Cup of Coffee: January 24, 2024

Good morning!

The Hall of Fame voting results are in and three men have passed the post. The Pirates signed a closer, the Dodgers signed a starter, the Nationals signed a hacker, Ryne Sandberg is sick, and a pretty good pitcher has called it quits.

In Other Stuff someone you don’t know died but I talk about him anyway, a former ballplayer put in a poor debate performance, the Los Angeles Times slashes its newsroom, and the Oscar noms are out.

 The Daily Briefing

Adrián Beltré, Todd Helton, Joe Mauer elected to the Hall of Fame

The Hall of Fame voting results from the Baseball Writers Association of America were announced last night and Adrián Beltré, Todd Helton, and Joe Mauer have been elected. They will join Eras Committee inductee Jim Leyland, BBWAA's Career Excellence Award winner Gerry Fraley, and Ford C. Frick Award winner Joe Castiglione as Cooperstown honorees this summer.

Beltré and Mauer were first-timers on the ballot. They received 95.1% and 76.1% of the vote, respectively. Helton, in his sixth year on the ballot, got 79.7% of the vote.

Falling just short, at 73.8% was Billy Wagner, who will have one more shot at it next year and seems like a good bet to get in. Behind him was Gary Sheffield, at 63.9% in his tenth and final year. He’ll be the responsibility of the Eras Committee in the future. Here is the rest of the top ten:

• Andruw Jones (61.6%; 7th year)
• Carlos Beltrán (57.1%; 2nd year)
• Álex Rodríguez (34.8%; 3rd year)
• Manny Ramírez (32.5%; 8th year)
• Chase Utley (28.8%; 1st year)

Carlos Beltrán, once considered a sure-thing Hall of Famer, continues to be punished for his role in the Astros sign-stealing scandal. I feel like there’s some form of mental distress among the Hall of Fame electorate about that, as his higher vote totals suggests that people generally want him in the Hall but they also know that voting him in while not voting in the steroids dudes is an incoherent position to take, so Beltrán is left in this weird, liminal space. Not my problem. I’m not the one who turned the Hall of Fame vote into some morality play, they did, so they can live with it.

The following players received less than 5% of the vote and will drop off the ballot: José Bautista (1.6%) Victor Martinez (1.6%) Bartolo Colon (1.3%) Matt Holliday (1.0%) Adrián González (0.8%) Brandon Phillips (0.3%) José Reyes, and James Shields (0%). And so it goes.

The full voting results can be read at the BBWAA website.

Pirates sign Aroldis Chapman

I missed this due to my unexpected day off yesterday, but the Pittsburgh Pirates signed reliever Aroldis Chapman to a one-year, $10.5 million deal.

Chapman is coming off a 2023 season in which he pitched for the Royals and the Rangers and posted some of his best numbers in a few years, including a 3.09 ERA (145 ERA+) and 103 strikeouts in 58.1 innings. His velocity ticked up some last year too.

He’s still a bit of a heart attack on wheels when he takes the mound in close and late games, however, and he’s prone to handing out free passes at the worst time, so it makes sense that the stronger contenders might’ve wanted to shy away from him. The Pirates, though, will get a nice boost by his presence. If that boost moves them toward contention, great. If contention remains elusive, he’ll be a deadline flip candidate once again.

Dodgers sign James Paxton

If you thought the Dodgers were done signing guys this offseason, think again: they inked lefty starter James Paxton to a one-year, $11 million deal yesterday. There’s also a $1 million roster bonus which, well, OK. Like, I don’t know how you give a guy $11 million and anticipate a situation in which he does not make the Opening Day roster and therefore needs to be incentivized to do so, but the Dodgers have done a lot of weird things lately.

Paxton is something of an unknown quantity at this point. Last year he pitched 96 innings of league average ball for the Red Sox but that was the most action he’d seen since 2019. He missed all of 2022 and most of 2021 and 2020 with injuries.

Which makes it seem weird to call him a “depth guy” or “insurance,” but that’s really what he is with Walker Buehler coming off of Tommy John surgery and Tyler Glasnow being injury prone himself. The back end of the Dodgers rotation features unproven guys like Bobby Miller and Emmet Sheehan. Ohtani is a year away from pitching. Maybe Clayton Kershaw shows up in August, maybe he doesn’t. That makes Paxton fairly important, at least by the standards of a late January signing.

The Nationals signed Joey Gallo

The Washington Nationals have signed outfielder Joey Gallo to a one-year, $5 million contract.

Gallo, 30, hit .177/.301/.440 (101 OPS+) in 332 plate appearances with the Minnesota Twins last year. He hit 21 homers but he also struck out a whopping 142 times. That was 42.8% of all of his plate appearances which counts for the highest single-season strikeout percentage ever for a player with at least 300 plate appearances.

I don’t suppose Gallo could be worse in that department with the Nats than with the Twins, but I’ve been wrong before. Given the state of the Nats roster, though, I presume he’ll have no shortage of opportunities to, um, shine.

Ryne Sandberg announces cancer diagnosis

Hall of Fame second baseman Ryne Sandberg announced on Monday that he has been diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer. He didn’t provide prognosis details, but he had this to say in his statement:

To my Chicago Cubs, National Baseball Hall of Fame, extended Baseball Family, the city of Chicago, and all my loyal fans, I want to share some personal news," Sandberg wrote. "Last week, I learned that I have been diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer. I have begun treatment, and I am surrounded by my loving wife Margaret, our incredibly supportive family, the best medical care team, and our dear friends. "We will continue to be positive, strong, and fight to beat this. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers during this difficult time for me and my family.

Sandberg, 64, played in parts of 16 big-league seasons, making 10 All-Star teams, winning nine Gold Glove Awards, seven Silver Slugger Awards, and the 1984 National League MVP. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2005 on his third year on the ballot.

Here’s hoping for a good outcome for Rhino.

Collin McHugh retires

Eleven-year veteran Collin McHugh has announced his retirement.

McHugh came up with the Mets in 2012, made a brief stop in Colorado, and then established himself as a regular for the Astros from 2014 through 2019, serving in both starting, swingman, and regular relief duties. He sat out the pandemic-shortened 2020 season before finishing his career with a season in Tampa Bay and two in Atlanta, most of which came in relief.

Over the course of his career McHugh went 71-47 with a 3.72 ERA (109 ERA+) in 346 career games, 127 of which were starts. He struck out 967 batters in 992.2 innings. He won 19 games for the Astros in 2015, though his best season was probably 2014 when he went 11-9 with a 2.73 ERA (141 ERA+) in 25 starts.

Not bad for a guy who barely broke 90.

Other Stuff

Rest in Peace Inspector General

This will not be of any importance to anyone who did not work in or around state government in Ohio over the past few decades, but I must note that Thomas P. Charles, who served as Ohio’s Inspector General and director of the Ohio Department of Public Safety for a very long time, died yesterday at the age of 81.

Charles’ job was, basically, to investigate corruption among state actors and institutions. I have no strong reason to believe he did an especially bad or especially great job at it. He did go after a lot of corruption and took a lot of crooked people and bad schemes down. It’s also the case that, like most people in his position, he went after low-hanging fruit and left the bigger dogs alone. I mean, there was a metric shit ton of stuff he didn’t touch when he was in office and a whole lot of corruption that began on his watch that bloomed after he retired, so it’s not like he was Elliott Ness or anything. He did fine I guess. Could’ve done better. Same as anyone really.

I don’t mention Charles for those reasons, however. I mention him because he provided me with one of my most memorable moments as an attorney. I wrote the whole story about it back in my Pandemic Diary in 2020 when I talked about being swept up in a highly-publicized search warrant execution that had me literally fighting with state troopers over my laptop. Charles was the Inspector General I mention near the end of the story who swooped onto the scene with TV helicopters and reporters in tow, grandstanding like nobody’s business as I tried to get the hell out of the building with what was probably a whole lot of evidence of illegal crap on my person. The late aughts were a trip for me, man.

Like I said, I cannot objectively rate what kind of job Tom Charles did in his post. But I can say that he had quite a flair for the dramatic. It taught me a hell of a lot about how public corruption is and is not fought in this country, that’s for sure. Basically: if you can get good press out of fighting corruption, you fight it. If you can’t, well, you probably don’t.

The Los Angeles Times slashes the newsroom staff

The Los Angeles Times announced yesterday that it is laying off 115 staffers. It does so as it claims to be losing $30-40 million a year. Which, hey, you gotta do what you gotta to do survive. I mean, the LAT’s owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, is only worth $5.5 billion, so if he doesn’t put 115 low-paid staffers out on the street and slash critical news coverage at a time it’s needed most he might go out of business in 150 years or so.

Yeah, I know businesses don’t think that way. But if you get a lot of glowing press because you’re claiming, like Soon-Shiong did five years ago, that you’re all about great journalism and doing things differently, profits be damned, you’ve sorta applied that standard to yourself. I mean, even Charles Foster Kane saw things that way and he was objectively awful:

Among the staffers laid off from the Times was Jack Harris, the excellent Los Angeles Dodgers beat writer. Which given that the Dodgers have been so un-newsworthy this offseason and appear to be so un-newsworthy going forward, is totally understandable, amirite? I mean, it’d be a different thing altogether if they were the single most exciting and interesting team in baseball. Then you might want a good reporter covering them. Good things for the Times that that’s not the case.

Not that it’s just the sports page. This layoff is approximately 23 percent of the LAT’s newsroom. They also had layoffs last year that, combined with this layoff, means that a full third of its staff has been eliminated in the space of a year. But it’s the same as it ever is, right? A media company fires a bunch of employees to save money, it provides worse coverage than it used to, so it loses more money, then more staff is cut, etc. etc. until the entire thing is wire reporting, AI, or some other worthless form of empty content, assuming of course the enterprise stays in business.

Such enshittification of a major daily newspaper like this is great news for crooked politicians, shady businesspeople, and those who profit off of a misinformed and ignorant public. It’s terrible for the rest of us, though.

Steve Garvey whiffs in his first debate

Former Dodgers and Padres first baseman Steve Garvey is running for U.S. Senate in California as a Republican. On Monday night he participated in the first debate, in which he and the three Democratic frontrunners all took part as, in California primaries, all candidates are listed on one ballot and the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, move on to the general. Garvey, per this report in Politico, did not have himself a good night:

Over the course of the 90-minute debate at the University of Southern California, Garvey struggled to provide details of his policy ideas, was repeatedly laughed at by people in the audience and saw himself ganged up on by his Democratic rivals: Democratic Reps. Katie Porter, Barbara Lee and Adam Schiff.

One of the tensest exchanges of the night came when the three Democrats all pressed Garvey to say whether he’ll vote for former President Donald Trump a third time. Garvey repeatedly refused to answer, saying he would decide before election day. “At that time, I will make my choice.”

Porter retorted with a zinger: “What they say is true: Once a Dodger, always a Dodger,” she said as the audience howled. “This is not the minor leagues. Who will you vote for?”

He also got super weird when asked about California’s homelessness problem, saying he approached unhoused people and “touched them and listened to them.” Then he suggested he was the only serious candidate with respect to homelessness because his opponents are “career politicians” who’ve done nothing to solve the crisis. Never mind that one of the candidates on the same stage as him, Barbara Lee, was actually unhoused herself for a period after she left an abusive relationship as a young mother. Lee called Garvey’s comment about “touching” homeless people belittling, saying “I’ve just gotta say, as someone who’s been unsheltered, I cannot believe how he described his walk and touching.” The audience then burst into laughter.

Startin’ to get the feelin’ that Steve Garvey ain’t gonna be California’s next Senator.

The Oscar Nominations are out

I view the Oscars in much the way I view the Baseball Hall of Fame: it’s interesting enough, and I generally pay attention, but I am mostly uninvested in the process and that which surrounds it.

I love movies, of course, just as I love baseball, but just as I don’t consider a Hall of Fame nod or the lack of one as the determinative factor in what makes for a good ballplayer, I don’t think an Oscar nod necessarily means all that much with respect to a movie’s quality. I mean, an absolute banger like “Zero Effect” got no nominations in 1998 while “Shakespeare in Love” won best picture that year, so the legitimacy of the Academy is sus at best, as the kids say.

That being said, I do acknowledge that the Academy Awards are notable and discussion-worthy, so here we are.

Not surprisingly, at least based on the Golden Globes and various critics awards leading up to it, “Oppenheimer” got the most nominations, securing 13 nods, including for Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director. “Poor Things” got 11 nominations, Martin Scorsese’s “Killers Of The Flower Moon” got 10, and “Barbie” landed eight. Much talked about, though, were two nominations “Barbie” did not get: best director for Greta Gerwig and Best Actress for Margot Robie. I don’t think they’ve created a mathematics rigorous enough to calculate the number of thinkpieces we’ll see written about that over the next couple of weeks.

A fun thing: Scorsese’s nomination for Best Director is his 11th, which breaks his tie with Steven Spielberg for the second most Best Director nods of all time. William Wyler was nominated 12 times, but he has been notably silent in Hollywood circles since July 27, 1981, so barring a mystery project — maybe a sequel to “The Collector?” — he could still be caught. Regardless of what he does, Spielberg and Scorsese are the only two directors to be nominated in six different decades. Which, since those guys started their careers around the time I was born, means that I have been alive in six different decades and oh mercy me I am not ready to think about that so let’s move along to other surprising things besides the Gerwig/Robie snubs:

• Todd Haynes’ “May December,” was only nominated for its screenplay. I figured either Julianne Moore or Charles Melton would get an acting nod for it. Guess not;
• “Killers Of The Flower Moon,” which was based on an award-winning book, was not nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, and I consider that something of an upset;
• “Asteroid City” is being talked about as a snub victim for not getting any nominations, but even if I liked it a whole lot I don’t really consider that a big snub. I mean, I’m pretty realistic about Wes Anderson these days. I love his stuff. I’m a true dead-ender. But I get if people have gotten off that train by now;
• People are also saying “Saltburn” not getting any nominations is odd, but I feel like people will be talking about it in future years more than they’ll talk about, say, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which is a thing that often happens with weird, divisive movies. They live on in ways many of the Big Important Epics don’t.

Anyway, that’s about all I can really care about. Here’s the whole list of nominees. Argue if you’re into it. Don’t if you’re not.

I feel like I might’ve used that one recently. Did I use that one recently? Eh, I don’t care. It’s a banger. I’d do nothing but Kinks songs if I could. Which I could. Don’t tempt me though.

Have a great day everyone.

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