Cup of Coffee: August 25 2022

A weird new schedule, Jeff Luhnow being a slime ball, some questionable merch, student loan relief, large filing cabinets, a city covered by a dome, and a beautiful sunset

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

As subscribers know, I’m Burlington, Vermont this week moving my daughter in to college. We don’t actually drop her at her dorm until later today — yesterday was some sightseeing and shopping and all of that — and with all of the stuff there’s been to do, I haven’t had a ton of time to devote to writing, so the newsletter is going to be a bit light today. But hey, it’s Free Thursday and you get what you pay for, right?

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And That Happened

Atlanta 14, Pirates 2
Tigers 6, Giants 1
Rangers 16, Rockies 4
Athletics 3, Marlins 2
Guardians 7, Padres 0
Nationals 3, Mariners 1
White Sox 5, Orioles 3
Phillies 7, Reds 5
Rays 4, Angels 3
Blue Jays 3, Red Sox 2
Cubs 7, Cardinals 1
Royals 5, Diamondbacks 3
Astros 5, Twins 3
Dodgers 12, Brewers 6

No full recaps, but a few drive-by observations:

• In the third inning of the Atlanta-Pittsburgh game, Pirates’ shortstop Oneil Cruz hit a ball off the wall that left the bat at 122.4 miles per hour, making it the hardest-hit batted ball since Statcast became a thing seven years ago. If anything, though, he probably wished he didn’t hit it as hard as he did because it got to the wall and off it to Ronald Acuña’s glove so fast that Cruz was held to a single. Not that that was the worst thing that happened to the Pirates yesterday given the final score in their game against Atlanta. A grand slam from Matt Olson and a fantastic performance from Kyle Wright led the way;

• José Ramírez homered twice and hit a sac fly to help Cleveland beat San Diego. I’m so old I remember when the Padres were trying to acquire Ramírez in a trade and that the Guardians were actually considering it for a minute. Madness;

• Nathaniel Lowe homered and drove in five for the Rangers who routed the Rockies;

• The A’s won with a leadoff sac fly in the 10th inning. My god I hate the Manfred Man. Before that Cole Irvin struck out 11 over seven shutout innings. If you adjust for the fact that it was the Marlins offense he was facing that’s, like, five runs over six innings maybe?

• In the Mariners-Nationals game Seattle starter George Kirby started the game by throwing 24 straight strikes. He gave up a run during that stretch because, hey, hits count as strikes, but on the day he only gave up the one run over seven innings while striking out nine and not walking anyone. As for the Nats, the box score says Aníbal Sánchez pitched shutout ball into the fifth inning but that has to be a lie because I’m pretty sure Aníbal Sánchez is 110 years-old and retired at some point during the Truman administration. Too busy to check, though;

• Death, taxes, Framber Valdez. Seven innings pitched, two hits, one earned run, and his 21st straight quality start. And yeah, I know quality starts is a bullshit stat, but there is something wonderful about a solid, old school starting pitcher who, while he may not be flashy or anything, just puts in a damn fine day’s worth of work almost every time out; and finally

• Look at this goddamn throw from Aristides Aquino:

  Bobby Nightengale @nightengalejr

  Hitting will be the deciding factor for Aristides Aquino’s future, but he saves a good amount of runs with his arm.

  Yeah, he didn’t play it well at the wall, and yeah, that was a bad send from the third base coach, but even controlling for that stuff, this was a friggin’ laser.

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The Daily Briefing

The 2023 schedule is out and it’s pretty different

Major League Baseball released the schedule for the 2023 season yesterday. For the first time ever all 30 teams will play one another at some point during the season. Here’s how it breaks down:

• Division games: There are 52 total games against divisional opponents, down from 76. Teams will play each of the other teams in their division 13 times, with either six home/seven road or vice-versa;

• Intraleague games: There are 64 total games -- 32 home and 32 away -- against non-divisional league opponents, down from 66. Teams will play six games against six league opponents and seven games against four league opponents;

• Interleague games: There will now be 46 games against interleague opponents, which is a BIG increase from the current 20.

I know a lot of people aren’t super pleased with the decrease in divisional games, but I’m pretty cool with it. I grew up watching baseball with a more balanced schedule and I preferred it, frankly. I like seeing more teams and more varied matchups. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that I recap games five days a week. Like, I know the Pirates and Reds or the Astros and A’s play each other 19 times as it is, but it feels like 150 by the time September rolls around.

I also know that a lot of people chafe at the idea of more interleague play, but at some point we all just have to accept that the leagues are now mere historical holdovers which exist in name only. That was happening even before the DH went universal, and now the only reason we have two leagues is to organize teams on either side of the bracket for purposes of the October tournament that we once called the playoffs. I’d bet vast sums of money that, within the next decade, we will see expansion to 32 teams followed by radical realignment that fully abolishes the names “American League” and “National League” and replaces them with “MLB East” and “MLB West” and it’s all done NBA-style.

Being honest: I don’t really care if that happens, I don’t think. It’d be one thing if the leagues actually meant anything but they don’t anymore. May as well go with a regional scheme at this point rather than keep up the charade.

Jeff Luhnow deleted cell phone data during the sign-stealing investigation

Evan Drellich of The Athletic has a book coming out about the Astros sign-stealing scandal. Yesterday The Athletic ran an excerpt of it which reveals that ex-Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow deleted data from his cell phone during MLB's investigation. This was not mentioned in the report Rob Manfred released at the time MLB banned Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch for a year, but in a letter to the Astros dated January 2, 2020, Manfred outlined evidence the league had compiled against Luhnow. From the letter:

“Your credibility is further impacted by the fact that you permanently deleted information from your phone and its backups in anticipation that my investigators would seek to search your phone,” Manfred wrote to Luhnow. “You did not tell my investigators that you had done this until they confronted you about it in your second interview. While you explained that you were simply deleting sensitive personal photographs, I have no way to confirm that you did not delete incriminating evidence.”

Luhnow claimed then, and continues to claim now, that the only thing he deleted from his phone were photos he took of his wife giving birth. Which, eww. But also that’s probably a lie:

Investigators found that Luhnow’s phone had no standard call logs, even though Luhnow had known phone calls with A.J. Hinch that should have been there. MLB also could not locate known email exchanges that should have been on his phone that were found on others’ devices . . . A person with knowledge of the investigation said that Luhnow told MLB he hadn’t deleted anything else on the phone. Yet, when the league looked at the hex of the SMS database, MLB also found traces of nine messages between Luhnow and [Astros employee Tom] Koch-Weser, from March and August of 2019, a person with knowledge of the investigation said. MLB couldn’t recover those texts on either device, however . . . To the league’s determination, the photos accounted for only a very small percentage of the data that was removed when Luhnow deleted the backups.

Surprised the dude only got a year, frankly. Not at all surprised that he remains committed to claiming he did nothing wrong and has never once taken any responsibility for what went down on his watch.

San Franciscans: would you buy this shirt?

This is official merchandise from the actual Giants team store at Oracle Park. Note the option on the bottom right:

According to my friends who live in the Bay Area, “Frisco” is the nickname for the city that is the most-loathed by residents and the name is never, ever used by them. “San Fran,” they tell me, is not quite as loathed as “Frisco” but it’s still pretty damn loathed and is likewise never used by locals. It’s “San Francisco” or “The City” or bust.

In light of that, I’m wondering who in the hell that shirt on the bottom right is for.

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Other Stuff

On student debt cancellation

Yesterday President Biden announced that the government is going to cancel $10,000 in student loan debt for those earning less than $125,000 per year and $20,000 for Pell grant recipients.

There are a lot of people who don’t like this. Some don’t like it as a matter of policy and because they fear it could exacerbate inflation. Many more don’t like it because of politics or because of a grievance related to fairness that roughly goes “hey, I paid MY student loans off, so why should someone else get a break?”

I don’t take these complaints terribly seriously. Republicans would complain about a cure for cancer if a Democrat did it, so forgive me if I don’t take their beefing over this seriously. Not only do they refuse to offer any ideas of their own about the student loan problem in this country, they refuse to even acknowledge that there is a student loan problem in this country, so they can take a flying fuck at a rolling donut as far as I’m concerned.

I suspect that there’s a pretty heavy overlap between the people who cite “fairness” and those who went to college before the 1990s. You know, back before states slashed higher education budgets, tuition went up like 300%, and Congress — led by Senator Joe Biden, it should be noted — made student debt non-dischargeable in bankruptcy, all of which greatly empowered those who peddle student loans and rendered the vast majority of said loans predatory in the extreme.

There was a time when higher education did not cost anything approaching what it does now. There was a time when student debt was manageable. That time is decades in the past, however, and those who are yelling about fairness generally fail to acknowledge that. It’s a totally different game these days than it was when you could go a state university for mid-four figures a year, room and board in all. We have a legitimate crisis here that is hamstringing a couple of generations worth of people in major, major ways.

All of that aside, I’ll never understand the “I had to [endure some awful thing] so other people should have to as well” mindset. Personally, if there is a problem facing a vast swath of the populace, I’d like to do things to address that problem even if it had not been addressed prior. I know someone who beat leukemia a few years ago. I don’t think he’d think it unfair if someone cured leukemia now.

One other thing: given how much student debt is sitting out there — Americans owe more to lenders for student loans than they owe on car loans, credit cards or any other consumer debt apart from mortgages — this is, actually, a fairly modest about of debt relief Biden is offering here. Yet, based on the hysterical responses to it we’re already hearing and will continue to hear for some time, you’d think he did something truly sweeping and consequential as opposed to forgiving a relatively small percentage of debt.

Know what? Given that Biden is getting maximal political heat for $10K, he probably should’ve gone way bigger. Politically speaking, it’d not cost him a thing and it’d actually help a lot more people. Democrats have never grokked that and thus they constantly aim low, thinking they can thread some sort of moderate needle and head off criticism from the right. Just a total sucker’s game they play. Maybe one day they’ll stop playing it and will go big when they believe in something.

Yeah, I know how to party

Yesterday morning we went to go see one of the most important cultural sites in Burlington: The World’s Tallest Filing cabinet:

It was only after we visited it that I learned that, actually, it’s not called “The World’s Tallest Filing Cabinet.” It’s a piece of art called “File Under So. Co., Waiting for...” The “So. Co.” stands for Southern Connector, which is the name if interstate 189, which is a spur line freeway that takes traffic into downtown Burlington. There had been many delays in its construction over the years and there continues to be controversy over what to do with the last bits of it that were planned but never finished. The artist who put the cabinet together was tired of it all so he made this thing in, um, protest? Sure, let’s say it was done in protest.

Three other notes:

• From the time it was built in 2002 until August 2020, it did not have the concrete pedestal. That was added when the thing was moved 100 feet from its original location due to impending construction on its original site. You can see what it used to look like before it was in the parking lot at the Wikipedia page;

• Even if it’s not, actually, called “The World’s Tallest Filing Cabinet,” Google Maps calls it that, as does everyone else I’ve heard mention it, so I’ll call it that too. Consider this a reverse “San Fran” situation; and

• Anna’s mother was the main driver for wanting to see the World’s Tallest Filing Cabinet. I’m pretty sure that’s because she works in the office furniture industry and that by visiting it she can write part of this trip off as a business expense. Pretty clever, really.

Anyway: the filing cabinet was OK.

Also OK: the place I’m staying. Because it’s tourist season and college move-in season here in Burlington, lodgings are at a premium. The hotels were filling up fast a couple of months ago and they’re not cheap. Because of that, and because a three-bedroom situation was best for Anna, Anna’a mom, and me, we got an Airbnb. It’s actually in Winsooki, Vermont, which is just north of Burlington. It’s a pretty chill little place from what I can tell. While walking around yesterday morning I was curious about it so I Googled it. It’s your standard Wikipedia page of a small New England town until you get to this part:

In 1979, the city researched the construction of a dome over the entire city of Winooski, to reduce heating costs during the winter. The proposed dome would have been 200 feet (61 m) at the center, and internal combustion engines would have been banned. Though the dome was never built, to this day the city's planner defends the concept, insisting "Economically, it's a slam dunk," and adding "You could have had year-round fly-fishing."

OK!

More than OK was watching the sun set over Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks after dinner last night:

Me: “Why do you get to live here while I’m stuck in Ohio?”

Anna: “I think I decided to live here because I’ve been stuck in Ohio.”

Girl has a point.

Have a great day, everyone.