Cup of Coffee: October 20, 2022

A tied NLCS, the Astros take the lead in the ALCS, the Guardians payroll, two fired hitting coaches, GOP sickos, the JFK assassination, British actors, and a cool human trick

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

We’re even in the NLCS. The Astros have taken a 1-0 lead in the ACLS. One game tonight and then a weekend full of postseason action lies ahead.

Today we briefly talk about those two games and then we talk about the Cleveland payroll, the Angels firing their hitting coaches, what run differential means, and how the Phillies are, arguably, reducing the crime rate.

In Other Stuff, when it comes to GOP politicians, accusations are confessions, I talk way too much about the JFK assassination and British actors and I share a cool human trick that I found.

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And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Padres 8, Phillies 5: San Diego found itself down big early but two homers and then a five-run fifth inning turned this one around for the Padres. The homers came from Brandon Drury and Josh Bell. The fifth-inning surge started with Austin Nola hitting an RBI single off his younger brother Aaron after which San Diego got an RBI double out of Juan Soto and RBI singles from Drury and Bell. A Manny Machado blast in the seventh made it 8-4 and after that it was all over but the paperwork. The series now shifts to Philadelphia for three games beginning tomorrow night.

Astros 4, Yankees 2: Justin Verlander allowed a Harrison Bader solo home run as he worked to find himself early but he did, eventually, find himself and ended up giving up only three hits while striking out 11 over six innings. New York whiffed 17 times in all. In support, Martín Maldonado doubled home a run in the second while Yuli Gurriel and Chas McCormick homered in the sixth and Jeremy Peña went deep in the seventh.

Roger Clemens threw out the first pitch to this game if you care about such things. I loathe him, but I kind of love the Astros trotting him out there as it’s sort of a professional wrestling move. It also inadvertently enhances the discourse, as a couple of years ago one of Astros fans’ responses to Yankees fans who were mad that the Astros cheated to beat New York in the 2017 playoffs was “hey, you guys had a bunch of steroid users like Clemens back when you were winning championships, so your guys are cheaters too!” Now, to throw out the first pitch . . . Roger Clemens!

Like a lot of people I have no rooting interest in this ALCS matchup and would prefer it if both teams lost if such a thing were possible. Short of that I’ll take chaos.

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The Daily Briefing

Angels fire their hitting coaches

The Los Angeles Angels have fired their assistant hitting coach John Mallee. Reed had been the team’s hitting coach since 2019 and has been with the organization since 2017. Mallee, the one-time hitting coach of the Phillies, Cubs, and Astros, had been with the Angels since 2020.

I think if you have Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani and both of those dudes rake while everyone else kinda stinks your issue is talent, not coaching, but the overall results were pretty dire. The Halos led MLB in strikeouts with 1,539, they were 25th in runs, 25th in walks, 22nd in hits and 23rd in OPS. Acquiring some better hitters will do more for those numbers than coaching changes will, but it’s not shocking that these heads rolled.

It wasn’t the Yankees payroll that beat the Guardians

This came across the old timeline yesterday:

Sir Yacht🛥 @SirYacht_

The Guardians took a $251 million payroll team to 5 games in the ALDS Friendly reminder the MLB should impose a salary cap and shared revenue like the NFL and NBA (if they actually care about small market teams)

Personally, I would argue that a low payroll team taking a high payroll team to a do-or-die playoff game is, actually, evidence that payroll disparities are not as big an issue as a lot of people think. I mean, if Terry Francona throws a different pitcher out there on Tuesday afternoon — one of the ones he actually had, not some imaginary $40 million a year pitcher the Dolans allegedly cannot afford — and the Guardians might be facing off against the Astros right now.

Secondly: as of last spring, when I last looked at this, each team in Major League Baseball gets a minimum of $65 million a year from national TV deals alone. Just national deals, not local broadcast deals, which themselves average around $50 million a year per team on top of the $65 million. So figure that teams are getting at least $100 million in TV money — and likely more — before a single ticket, a single hot dog, a single beer, a single scoreboard advertisement, a single replica cap or jersey, or a single parking pass is sold. Then add in all of the national sponsorship money MLB generates for gambling partnerships and labeling every conceivable product The Official Whatever of Major League Baseball.™ We’re talking way into nine figures on that stuff too.

Now appreciate that the Cleveland Guardians had something like an $82 million payroll. Even if one assumes that a payroll gap, and not fat pitches from Aaron Civale, is the reason the Yankees beat the Guardians in the ALDS, a large part of that payroll gap exists by choice.

Thirdly: MLB does share revenue. A lot of it, actually. I suppose he means that they should completely pool revenue, perhaps, but that’s a different topic.

Finally: never take anything someone who uses the construction “The MLB” says particularly seriously about baseball. Indeed, I’ve already taken it too seriously myself.

You still here?

At this point Roger Maris Jr. is just trolling:

Roger Maris Jr @RogerMarisJr

Lots of fun seeing the home run champs hitting some bombs last night in New York to clinch the series. Giancarlo Stanton National League Single-Season Home Run Champ (59) and Aaron Judge Single Season All-Time Home Run Champ (62). Should be some fun baseball tonight in Houston.

I suppose it’s not shocking that my man here won’t go away. I mean, if he doesn’t know that 73 is more than either 62 or 59 how in the hell is to know when his 15 minutes were up?

Regular Season Run Differential and Postseason Success

It’s also Free Thursday over at the primarily minor league newsletter Down on the Farm. Today, though, Down on the Farm looks at a major league issue: how regular season run differential translates to wins and, ultimately, to postseason success. All of which has some bearing on the “oh noes, the really good teams got eliminated from the postseason!” discourse which has dominated the past week.

Crime blotter

Philadelphia news anchor Sarah Bloomquist tweeted yesterday that, through Tuesday night, there had been no murders in Philadelphia for four nights, which is unusual for the city. In so doing she muses that perhaps it’s because the Phillies and Eagles keep winning, with the implication that it somehow pacified the city.

Yesterday the Phillies lost. There’s a day off today. I’m hoping no one got killed last night and that everyone stays safe tonight. Tomorrow night the lives of Philadelphians are in Ranger Suárez’s hands.

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Other Stuff

Like clockwork

A Republican politician from Arizona who is running for a seat on the Maricopa County Community College District — and who said last spring that he wanted “our children protected from the progressive left” — was arrested after being caught masturbating in his truck within eyeshot of a preschool.

Nearly everything that comes out of Republicans’ mouths these days is projection. That includes all of the talk about how leftists, progressives, liberals, Democrats, whoever, are “groomers” or deviants or pedophiles or what have you. Basically every accusation these people make are confessions.

Back, and to the left... back, and to the left... back, and to the left

I’ve never been super interested in JFK Assassination stuff for its own sake. It’s interesting as history, and it can be super interesting as historical background for fiction, but the non-fiction books, the documentaries, the conspiracy theories, and any of that stuff generally doesn’t do much for me. I enjoyed the movie “JFK,” for example, but I liked it as a movie that had a lot of actors I admire and some good cinematography and things, not as some sort of blow-the-lid-off-of-a-conspiracy thing. Most conspiracy theories are hogwash. Evil, when it acts, usually acts more simply, bluntly, and in an open and obvious fashion than the Oliver Stones of the world like to think it does.

That said, I continue to be rather irked that JFK Assassination materials continue to be classified. In 1992, in the wake of all of the attention the Oliver Stone movie got, Congress passed a law ordering that the remaining classified materials related to the case be released in 25 years. That was 2017, at which time President Trump prevented their release. When Biden came into office he issued a memo continuing to prevent their release. Given that it’s now been nearly 60 years since that day at Dealey Plaza, that’s complete garbage.

I’m not the only one who thinks so. A lawsuit has been filed:

The Mary Ferrell Foundation filed the federal lawsuit Wednesday one year after Biden issued a memo postponing the release of a final trove of 16,000 records assembled under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 . . . The suit asks a judge to declare Biden's memo void and disclose the records as Congress intended 30 years ago. Biden’s memo blamed the coronavirus pandemic for slowing the disclosure process, an argument rejected by the foundation’s attorney, Bill Simpich.

“It’s a ‘dog ate my homework’ argument,” Simpich said. “This case is all about delay. The agencies always have new and better excuses.”

I don’t know anything about The Mary Ferrell Foundation — it seems to be exist in order to collect documents that the James Ellroys of the world might want to research their next mid-century crime/corruption tomes — but I doubt the suit will do much to move the needle here. Government secrets tend to stay secret until the government doesn’t want to keep the secrets anymore, especially if there is even a remotely plausible claim of “national security,” even if the claims seem far-fetched.

I don’t think that the still-classified documents hold earth-shattering secrets or revelations that LBJ, Sam Giancana, and the Trilateral Commission planned the killing while smoking reefer at a New Orleans cathouse or anything. I suspect what’s actually going on here is that there is stuff in there about how the CIA and FBI went about their business in the early 60s, specifically as it related to our ham-handed efforts to destabilize Castro. All of which likely has zero to do with Kennedy’s killing but would serve to embarrass the CIA and FBI as institutions and make our continued treatment of Cuba seem even less egregious and stupid than it already is.

Whatever the case, we should not be in the business of keeping government documents from well over half a century ago classified, be they about political assassinations, diplomatic communications or memos about farm subsidies. Oliver Stone, using Kevin Costner’s Jim Garrison as his mouthpiece, said all manner of eye-rolly things in “JFK” but the stuff about it being our government and how it’s there to serve us, not its own ends, was spot-on.

Don’t I know you?

While I am something of an Anglophile, I don’t watch anywhere near as much British TV shows as a lot of people do. I watch enough of them, however, to nod whenever I see the comments keen observers of British TV make about how there are only like ten working British actors who just keep getting recycled over and over again (and how Olivia Colman is five of them).

Over at The Ringer baseball/British TV analysts Ben Lindbergh and Rob Arthur tested that observation via scientific means and have discovered that, yep, there is a much greater incidence of British actor recycling than American actor recycling. They took the top 500 most popular U.S. and UK TV shows and then analyzed their casts. This is what they found:

What we find is that for any number of the top-listed actors in a given project, British shows have a higher rate of those actors having earned the same billing in another qualifying project. For instance, 13.7 percent of actors listed as the top cast member in one of the most popular American shows also appeared as the top cast member in another of the most popular American shows. Among the British shows, though, the overlap rate was 21.9 percent—roughly 60 percent higher. Expand the criteria to the top eight listed actors, and the respective rates are 18.9 percent and 30.2 percent—again, about 60 percent higher.

The reasons are pretty intuitive if not blatantly obvious. Most notably, the UK is one-fifth the size of the United States, the pool of actors is roughly proportionate, but the number of productions is not. Also, while U.S. TV production has moved toward the British model of fewer episodes and fewer seasons per show, it hasn’t quite matched up yet, so U.S. productions have to look a bit harder to find available actors.

A lot of people have trouble with this as familiar faces can interfere with the suspension of disbelief. I don’t have much trouble with it myself, though, as I mostly treat TV like comfort food and it’s comforting to see those familiar faces. Maybe I’d feel differently about it if I was a devoted BritBox subscriber and watched more shows than I do. I dunno.

Cool human tricks

I am a big fan of detective work. Not, like, actual real world detective work which normally requires a bunch of time spent messing with databases, sitting outside of someone’s house, or going through people’s garbage, but gimmicky, fast-paced detective work like what you might see on an episode of “Sherlock” or what your best friend might come up with when doing surveillance on your new boyfriend. Party trick detective work, that’s my bag.

Stuff like this guy who figured out what hockey game was being played in the background of an NCIS episode despite having only a second or two of video evidence to go on and nothing else. Indeed, his entire account is devoted to figuring out what games or matches or other sporting events are taking place in the background of TV shows and movies.

If you need me, I’ll be watching literally every single one of these videos. They’re amazingly satisfying.

Have a great day, everyone.