Cup of Coffee: July 13, 2023

The Cardinals are poised for a selloff, Rob Manfred gets told, the Pinstripes get ads, Immaculate Grid, a dumb betting scandal, All Hail Autocado, and how to destroy Ohio

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

Just to let you know, as it’s still the All-Star break, my All-Star break sale on annual subscriptions is still going on:

Act now, as you won’t see prices like these for many, many months. And, if you’d be so kind . . .

Thanks, gang. Now let’s get on with it.

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The Daily Briefing

Cards president John Mozeliak: “We’re gonna trade people”

Cardinals president of baseball ops John Mozeliak gave an interview yesterday in which he said, “right now, I can tell you we’re going to trade people. I just don’t know if it’s going to be household names or more of guys who are just not likely to be here next year.” The Cardinals are 38-52 and sit in last place in the NL Central, so yeah, they’re likely sellers.

“Guys who are just not likely to be here next year” obviously refers to players in their walk years, so that would include starters Jordan Montgomery and Jack Flaherty as well as relievers Jordan Hicks and Chris Stratton. Infielder Paul DeJong has team options in 2024 and 2025 but they’re pretty pricey — $12.5 million and $15 million, respectively — so the Cardinals likely look at him as a walk year guy too.

More interesting would be a tear-down rebuild that entailed unloading Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado. Each of those guys make real money, though Arenado’s annual salary begins to decline in 2025 and goes way down by 2027. Goldschmidt is only signed through 2024 so he wouldn’t scare off anyone necessarily. Each have full no-trade clauses, though, so it’d definitely take some work for a deal to go down, but if the Cardinals are holding a fire sale neither of them would want to be around anyway.

I feel like the Cardinals would be fine to stick with the current plan as long as they don’t simply punt improving the rotation for 2024 like they did for 2023, but John Mozeliak apparently feels differently about it and his vote counts more than mine.

Oakland Mayor calls Rob Manfred on his bullshit

Back in mid-June Rob Manfred, talking about the A’s move to Las Vegas, said, “There is no Oakland offer, OK? They never got to a point where they had a plan to build a stadium at any site.” In response, Oakland mayor Sheng Thao said that was “totally false.” On Sunday, she proved it.

Per Ken Rosenthal at The Athletic, Thao met with Manfred in Seattle on Sunday. It was their first in-person meeting since she took office at the beginning of the year. During the meeting Thao gave Manfred 31 bound folders — one for him and one for each of the 30 owners — documenting Oakland’s plan to build a new ballpark for the Athletics. It also included a timeline of negotiations which, according to Thao, establishes that, yeah, there is a plan and there has been one for some time. The A’s, however, simply wanted to bolt for Vegas so that’s what they’re trying to do. Rosenthal’s article has links to the actual documents Thao gave Manfred, so if you are an Athletic subscriber you should check ‘em out. This is in the cover letter, however:

Based on your recent comments, I fear that there may be certain misperceptions about the status of the A’s proposed project at Howard Terminal. By way of this letter and its attachments, I want to make it clear to you, MLB, the relocation committee, and the owners of the other 29 teams that Oakland very much had a specific and concrete proposal on the table, we had a detailed and mutually agreed upon plan and schedule, and after two years of negotiations, we were, I believe, extremely close to finalizing a deal with the current ownership of the A’s.

She told Rosenthal, “Through the press, we have heard that Manfred has stated there was no proposal. We wanted to dispel that notion. If people were misinformed, we wanted to make sure everybody had all the real-time information of how close we were to a ballpark.”

Manfred, despite offering some kind-ish words about how he was “receptive” to what Thao had to say and that he’d read what he gave her and all of that, was still being a condescending ass about things, saying, “I understand she came to the process late and is doing her best to figure out if there is something that can be done in a process that was in a lot of ways kind of over when she showed up on the scene.” Again: she’s been in office since January, and as Rosenthal notes, she was in charge of the process that everyone agrees was still going on up and until the A’s bailed for Sin City. Manfred’s a dick, though, so of course he’s gonna figuratively pat a woman on the head and tell her she obviously doesn’t understand what the Big Men were talking about it. He can’t help himself.

For her part, Thao says she’s willing, and has always been willing, to reengage with the A’s and Major League Baseball to get something done in Oakland. I suspect that, some more kind words notwithstanding, Manfred, John Fisher, Dave Kaval and that gang have zero intention of looking back. They’ll know, however, that we all now know just how disingenuous they have been throughout the process.

Rob Manfred will soon be up for reelection

Even Drellich of The Athletic reported yesterday that Rob Manfred intends to remain in his job for another term, saying “I have what I regard to be the best job in the world. My current thinking is I’d like to continue to do it.” That’s not particularly shocking as the man gets paid $25 million to be a shield for billionaires and, generally speaking, isn’t otherwise accountable to anyone.

The logistics of his reelection are interesting, however:

Technically, a commissioner could be extended at any time on a three-quarters, written vote by owners. That’s the same number of votes it takes to install a new commissioner.

But for a commissioner seeking re-election, the sport’s constitution calls for a period where a majority vote is enough to cement another term. That window starts 18 months before a commissioner’s current contract expires, and runs until nine months remain on the deal.

Starting in two weeks, then, Manfred will be in the window where he could be brought back by a majority vote.

That’s probably academic here. When Manfred was first elected it took a couple of ballots to get him over the hump as there were a cadre of owners — about seven to ten of them, led by White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf — who preferred Red Sox executive Tom Werner to Bud Selig’s handpicked candidate Manfred. The thinking at the time, according to various reports, was that the holdout owners worried that Manfred would not be hard on the players union and that he would not, like Selig did before him, cater to the concerns of small market/cheaper owners. Which Selig once was while Manfred was a New York lawyer with no natural predilection to the Jerry Reinsdorfs of the world.

These days there are likely still many owners who have issues with Manfred, but the idea of there being widespread opposition to him seems less plausible than it was nine years ago. To beat him in a regular election would require eight holdouts, and I’d guess there aren’t eight holdouts to be found. Even so, it’s probably wiser for Manfred to put his name in once the window in which only a majority vote would be required, because he’d pretty obviously skate to victory if all he needed was 16 owners on his side.

Yankees slap an insurance company ad on their sleeves

Clubs have the ability under the new CBA to use player uniforms for ad space. Some have pulled the trigger, some have not. The game’s most storied franchise finally did so yesterday:

The New York Yankees and Starr Insurance today announced that Starr Insurance has become the Signature Partner of the New York Yankees. Building on the successful partnership that the two organizations have had since 2018, this exclusive agreement extends through the 2031 season.

As part of the expanded relationship, Starr will continue as the Official Commercial Insurance Company of the New York Yankees and become the team’s first jersey patch partner, with the Starr Insurance logo debuting on Yankees uniforms on July 21.

It’ll look like so:

I cannot wait for the next Yankees figure to go on about how the pinstripes are sacred and all that nonsense now that they’ve got a billboard for the 50th largest insurance company on the sleeve. The ghosts of October (Aura? Mystique? Or were those just strippers David Wells used to know?) must be proud.

Dodgers, Padres to open next year in Korea

Back in early May the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that the Padres and Dodgers were likely to play regular-season games in South Korea next year. Yesterday MLB made it official, announcing that the clubs will be opening next season in Seoul on March 20-21. They’ll be the first regular season MLB game in Korea.

In related news, the Houston Astros and Colorado Rockies will play in Mexico City on April 27-28. And we already know that the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies are playing in London next June 8-9.

The international game, folks.

The Dodgers acquire a reliever

The Los Angeles Dodgers announced yesterday that they have acquired righty reliever Tyson Miller from the Milwaukee Brewers in exchange for cash considerations.

Miller, who has a 5.79 ERA in seven appearances this year, was DFA'd last week. The Dodgers bullpen is a big mess however, due both to ineffectiveness and injury. The latter of which is why there was room for Miller in that Daniel Hudson was transferred to the 60-day injured list, opening up a spot on the 40-man roster.

Sports Reference Acquires Immaculate Grid

Sports Reference, the company that created Baseball-Reference.com and all the other amazing sport-specific “Reference” stat sites, has expanded into online games, with the company’s founder and president Sean Forman announcing the other day that they’ve purchased Immaculate Grid. The game was invented by a 29-year-old software developer named Brian Minter, but he has now cashed in on it.

What is Immaculate Grid? As many of you probably know by now, it’s a fun little game in which players are presented with a three-by-three grid with team logos and individual statistical or award accomplishments along each axis. Participants are required to select baseball players who match both criteria for each box. For example: if one cell requires a player who was both a Detroit Tiger player and a Cincinnati Red, you might put Jack Billingham in the square. If the box requires a Pittsburgh Pirate and a batting champ in the same grid, you might put Freddy Sanchez. And yeah, I went obscure in both of those because you get results which show you how common or uncommon your answers were.

Here was yesterday’d grid with my answers:

My “rarity score” was 190. Honestly, I have not played the game enough to know if that’s good or not, but given that I put some pretty common answers in five of the nine squares, it’s probably fairly mediocre. I was pretty proud of Ron Kittle and Charlie Hough, though.

Like a lot of online games you can cheat pretty easily at this, but where’s the fun in that? Besides, after you’re done it gives you the option of seeing all possible answers for each square anyway, so you’ll know what was what soon enough. Here, for example, there were 74 — 74! — dudes who satisfied the Mariners/Diamondbacks square. Those teams really need to stop trading with one other, man.

Immaculate Grid is the ultimate “let’s remember some guys” game. I’ve only played it a couple of times, but it’s pretty damn addictive. And the fact that it’s now owned by Sports Reference, which runs the absolute best, and most essential website in all of creation, makes me really happy. It helps that Sean Forman is a genuinely great dude.

So, if you haven’t already, go give Immaculate Grid a try. It’ll be be your new favorite time waster.

Oh, the youth

Sticking with the topic: Sports Illustrated ran a story about Immaculate Grid the other day. In it Stephanie Apstein reports that the game has become quite popular among ballplayers themselves. But, as anyone who has played it knows, one’s answers tend to reflect one’s age. Like, each time I’ve played I seem to autopilot to guys from the 1980s first before expanding my thinking a bit. This has led to some younger players revealing that, well, they are young:

And baseball players must be destroying the game, right?

“That’s what you would think,” says Milwaukee first baseman Rowdy Tellez, who is most proud of remembering that Steve Cishek pitched for the Marlins and for the Angels. “But I bet if you ask any of these guys that are under a year of service time or two, they don’t know.” He used Tom Seaver for a square asking for Mets and 20-game winner; afterward, he says, “One guy was like, ‘Who’s that?’ I was like, ‘He’s like a top-15 best pitcher ever.’” He shakes his head sadly.

Yankees ace Gerrit Cole can top that. A younger teammate whom he declines to identify recently asked him who Curt Flood, the player whose 1970 lawsuit challenging the reserve clause helped usher in free agency, was. “We’re gonna clean that up,” says Cole.

I am absolutely howling at “we’re gonna clean that up.”

The Alabama baseball betting scandal was even dumber than we thought

Back in May Alabama's baseball coach Brad Bohannon was fired after betting against his own team on a night when his ace pitcher was scratched and he sent out a lesser talent to take the mound. Or, rather, he directed someone else to place the bets and was easily found out because there was not much action on the game and the bets stood out.

Just impossibly dumb, but as we learned in a Sports Illustrated story about it from earlier this week, it was way, way dumber than anyone could’ve expected:

On April 28, Bert Eugene Neff Jr. walked into the BetMGM Sportsbook at Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati in possession of a large amount of cash, looking to make a huge score. His proposed wager quickly aroused concern and suspicion among the staff.

Three people familiar with the investigation told Sports Illustrated that Neff wanted to bet more than $100,000 on a college baseball game that night: Alabama at No. 1 LSU. The game had gotten virtually no gambling traffic, and Neff’s desired bets on the Tigers far exceeded the sportsbook’s established house limit on college baseball.

This sent up all kinds of red flags, so the people at the sports book pressed Neff on what he wanted to do and why. Neff, for reasons that are only clear to him, told the people at the betting window that he had inside information on the game. But it gets even better:

Neff was texting with [Bohannon] via the encrypted messaging app Signal while at the betting window, attempting to place the wager, the sources say. His texting was indiscreet, to the point that the book’s video surveillance cameras were able to zoom in on the details of Neff and Bohannon’s text exchange, making Bohannon’s name visible later in screenshots.

“[Video cameras] can see the [text] conversation back-and-forth,” a source familiar with the incident says. “It couldn’t have been any more reckless.”

I worry about what gambling might do to sports. But just imagine how much more damage it could do if the people doing the betting weren’t such idiots.

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Other Stuff

Update on the sad movie trailer song thing

Yesterday I talked about the trend in which movie trailers use sad, slowed down, minor key versions of pop and rock songs. It’s a thing I’ve noticed in passing and for which I can think of like five examples, but apparently it’s far more common, and far more professionally documented, than I realized.

One of you alerted me yesterday to the fact that the critic Matt Singer has been chronicling the sad pop song cover movie trailer thing for years and years. There are just tons and tons of them.

Come up with a new idea, guys! Or hire a composer or three to do something original!

ALL HAIL AUTOCADO

Chipotle has introduced a guacamole prep robot to take over the job of slicing, coring, and digging out the good stuff from avocados. Humans will still smash up and guacamole by hand. And yeah, you’re still paying extra for that shit.

The name of the robot guacamole robot: Autocado. This goes along with a robot the chain already uses to make tortilla chips. It’s name: Chippy.

A hate automation, but if you’re gonna automate a job it’s probably better that you do it with robots that have a cool as hell names like Autocado or Chippy. It’ll make it that much cuter when they all gain sentience, murder us en masse and put us inside giant burritos.

How to destroy Ohio

FBI Director Christopher Wray was called before a Congressional committee run by Neanderthal Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan yesterday. The point of the hearing, of course, is to drag Wray over the coals for whatever it is that is up Jordan’s ass these days.

During Wray’s opening remarks, in which he sought to tout his accomplishments, he praised his agents with arrests leading to the indictment of a couple dozen drug traffickers in Ohio. His comments:

"In that one investigation, run out of the FBI's two-man office in Mansfield, we worked with partners from multiple local police departments and sheriff's offices to take kilos of fentanyl off Marion streets, enough lethal doses, I should add, to kill the entire population of Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati combined.”

It’s good that all that fentanyl got off the street because it’s a bad drug, but I really hope that Wray was not sharing the specifics of that investigation with Congressman Jordan. Because if you could grant Ohio Republicans one wish that wish would be to wipe Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati off the map so they could complete the job of turning this state into a agri-fascist paradise. We really don’t need to be giving them tips on how to do that, ya know?

Have a great day, everyone.

And don’t forget: annual subscriptions are 20% off until tomorrow! So act now!