Cup of Coffee: February 27, 2025

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

And away we go.

The Daily Briefing

Rethinking the third-time-through-the-order penalty

You all know the prevalent thinking by now: starting pitchers going too long is bad. Specifically, starters going through the order a third time is SUPER bad. The numbers bear that out pretty clearly. As such, starting pitchers are being pulled earlier in games now than they ever have been and bullpens are being relied upon to an unprecedented degree.

Given how those numbers work, a lot of people – people like me! – who view baseball games as a drama framed by a battle between two starting pitchers have been left to complain about it, mostly as a matter of aesthetics. "I get it, I really do," I think when a starter who was otherwise cruising is lifted after five innings, "but it just sucks and I wish they stayed in longer."

Which makes articles like the one Lewie Pollis wrote on Tuesday welcome reading indeed.

Pollis, after watching dominant relief aces flame out during the past couple of postseasons, looked more deeply at pitcher usage and its consequences. And what he has found is that while a starting pitcher may experience diminished performance in a given game by being kept in for a third time through the lineup, there is a hidden, longer-term cost to be paid for doing that in terms of bullpen arms being overworked. That makes a lot of intuitive sense, but Pollis has attempted to quantify it, and he has found that each additional out a starter records is associated with a an improvement in a team's aggregate bullpen ERA. Pollis:

To pick out the two most-common start lengths, 41 percent of MLB starts over the last three years lasted either 15 or 18 outs. The league-wide bullpen ERA when the first reliever enters after five innings is 4.04. After six innings, it drops 33 points, to 3.71. The concept isn’t rocket science. It’s almost too tautological to be interesting. But people usually conceptualize saving the relievers’ bullets as an abstract aspiration, not as a managerial decision with a tangible impact. The freshness and flexibility of the bullpen is not a side effect of optimizing pitching strategy. It is a key component of it.

To be sure, this is not some "Eureka!" moment, and Pollis does not sell it as such. He acknowledges that there may be noise in the data and underlying reasons for this which muddy the waters to some degree. But he does believe, and I think rightly so, that there has been too much focus on the downsides of leaving starters in to get a few more outs and not enough focus on the downsides of heavy reliance on relievers beyond the mere aesthetic preferences of old men like me. His wrapup:

I’m not suggesting we rewind pitcher usage back by decades. Starters went over six innings per outing as recently as 2011. Even in 2017 the average rounded to six instead of five. But I believe the league has blown past the optimal point of pitch count and times-through-the-order caution, and the runs saved in the rotation are actually borrowed with interest from the bullpen. If nothing else, my suggested takeaway from these numbers is: When in doubt, leave the starter in. Then these overworked bullpens may finally get some relief.

As always, I'll observe that I do not have the stat-fu to engage with this on a supercritical level, but it all makes some basic sense and my hope is that clubs begin to value start length more than they seem to do now.

Jose Altuve to debut in left field tomorrow

Future Hall of Famer Jose Altuve – yeah, I think that's a safe bet but if you wanna argue about it we can – will make his spring training debut tomorrow. But it won't be at second base. It'll be in left field.

Two things have led to this: (a) the Astros traded Kyle Tucker to the Chicago Cubs, leaving a hole in the outfield; and (b) Altuve isn't really all that good a second baseman anymore. No one with the Astros is gonna say that latter reason out loud, but the number don't lie. Whether he'll be a good left fielder is a totally different matter but I suppose that's what spring training is for.

And hey, if the Astros' last Hall of Fame second baseman could do it – and he moved from catcher to second base and then moved on to center field – I suppose the current one can.

[Editor: Have you looked at Biggio's defensive stats in the outfield?]

Ixnay, will ya? I really don't wanna talk crap about old guys named Craig in this space.

OK, Nestor

Tyler Kepner of The Athletic has a feature story about Nestor Cortes, how he's adjusting to life with the Milwaukee Brewers and, of course, a lot of talk about last year's World Series. This quote is absolutely sending me:

“They can talk whatever they want to talk, but we win Game 1 — which we should have — we lost 2 and 3, we win Game 4 and we should have won Game 5. Then we go back to LA up 3 to 2. So people can say it slipped away from us, people can say we made a lot of mistakes, which we did. But at the end of the day, we were the better team. I see it that way, and I’m sure everybody in that clubhouse sees it that way. The reality (could have been) going back to LA leading 3-2. It didn’t happen that way and they deserve all the credit in the world, they won the World Series. At the moment, they showed they were the better team.”

I'm trying to figure out which part of all of that is my favorite. The overall vibe – "if we had won those games we lost we would've won it all so we were the better team" – is amazing on its own. But I'm really taken with "we win Game 1 – which we should have" coming from the mouth of the guy who gave up a walkoff grand slam to end Game 1.

Ballplayers, man. There are no other people like them on God's green Earth.

Other Stuff

The Washington Post throws in with corporate authoritarianism

The Washington Post was once, arguably, the greatest newspaper in America. It had a reputation, well-earned, for holding the power to account. But as of yesterday it's explicitly a mouthpiece for corporatist authoritarianism, as owner Jeff Bezos announced that he has fired Opinion editor David Shipley and that, going forward, "We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets."

From Bezos' Twitter post:

We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.

There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job . . . I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter. I suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t “hell yes,” then it had to be “no.” After careful consideration, David decided to step away. This is a significant shift, it won’t be easy, and it will require 100% commitment — I respect his decision. We’ll be searching for a new Opinion Editor to own this new direction.

I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.

Jeff

I'm all for "personal liberty" but I am pretty sure that the personal liberties for which the Washington Post will be advocating going forward will be highly selective. They will not, I am certain, include personal liberties regarding one's sexual orientation, gender identity, the right to have an abortion, the right to join a union, or silly things like that. As for "free markets," well, thank GOD that there is finally an outlet in this country which will stand up for corporate America. Those poor guys have been voiceless for ages. And no matter what else we can say about this new direction, it is an absolute certainty that the move is being made to curry favor with the Trump administration, so regardless of what Bezos says about "freedom" the Washington Post will, henceforth, be an authoritarian mouthpiece. Of that there can be no doubt.

I stuck with the Washington Post longer than I should have out of (a) nostalgia for what it once was; (b) because I have a news-based publication to run; and (c) general inertia, but nope. I'm not supporting this even in the slightest:

Contrary to what that message says, feedback is apparently not all that important to the Washington Post. Because when I was prompted to give my feedback I was forced to choose one of 11 options – ten of which have nothing to do with the paper's content or editorial direction – or "other." Even if you pick "other" there is no ability to explain, in your own words, why you're canceling. So I clicked "Concerns about Washington Post content."

Not that I think unsubscribing from the Washington Post will harm Jeff Bezos. He has more money than God and, more to the point, he likely sees the newspaper as a propaganda-spewing loss leader than can shore up his other endeavors, not unlike how Elon Musk has lost billions on Twitter yet now quite literally controls the government of the most powerful country which has ever existed on planet Earth.

Whatever the case, I won't underwrite it, so good riddance.

Us vs. Them

There's a huge measles outbreak in Texas, no doubt born of anti-vax sentiment running wild in certain areas of the country. Yesterday it was reported that a child died from it. It was the first measles death in the United States in ten years. And wouldn't you know it, some people are quickly changing their tune about vaccines now that it has become real for them:

As the measles outbreak in Texas keeps spreading, parents who previously chose not to vaccinate their children are now lining up to get their kids the shots needed to protect them from the serious illness.

“People are more and more nervous” as they watch the highly contagious virus spread in their communities, mostly among children, said Katherine Wells, director of public health for Lubbock's health department. “We’ve vaccinated multiple kids that have never been vaccinated before, some from families that didn’t believe in vaccines.”

This sort of thing is both enraging and fascinating to varying degrees. I've spewed enough rage over these past few weeks that I'll give that part of this a bit of a breather and focus instead on the part that's fascinating, at least to weirdoes like me.

From an evolutionary perspective humans are wired to prioritize the safety and well-being of themselves and their own in-group, however that's defined. In prehistoric times it was probably one's immediate band or tribe, as there was little evolutionary incentive to care about other bands or tribes. As civilization evolved it may have been one's village, one's region, one's kingdom, one's nation-state, or however else the "us" in "us vs. them" was identified. Maybe, at the bleeding edge of human progress, that "us" became "humanity," though based on the evidence provided by most world events, that's a bit optimistic.

In this country – and probably a lot of others – we've seen a sharp return to a certain type of tribalism in the past 20-30 years or so as we've turned against each other politically in ways we really hadn't turned on each other on a broad level in most people's lifetimes. The "us" is no longer "Americans" it's "real Americans" or "Republicans" maybe. And the "them" is "Democrats" or "people who live in big cities" or "coastal elites" or whatever. And yes, it works both ways, with Democrats and other left-leaning people defining people who live in rural areas, blue collar or farm workers, conservatives, the less-educated, and the deeply religious as "them." It's a distinctly pitched thing and virtually every part of our political and media landscape encourages this oppositional binary now.

While disease does not really discriminate between urban and rural areas like it may have hundreds of years ago, the bulk of the coverage of the pandemic, for example, focused on the risks to people in close quarters, primarily in cities, which – thanks to a big, big assist from the politicization of it all by Donald Trump and those loyal to him – made COVID a "them" problem and made the idea of getting vaccines against it less pressing because, hey, why should we care about them? We're fine. Again, there is a counterpoint to that on the left where there has long been a slice of left-leaning granola types who have eschewed vaccines because of, I suspect, a weird strain of superiority delusion which likewise makes illness a "them" problem, even if the "them" are different people.

Either way, if sickness is not our problem, why should we bother with vaccinating ourselves? The immediate answer is "because scientists and doctors know what they're talking about and the false tribal constructs which inform anti-vaxxers' risk assessment are frickin' stupid." Unfortunately, when we started breaking up into our little tribes 20-30 years ago, the scientists and other experts were rejected by the rural right wing and the granola left tribes for various reasons. And, yes, that was also helped along by a big push from political figures who found that rejecting expertise and authority – and getting others to do the same – was good for them politically.

Against that backdrop it all makes sense that the only thing that will change these people's tune is when something does affect them personally. When the threat breaks through the imagined barrier between "them" and "us." The threat wasn't real when it affected them. It's only real now that we are suffering. And now that it's real people in Lubbock are starting to go and get measles vaccines for their kids.

I don't offer any of that as some pointed criticism. Quite the opposite, actually. I am sure that I have called anti-vaxxers stupid and ignorant and malign many times in the past and I will no doubt do it again because it drives me absolutely insane to see good science, good medicine, and basic common sense rejected out of hand. But when I try not to be enraged – when I try to muster something akin to grace, which I really need to do more often than I've been doing lately – I can see where it all comes from and that it comes from a place way, way bigger than the opinions or ignorance of some random people in Lubbock, Texas.

It comes from something deep-seated in human nature that, even if we've transcended it at times, remains a powerful motivator. On some level almost any societal problem can be traced back to some very tribal assessment of who is part of the in-group and who is part of the out-group. And that's especially true when politicians, the media, advertisers, and various other forces find it in their interests to actively exploit and cater to people's tribalism, thereby dividing us and making shared and common interests nearly impossible to forge and maintain.

But no, I will not be demonstrating grace toward Elon Musk

From The New Republic:

Ever since Donald Trump and Elon Musk began downsizing the U.S. Agency for International Development, the administration has claimed that aid for lifesaving humanitarian assistance would continue. This notion has helped sustain the idea that the dismantling of USAID is merely about tackling governmental waste and fraud—after all, if the most critical assistance is continuing, then perhaps what is being targeted really is superfluous spending, as Musk and Trump claim.

But now the delivery of therapeutic food assistance to nearly 400,000 severely malnourished children abroad is in doubt due to ongoing firings at USAID, two manufacturers of this product told me in interviews. The raw materials needed to make the product are sitting in warehouses, but the manufacturers say they’re uncertain whether to proceed because they don’t know if the U.S. government still wants to buy the product—and they can’t be certain it will be shipped.

The richest person who has ever lived has simply decided, out of a combination of boredom, resentment, greed, and a thirst for power, that hundreds of thousands of the poorest children in the world should starve to death and the entire Republican party thinks that's just fine.

Hell, they think it's more than fine. They were happy to let him lead a Cabinet meeting yesterday. Despite the fact that he's, at best, some unappointed, unconfirmed low-level government employee who has been operating with blatant illegality for over a month now.

I've called Donald Trump a dictator, but I think he's about 85% senile and mostly checked out. Elon Musk is running the government. He's the dictator of the United States of America. And, apparently, nothing will stop him short of mob violence.

Shutdown negotiations update

Here's an update from the negotiations between Republicans and Democrats in advance of the March 14 deadline for raising the debt ceiling. The basic gist of things:

• Democrats are demanding language to make the Trump administration spend Congressionally appropriated money;
• Republicans say that’s a red line.

Personally, I think Democrats should be asking for far more than mere adherence to the law with respect to appropriations, because Republicans have already demonstrated that they have no interest in adhering to the law. They should be asking for the cessation of Trump's blatantly unconstitutional behavior, the dissolution of DOGE and its rampant illegality entirely, and the ejection of Elon Musk from any role in governing this country. Also personally: it's extraordinary telling that mere adherence to the law with respect to appropriations is a "red line" for Republicans.

When one side is asking for the bare legal minimum and the other side absolutely refuses to even consider not breaking the law, you really don't have anywhere productive to go in negotiations. Democrats need to walk away from this shit, let the government shut down on March 14, and make Republicans own the chaos they have willfully created.

The Best Songs by the Kinks

While there are any number of decent offline distractions, and while I do my best to engage in them, the two things which have most reliably made me feel better in light of everything that's going on of late is (a) to go for walks; and (b) to listen to Kinks albums. Walks have worked well this week since we're enjoying something of a Foole's Spring in central Ohio, but it's been a very cold winter and the Kinks have been far more of a balm.

Which is weird because the Kinks aren't exactly warmth personified. They've had their warm moments but overall their vibe is a bit . . . arch. There's a lot of ambivalence, contrarianism, acerbic observation, wistfulness, and sadness in their work, and Ray Davies himself is hard to love, though he seems quite OK with that. But there's something about the Kinks which very much fits the way I've been feeling for the past few months and which makes me feel things – good things – when every fiber of my being wants to simply flip off a switch and feel nothing, at least insofar as that's possible for someone wired like I'm wired.

The characters the Kinks sing about and whom the Davies brothers inhabit are rarely winners, but they're not necessarily losers either. They just are. They're often in situations and a part of systems in which there's no winning but for which there never was a hope of winning to begin with, so whaddaya gonna do? Some of that is explicit, such as in their songs which reference the English class system. A lot of the times it's subtext, though, and the takeaway from the songs – at least my takeaway; I really have no idea what the Davies boys think a lot of the time – is that you often just have to live with your lot. Not "make the best of it" and not "accept it with no complaint" but just live with it, with all of the ambiguity and frustration that may entail. That can be bleak stuff at times but there's a certain equanimity that can be found in figuring out how to live as best one can in suboptimal spaces, be they literal or the creations of one's psyche. The Kinks have helped me find equanimity in those spaces when it's been too cold to go for a walk.

I get that that's a lot of heavy stuff to lay down when all I'm really wanting to do with this item is to link Steven Hyden's article, "The Best Songs by the Kinks, Ranked" which dropped over at Uproxx yesterday, but hey, that's where my head is right now.

Hyden makes it a top-50, and I don't have many quibbles, honestly. He put "Strangers" at number one despite acknowledging that it might not, actually, be the "best" Kinks song yet I 100% agree with his reasoning. Cup of Coffee house favorite "Living on a Thin Line" is pretty damn high too, as it should be. He notes that Ray Davies has said that he would like "Days" played at his own funeral and, even if I really don't want a funeral when I die, it'd probably be a finalist for my own. Or maybe someone else's? It's a song from the living to the dead (or merely absent), not a farewell from the dead. Hopefully I have many years to chew on that one.

However that all shakes out, Hyden made a good list. If you're Kinks Kurious you could do way worse than to make a playlist out of his top-50 by way of introduction.

Have a great day everyone.