Cup of Coffee: February 23, 2023

New pickoff strategies, hurt arms, sailor boys, Angelos, a Tito tooth update, presidential candidates, heartless Republicans, my billionaire neighbor, DNA, and Stephen Spielberg

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

Today we have a tasty link to a fascinating breakdown of potential pickoff and baserunner strategies under the new rules, the Astros are going to be without a pitcher for a while, the Yankees may get a pitcher back sooner than expected, the Phillies get a pitcher on shore leave, so to speak, John Angelos is the talker who keeps on talking and, based on the pizza he housed, Tito’s tooth is gonna be just fine.

In Other Stuff there’s a new presidential candidate, the GOP just keeps cranking out winners, my billionaire neighbor sure is acting like someone with something to hide, another cold case is solved via DNA, and we talk a lot about Stephen Spielberg

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The Daily Briefing

On the Mets “secret play”

The other day I commented on the Mets clearing the practice facility so that they could work on some sort of secret play. The secrecy, which outside of signs is generally not a thing in baseball, reminded me of something the New England Patriots would do, so I referred to it as “The NFL-i-Fication of baseball.”

Former Baltimore, Atlanta, and the Houston front office guy — and former Baseball Prospectus writer — Noah Woodward read that and it got him thinking. Noah knows way more about baseball, baseball strategy, and how baseball teams work than I do, so his thinking, over at his newsletter, The Advance Scout, is definitely worth reading.

The result is Noah’s excellent breakdown of various strategies teams might take to deal with the limited number of pickoff throws under the new rules. Game theory and messing with baserunners’ heads and all of that jazz. It’s really a great and informative read in which he explains how teams might approach the new rules in a far more succinct way than your team’s TV analyst will struggle to do between pitches in the first couple of games of the season. Highly recommended that you check it out.

Lance McCullers Jr. Won't Be Ready For Start Of Season

Astros starter Lance McCullers Jr. had an MRI on Tuesday night and it was discovered that he has a muscle strain in his elbow. It’s not a UCL situation, but the Astros are gonna have to shut him down for a few weeks. He will not begin the season with the club. McCullers:

“Just a small muscle strain. It shouldn’t be anything like last year. It should be something where I’m playing catch in a couple of weeks.”

The Astros rotation, thankfully, is pretty deep, with Framber Valdez, José Urquidy, Christian Javier, Luis Garcia, and rookie Hunter Brown, who will likely take McCullers’ starts.

McCullers only made eight starts last year after spending most of the season recovering from a right flexor tendon strain he sustained during the 2021 postseason. He was excellent in those eight starts, posting a 2.27 ERA (171 ERA+), though he did get shelled by the Phillies in the World Series, giving up five homers in his Game 3 start.

Either way: better to rest now and be ready later.

Frankie Montas had surgery

Yankees starter Frankie Montas had shoulder surgery to clean up his shoulder yesterday. He avoided the worst case scenario — missing the whole season due to a rotator cuff or something — and had a labrum cleanup instead. He could begin throwing in late May. If so, he could pitch in the second half of the season. Aaron Boone:

“Everything went according to plan. We're day one out of surgery, so we have a long way to go from there. We're hopeful at some point he can get back but I don't want to best case, worst case.”

How are Yankees fans taking it?

WalkingTaako @WalkingTaako

Terrible news for the Yankees, Frankie Montas might be available down the stretch after all

Marly Rivera @MarlyRiveraESPN

As Frankie Montas expected, there was no need for rotator cuff/labrum surgical intervention. Montas’ arthroscopic shoulder “cleanup” might allow him to pitch again this year. Boone said that he will resume his throwing program in 12 weeks.

Tough room.

Rule 5 pick Noah Song has been discharged from active Navy duty

So what? So have a lot of guys. That’s how the Navy works! But in case you do not know who Noah Song is, know that he was a pitcher the Red Sox selected in the fourth round of the 2019 draft. Song was actually first round talent — and pitched fantastically in limited, low-level minor league play that year — but he went to the U.S. Naval Academy so he had a multi-year military commitment to fulfill before he could go back to pitching.

The Sox attempted to get his commitment shortened like some other ex-Annapolis athletes have done, but no dice. The Red Sox left Song unprotected in the Rule 5 draft this past December and the Phillies took him. Now, however, he has been shifted off of active duty and to the reserves and, reserve obligations aside, he can pitch again.

The problem, of course, is that Song (a) has hardly any experience and hasn’t pitched in anything approaching a controlled setting for several years; but (b) since he’s a Rule 5 guy, the Phillies have to keep him on their big league roster or else lose him. He could obviously use some minor league seasoning but, barring a rehab assignment following an “injury” — the sort of which Rule 5 guys often get for some reason! — he won’t get it.

Song will, obviously, not be the difference between the Phillies winning it all or falling flat this year, but his progress will be interesting to follow.

John Angelos wants the Orioles to be “the next Tampa”

I’ve become fixated on chronicling the dumb things Orioles owner John Angelos says this spring. I mean, I get it. Until recently he was being sued by his brother and kinda had to clam up, but since then he’s come up with something new every couple of days and it’s been gloriously dubious every single time.

The latest came on Sunday, but I somehow missed it until yesterday. Basically, it was a general State of the Team kind of conversation with the O’s press corps. In addition to giving assurances that he has no plans to sell or move the team, he talked about what he envisions for the Orioles, competitively speaking. Specifically, he pointed to the Tampa Bay Rays, Cleveland Guardians, and Milwaukee Brewers as examples which he hopes the O’s can emulate. Angelos was particularly enamored with the Rays model as something to aspire to, saying “I would be disappointed if we’re not the next Tampa. Which we’re sustainable relevant and competitive.”

There are many, many worse teams in baseball than the Rays — for many years the Orioles have been one of them — but it’s also the case that when you’re a young team on the rise you should maybe at least suggest that you’d like to win a championship, yes? Which is a thing the Rays and Brewers have never done so and is a thing the Guardians haven’t done in 75 years, so those are strange comps.

I don’t, actually, consider this to be some pathetic lack of vision on Angelos’ part, though. Rather, I think it’s an admission. An admission of a thing most of today’s modern breed of owners hold close to their hearts but rarely say out loud: that the financial sweet spot is to be a franchise that makes the playoffs once in a while so that people buy tickets but which never has a long run of playoff seasons and never wins the World Series, because when you do that you gotta pay the players more.

Update on Tito’s tooth

Yesterday I passed along the saga of Terry Francona getting all worked up about a speech, breaking his tooth on uncooked pasta, and generally having himself of a hot mess of a Monday night. Well, we have an update:

He has a temporary crown in. Will get the permanent in a few days. He needs to eat on the other side of his mouth for now. “Last night, I ate a pizza on this side. The wholeeee pizza carefully. Took about an hour and a half to eat it, but I ate it.”

He’s gonna be alright, folks.

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Other Stuff

There’s a new presidential candidate

And he’s from Ohio! Sadly, however — though not unpredictably — he’s a total jackwagon.

His name is Vivek Ramaswamy. He’s a 37 year-old biotech founder turned venture capitalist cut from the J.D. Vance/Peter Thiel cloth who thinks that “wokism” is the greatest problem facing America. Guy even wrote a book about it. But while running a campaign based on culture war crap as a means of taking an office via which one can deliver absolutely everything wealthy/corporate America wants is the Republican Ideal, Ramaswamy does have a couple of things working against him.

The first one: though he was born in Cincinnati, his parents are from India. No respectable pundit will say this out loud and GOP officials will act aghast at the mere suggestion of such a thing, but the fact that Ramaswamy’s skin is brown and he has an Indian name will knock him down several points in most GOP polls and primaries right out of the gate. I’d like to be wrong about that, but the GOP has built its entire retail political appeal around white supremacy and you can’t just turn that on and off. I truly think Republican voters will look askance at him for all the wrong reasons. Which is a shame given how many RIGHT reasons there are to look askance at him!

More troubling, however, is his campaign team. First off:

Ramaswamy boasts a veteran lineup of political consultants advising his bid, including Rex Elsass and Ben Yoho of the Strategy Group . . .

Ohio insiders know who Rex Elsass is. He’s a nihilistic Lee Atwater acolyte whose history as a GOP campaign guy goes back 30+ years. He made national news a decade ago when he ventured outside of Ohio to represent Todd Aiken’s losing Missouri senate race. This is the sort of press he got at the time and, yeah, it’s an accurate take on his reputation in Ohio:

Even within the mean-spirited world of political attack dogs, Elsass is known as an unpleasant sort, a reputation he sealed in the early ’90s. His first major undertaking, a 1990 campaign to unseat the Democratic Ohio House speaker, was so venomous that it unnerved even many of his fellow Republicans. The effort, which Elsass dubbed “Operation Kill The King” painted the speaker as the “conductor of the pay-to-play orchestra” over the public objections of Republicans who had long and collegial relationships with him. After the election, rumors circulated that Elsass and his cohorts had left a dead cat on the victorious speaker’s front porch. A local Democratic consultant dubbed Elsass and his crew the “nasty boys”—and it stuck.

Not that any of that hurt Elsass too badly. He later rebuilt his reputation by being the guy you go to if you’re the sort who wants campaign ads in which you’re wearing camo and holding a rifle while telling viewers that you won’t let Obama/Hillary/Biden/Whoever take their guns after which it’s strongly implied you murdered your critics. In this way he helped mastermind the political comeback of two-time Ohio House Speaker — and my former client — Larry Householder, who is now on trial in the largest political corruption case in Ohio history. And yes, Elsass’ name has come up in testimony because of course it has.

Also:

. . . Gail Gitcho, who served as a top strategist with Herschel Walker's Senate campaign, will be serving as a communications adviser.

Good luck, Vivek. I doubt your campaign survives the first barely-veiled racist swipe from Donald Trump, assuming at least he even shows up on Trump’s radar. If he does, though, you know the nickname Trump gives him will be both horribly bigoted and devastatingly harmful to your campaign.

Meanwhile, in Alaska . . .

A state representative named David Eastman suggested during a hearing about the impacts of child abuse that it may be better when victims of child physical and sexual abuse simply die from their abuse due to the cost to taxpayers of caring for them:

As part of the presentation, documents given to legislators estimated that when child abuse is fatal, it could cost the family and broader society $1.5 million in terms of trauma and what the child could potentially have earned over their lifetime.

Eastman said that he had heard an argument, on occasion, that when child abuse is fatal, it could economically benefit a society.

“It can be argued, periodically, that it’s actually a cost savings because that child is not going to need any of those government services that they might otherwise be entitled to receive and need based on growing up in this type of environment,” he said.

Worth noting that this Eastman, while a Republican, is not a part of the overall Republican caucus in Alaska because even the Republicans consider him to be a weirdo. He was invited to this hearing, however, because the Republican chair of the committee thinks that Eastman’s different “thought process” can be beneficial.

Whether this dude is a pariah within the Alaska GOP or not, there is a pretty damn clear through-line from GOP ideology to what he’s saying here insofar as the poor, abused, and marginalized are relatively unimportant to them and slashing the government programs that serve such people is paramount. He’s not a pariah for thinking such things, mind you, because the other Republicans think it too. He’s a pariah for giving voice to the logical implications of the larger Republican ethos.

Subpoenaing Les Wexner

Last week I wrote something about how Ohio State University’s president is being forced out by the New Albany, Ohio billionaire, Leslie Wexner. A man who, despite being Jeffrey Epstein’s sole benefactor for most of his reign of sexually-abusing-minors-terror, is still somehow the most powerful figure in Columbus and who still, apparently, runs Ohio State in the way in which he sees fit.

On Tuesday night the Financial Times wrote an item about Wexner. It’s about how there’s a lawsuit going on in which the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands is suing big banks and those who financially enabled Epstein. As part of that the plaintiffs have been trying to serve Wexner with a subpoena for documents. Wexner, however, has been using his security team to thwart would-be process servers at both his home and at the offices of his charitable foundation, which is basically his only job now. In light of this the court is allowing service by mail so Wexner cannot keep ducking the subpoena.

I don’t know about you but, personally, I always make sure my security team goes balls-to-the-wall to help me evade a subpoena when there is absolutely no risk to me in complying with it in a case related to America's most notorious sex trafficker. Indeed, I only fight such subpoenas as a matter of principle, not because people looking into Jeffrey Epstein’s enablers and potential accomplices could be a bad thing for me.

Cold Case Files

A murder in Burlington, Vermont from 1971 has finally been solved. Once again DNA databases like Ancestry and 23andMe were the key that unlocked the case. The killer has been dead for a very long time so he has evaded justice, but authorities know now who he was due to a cigarette butt left at the scene of the crime. You can read all about it here.

While I am someone who is deeply skeptical of police and governmental power and who worries at times about technology and surveillance being used for ill-ends, I kinda love these cases in which third cousin Hellen doing genealogy leads to a murderer being identified. As someone who himself has, perhaps ill-advisedly, uploaded his own DNA to one of those sites, I’m almost gonna feel ripped off if it doesn’t result in some distant relative getting arrested for being “The I-75 killer” or “The Great Lakes Strangler” or something.

Ranking Spielberg

Over at Uproxx, the critic Steven Hyden embarked on a massive undertaking: ranking every one of Stephen Spielberg’s moves from worst to best.

The ranking exercise — like all good ranking exercises — is less about where each film is placed than it is about saying things about each of the films and writing a compelling, overarching deconstruction and analysis of Spielberg. You’d think that by the Year of Our Lord 2023 such an exercise would be unnecessary given how long Spielberg has been a massive popular culture figure and fueler, but the article still provides all kinds of fun insights, both about Spielberg and his films and about the culture at large.

The following passage, which comes early in the list, is among my favorites. In it Hyden talks about how the Peter Biskind book, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, was so formative to his understanding of 1970s American cinema. It’s a book that was and remains likewise hugely important for me as well and which launched me on my love of New Hollywood when I first read it in the late 90s. Hyden walked away from the book as a kid with this general framework in his mind:

I compared Francis Ford Coppola to Bob Dylan, because “his early work was visionary and established a beachhead for those that followed, though by the early ’80s he seemed to have lost his mind.” George Lucas was Pink Floyd, because he started “out as an experimental filmmaker on the fringes” and “then reinvented himself as the epitome of mass-appeal space-themed entertainment.” Brian De Palma was Led Zeppelin, because “he’s bombastic and derivative, but such a gifted stylist and technician that it scarcely matters.”

Spielberg, naturally, was The Beatles, for reasons so obvious they don’t require elucidating.

Not bad!

Another bit, added later, is also important. It comes when Hyden correctly notes that Spielberg, who is credited, along with George Lucas, with killing New Hollywood and ushering in the blockbuster era, were nonetheless creatures of New Hollywood. Indeed, Speilberg himself did a film — “The Sugarland Express” — which was pure New Hollywood, to the extent where someone who didn’t know better might’ve confused it with a minor Hal Ashby or Robert Altman film. We can spend all day arguing about whether “Jaws” and “Star Wars” destroyed something wonderful, but when we do so, we must remember that their creators were from and of the tradition they allegedly destroyed, not outside invaders spoiling the party. That affects the analysis in a lot of important ways, I think.

Anyway, for the six of you who are still with me on this and who care about such things, Hyden’s article is a great one with which to waste a huge chunk of your time today.

Have a great day, everyone.