Cup of Coffee: April 6, 2023

A walkoff in Milwaukee, the Rays stay perfect, continued beefing in St. Louis, Alek Manoah doesn't give a shit, and people who think getting indicted is good politics

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

There’s a lot to get to today, so let’s get to it!

---

And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Brewers 7, Mets 6: Milwaukee blew an early 4-1 lead and fell behind 6-4 after the top of the fifth inning, thanks in large part to a couple of Pete Alonso homers. Jesse Winker tied things up with a two-run double in the bottom half, however, and it stayed tied until the bottom of the ninth. That’s when Garrett Mitchell, who had previously entered the game as a pinch-hitter, hit a walkoff solo shot off of Adam Ottovino. The Brewers sweep the Mets, outscoring them 26-6 in the three-game set.

Marlins 5, Twins 2: A dominating start for Jesús Luzardo who struck out ten and walked only one while shutting out Twins batters for six and two-thirds. This on the back of Sandy Alcantara shutting Minnesota out for nine the night before Unfortunately Luzardo gave up a double and a single with two down in the seventh, allowing the Twins to tie things up and give him the no-decision. Such is the thin line upon which one lives when one has no run support. The runs did come later, though, with Bryan De La Cruz singling in a run and then Jorge Soler hitting his second homer of the game — this one a three-run shot — in the eighth as the Fish won it going away.

Rangers 5, Orioles 2: Jacob deGrom no-hit the O’s for the first four frames while striking out eight and ended up allowing two runs over six while striking out 11. Josh Jung singled in a run in the first and hit a two-run homer in the sixth which broke a 2-2 tie and gave deGrom the win and to help Texas avoid the sweep. O’s phenom Grayson Rodriguez went five innings in his big-league debut, allowing two runs on two hits while striking out five and finishing with a no-decision. Rangers relievers have tossed 21.1 consecutive scoreless innings if you keep track of such things. They have likewise tossed 21.1 consecutive scoreless innings if you don’t keep track of such things

Yankees 4, Phillies 2: Aaron Nola was good but Gerrit Cole was better, allowing only one run while pitching into the seventh and striking out eight. The one runner who scored was put on base by Cole via a pitch clock violation. I’m sort of picturing Cole saying, in Pee-Wee Herman’s voice, “I meant to do that.” Gleyber Torres continued his early season hot snap, going 3-for-4 with two RBI singles. Torres also stole two bases, giving him five on the year. Bad news for New York: Josh Donaldson left with right hamstring tightness while running to first on a flyout.

[Editor: Craig, a lot of Yankees fans have been saying that Donaldson being out is not actually bad news]

Wow. Far be it from me to say something so harsh.

Atlanta 5, Cardinals 2: The sweep. Bryce Elder pitched six scoreless innings of two-hit ball, Matt Olson homered and had two RBI doubles on a three-RBI day, and Atlanta took an early lead and never looked back. Young Jordan Walker gave St. Louis a bright spot with his first career home run and later doubled in a run but, all in all, a pretty crap series for the Cards. And that’s before the ongoing beefing between Oliver Marmol and Tyler O’Neill which, as noted down in the Daily Briefing, continued into Wednesday.

Rays 7, Nationals 2: The Rays are 6-0 and none of their games have even been close. None of their games have been against a team that won’t finish in last place either, but they didn’t make the schedule so they still get the kudos. Wander Franco and Harold Ramírez each had two hits including a home run. Taylor Walls and Randy Arozarena had two hits each for Tampa Bay, which has outscored its opponents 44-13 in those six wins. The start is the best in Devil Rays/Rays history and is the best start from any team since Baltimore opened 7-0 in 2016.

Pirates 4, Red Sox 1: A good team getting swept by the Pittsburgh Pirates is not unheard of — the Pirates really handed it to the 111-win Dodgers a couple of times last season — but I’m not sure why I’m noting that given that Boston is pretty clearly not a good team. Carlos Santana homered and Bryan Reynolds continued to be hot, driving in a run to give him seven RBI in 6 games. That’s just short of a pace to catch Hack Wilson for the single-season record, but on the bright side Reynolds is not a combative drunk like Wilson was, so all in all he’s doing OK. The Buccos are 4-2.

White Sox 7, Giants 3: Dylan Cease allowed one run over five while striking out eight and inducing 17 swinging strikes, Gavin Sheets drove in three on a couple of RBI singles, Andrew Benintendi, Luis Robert, and Yoán Moncada each had multiple hits as well, and Elvis Andrus picked up his 2,000th career hit. Andrus meeting that milestone makes me think of him as old. Looking and seeing that he’s still only 34 makes me think of him as at least kinda young. Then remembering that he was once part of a trade that included a guy who was a scab in the 1994-95 strike and Mark Teixeira, who has been retired since Obama was in office, makes me think of him as old again.

In other news, Tim Anderson got ejected after asking for time out, not getting it, stepping out of the box anyway, watching strike three from about 15 feet away, and then jawing about it once he was back to the dugout. Anderson claims that he was quick-pitched by Giants pitcher Logan Webb. Webb, for his part, said he thought Anderson was yelling at him, not the umpire and he shouldn’t have been ejected. All I know is that dudes are gonna have to figure out soon that if they want to ask for time they need to assume they’re not getting it unless or until they hear the ump give it and then, and only then, can they step out.

Astros 8, Tigers 2: Chas McCormick, Kyle Tucker and Jeremy Peña all homered while combining for six RBI to help the ‘Stros snap a three-game skid. Tucker added an RBI double on top of that homer.

Guardians 6, Athletics 4: Cleveland blew a 4-0 lead, and a nice Hunter Gaddis start in which he tossed one-hit ball over six innings, when Ryan Noda hit a solo homer and Jesús Aguilar hit a three-run shot to tie the game up in the eighth inning. In the tenth, though, Andrés Giménez scored on pinch-hitter Will Brennan’s groundout for the go-ahead run and then Steven Kwan followed with an RBI single to give us the score that would become final. Three of Cleveland’s five victories this season have come in extra innings.

Angels 4, Mariners 3: Shohei Ohtani was a bit shaky early and ended up hitting two batters and walking four, but he settled down and ended up allowing only one run over six for the win. He also got called for pitch clock violations both as a pitcher and a hitter, which I’m guessing is a thing that will happen to him more than anyone else by the time he retires. Hell, it may not happen to anyone else at all. He also drove in a run with a single in the top of the seventh while Logan O’Hoppe hit a two-run homer for the Angels.

Blue Jays 3, Royals 0: Alek Manoah — who, as we note down in the Daily Briefing does not give a shit what people think about him — allowed only one hit over seven shutout innings and two relievers finished the two-hit shutout of the punchless Royals. It was a close one, though, as Zack Greinke nearly matched him, allowing only a run on a fielder’s choice. Vlad Guerrero Jr. homered in the eight for a bit of insurance after which Matt Chapman singled in a run.

Cubs vs. Reds — POSTPONED:

🎶Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall🎶

---

The Daily Briefing

Oli Marmol is still calling out Tyler O’Neill

In yesterday’s recaps I relayed the comments from Cardinals manager Oli Marmol which were critical of Tyler O’Neill for getting thrown out at home plate on a play in which O’Neill seemed to be doing something less than hustling. O’Neill, who has a history of leg injuries, defended himself, saying that he was trying to stay healthy.

Marmol benched O’Neill yesterday (O’Neill did get a pinch-hitting appearance). Before that game Marmol was asked more about all of that and, unlike a lot of managers who may seek to put out a fire by claiming it’s all good now, Marmol kept poking at O’Neill, saying “everybody wants to stay healthy. Arenado, Goldy, Donovan, Edman, you go down the list, everybody wants to stay healthy. That doesn't compute for me . . . There is a standard. You meet it, you play. You don’t, you don’t.”

Then when he was asked if O'Neill would be back in the lineup in the Cards’ next game on Friday, he said, “that's not an important question right now. Not that it's not a fair question. I'm just not going to answer it.”

For O’Neill’s part, he said “I don’t think it should’ve been handled that way,” referring to Marmol going public postgame on Tuesday. “I think if there’s internal issues they should be handled internally. We should have each others backs out there. Sometimes it doesn’t go that way I guess. Live and you learn.”

Points for honestly from both of them, I suppose. Points deducted for Marmol for staying on a player’s ass for a couple of games now when, really, this all should’ve ended on Tuesday night. Unless, of course, Marmol gets the sense from the clubhouse that other players are mad at O’Neill too, in which case I suppose this is what you do.

Alex Verdugo has beef with Alek Manoah. Manoah does not give a shit.

Red Sox outfielder Alex Verdugo was on a podcast the other day and took issue with Blue Jays pitcher Alek Manoah and the way he somehow celebrates strikeouts and taunts the opposition. He took particular issue with an exchange Manoah had with Red Sox hitters last year. Verdugo:

“If it's a genuine reaction and it’s for the boys, not directed towards somebody, then yeah . . . Like, I’ll say it right now, I think Alek Manoah goes about it the wrong way, 100 percent I think he does. You can find videos of him, footage of him in Triple-A going like this to hitters. Last year, telling Franchy [Cordero] and Bobby [Dalbach] like go sit, shit like that and looking right at them . . . So it’s like, shit like that just pisses me off. It’s not the way it should be played. It should be played like you’re celebrating it with your team, you’re not fucking disrespecting another player who is — at the end of the day we’re just trying to compete, that’s it.”

Verdugo’s words got back to Manoah. Manoah said this:

“Coming from him? I don’t give a shit.”

Always strive to be the calmest dude in the argument. You’ll always be OK if you are. As such: Game, set, match. Manoah.

Eloy Jiménez placed on the IL with a bum hammie

Chicago White Sox outfielder Eloy Jiménez suffered a hamstring injury running the bases in the seventh inning of Monday’s game against the Giants. Yesterday the club put him on the 10-day injured list, retroactive to Tuesday, with what they’re calling a low-grade left hamstring strain. Jiménez is expected to miss two to three weeks.

Jiménez played in only 84 games last year after missing more than two months with a hamstring strain. He played in only 55 games in 2021 due to a torn pectoral muscle sustained while jumping to make a catch at the wall in a spring training game and, later in the year, sustained a deep bone bruise in his knee after getting hit by a foul wall while sitting in the dugout.

The White Sox had already made him a DH to keep him from hurting himself. Seems like they also need to encase him in cotton balls or bubble wrap. Or, since Jerry Reinsdorf is cheap, they could put him in a box and fill it with styrofoam packing peanuts.

Manfred: pitch clock has not hurt concession sales

I mentioned yesterday that the pitch clock seems to be working as intended in the early going, at least as far as limiting game times goes. But what about secondary concerns? Here I mean important stuff such as whether or not fans are buying less beer due to the shorter games. For that, Evan Drellich has you covered:

When MLB was experimenting with these rule changes in the minor leagues, they monitored the effect of shorter game times on concession sales . . .“When we went from no clock to a clock and lost the 26 minutes, what we found is that there was no decrease in our concession sales,” [Rob] Manfred said during an executive luncheon hosted by the Paley Media Council in New York. “And we think the reason for that is people kind of, in their head, have two and a half hours set aside to do this baseball game. So before the clock, if two and a half hours was at the end of six (innings), they were gone, OK? Now, they stayed until the end of the game, and we’ve seen absolutely no decline on the concession side. And that’s a really important indicator of how serious the problem was that we were trying to deal with.”

As someone who has attended a lot of games, be it young and solo, with friends when we were young, with friends when we were older, with young kids, and as a solo old fart, that makes sense. There is a rhythm to a day at the ballpark and there is a natural point where, at least if you’re not the only person making the call, people feel at least some pressure to leave. And even if they don’t leave, they sort of get on a “let’s wrap this game up” footing, during which no one is going off to buy more hot dogs or t-shirts or whatever.

All of which is to say that, while at first instance it may seem counterintuitive that concession sales wouldn’t drop off with shorter games, I can totally see them holding steady given how many people are checking out, either physically or mentally, as games drag on toward and past the three-hour mark.

Do know, however, that Big Brother is watching you

In that same story Drellich dives a bit deeper into how MLB knows that the shorter games aren’t leading to a big hit at the concession stand. It turns out that a big reason they know it is because they’re watching us:

It’s easy for teams to track when fans show up to the park, because they can review what time people scan their tickets to enter. But determining when they’re in their seats or not requires more effort, and potentially, a third-party vendor. CrowdIQ installs cameras at different stadiums in various sports and then uses computer vision and artificial intelligence to discern movement and characteristics.

“Anything you and I can deduce from an image, a computer can be trained to detect,” Goodger said. “So if we look at a photo, you could assume male or female, approximate age, if there’s somebody in their seat or not, if they’re wearing, you know, the home team merchandise or away team merchandise, things like that. … We’re essentially doing that every 10 to 15 minutes.”

The guy Drellich quotes from CrowdIQ makes a point to say that they are not doing facial recognition stuff and don’t know who is who in these assessments. Rather, he says, it’s the same thing as you or me looking at a camera shot panning the crowd. We know who is there by characteristic, but we don’t know that the guy in the team-branded polo shirt in section 240 is there with a woman who is not his wife or whatever. For that we are left with our baseline assumptions.

Imagine

From the MLB press release machine:

Major League Baseball and Brian Grazer and Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment have entered into a strategic partnership to create scripted and non-scripted film and television properties. Under the terms of the multi-year deal, Imagine and MLB will collaborate to develop and produce projects rooted in stories and personalities throughout the league’s robust 150-year history. The partnership looks to produce pioneering programming that taps the expansive MLB Film & Video Archive to cover historical and cultural subjects while leveraging access granted by the league to also profile the captivating storylines around the game today.

If you thought that Ron Howard’s filming of “Hillbilly Elegy” represented the apotheosis of pandering credulity, wait until he starts putting out baseball movies that require final sign-off from Rob Manfred and his merry men. I’m sure anything produced out of this venture will consist of the hardest of hard-hitting dramas and documentaries which speak truth to power.

---

Other Stuff

I think I am having a stroke

There is this joke on Twitter about how the New York Times will cast any news, be it good, bad, or indifferent as bad for Democrats or President Biden. The joke is usually along the lines of “unemployment down, economy booming: why that’s bad news for Biden” or “Republicans polling at all-time lows: why this is a dangerous time for Democrats.” The jokes, like all jokes, tend to be based on exaggeration, but the New York Times’ comical commitment to reflexive both-sidesism provides them with a core of truth.

Sometimes, though, the joke actually understates things. Like in this story in yesterday’s New York Times, headlined “Biden Has the Oval Office. But Trump Has Center Stage,” which contains passages such as this:

Americans could be forgiven if they momentarily forgot the most powerful person in the country. As helicopters and cameras followed every step of the Donald J. Trump legal drama in New York more than 200 miles to the north with white Ford Bronco-level intensity, President Biden faded into the background, ceding the stage to his defendant-predecessor . . . No commander in chief in more than a century has been eclipsed in the public eye by the leader he succeeded the way Mr. Biden has at times. Now with the first criminal prosecution of a former president in American history, it will be that much harder to command the national conversation.

I am not sure how The New York Times fails to understand that (a) not every story lends itself to horse race politics framing; and (b) even if they can’t help themselves in that regard, not all attention is created equally. It’s one thing to get more attention and screen time because you’re doing more interviews or getting bigger crowds at your stump speeches. It’s a bit of a different case when the reason the spotlight is on you is because YOU LITERALLY GOT ARRESTED AND ARRAIGNED ON MULTIPLE FELONY COUNTS.

That doesn’t seem like a difficult concept to me. Nor does it seem hard for editors to tell reporters to come up with a better angle when they come to you with “Trump is winning the news cycle!” stuff when he’s doing so because he’s now a formally accused criminal.

Great Moments in accountability

A state representative in Ohio named David Dobos is the Vice Chairman of the legislature’s Higher Education Committee and is the former president of the Columbus City School Board. He has also been outed as having been lying for over 30 years about graduating from MIT. We know that he never did because MIT said so itself when it was asked about it by an Ohio reporter:

An MIT spokesperson, Sarah McDonnell, said that Dobos' claims of holding a degree from the prestigious research institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts, are incorrect.

“Dobos attended MIT as an undergraduate student in economics from September 1973 -August 1977; February 1978 – January 1979; and February 1980 – May 1980,” McDonnell said in an email to The Dispatch. “No MIT degrees were conferred.”

And it’s not like Dobos just made this claim in a campaign flyer or in some random speech. He’s had it in his official Statehouse biography, on all of his campaign materials going back something like 30 years, and has mentioned it to friends, colleagues, and members of the media throughout that period. Now he’s busted, though, and he’s beginning to scrub his lie about that from his websites and things.

We have a decent amount of lying about educational accomplishments among state legislators here, but usually it comes in the form of misleading aggrandizement, such as someone who was homeschooled and then got a worthless degree from a shitty online evangelical college claiming they “got their degree at age 19” or something. A straight up fabrication like this is pretty next level.

But it’s not so next-level that anything will happen to the guy, of course. We know that because this is the same state legislator who failed to state in his campaign finance reports last year that he has two creditors who claim he owes them $1.3 million as the result of a decade-old business dispute. In Ohio, at least if you’re a Republican, there is no accountability, no oversight, and, thanks to gerrymandering, no electoral consequences for anything. It’s a great gig if you happen to be both a Republican and utterly shameless.

That doesn’t sound relaxing

Someone posted one of those maps showing how much more passenger rail coverage Europe has than the U.S. and said something like “wish we had that here.” Then this exchange took place:

I’m not sure who this dude is, but I cannot imagine trying to squeeze in a Home Depot and Ikea trip, each of which imply a major home project going on, followed by a trip to the grocery store, all during one’s lunch hour, is anything other than the most stressful and unpleasant thing imaginable. Add in the loud music he mentions and I’m thinking that this dude is actually Ray Liotta from the helicopter/cocaine paranoia scene from “Goodfellas.”

Anything else?

Ah, OK. Now his comparisons make sense. Because based on this response the man has obviously never been on a train in Europe and thereby misunderstands the whole topic.

Sunset Boulevard

From driving to walking, this time courtesy of baseball writer Pedro Moura’s chronicle in the Los Angeles Times of walking the entire 25 mile length of Sunset Boulevard. That route beats my cross-San Francisco walk back in February by about nine miles, but it does have slightly less in the way of total elevation gain. It also, per Moura’s account, have much more in the way of hostility to walkers which is obviously not a surprise in that town.

Still, it sounds wonderful:

We walked by the erstwhile locations of old stamping grounds Sunset Beer Co. and the ArcLight Hollywood. We walked by the Black Cat, where a plaque commemorates its role as the site of a 1967 LGBTQ civil rights demonstration. We walked by the third-floor window at Kaiser Permanente, across from L. Ron Hubbard Way, where I anxiously looked out as my mom underwent emergency surgery. To the north, the Griffith Observatory rose out of the day’s fog to greet us . . . In Beverly Hills, Will Rogers Memorial Park and its restrooms, made famous by George Michael’s lewd conduct, were a welcome sight amid extravagant wealth and pedestrian-unfriendly streets. Soon the sidewalks disappeared and makeshift trails emerged. Sizable Metro buses and speeding sports cars threatened a few feet away. We saw more motorcyclists than cyclists and more mushrooms sprouting below us than fellow walkers.

I’m on a nature-walking kick these days, but the urban hikes are a lot of fun too. When I was a kid my dad took us on a meandering walk from Battery Park to Central Park in New York that, as best I can reckon, covered 6-7 miles once we added in the east-west tourist attraction detours. That San Francisco hike was wonderful as well. Maybe when I’m done with England I’ll pick another city to cross?

Have a great day, everyone.