Cup of Coffee: April 3, 2025

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

And away we go.

And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Pirates 4, Rays 2: It was Paul Skenes day and he did Paul Skenes things, allowing only an unearned run over seven innings while striking out six and not walking anyone. Oneil Cruz homered and drove in two. In other news:

I understand that the band name, The Outfield, is the reason for it, but it's absolutely wild to me that a song about a dude cheating on his girlfriend or maybe his wife is a baseball park staple. It's a bop for sure, but the lyrics of that song are basically "hey, my wife is out of town, come over and we can bang. I really wanna just use you. We gotta keep it secret though." At least "Glory Days" has one verse that references baseball!

Also: Pirates reliever Dennis Santana got the save here. This was the look he was flashing on the mound:

I try hard not to offer old man opinions about every damn thing but, folks, this one bothers me in ways I'm having a very hard time shaking.

Finally, subscriber Morris Adams was at this game and gave us an update on regular season baseball in a spring training/Florida State League park:

 Just wanted to give you some thoughts on watching a MLB game in MiLB park, can't really call it a stadium. Unfortunately it felt like a Spring Training game . . . I was amazed at how quiet it was for the first few innings.  Traffic on Dale Mabry was louder than the crowd.  Even Oneil Cruz's HR blast sounded weak although he sent it straight out to center.  By the 5th inning the alcohol must of kicked in,  It started getting a little louder but not in a baseball way,  just in a day drinking afternoon kinda way, a la Spring Training.

Morris added that, despite the place feeling minor league, a Bud Light still ran $20. He also said that the game was hard to follow, as the only place you can see the score is on the centerfield scoreboard, but since it's not a modern, MLB-level scoreboard, every chant cue, every ad, every replay, and every inter-inning bit of entertainment takes that away as it takes up the whole screen. 

Obviously a hurricane is to blame for this in 2025. But to the extent this is the new normal for the Rays due to their stadium and ownership mishegoss, woof.

Dodgers 6, Atlanta 5: Atlanta jumped out to an early 5-0 lead off of Blake Snell, but the Dodgers chipped back with a two-run Tommy Edman homer in the second, a Michael Conforto solo shot in the fourth, and a two-run double from Max Muncy to tie things up at five in the eighth. That set the stage for a Shohei Ohtani walkoff homer that like a half dozen people on my social media timeline predicted before it even happened. I feel like we're living in a simulation sometimes. Usually when stuff like that happens.

The Dodgers still haven't lost. Will they ever lose?

Cardinals 12, Angels 5: Have a day Iván Herrera! Three homers for the St. Louis catcher, including a solo shot in the fourth, a two-run homer in the sixth, and a three-run shot in the Cards' seven-run eighth inning. Logan O’Hoppe had a grand slam and Mike Trout hit a solo shot for the Angels but this one ceased to be competitive late.

Rangers 1, Reds 0: Jack Leiter shut the Reds out on one hit over five and four relievers each tossed a shutout inning to complete the three-hitter. That's two shutouts by Texas pitchers in a row, what with Nate Eovaldi's Maddux on Tuesday night. For the Reds Hunter Greene was pretty sharp too, allowing just one run on three hits over seven but he had to have been nearly perfect yesterday and wasn't. The Reds outscored the Rangers 14-5 in the three-game set but dropped two of three. Baseball!

Brewers 3, Royals 2: The starters were sharp here with Cole Ragans of the Royals allowing just one run while striking out ten over five and Freddy Peralta allowing just one over eight innings for Milwaukee. Because of that it was a 1-1 game between the second and the tenth, when Kansas City scored one on a single and the Brewers got one when Jackson Chourio, who had homered in the first, doubled in a run to tie things back up at two. In the bottom of the 11th, however, the Brewers' Manfred Man, Oliver Dunn, reached third on a groundout and a couple of batters later Brice Turang laid down a perfect squeeze bunt which brought home Dunn with the walkoff run.

Blue Jays 4, Nationals 2: Easton Lucas, filling in for Max Scherzer, allowed one hit over five scoreless innings in his first major league start. George Springer homered. Toronto finished its seven-game season-opening home stand 5-2. That'll play.

Cubs 10, Athletics 2: Seiya Suzuki – who has started off the season smokin' hot – homered twice and drove in five and Matt Shaw had two RBI singles as the Cubs complete the sweep. It wasn't just a sweep, either, it was a shellacking, as Chicago outscored Sacramento 35-9 in the three-game set.

Giants 6, Astros 3:  Wilmer Flores, Luis Matos, and LaMonte Wade Jr. went deep. Flores has four homers already. He had just four all last year. The Giants complete the three-game sweep.

Padres 5, Guardians 2: Jackson Merrill had a pretty good day yesterday. In the morning he agreed to a nine-figure contract extension. In the afternoon he hit a two-run homer. Luis Arraez homered too. Fernando Tatís Jr. stole home but it was on the back end of one of those double steals so it's not like it was the ballsiest thing ever. Still, kinda cool. The Padres are 7-0.

Red Sox 3, Orioles 0: Garret Crochet has had a pretty good day the other day. That's when he signed a $170 million extension, and here he is shutting out the O's for eight. Kristian Campbell — who also got a contract extension from the Red Sox, discussed below in the Daily Briefing — had two hits. Trevor Story homered and he didn't even need a contract extension to do it.

Mariners 3, Tigers 2: Luis Castillo out-pitched Tarik Skubal, allowing two runs on five hits over seven while striking out eight. Victor Robles doubled in two and Dylan Moore homered. Detroit threatened in the ninth but they weren't threatening enough.

Twins 6, White Sox 1: This one had a three and a half hour rain delay. Figuring there weren't a lot of people who hung around for that. Once they got going Twins starter Pablo López allowed one run over seven and  Harrison Bader and Byron Buxton went deep. Sox starter Sean Burke gave up all six of the Twins' runs and didn't make it out of the fifth. That string of impressive White Sox starts to begin the season is gonna seem so weird when we remember it in a couple of months.

Mets 6, Marlins 5: Pete Alonso hit a three-run homer with two outs in the eighth to tie things up and force extras. He had doubled in a run in the first. The Mets got two runs in the 11th, the first on a bases-loaded walk to Jesse Winker. Alonso factored in that two by drawing a leadoff walk. The second run came on a Mark Vientos fielder's choice. The Mets' home opener is tomorrow.  

Phillies 5, Rockies 1: Zack Wheeler is probably the most war-horsey of a starting pitcher in the game these days and here he did war-horsey things. Seven innings, three hits, one run, ten strikeouts. Trea Turner had three hits, Kyle Schwarber had a run-scoring double, and he scored on an RBI groundout by J.T. Realmuto. Edmundo Sosa drove in a couple.

Diamondbacks 4, Yankees 3: Zac Gallen was in charge, striking out 13 Yankees batters while working into the seventh and not allowing a run. A Lourdes Gurriel Jr. two-run homer and a couple of random runs in the second held up, a ninth inning New York rally punctuated by a three-run homer from Anthony Volpe notwithstanding.

The Daily Briefing

Jackson Merrill, Padres agree to a big contract extension

The San Diego Padres are in agreement with star outfielder Jackson Merrill on a nine-year contract extension. It starts in 2026 and the guaranteed portion of the deal runs through 2034. There's a $10 million signing bonus and there's a $30 million club option for a tenth season that can be converted to a player option. The contract guarantees Merrill $135 million but it can max out at $204 million.

It now strikes me that if the option year is exercised on this deal it will run into the year in which I will become eligible to draw Social Security, assuming Social Security still exists then. That's somewhat sobering. Though, given that Merrill is only a few months older than my daughter, I suppose it's not really surprising on an intellectual level.

Merrill, who turns 22 in a couple of weeks, is only in his second season as a major leaguer but he's already made a huge impact. As a rookie he hit .292/.326/.500 (128 OPS+) with 24 homers and 16 stolen bases. He was an All-Star, won the Silver Slugger Award, finished second in the Rookie of the Year balloting, and even got some MVP votes.

Kristian Campbell, Red Sox, agree to a kinda meager contract extension

I understand that sports is the only place where agreeing to pay someone $60 million can be considered parsimonious, but it's all I could really think when I saw the news yesterday that the Red Sox and rookie infielder Kristian Campbell have agreed to an eight-year $60 million extension. There are also club options for 2033 and 2034 at $19 million and $21 million, respectively.

Campbell will get a $2 million signing bonus and a $1 million salary this year. He will then make $2 million, $3 million, $4 million, $6 million, $9 million, $13 million, and $16 million. There’s a $4 buyout on the 2033 option. There are various escalators based on awards voting and All-Star selections. In all, Boston is assured of buying out all of Campbell's arbitration years and two of his free agent seasons but with the options they can buy out four of them. If that happens he'll be 33 before he can hit the market again.

Campbell, a 2023 draft pick, is just 22 years old and has played just six games in the bigs. Last season he went from A-ball through Triple-A hitting a fantastic .330/.439/.558 with 20 homers and 24 stolen bases across three minor league levels. If he comes even relatively close to fulfilling his promise, he'll have left nine figures on the table here. It harkens back to the very below-market deals Atlanta has made with many of its young stars over the past decade or so. Or, for that matter, the $50 million deal Boston made with Ceddanne Rafaela last year.

Of course, it's easy for me to say that, as I'm not gambling anything here. At the end of the day no one is looking out for Campbell but himself and with this deal he's at least assured of financial security for the rest of his life. But he does stand a chance of being massively underpaid for the value he creates.

Diamondbacks, Ketel Marte extend, restructure his contract

Arizona Diamondbacks second baseman Ketel Marte had been on a five-year $76 million deal that went through 2027 with a 2028 team option. That deal had him making $16 million this year and next year, and $14 million in 2027, while the 2028 option was worth $13 million. It was reported yesterday afternoon, however, that Marte and the Dbacks have torn that deal up and have replaced it with a new one.

The new deal is for six years, covering 2025 through 2030, plus a player option for 2031. There is a guarantee of $116,500,000 with escalators which can bring it up to $149,500,000. There's $46 million in deferred money.

Marte, 31, is coming off a season in which he finished third in the MVP balloting and won the Silver Slugger Award after hitting a career-best 36 home runs in 136 games. He's the anchor of an excellent Diamondbacks lineup. He's the best player in franchise history. Locking him up longer and giving him a raise makes all the sense in the world.

The Opening Day payrolls are out

Each year the Associated Press reports on the Opening Day payrolls of all 30 teams. This year's report came out yesterday morning.

At the top are the Mets with $322,589,724. Just behind them are the Dodgers at $319,537,290, the Yankees at $284,815,172, the Phillies at $283,990,117, and the Blue Jays at $239,242,531. The bottom five are the Marlins at $64,893,725, the Athletics at $74,908,652, the Rays at $79,216,312, the White Sox at $80,908,625, and the Pirates at $87,883,875.

The article contains the methodology and the various adjustments the AP uses for this exercise, so if you see numbers there than differ from what you've seen reported elsewhere, that's why.

In related news, Hannah Keyser has an interview with the Associated Press' Ron Blum in the latest edition of her and Zach Crizer's newsletter, The Bandwagon. Blum is the reporter most responsible for making player salary information public, going back to databases he began compiling in the 1980s. He's a singular dude who, last fall, made headlines for asking an incredulous Andrew Friedman of the Dodgers about the team's draft pool strategy during the damn World Series. Our passions are our passions, man.

Colin Cowherd has an opinion on the torpedo bats

There's been a lot of talk about the tapered torpedo bats many players are now using. And, sure, I get that because there is always a new storyline or two that people fixate on early in seasons when the sample sizes are too small to say anything intelligent. Last year it was the uniforms. This year it's the torpedo bats. Next year it will be something else.

You know that chatter is near the end of its shelf life when the general sports yakkers who tend to almost exclusively focus on the NFL and basketball start to weigh in. Guys like Fox's Colin Cowherd who had this to say bout the torpedo bats yesterday:

“So Elly De La Cruz plays for the Cincinnati Reds . . . Elly De La Cruz, a couple of home runs, seven RBIs, he used the torpedo bat. Listen, the Minnesota Twins used the torpedo bats this weekend and got swept, and scored six runs. So it’s like Harry Potter, the wand is choosing the wizard.

“We’re now getting more offense, more hitting. And again, not everybody is using the bats. Steroids was different. This is like legal HGH. Steroids would take guys that were non-home run hitters, and suddenly, they were in the race for the American League MVP. It would also help guys like Barry Bonds, allegedly, or other guys. You felt like a lot of times, you were taking Triple-A players, and they were making the big leagues because of HGH. This is totally legal. It’s amazing when you embrace innovation and don’t fight it. Baseball is on a heater. It’s like grandpa got a sports car.”

At this point it's worth noting that Colin Cowherd once suggested that the Angels should trade Shohei Ohtani for "five first-round picks," apparently not realizing that baseball does not allow for trading draft picks like that. He once said that baseball season should end in August so it doesn't interfere with the NFL schedule. In 2010 he was unaware of who Joey Votto was. Which, sure, there are a lot of baseball players and we can't know them all but that year Votto was on his way to winning the NL MVP. Suffice it to say, baseball is not his métier.

There's a lesson here that goes beyond Cowherd, though. It's about how whenever there's a Big New Story in baseball people in the sports yakking business feel obligated, by the very nature of the business model, to talk about it feel obligated to find something provocative to say about it whether or not there is anything worth saying.

Any rational person looks at the torpedo bats and says "hmm, that's interesting" and then waits until something even modestly definitive can be said bout them before weighing in with some fire opinion. When you're in Colin Cowherd's business, however – and when some producer tells you that you HAVE to come up with something pithy for that day's show – you just pull crap out of your butt.

Other Stuff

Trump tanks the world economic order

Most people don't follow trade policy closely, but know that yesterday afternoon, at around 4:30PM, the President of the United States announced tariffs which will almost certainly tank the entire world economic order and which will effectively serve as a $6 trillion tax on Americans. As soon as he announced this S&P and NASDAQ futures plummeted, so the markets are likely to experience a bloodbath today when the opening bells ring.

Trump did this because he's a big stupid fucking idiot who doesn't know anything and because he has surrounded himself with cowards and idiots who are afraid to tell him anything he doesn't want to hear and who refuse to exercise their considerable power to rein him in.

As a fun bonus, Trump said yesterday that he talked to Lee Iacocca about his tariff plan. Lee Iacocca has been dead since 2019. He was 94 then and had been sick for a long time so it's highly unlikely that any such conversation has happened in at least the last decade. It could've been 1983 for all we know.

Trump also said at one point, "An old fashioned term that we use – groceries. I used it on the campaign. It's such an old fashioned term, but a beautiful term. Groceries. It says a bag with different things in it." He said that because he is suffering from dementia, he has no idea where he is or what he's talking about half the time, and no one is willing to do anything about that.

Oh well, I'm sure we'll be fine. It's not like the American economy is completely reliant on global supply chains built on an interconnecting series of international free trade agreements. If that were the case it'd mean serious trouble!

[aide whispers in my ear]

Oh . . . oh no. Oh god.

The American Empire is in the process of falling. It was not defeated by an external foe. It committed suicide.

You love to see it

From Politico:

"President Donald Trump has told his inner circle, including members of his Cabinet, that Elon Musk will be stepping back in the coming weeks from his current role as governing partner, ubiquitous cheerleader and Washington hatchet man."

I've long since learned to (a) distrust Politico in general; and (b) distrust any report from anyone claiming to know what Donald Trump – who has a 19th century steam-powered calliope where his brain used to be – is thinking. Indeed, I suspect that if Musk is sidelined that it will be a matter of optics over substance, with him showing up in front of cameras less often but still having the same amount of power he currently has in the administration.

I do hope, however, that there is at least some truth to this. Partially because I want Musk away from the levers of real power. Mostly, however, because he is so convinced that he alone is the protagonist of reality that I'm pretty sure his brain cannot handle being sidelined even a little bit, which would lead to a highly entertaining meltdown. I mean, the morning after he face-planted in that Wisconsin election he was posting stuff like this:

When you already believe that human beings are meaningless non-player characters in some larger machine-driven reality, you're not too many steps away from doing something really stupid and self-destructive. If Trump is even halfway serious here and decides to start dropping dismissive one-liners about Musk and the stink of failure he now has on him Musk will almost certainly go crazy and I, for one, would love to see that happen.

Eric Adams case dismissed by a judge who pegs the Trump Regime's corruption

Last September New York City mayor Eric Adams was indicted on multiple felony corruption charges arising out of an influence peddling scandal in which Adams is alleged to have done favors for the Turkish government. He was hit with counts of bribery, fraud, and soliciting foreign campaign donations. Then in February Trump's DOJ moved to dismiss the charges against Adams, but to do so without prejudice, which means that they could be held over Adams' head indefinitely in an effort to coerce him into doing Trump's bidding, particularly as it relates to assisting ICE arrest and deport immigrants in New York.

The move was a manifestly corrupt perversion of criminal legal process. So corrupt, in fact, that multiple DOJ attorneys – including Republican partisans – refused to file the paperwork because doing so was unethical as hell. It led to multiple firings which I and many others likened to Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre. Eventually the motion to dismiss the case was filed, however.

Yesterday U.S. District Judge Dale Ho ruled on that motion. While he did dismiss the charges against Adams, he did so with prejudice, meaning that the government cannot file them again and Adams is in the clear from the feds, thereby taking away Trump's leverage over Adams. In his opinion Ho plainly states that the United States government's position was a corrupt one:

Taking a step back from the particulars of this case, DOJ’s immigration enforcement rationale is both unprecedented and breathtaking in its sweep. DOJ cites no examples, and the Court is unable to find any, of the government dismissing charges against an elected official because doing so would enable the official to facilitate federal policy goals. And DOJ’s assertion that it has “virtually unreviewable” license to dismiss charges on this basis is disturbing in its breadth, implying that public officials may receive special dispensation if they are compliant with the incumbent administration’s policy priorities. That suggestion is fundamentally incompatible with the basic promise of equal justice under law . . . to the extent that the Government may be seeking to extract policy concessions from the Mayor, dismissal with prejudice rather than continuation of the prosecution best addresses that concern. It ensures that, going forward, the charges in the Indictment cannot be used as leverage over Mayor Adams or the City of New York.

Judge Ho addressed why he did not simply deny the government's attempt to dismiss the case and keep Adams under indictment and facing trial. The short version: he cannot force the executive branch to proceed with the case and, if he tried, the DOJ would simply refuse to go forward while still being able to hold the notion of changing its mind over Adams, which is what they want now. This ruling – while letting a corrupt as hell mayor walk free – serves the higher purpose of not letting Trump's DOJ weaponize the criminal justice system as a means of carrying out its political priorities.

This was the best result in a bad situation. And it should serve as a model for how courts can tell the Trump Regime to go to hell when they try to pull crap like this.

Val Kilmer: 1959-2025

Val Kilmer died on Tuesday due to pneumonia. He was 65 and had been dealing with a lot of health problems since being diagnosed with throat cancer about ten years ago.

Kilmer was an uneasy A-lister for a spell in the 80s and 90s but ultimately he was just a couple of bubbles off-center, both in front of and behind the camera, for that to have really lasted. Because of that, however, he gave a number of performances that solid A-listers likely never could've given because they were either too concerned about their image or simply weren't weird enough, and I mean that complimentarily. My stab at Kilmer's best performances:

1. Tombstone (probably a unanimous opinion)
2. Top Secret
3. Heat
4. Real Genius
5. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

I could've put "Willow" on that list. Yeah, it's basically a kids movie, but you can see a lot of Harrison Ford energy in him, in no small part because he, like Ford before him, had to do whatever he could to elevate some questionable George Lucas-penned material. It's also the sort of thing that makes me imagine an alternate universe in which Kilmer and Tom Cruise traded places after "Top Gun," with Kilmer becoming the biggest movie star in the world while Cruise pursued weird projects and interesting supporting roles. I'd rather have lived in that world – or the world in which Kilmer didn't get sick in his 50s and went on to enjoy an enjoyable third act in which he played all manner of interesting roles as an aging character actor – but I'm thankful for what we got. RIP.

"Monty Python and the Holy Grail" turns 50

As one of you reminded us in the comments yesterday, today is the 50th anniversary of the release of the film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." That was its London debut at least. It premiered in Los Angeles and New York later in the month. It's easily the best movie to ever feature discourse involving royalty and a couple of  anarcho-syndicalist peasants. Now we see the violence inherent in the system.

I was probably 11 or 12 when I first saw "Holy Grail." It, along with Mad Magazine, and The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy went a long, long damn way toward establishing my sense of humor as an adolescent. Like any good kid who was wired like that I retain 100% memorization of the script and could watch it 25 times in succession and not get bored with it.

Have a great day everyone.