a senior executive at the private equity firm Blackstone is, along with Harris, a co-managing partner of the Philadelphia 76ers and the New Jersey Devils and owns a stake in the Washington Commanders. On his own Blitzer has a piece of the Cleveland Guardians. Harris, from the investment firm Apollo Global Management, is also a general partner of the Premier League club Crystal Palace.

The article, however, cites multiple other examples of private equity entities taking either whole ownership or large stakes in youth sports and youth sports-related businesses. They’re, to use Bloomberg’s words, “scooping up camps, tournaments and other assets across the country” resulting in smaller clubs and leagues combining to form regional powerhouses.

To be fair, youth sports and its associated businesses have been something of a cesspool for some time. As we all know via the stories of player development, the days of sandlot sports are essentially over. An entire industrial complex has emerged over the past couple of decades which has made youth sports an expensive, full-time pursuit for both kids and their parents. There are a LOT of sketchy training academies and tournaments and stuff. Fly-by-night operators and outright criminals have messed up what was once thought of as a pretty wholesome world. It’s thus possible that private equity’s move into the scene and the attendant consolidation it occasions will lead to higher standards, a greater sense of professionalism, and the pushing out of the creeps and grifters who have long made youth sports rather icky.

And, to be sure, the article does a really, really deep dive both into the youth baseball tournaments — the reporter had two kids playing in the Cooperstown tournament as he was reporting the story — and he and many of the people he talks to generally come down on a position which can basically be summed up with “private equity makes us uneasy but it’s not like it what it is replacing was any good either.”

Ultimately, though, I can’t get past the idea that private equity exists for one purpose and one purpose only: making money. It is not tasked with helping kids or enriching their lives anymore than it is tasked with keeping nursing homes or legacy retail brands in business, and their investment in those sectors has been nothing short of devastating. Maybe private equity will be better than the low-level grifters which run so much of youth sports now, but what it won’t do is make anything cheaper. That’s just not how private equity rolls. In their pursuit of profits, the new investment class owners of youth sports business are going to make youth sports even more expensive, exclusive, pressurized, and miserable than they already are. And if at some point the money dries up, it’ll just moonwalk away and leave destruction in its wake.

Other Stuff

Face/On

Nicolas Cage does not want anyone to do anything with his image or likeness via AI after he is dead. From a recent New Yorker interview — with Susan Orlean of all people — in which he talked about working on a project which requires full body scans for CGI stuff:

Cage: Well, they have to put me in a computer and match my eye color and change—I don’t know. They’re just going to steal my body and do whatever they want with it via digital A.I. . . . God, I hope not A.I. I’m terrified of that. I’ve been very vocal about it.

Orlean: It’s really scary.

Cage: It is. And it makes me wonder, you know, where will the truth of the artists end up? Is it going to be replaced? Is it going to be transmogrified? Where’s the heartbeat going to be? I mean, what are you going to do with my body and my face when I’m dead? I don’t want you to do anything with it!

For the record, yes, Orlean and Cage talk a lot about the movie “Adaptation,” in which Orlean’s book The Orchid Thief was turned inside-out by writer Charlie Kaufman, who Cage played. Yes, the writer of the movie was a character in the movie. Cage also played Kaufman’s twin brother Donald, who does not actually exist. And yes, The Orchid Thief is non-fiction. It’s a long story if you don’t know about it but you should totally see it.

There was another recent New Yorker article which talked about how AI will never truly be able to make art because real art requires human choices and there are is no way AI will ever be able to encapsulate the number and nature of human choices which go into writing a novel or painting a picture, and that’s before you even get into what informs those choices, which is arguably more important to the work of art than the choices themselves.

I realize that he’s highly polarizing, often over-the-top, and that he has made a great many terrible movies, but I actually like Nicolas Cage as an actor. I think the biggest reason I like him, even in his bad movies, is that the guy very, very clearly makes about a billion choices before every word he utters and every step he takes on a set. He probably drives directors crazy. Hell, he drives a lot of viewers crazy, myself sometimes included. But let no one say Nic Cage has ever mailed anything in or that he hasn’t thought about his part deeply, to the point of near absurdity.

So no, Nic. I don’t think you have a thing to worry about when it comes to AI replicating you after you are gone. We’ll all be able to spot the flaws five seconds in.

What introverts want

I saw this in the wild last week:

As someone who is married to an introvert, I can tell you that this is complete bullshit. What introverts actually want is for people to leave them the fuck alone. That’s the rough definition of introversion, and that’s all it means. Within that framework there may be weird wannabe influencer/life coach types like this guy who use eye-rolly phrases like “spiritual journey” or “soul talk,” but the introverts I know are happy to talk about silly and inconsequential things with the people they like and with whom they feel comfortable in spaces in which they feel comfortable.

You see a lot of these sorts of posts these days. Posts in which a person presumes to define an entire category of folks — which includes millions of people! — pursuant to some very specific traits which they, themselves, just so happen to embody. “Millennials believe . . .” “Introverts want . . . “ “Libras are like . . .” It’s complete baloney.

Millennials are people born during a certain set of years. Libras are people born during a particular time of year. Introverts are generally reticent people who are not naturally comfortable in social situations and thus tend to turn primarily inward. That’s it. Everything else laid on top of that is either projection or someone trying to stir up stuff or make a buck.

The absurdity of the penny

Many people are aware of the fun fact that a penny — our pretty little one-cent coin — costs more than three cents to produce. That, in and of itself, makes the idea of even having pennies pretty suspect, but it’d be defensible if the existence of pennies lubricated the American financial system in such a way that a penny’s production costs were outweighed by the efficiencies a penny’s existence created.

But as this fascinating, often funny, and mildly enraging New York Times Magazine story by Caity Weaver makes clear, that’s not the case. In fact, having pennies at all is a gigantic problem even if they weren’t money-losers to begin with:

Most pennies produced by the U.S. Mint are given out as change but never spent; this creates an incessant demand for new pennies to replace them, so that cash transactions that necessitate pennies (i.e., any concluding with a sum whose final digit is 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 or 9) can be settled. Because these replacement pennies will themselves not be spent, they will need to be replaced with new pennies that will also not be spent, and so will have to be replaced with new pennies that will not be spent, which will have to be replaced by new pennies (that will not be spent, and so will have to be replaced). In other words, we keep minting pennies because no one uses the pennies we mint.

That’s the so-called “Penny Paradox.” Which, in addition to being stupid, wasteful, and pointless, also occasions at least a mild threat: if a significant number of people took it upon themselves to start rolling pennies and trading them in to banks and stores and stuff for higher denominations, it would create a serious and costly logistical problem for banks, as they’d take up a ton of room and would be costly to transport. All that low-value but high-volume hard currency would create giant headaches.

The article goes on to provide a great deal of information about pennies and money that is at turns fascinating, frustrating, and downright hilarious. Among the fun stuff:

• There’s a lobbying operation that helps keep pennies as legal tender that, it just so happens, is owned and run, 100%, by the private company which currently provides 100% of the zinc used in making pennies;
• Coinstar machines are way, way more significant to the coin-circulation economy than you ever realized, and the reason you saw so many “coin shortage” and “please use exact change” signs during the pandemic is because people weren’t using Coinstar machines as much. There were a sufficient number of coins out there, but they were simply not moving around. It sounds crazy to say it, but a non-trivial portion of the economy relies on Coinstar now;
• The classic arguments one hears about why we still have pennies are mostly B.S. People often say that charities love them because of small donations, but nope: most charities don’t even collect spare change anymore. They get far more from “round-up” transactions at points of sale. Likewise, people say that poor people and the unbanked rely on pennies to make purchases or to be paid, but that’s not really a thing either. The poor and unbanked do use cash more than most people, but their penny use is as rare as anyone else’s;
• Canada, Australia, and New Zealand — fellow former British colonies who also had English-derived pennies as part of their currency system — got rid of their pennies many years ago and no one had a problem with it, making Americans’ preemptive fear of the elimination of the penny — and it’s real! — seem rather silly. This, of course, is in keeping with almost everything Americans think about stuff that other countries have handled fairly seamlessly.
• Every time someone talks about getting rid of the penny, someone in power says “well, that would take an act of Congress” and since everyone knows that Congress can’t do anything, they just give up. Except, actually, federal law gives the Treasury Secretary the power to simply stop minting pennies if she wants to. No one in power would acknowledge that or comment on that for the story, however.

That last item, I think, is the most telling part. I suspect people won’t comment on the Treasury Secretary’s power to stop ordering pennies because if she were to do so it would become a political thing. It’d be so easy to demagogue in a country such as ours. There would be broadsides about her destroying an American tradition or erasing a popular president from a coin, or cheating people out of money on rounded-up prices due to pennies being gone (even if it actually would break even given the rounding down which would also occur). We’re a pretty dumb country that may actually hate pennies in practice, but we love shiny political things like that and it’d create a headache that could, by doing nothing, be avoided.

Whatever that all amounts to, it’s a great and often fun article and I highly recommend it to anyone.

Just my two cents, of course.

Have a great day everyone.

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