Cup of Coffee: December 19, 2024

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

And away we go!

The Daily Briefing

Nolan Arenado blocks trade to the Astros

Nolan Arenado is owed $59 million over the next two seasons. He's also pretty clearly into his decline phase, having put up a below league average batting line, including a sub-.400 slugging percentage last season. Between that and the fact that the Cardinals are doing a rebuild that they are refusing to call a rebuild, it doesn't make much sense for Arenado to stay in St. Louis and the Cardinals have been trying to trade him.

Arenado has a full no-trade clause and can reject a deal to any team. It was reported last week that he'd approve a trade to six teams: the Angels, Dodgers, Padres, Phillies, Mets, or Red Sox. Yesterday The Athletic reported that the Houston Astros, too, had been on the approval list but based on what happened yesterday that's apparently no longer the case. From MLB dot com:

According to sources, the Astros and Cardinals were in discussions on a potential trade involving the third baseman, but Arenado informed St. Louis that he will not waive his no-trade clause to go to Houston. The Cardinals were willing to send $15-20 million to the Astros as part of the deal to help pay down Arenado’s salary, sources said . . . A source said there were still “ongoing talks” between the clubs, though another source indicated that the Astros aren’t holding out much hope that a deal will get done. “It’s definitely not close,” a source said.

I suppose it's possible that the Astros were on Arenado's OK list at one point but that he took them off of that list when they traded Kyle Tucker to Chicago, as that suggested they'd be retrenching/rebuilding/whatever and Arenado didn't want a part of that.

Mets sign Griffin Canning

The Mets have signed pitcher Griffin Canning to a one-year, $4.25 million deal with another $1 million in performance bonuses attached.

Canning has had quite a journey this offseason. He began it still on the Angels, but then was traded to Atlanta for Jorge Soler on October 31. Atlanta non-tendered him in November, however – taking him was the cost of dumping Soler's salary – which put him on the free agent market. Now he's in New York.

Canning, 28, started 31 games for the Angels last season, posting a 5.19 ERA (81 ERA+) over 171.2 innings with 130 strikeouts and 66 walks while giving up 31 home runs. So, no, he's not likely to make a huge difference. But it's not unreasonable to think that him being on a new team with new coaches and analysts who do not work for the Angels will help him out a decent deal.

White Sox sign Bryse Wilson

The Chicago White Sox announced yesterday that they have signed free agent pitcher Bryse Wilson to one-year, $1.05-million contract. Wilson elected free agency last month rather than accept being outrighted to the minors by the Brewers.

Wilson has pitched parts of seven seasons in the bigs, sometimes starting but more commonly working out of the pen. Given how thin the White Sox pitching staff is he'll almost certainly be looked at as a rotation option in Chicago. Probably worth noting that his most notable game came as a starter. That was when Atlanta started him against the Dodgers in Game 4 of the 2020 NLCS against the Dodgers and he tossed six innings of one-hit, one-run ball. That gave Atlanta a 3-1 lead in the series, which they'd go on to blow, but that wasn't Wilson's fault, man.

For his career Wilson has appeared in 143 games, 52 of which were starts, for Atlanta, the Pirates and the Brewers. He has a lifetime 4.61 ERA (92 ERA+) with 305 strikeouts and 132 walks over 413.2 innings. Last year in Milwaukee he made 34 appearances, nine of which were starts, posting a 4.04 ERA (104 ERA+) with 82 strikeouts in 104.2 innings. Which, ain't amazing or anything, but it's the kind of performance that could certainly play on a White Sox team that is trying to dig itself out of a historic hole.

White Sox tweak the name of their ballpark

Sticking with Chicago, the team will be playing in a newly-named park next season. It's the same park – which normal human beings either call Sox Park, Comiskey, or New Comiskey – but the naming rights overlords have given it a slightly new moniker:

The transformation of Guaranteed Rate Field is officially underway, as the home of the Chicago White Sox adopts a new name beginning Wednesday: Rate Field. This change follows the rebrand of Guaranteed Rate to Rate, a move designed to streamline the customer experience and solidify the company’s fintech leadership

I feel like that's a pretty aggressive use of the word "transformation" but I don't suppose there's too much else to crow about in Reinsdorf land these days so we'll let 'em go crazy. Congratulations on "Rate Field."

The Rays get their new ballpark funding. And now they are acting like that's not good enough.

Back in October the Pinellas County Commission voted to delay approval of the bonds that need to be sold to fund the new ballpark the Tampa Bay Rays want. The Rays threw a gigantic hissy fit about that, acting as if the world was ending and that the delay risked throwing the team into financial ruin or something. Never mind the fact that the agreement which had set all of this in motion, and which the Rays approved, did not require bond sales until this spring. But when you're a spoiled-ass rich guy like Stuart Sternberg is people generally don't make you wait, so your slight inconveniences become crises that others are obligated to solve.

Two months later and the governmental skids have been greased. First the St. Petersburg city council voted to approve its portion of the stadium funding and earlier this week Pinellas County did the same. So it's all good to go, right?

Well, not so much. Rays President Matt Silverman released a written statement after the funding vote on Tuesday:

“As we have made clear, the county’s delay has caused the ballpark’s completion to slide into 2029. As a result, the cost of the project has increased significantly, and we cannot absorb this increase alone. When the county and city wish to engage, we remain ready to solve this funding gap together.”

Yes: the Rays were just given a billion dollars in public money and their response was "sorry, not good enough." Because somehow a two month delay on a bond approval that, again, per an agreement to which the team signed on, didn't even have to be done until March. And at no point have the Rays explained how, even if the delay was not ok per the agreement, a two month delay has caused a construction schedule that was to end before Opening Day 2028 to "slide into 2029." I used to practice construction law and people in that business make disingenuous claims about schedule delays all the time, but this one is about as disingenuous as it comes.

I said this last month and I'll say it again: I don't think the Rays want this stadium deal. I think that they have decided that they'd rather move someplace else and that they're trying to kill this deal without being blamed for killing the deal. Why they'd want to kill it after years and years of trying to get a new ballpark is not 100% clear – maybe the destruction of Tropicana Field has changed their calculus, maybe seeing what the A's are doing has, maybe it's something else – but the only way their behavior in all of this makes sense is if they are trying to sabotage the deal.

Hop Run Tours is . . . go!

Back in June Cup of Coffee subscriber David Jay wrote a guest post about a venture he was planning which would combine baseball games, craft beer, paired-meals, and a road trip. The idea: people pay a flat rate for a luxury package coach tour that would visit a number of minor league parks and noted craft breweries for ballgames and beer-related fun, with hotels and stuff included in the price.

That venture now has a name: Hop Run Tours. And it's now live. The site is up, five itineraries are planned for 2025, and David is taking bookings (tour details in links):

• Great Lakes Tour from May 20-27;
• Mid-Atlantic tour from June 10-16;
• Great Lakes Tour from July 1-7;
• New England Tour from July 28-August 4; and
• Southeast Tour from August 26-September 1.

Bonus: Hop Run Tours is offering a 10% discount on tour packages to Cup of Coffee readers. Just use the code "cupofcoffee" when checking out. Less of a bonus but, eh, why not: I'll almost certainly join everyone for the May 22 stop in Columbus on the first Midwest tour. Try to contain your excitement.

While I have nothing to do with these tours and I'm getting absolutely nothing out of them other than, perhaps, a free porter or black IPA from one of y'all when you're in town, I did meet up for beers with David here in Columbus while he was doing advance work on the tours this past summer. He has put in a lot of time visiting breweries, checking out hotels, talking to minor league clubs and all of that. I can tell you that he's worked hard on this and it sounds like these will be pretty special trips. In his words:

I've put each of the tours together to get a real taste of the best of both (mostly) minor league baseball and craft beer in the different regions. I've built itineraries that take into account baseball schedules and ballpark experiences, brewery schedules, the best paired tasting meals, the right hotels, and reasonable bus ride lengths, to make each one a unique and quality experience. Guests who join me will get some special behind-the-scenes experiences both on the baseball and brewery sides, not to mention the chance to spend time with others who share their enjoyment of both.

If you're interested, by all means, check out the website, ask yourself what's not to love about great beer and baseball, and consider giving a Hop Run Tour a shot.

Other Stuff

President Musk

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is a weirdo right wing religious fanatic but, on occasion, he at least understands that the country has to actually, you know, be governed. As such, he's worked fairly hard over the past week or two to assemble a spending package to avoid a government shutdown, which will happen tomorrow if nothing is done. Such a thing is not an easy job in this age of polarization. Indeed, the reason he even has the Speaker's gavel is because his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, dared to compromise even a little bit with Democrats to pass a shutdown-avoiding resolution of his own, only to have the extremist loonies in the GOP caucus rebel against him. So, good job, Mike!

But then something fun happened: Elon Musk, the drug-addled, unelected megalomanic sociopath who bought his way into Donald Tump's inner circle by bankrolling his ugly campaign, decided that he, personally, does not like the spending resolution. He then tweeted that not only does he oppose the bill, but vowed that he would back a primary opponent against any Republican who supports it. Given that Musk just bought the presidency – seriously, the Trump campaign was dead-ass broke before Musk came riding in – that's no idle threat. So, predictably, all support for Johnson's bill evaporated. We're almost certainly going to get a government shutdown tomorrow, and Johnson himself is probably at risk of losing the speakership over it.

The most interesting part of all of this is that Trump pretty clearly had nothing to do with it. After it all came crashing down he waded in, talked shit about the spending bill, and voiced his support for Musk, but it's clear that he was reacting to this, not instigating this. His own personal Rasputin was driving events.

On some level this is understandable when one appreciates that Trump has pretty clearly lost his fastball and may very well be sundowning. I mean, we all watched that campaign. We heard him try and mostly fail to speak coherent sentences for the past year. Trump seems to be pretty susceptible to being influenced by whatever he just saw on TV and whoever last spoke to him, and Musk has ensconced himself at Mar a Lago since the election. He's pretty obviously running the show right now and no one is telling him no. Which means that if and when the government shuts down tomorrow, it's because Elon Musk shut down the government. Indeed, it should be referred to as the Elon Musk Shutdown. Based on his ego and his tweets yesterday, I'm pretty sure he'll be happy to be cast as the guy who blew up the government days before Christmas.

But imagine for a moment that you are Donald Trump. Imagine that, in your moments of lucidity, which of course there still are, you realize that you're not in charge. That the country is being thrown into chaos – a thing YOU normally love!– but you aren't the one doing it. Imagine him seeing and hearing, as he no doubt will today and going forward, that Musk did this and you're following along. Knowing how Trump rolls I'm guessing he already resents the fact that his campaign had to be rescued by Musk as it is, so imagine what it'll do to him to be cast as Elon Musk's bitch before he even takes office.

Which is to say: this is not sustainable and, I suspect, it's gonna get really ugly when Trump inevitable tires of not being the sole protagonist of reality. The only question is how much damage will be done before things are resolved.

Great Moments in Capitulation

From ABC News:

Democrats have a plan to take back power in Washington back from Republicans in two years: work with them now.

Democrats, who are already planning their comeback after being swept out of power in Washington last month, have said they'll oppose President-elect Donald Trump and his allies when their values collide but are open to cooperation on a range of issues, including immigration, federal spending and entitlements.

Democrats taking this lesson, scarcely a month after running a campaign in which they openly courted Republicans and talked about just how bipartisan they can be only to lose, was just as predictable as it is stupid.

One either believes that the Republican agenda – which is, definitionally, "do whatever Donald Trump/Elon Musk wants us to do" – is wrong, bad, and evil, or one doesn't. If Democrats don't believe that, especially given how ominous and authoritarian the noises coming out of his transition have been, they're never, ever getting my support or the support of the 75 million or so people who came to the polls to vote for someone other than Donald Trump to begin with. If, however, they do believe that the Trump/Republican agenda bad and evil – if they say as much at town halls and on TV and fundraise off of it – only to turn around and choose to capitulate/collaborate with it to some extent, why should anyone ever trust them or take them seriously?

This whole "we'll work with them some" tack is no doubt a function of Democrats believing that voters want bipartisanship above all else. The problem with that is two-fold.

First, Republicans are not at all interested in bipartisanship. They say, constantly, that Democrats are evil heathens and they act accordingly. They refuse, utterly, to compromise with Democrats in any way. Indeed, as the spending bill/shutdown stuff mentioned in the previous item makes clear, Republicans have shown that they will actively punish anyone from their side who attempts to reach across the aisle. If Democrats do join their side on a given vote or talking point, Republicans will happily accept their support, but they will never give a single thing in return and the moment their position has carried the day they will return to demonization. There is no actual bipartisanship without compromise and Republicans never, ever give an inch. The only time they back off from their maximalist approach is if they are forced to by effective opposition. You cannot negotiate with that. You cannot triangulate your way out of someone trying to stomp your face in.

Democrats have spent the past eight years trying to finesse their way around Trumpism. To be as non-confrontational as possible, even after that jackass literally tried to overthrow the goddamn government. The approach was rooted in fear of backlash, fear of being attacked, fear of being called names, and fear of upsetting swing voters. Well, they still got backlash, still got attacked, still got called names, and still watched swing voters abandon them, leading to a pathetic electoral loss a month and a half ago. It's loser shit and doing it again will only ensure more losses.

You want to beat Trump and the Republicans? You do so by presenting a clear contrast to Trump's and Republicans' corruption, chaos, and – their election victory notwithstanding - their highly unpopular agenda. You do not, as I saw someone put it yesterday, act like the junior partner in a fascist coalition. You oppose your opponents, you point out their failures in clear terms, and you push for big, easy to understand policies which directly help normal people and make America better which are difficult for the other side to counter. It's something Democrats rarely if ever do but, I assure them, "supporting good things people love and opposing bad things" is popular and gets results.

What I do know for sure is that if Democrats think that "we'll agree to cut Social Security, but not by quite as much" or "we'll agree to deport seven million but not fifteen million immigrants" or "we'll restrict the civil liberties of some people but not others" is a winning platform they will continue to lose. They will lose badly and they will lose deservedly. Just like they have every other damn time they've chosen the path of strategic capitulation.

Legally Bald

Yesterday morning I took Anna to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles get her driver's license renewed. Mine still had a year and a half on it but it still has my old address on it. That has been annoying me and the line was short so I decided to get a new license as well. It led to this exchange:

BMV clerk [auto-piloting through questions]: "Is 5'10" still a good height . . . is brown still your eye color . . . is brown still a good hair color . . ."

Me [half-jokingly]: "Is 'bald' an option? The hair I have is still brown but . . ."

Clerk: [looks up from her computer at me, assesses my whole deal; says, pointedly]: "Yes, 'bald' is an option. Would you like me to put 'bald?'"

Me: "Um, yeah, I guess."

So congratulations to me. I am now both actually and legally, per the government, bald.

Not long after I got home, I saw this new article at The Onion:

I posted that and then, within like a minute and a half, my friend and Matter News Director/Editor Andy replied with this Photoshop:

You all know that I don't much care for that Donald Trump fella, but between these vicious, personal attacks from The Onion and from Mr. Downing, I am coming around to his "sue the media for hurting my feelings" position.

The good ol' days

This is not a new story or poll – it came out last May – but it crossed my screen yesterday morning for some reason and it gave me a rare smile in these dark, dark times.

The story, in the Washington Post, talked about a poll in which 2,000 adults were asked which decade had the best and worst music, movies, economy and so forth. Not surprisingly, there wasn't a lot of agreement on those things. Obviously white people and Republicans LOVED the 1950s or, at the very least, what they believe the 1950s were like. Women and people of color are a lot more positive about the years after gains from the Civil Rights and Women's Liberation movements took hold. Old people think the distant past was better. Young people think more recent days were better. All of this is very, very predictable, even if there were some pretty wild inconsistencies overall.

But this bit absolutely sent me:

So, we looked at the data another way, measuring the gap between each person’s birth year and their ideal decade. The consistency of the resulting pattern delighted us: It shows that Americans feel nostalgia not for a specific era, but for a specific age. The good old days when America was “great” aren’t the 1950s. They’re whatever decade you were 11, your parents knew the correct answer to any question, and you’d never heard of war crimes tribunals, microplastics or improvised explosive devices. Or when you were 15 and athletes and musicians still played hard and hadn’t sold out.

It's most remarkable in graph form:

What are the frickin' odds that all the best stuff just so happened to come out when the person responding to the question was at their most impressionable age? I am shocked. This is my shocked face, I tells ya.

Anyway, keep this graph in mind the next time someone starts going off about ballplayers of yore, how no one one these days makes albums like they used to, or how everyone used to agree about things and everyone was happier but now it's all shit. You could probably bet your mortgage that the person making such a proclamation was between, oh, 10-15, during the time period they most venerate.

Have a great day everyone.