Cup of Coffee: November 5, 2020

"Arise, Serpentor, Arise!"

Good morning! It’s Free Thursday!

Sorry in advance to all you free readers who were hoping that today would be the day I broke down the top 50 free agents or something, but it’s not. I’ll be doing that soon. Promise. In the meantime, if you want that you can always subscribe and make sure you don’t miss it:

Yes, there will be more about the election today. Sorry if you’d prefer I stick to sports, but I really don’t do that. The election continues to be the biggest thing going on affecting our lives, so it’s not like I can ignore it.

Believe me, I wish I could, because even as we seem to be moving pretty steadily toward a Biden win, all of this is still making me rather grumpy. Subscribers who read yesterday know why that is, but y’all here today will get a larger dose of that. At least today there will be some levity and G.I. Joe-related analogies to help elaborate on it all. No, I’m not making that up.

Election ranting is not all you’ll get, though. I am going to try my damndest to talk about other things too. I may be a shrill and exhausting pamphleteer at times, but I at least try to mix it up a little. To that end, we have some stuff about the DH, Justin “Typhoid” Turner, the Red Sox, Trevor Bauer and what’s that? Why yes, it’s the first Best Shape of His Life of the offseason! Yay!

Let’s get at ‘er.

---

The Daily Briefing

Players want the DH universal next year, Manfred wants expanded playoffs

Jeff Passan of ESPN reports that players want to keep the universal designated hitter for 2021, but owners want them to agree to keep the expanded playoffs for the 2021 season in exchange.

A fair trade? Nah. It’s roughly akin to a kid in a cafeteria asking for his friend’s Snack Pack and the kid with the Snack Pack saying “sure, but you gotta give me your dad’s BMW.” But, hey, Rob Manfred hasn’t gotten where’s gotten by being subtle.

Both of those things, the DH and the interminable postseason, will go away without an agreement between the two sides because they were one-off deals for the 2020 season only. If they do go away, they’ll no doubt both be discussed in the next Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations next year.

In no event is it likely that the players will give the owners anything as valuable as a greatly expanded postseason — worth millions upon millions to the owners — for a rule change which affects only part of the league and which, actually, the owners kinda want anyway. You don’t have to have read “Getting to Yes” to understand that such a setup is not conducive to a deal the sort of which the owners are seeking here.

Either way, teams will begin building rosters soon. Since they’re probably gonna need to know whether or not they have to account for a DH or not when they do, I feel like some agreement on the DH will happen soon. Maybe the players can trade their banana for it.

MLB still scapegoating Justin Turner

Ken Rosenthal tweeted last night that MLB is still considering punishing Justin Turner for coming out on the field and celebrating with the Dodgers last week despite having tested positive for COVID:

Ken Rosenthal @Ken_Rosenthal

MLB and the Players Association are moving closer to a resolution on Justin Turner, sources tell The Athletic. Potential discipline aside, these questions remain: Is Turner experiencing symptoms? How did Turner become infected inside a supposedly secure bubble? 1/2

Ken Rosenthal @Ken_Rosenthal

Other questions include: Does Turner, after being removed from the game in the eighth inning, plan to apologize for returning to the field to celebrate? Will the episode affect the Dodgers’ decision on whether to re-sign him as a free agent? 2/2

Nowhere does Rosenthal ask why Turner was even in the game after the second inning when he had tested inconclusive for COVID. After all, in the past, inconclusive COVID tests caused players to be immediately removed from games and, in at least two instances, caused games to be canceled or delayed. This due to the fact that inconclusive tests are, responsibly, treated like presumptive positives until negative tests prove otherwise.

I asked MLB about that last week. I asked who cleared Turner to play despite having an inconclusive test. I got no response. I suspect it’s because the decision was not made by someone with COVID expertise and that, rather than a sober assessment of Turner’s potential for having COVID — a look at where he had been and who he had been around, and all of that — he was allowed back on the field based on a gamble and a gut feeling. “Hey, it’s the World Series! No one has tested positive for a long time! He’s probably OK!” Of course I’m left to speculate here, because MLB will say nothing.

But they sure have a hell of a lot to say about Turner’s being on the field after the game. Maybe at some point they’ll talk about his questionable presence on the field between the second and eighth innings. And whether the league’s laissez-faire attitude about his potentially positive COVID test influenced his decision to prance his infected butt all over the field after the game.

Or maybe they won’t. Because, when you’re Rob Manfred, you only take the players to task for their behavior. You never examine your own behavior and ask what part you had to play in it all.

The Red Sox interviewed Alex Cora

The Boston Globe reports that Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom and general manager Brian O’Halloran had an in-person meeting with Alex Cora last week about the team's managerial vacancy. Which is to say, a job interview. The fun part: Bloom and O’Halloran went to Puerto Rico to see Cora, not the other way around. In case you want to know who has the power here. This all screams “the owners want Cora back, so go down and talk to him.” That he wasn’t even called back to Fenway to make the case for getting his job back speaks volumes.

The Globe reports that the Sox have also interviewed Phillies player information coordinator Sam Fuld, Pirates bench coach Don Kelly, Yankees bench coach Carlos Mendoza, and Marlins bench coach James Rowson. Cora is the only one of the five known candidates with experience as a major league manager. And I bet he’s the only one where the brass came to him.

Trevor Bauer rejected his qualifying offer

Trevor Bauer's agent, Rachel Luba, tweeted yesterday that Bauer has rejected the one-year, $18.9 million qualifying offer from the Reds.

That was an easy decision for Bauer. Yes, it’ll be a tough market for free agents, but not for the guy who stands head and shoulders above all other available pitchers. And who, I suspect, will win the Cy Young Award next week after posting a 1.73 ERA and 100/17 K/BB ratio over 11 starts and 73 innings during MLB's truncated 2020 season.

If Bauer signs elsewhere, the Reds will get a draft pick.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is in The Best Shape of His Life

Vladimir Guerrero is only 21 so he hasn’t been alive that long, but he’s now an official member of the Best Shape of His Life Club. And the first member of that club for the 2020-2021 offseason:

Héctor Gómez @hgomez27

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has lost 32 pounds since the end of the MLB season. (via @YancenPujols)

No, one one quoted him or any of his people saying the magic words, “Best Shape of His Life,” but as I’ve explained in detail before, that’s not necessary to join this particular club. Indeed, given how widely mocked the “Best Shape of His Life” cliche has become over the years, thanks in large part to my efforts, players, their agents, and coaches tend to actually avoid using that phrase now.

But the idea is still the same: a player who has either come off a bad year or whose physical conditioning has been questioned will disappear for a time in the offseason and then reemerge, either in workout photos like the one of Vlad here or in offseason stories in which they claim to have lost weight or packed on muscle or whatever. All of this is done in an effort to make people think the upcoming season is going to be a good one for them if the last one was sub par. Or to stake their claim to sticking at one defensive position rather than slide left on the defensive spectrum. Or to stoke expectations coming into a contract year or something.

Which is to say, it’s propaganda, even if it’s mostly benign propaganda. It’s also often absurd. Miguel Cabrera, for example, was in and out of the Best Shape of His Life club many times over the years. Sometimes in back-to-back offseasons. Other guys have talked up their BSOHL winter by highlighting their increased muscle mass due to weight work only to turn around a year later with a BSOHL winter in which they go on about how last year they were too bulky while this year it’s all about being lean and flexible.

As for our friend Vlad here, hey, good for him. Everyone who has lost 32 pounds in a month knows how healthy and sustainable that is. I’m sure this will be the last time we ever hear about his conditioning.

Former Rays first rounder found guilty on three counts of first degree murder

Brandon Martin was a first round pick of the Tampa Bay Rays out of Corona, California in the 2011 draft, going 38th overall. The shortstop played parts of three seasons in the low minors before washing out when he was still only 19. After that he descended into drug use and erratic behavior. In 2015, after being released from a 72-hour psychiatric hold requested by his concerned family, he came home and killed his father, his uncle, and a security system installer who happened to be in the family’s home. He did it by beating them with a baseball bat.

Yesterday, after years of legal process, he was found guilty three counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances of (a) taking multiple lives in the same crime; (b) auto theft; (c) evading arrest; (d) obstructing a peace officer; and (c) injuring a police dog. He faces the death penalty at sentencing.

---

Other Stuff

This is Still Trump’s America

With Wisconsin and Michigan calling it for Joe Biden yesterday — and with Arizona and Nevada leaning that way and some strong signals coming from Pennsylvania that it will, eventually, go Biden— this cake is pretty near baked. It seems fairly certain now that Biden, despite the temper tantrums and legal gambits Trump and his people will throw out there, will all but certainly be the 46th President of the United States.

That’s a big deal. I don’t want anything I said yesterday or that I will say here in a few moments to discount that. I am decidedly not one of those people who think there are no differences between Biden and Trump. It should go without saying that we’ll be better off for Biden taking office in January than we would be with Trump remaining in office. With Biden we stand at least a decent chance of the restoration of the Rule of Law and a competent civil service. We also will be rid of malignant actors such as William Barr, Stephen Miller, Betsy DeVos, Mark Meadows, Jared Kusher and all of the other terrible people who Trump shat into power and national prominence over these past few years.

Plus, it’s going to completely OWN, on about 50 levels, watching Trump go through the stages of grief on all of this publicly. To see him have to pack his bags and get the hell out. To see the legal process connected to multiple criminal investigations and civil suits, held at bay for now by the fact that he is the president, go forward and dominate his life until he shuffles off to the Abyss and the Dark Queen Takhisis has her way with him.

All of which is to say: I want no one to think I’m anything but happy for Biden to have won this.

But subscribers who read me ranting about this yesterday know that I remain largely disillusioned about all that’s gone down this week. Disillusioned that the election, being as close as it was, failed to definitively repudiate Trump and Trumpism and reminded us of just how many of our neighbors and family members looked at that guy and all that he has done to this country and thought, “yeah, we’re cool with that.” The Trump base of MAGA-hat wearing white supremacists and science deniers is irredeemable. Many of the others who voted for him in 2016 can, perhaps, claim that they didn’t think things would get as bad as they got. But to say, in 2020, that America needed four more years of Donald Trump in office is a window into a set of value judgments that I simply cannot abide and cannot begin to get my head around.

Between the more than 60 million Americans who voted for Trump and the larger election results — including the Congressional races and state and local races — it seems pretty clear to me that this is and will remain Donald Trump’s America. Sure, the country, barely, decided that it wants someone else besides Trump to wave his flag, but it wants to retain basically everything else. And I am pretty sure the country will get it. Specifically, Tuesday’s results made it clear that:

• Americans, en masse, want us to do nothing different about COVID;

• They want us to do nothing about climate change;

• They want us to do nothing about police murdering Black people with impunity;

• They want us to do nothing to cease the transferring all of the nation’s wealth and opportunities to the rich and to continue to victimize and demonize workers and the poor while enacting increasingly draconian laws to punish them and make their lives harder; and

• They do not want us to regulate industries that are destroying the planet and exploiting workers and consumers.

The polls may say that Americans want to address those sorts of things, but if they truly wanted those things they would’ve voted to flip the Senate, made significant inroads into statehouses or, at the very least, they would’ve given Biden something approaching an unequivocal mandate. The results we got, however absolutely scream “we generally like things the way they are, but we would simply like less Tweeting from the Oval Office, thanks!”

Oh, there are a couple of narrow things we might take directly from Trump’s defeat and assume that, perhaps, they stand as repudiation of him and what he stands for. Maybe we can read this as a rejection of Trump’s blatant personal corruption and the repurposing of governmental resources meant to serve the people into personal resources meant to serve only Trump. But there are limits to that assumption, of course, because the people who were responsible for preventing him from doing those things — Republican members of Congress, mostly — were not punished for failing to do so. Indeed, in most cases, they stridently defended him as he violated laws, ethics, and norms, they saved him from being impeached and removed from office over those violations, and then they, mostly, cruised to reelection.

This is why Trumpism isn’t going anywhere. Hardly anyone who stood by Trump and loudly supported Trumpism was harmed in the election. Trump’s personal loss will be blamed on his tweets and his tone and his most superficial qualities as a person as opposed to the vast number of illiberal and downright oppressive policies he supported and his shockingly strident embrace of authoritarianism in order to get them. To most voters, however, the biggest problem was that he was inefficient and uncouth in his efforts.

Now someone — someone younger, more energetic, with a better haircut and with less of a propensity for bad tweets, gaffes and outbursts — will take up his mantle and, based on everything we saw on Tuesday, they will do quite well with it. Trump showed them that even the dumbest, most over-the-top blowhard who telegraphed every move he ever made could do untold amounts of damage by simply being willing to do transgressive things and to dare others to stop him. In 2024 Republicans will nominate someone who has that blueprint in front of them but who will be able to give us right wing authoritarianism with a smiling face. That someone will accomplish much, much more than Trump did. And they’ll likely do it with a host of former Trump advisors and staffers at their side, all happily and lucratively employed thanks to the fact that their movement and their boss were not conclusively repudiated. Thanks to a plausible “people didn’t like the way Trump did things but they were fine with much of what he was doing” narrative, They will be around to continue Trump’s mission when any justice at all would have them exiled from polite society.

There’s already a model for this, by the way.

Remember when Destro and the Baroness, tired of Cobra Commander’s harebrained plots, ego, and personal excesses, decided to overthrow him and replace him with Serpentor? A leader who was far better-suited to the role because of his, ahem, good breeding and who thus would make carrying out Cobra’s plots that much easier? Yeah, it’s kind of like that.

Trump is the Commander, Mitch McConnell is Destro, Xamot and Tomax of Extensive Enterprises are the Koch Brothers or any other stand-in for big Republican money, and any number of youngish, square-jawed politicians who manage to go more then ten minutes without tweeting nonsensical and obnoxious things, openly praising dictators, and explicitly talking about committing crimes are the mixed soup of DNA taken from Napoleon, Julius Caesar, Hannibal, Attila the Hun, and — substituting for Sergeant Slaughter — Ronald Reagan. That’s your 2024 nominee right there, pals. Arise, Serpentor, arise!

Sorry. This was getting heavy. had to lighten things up. Now let’s get heavy again.

Democrats not winning the Senate is a huge part of what’s making me grumpy. Biden may be the president-elect, but because of Mitch McConnell and Republican control of the Senate, he won’t be able to get anything done. He may not even get the cabinet members he wants confirmed. The election told McConnell, loud and clear, that there is no political price to pay and, in fact, there is an astronomical upside to be achieved, by simply standing in the way of anything and everything, so why would he stop now

Why would McConnell let a single Biden-backed bill pass the Senate? That’s an honest question. I can’t see why he would. He wouldn’t pass even basic legislation aimed at addressing the worst health and financial disaster the country has ever seen and he was handsomely rewarded for it. He won reelection. he maintained his majority. He’ll be able to do nothing now for the next 2-4 years, blame Biden for it, and most likely get away with it again. Some naive people who haven’t paid attention to anything that has happened in the past 12 years may say “this means Democrats and Republicans will have to work together and do some old-time deal making!” but Tuesday night was a HUGE night for Republican obstructionism and the opposition to anything that even appears to be progress.

Maybe the last big winner on Tuesday night was the COVID-19 virus. Huge winner, COVID.

Did you know that the places where COVID infection and death rates are the worst actually supported Trump at much higher rates than other places? Yup. What’s more, no candidate who made denying the seriousness of COVID a part of his or her public persona or who spent time demonizing measures to fight the pandemic it was harmed. Well, a candidate COVID literally killed was harmed, but his corpse won his election. Really: our country cares so little about the pandemic that we’re electing its victims to office.

In light of that, if you think for one moment that a single thing will change as COVID continues to kill thousands and infect thousands more, you’re crazy. No one will have the political courage to change a thing and many will be incentivized to be even more strident in their opposition to anti-COVID measures. Where I live, in Ohio, wacko right-wingers in the state legislature have gone so far as to suggest arresting or even kidnapping our REPUBLICAN governor because they believe his mere suggestion that people wear masks and not pack bars amount to tyranny. Those wackos actually gained seats in the legislature. The virus was already winning, but it has now definitively won.

Again, as I said at the outset: it’s better that Biden won. I truly and sincerely mean that and I don’t want to discount it. But the fact is, all that he has won a presidency that, because of everything else I mentioned, will be weaker than any presidency we’ve seen in our lifetimes. I’m talking Chester A. Arthur, Franklin Pierce stuff. A presidency that does not change the basic fundamentals on the ground or do anything to make people’s lives better for more than a few fleeting moments until Republicans consolidate their power anew, obstruct everything he tries to do and then begin the Serpentor ‘24 campaign.

This is Donald Trump’s America. That’s the case even if Donald Trump is gone. There is really nothing to suggest otherwise.

First Dibs

Let’s look back at the past and make ourselves feel a bit better, shall we? Facebook Memories, take me back to November 4, 2012!

This was written and hung on the door of my daughter Anna’s room. She was 8 at the time. Her anger at not getting “first dibs” and her demand that she always get “first dibs” lest she not come out of her room ever again was spurred by me allowing her little brother, then age 7, to pick the color toothbrush he wanted out of the new pack of toothbrushes before she could.

Anna soon relented, and came out of her room. But then she realized that such backtracking was a sign of weakness, and returned to her room, putting up a new sign:

She did, eventually, look at me even though I did not let her have first dibs on everything. It may not have been until 2014 or 2015, but it eventually happened.

Great Moments in Advent Calendars

Allison gave me a task to keep me from grumping around the house yesterday morning: go to Aldi to pick up advent calendars.

Most of you probably know that advent calendars are a thing of late. Sure, the traditional chocolate ones are still around, but now there are tons of novelty ones. Wine advent calendars, which give you a little airplane-sized bottle each day. Beer advent calendars. Cheese advent calendars. Craft advent calendars. They even have cat treat advent calendars. They’re all the rage among the particular demographics Allison and I find ourselves in these days, whatever they are.

So off I went, getting to Aldi just as it opened, because I figured there’d be a rush. Boy was there. A line of wine moms snaked out the door and around the side of the building. They opened just as I was getting out of my car. The moms all rushed inside. I followed, but just after I got in there one of the Aldi employees yelled “all the wine and cheese calendars are gone!” There was apparently some ticket system in play that I knew nothing about, but some women with tickets in hand but no calendars were grumbling, so maybe they had a shortage.

Which is sort of appropriate in a weird way.

I don’t do much of my shopping at Aldi because Allison has a specialized diet and it’s often hard to buy certain things we need there, but I rather like Aldi, at least aesthetically speaking. It’s inexpensive, simple and straightforward. It has its own brands for the most part and, while it’s obviously a commercial enterprise, it’s not saturated with promotions and marketing and stuff from the big food and agribusiness companies. The whole vibe is stripped down and utilitarian in a way that suits a guy who has spent time in this space extolling the virtues of minimalism and wishing that automats still existed.

But when I’m in a less chill and whimsical mood — and folks, I was grumpy yesterday —Aldi can sort of piss me off. The whole “we have one kind of ___, take it or leave it” thing can be annoying, and the business about putting a quarter in the slot to get a cart and some of the front-of-the-store rules around the cashier station makes me feel like I’m in a supermarket operated by a midlevel bureaucracy in some Eastern Bloc country. Which, if you know how I roll, you know I kinda don’t mind that much, but like I said, I’m not always in a good mood and my inner ugly American often comes out when I’m cranky.

The business with the advent calendars yesterday definitely made me feel like I was at People’s Store Number 247 in Western Mymanistan in late 1977, just as the underwear rations ran out. “You want toilet brush?” the clerk says to me. “No, I was here for underwear.” “No underwear. Good price on toilet brush this month, comrade.” I sigh, realizing I’m not getting underwear and take a toilet brush. Or, in this particular case, I sigh over the unavailable cheese advent calendar Allison wanted and buy a cat treat calendar and some gluten free bagels they sometimes, but not always, have in stock instead. Then I go home and, like any good communist, smoke little black cigarettes and write about my displeasure with politics to share with my fellow travelers.

Wanna become an everyday fellow traveler, comrades? Subscribe!

And spread the propaganda!

Have a great day, everyone.