Cup of Coffee: March 15, 2024
A signing, the ever-expanding score bug, the Space Cowboys rotation, Kaval's delusions, Pittsburgh piracy, Barstool, and nepotism
Good morning!
Today we talk about a signing, the ever-expanding score bug, the Space Cowboys rotation, Kaval’s continued delusions, Pittsburgh piracy, the nature of Barstool, academically speaking, nepotism and even more nepotism.
The Daily Briefing
Atlanta signs Adam Duvall
The Atlanta Baseball Club has signed outfielder Adam Duvall to a one-year contract worth $3 million.
This is Duvall’s third stint with Atlanta, having initially played for them from 2018-2020 and then leaving via free agency before the start of the 2021 season only to be traded back to them in the middle of that campaign and remaining with them through the 2022 season. Last year Duvall played for the Red Sox but, as always, he has managed to find his way back to Georgia.
You — and Atlanta — know what you’re getting from Duvall. Some home run pop and solid outfield defense. And even at age 35 he seems to still be going strong, at least when not overused. Last year in Boston he hit .247/.303/.541 (119 OPS+) in 92 games. That definitely plays as a fourth outfielder type. Or, as is more likely the case, as the right-handed sign of a platoon with Jarred Kelenic taking the left-handed side.
Nice move, really. It’s shocking to me that no one else could use a guy like Duvall in a similar capacity. It’s also shocking that Atlanta didn’t sign him sooner, especially after seeing this sort of thing yesterday afternoon:
The Braves hadn't been looking for a right-handed bat, but Anthopoulos said Duvall was a “special case for us given the history we’ve had with him. The opportunity to get Adam was too good for us to turn down.”
I get that! But I don’t understand why, then, they waited until a month into spring training to sign him. He was available in February too! They could’ve signed him at any time! It’s not like he just fell into their lap yesterday morning.
I suppose the real answer is “he wanted $5 million last month but dropped to $3 million now.” Which is totally fair, of course. But it sort of undercuts that whole “too good to turn down!” thing.
Oh well. Whatever. Business.
The score bugs are getting buggier
We’re only about a week away from actual regular season games that count. That means that we’re only about a week away from the return of Cup of Coffee’s recap feature, And That Happened.
As anyone who has been reading my work for the, God, 16 years I’ve been writing And That Happened knows, I do not watch 15 baseball games a night. That would be insane. I write the recaps primarily from highlights, condensed games, box scores, and game stories and from the random bits I see on social media as games are being played. Which means that I look at a lot of scores in progress on score bugs. You know, the little graphics in the corner of the screen which tell you, duh, what the score is.
But there’s more on a score bug than the score, right? There’s outs and balls and strikes and which bases are occupied by runners. Some have the batter’s name and even the on-deck batter’s name. There are also pitch counts and the velocity of the most recent pitch. Some are even more detailed than that. It’s a lot of information in such a tiny little bug!
But now there will be more, at least on ESPN: win probability. Or, as it’s sometimes called, win expectancy, which indicates the chance a team has to win a particular game at a specific point in that game based on statistical figuring that I do not know how to calculate but many do. It’s also a measure I don’t much care about for any reason whatsoever because I prefer to watch games to see what happens rather than watching games to see if my data-backed expectations are fulfilled or confounded, but if you like that stuff good for you.
I gotta say, though, as a person who looks at a LOT of damn score bugs, I don’t think we need this, at least not there. Because (a) the score bugs are already cluttered enough; and (b) anyone who really cares about win probability already knows the places where you can find that in-game, in real time.
The old Cards pitchers are tempting fate
The projected rotation of the St. Louis Cardinals is not young by baseball standards. Sonny Gray is 34. Lance Lynn is 37. Kyle Gibson is 36. Miles Mikolas is 35. Steven Matz is the baby of the group at 33. It’s the sort of thing that makes people wonder and possibly even worry about their durability. So it’s not surprising that reporters have been asking them about it. Like Ken Rosenthal did over at The Athletic yesterday:
“Obviously, with the older age, people are going to say certain things,” Lynn said. “But younger guys can’t cover the innings anymore. That’s a proven fact. Because that’s how they’re taught. We were taught differently. That’s why we’re still here.”
I actually hope Lynn is right about that. I love traditional starting pitching. My favorite part of watching baseball games for basically my whole life has been watching the battle between two starting pitchers. The build and the flow of the game as the innings progress and you wonder who will break or tire first. It doesn’t even have to be a strong pitcher’s duel between two aces. I just love and understand the game best via 6-7 innings of starting pitching before the bullpens come into play. Though these days I more often have to scratch the itch with five and there’s no guarantee of even that anymore.
Which is to say that I want the Cardinals’ approach to this season to work. I want to see rotations of four and five established starters without resort to bullpen days or a constant carousel of callups making spot starts. I want Lynn to be right about the older guys simply being better-geared for taking the ball every fifth day and giving their skipper some innings. And no, I don’t care if the numbers or projections back that up as the best approach. I simply want that to happen purely for aesthetic and cosmic purposes particular to my own personal desires.
But I’m also a jackass blogger, and that part of me is bookmarking this article. Because folks, I am super skeptical that the Space Cowboys approach to pitching is gonna work in 2024 and I feel like Lynn’s quote is gonna look bad in a few months. Though I hope I’m wrong about that, of course.
Devin Williams to miss three months
I missed this one before yesterday’s newsletter published: Brewers reliever Devin Williams is going to miss three months with multiple stress fractures in his back.
Williams began experiencing back issues late last season. He felt fine coming into spring training, but the pain began to flare up during his first bullpen session and it began affecting his mechanics so he underwent an MRI. What was found was not just one but two stress fractures in his back. Now he’ll be shut down for six weeks after which he’ll begin a slow ramp-up. He’s expected to be fine at the end of that and should be able to contribute in the second half of the season.
Williams, 29, is a two-time NL Reliever of the Year and is one of the most dominant bullpen arms in the game. He is obviously an extremely important player for the Brewers, especially given that their much-depleted rotation will cause them to rely much more heavily on the bullpen this season. So yeah, tough break. Two tough breaks, actually.
Dave Kaval continues to be delusional
Here’s Oakland A’s/Las Vegas A’s President Dave Kaval talking about using the planned Las Vegas stadium for non-baseball events. As if no recipient of public funds for a sports facility has ever offered to lip service to that sort of thing before:
Once again, I marvel at the arrogance and contempt he has for whoever he’s speaking to. As noted, “this stadium will be used year-round for all manner of events” is boilerplate stadium pitch stuff. But it also never, ever comes to pass in the way in which the backers of such plans claim it will. That’s especially true for baseball stadiums.
Some of them get a few concerts a year but that’s pretty much it. As sports economist Victor Matheson tweeted, between 1990 and 2019, the typical MLB stadium hosted fewer than five major events per year outside of actual MLB games. And I’d bet those numbers are skewed by cities which have ballparks but which don’t have as many alternative venues as Las Vegas does.
Concerts, conventions, alternative sporting events, graduations, and things like that prefer to use NBA/NHL arenas or football stadiums because the scale is better in the former and the geometry is better in both. And, of course, Las Vegas already has a domed football stadium, a pretty new arena, and all manner of smaller facilities given that the city is an entertainment mecca. There’s also a large university in town with an arena that has often been used for all manner of events.
Which is to say, the A’s ballpark will be useful for the A’s and virtually no one else. So please stop shoveling bullshit, Dave. It’s getting really, really insulting.
The Dodgers continue to do right by Andrew Toles
Yesterday, for the fifth year running, The Los Angeles Dodgers renewed the contract of their former outfielder Andrew Toles.
Toles, of course, hasn't played since 2018 and will no doubt never play again due to serious mental health problems, including a schizophrenia diagnosis and bipolar disorder which have seen him hospitalized on multiple occasions. The Dodgers keep renewing him, however, so that he can continue to receive health insurance.
We live in a country with a horrible healthcare system and it’s even worse for mental healthcare than it is for most things. Good on the Dodgers for understanding that and continuing to do something they are in no way required to do in order to help out a man in need.
Sports Broadcasting nepotism cases deny nepotism is the reason for their success
The Athletic has a story about nepotism in sports broadcasting. Which is rampant, of course.
This article mentions Jac Collinsworth, Ben Shulman, Mike Golic Jr., Sam Ravech, and Olivia Harlan Dekker. We’ve talked here recently about the four-generations of Caray broadcasters, and everyone is quite familiar with Joe Buck and Thom Brennaman. There are no doubt several others.
The story is framed by the failure of young Jac Collinsworth who was recently removed from NBC’s Notre Dame broadcasts as it was a job which he was manifestly not prepared to handle. But then it transitions to Buck, who has been a success despite criticism early in his career, with said criticism fueled by the fact that he got into the business because of who his father was. Buck, who has always been a refreshingly straight shooter when talking about his life and career, nonetheless falls back on an old nepotism case chestnut, which closes out the article and pretty clearly stands as its concluding point of view:
“I think it gives you a tremendous advantage,” Buck said of being the son of a famous sportscaster. “But then the question is, ‘What do you do with it?'”
Again: Buck made himself into an excellent announcer, no one can deny that. But the whole "I got a chance because of who my dad is, but I MADE THE MOST OF IT" is bullshit you hear from every nepotism case in every single field.
And sure, in some fields maybe that’s fair. There are something like 1.1 million doctors in the United States. Some of them, no doubt, got into medical school and maybe got their first jobs because their parents helped them out. But to get through school and to keep those jobs requires performance and even the most well-connected doctors will wash out if they kill their patients on the regular. So I’ll take Buck’s response at face value in certain situations.
But in a business like broadcasting where there are very, very few available jobs, where the stakes are not life and death, where performance is in no small part subjective, and where there is very little turnover at the very top, getting that first chance is everything. There are a TON more people who could competently call a game than there are openings in the field. Getting your famous father and his network executive friends to give you that chance over someone else is a difference maker. It’s THE difference maker.
Nepotism cases either cannot or will not admit that. They lie to themselves and others about it and do so in some pretty astounding ways sometimes. Buck, for example, talks about how he got a ton of criticism early in his career for being a nepotism case. In the article he says that at he felt “like he was in a race but was beginning behind the starting line.” Which is the exact opposite of what happened! He won the 100 meters after starting at the 75 meter mark! Or, as Ann Richards once said of George W. Bush, he started on third base and thinks he hit a triple.
I don’t suppose this is unique to broadcasting. People who got where they got because of nepotism never think they have a real advantage. Not that I can really blame them for thinking that. It’s probably an essential act of psychological self-preservation for them to believe it, and God knows we all have to sleep at night.
Other Stuff
Seriously, stop following this guy
I’ve gone off on the Super 70s Sports Twitter account many times in this space. For those who unfamiliar: Super 70s Sports is an account run by a guy named Ricky Cobb who tweets out photos and videos of 1970s and 1980s athletes along with jokes or commentary about how things were better and players were tougher once upon a time.
The account can be fun at times, on a basic level. And he and his fans claim that it’s all a joke. But Cobb frequently swerves into decidedly non-joking Boomer-ass back-in-my-dayism, seems to think players who get injured or require medical attention are morally flawed and, quite often, engages in simply toxic crap like transphobia and sexism that, even if offered in the form of a joke, is “humor” that punches down in the most cruel and hateful of ways. I don’t suppose he really gives a crap about any of it — he’s just trying to farm engagement so he can do things like get a TV deal — but even if his tongue is placed in his cheek, his account cultivates and perpetuates the most toxic sort of shit which surrounds sports.
This morning I woke up to fine him riding a hobby horse he’s ridden many times before: fanboying for Pete Rose:
"Hey, the guy is not Hitler" is definitely a low bar to set when arguing that someone should be given the highest honor in their field. It certainly doesn’t take a master ethicist to understand that one can be really fucking evil and unworthy of honor short of being Hitler. Like, say, by raping a 14 year-old girl. Sorry, not gonna “get over myself” when it comes to things like that, but if you can, hey, good for you.
I think what galls me the most is just how many prominent sports writers, even some I otherwise respect and who I would hope know better, follow and retweet this guy on the regular. Tells you a lot about ‘em.
Pittsburgh Piracy
There were apparently 18,000 of them in there.
I like my completely off-the-wall heist idea better, but I bet there’s a great story behind this one. If I had to guess it’ll either involve (a) some convoluted and poorly-though-out scheme involving sketchy memorabilia obsessives; or (b) some low level mobsters who were told that the truck actually contained sneakers, booze, or cigarettes and who are now SUPER mad and SUPER desperate to unload the bobbleheads.
We could make a movie out of this one as well. It could be set in the same world as the Truck Day Heist. If we can these ideas off the ground I could become the Sports-Related Heist Cinematic Universe’s Kevin Feige.
Barstool is, academically speaking, pure shit
I know that the Barstool sports community and aesthetic is inherently racist and sexist and overall shitty. Many of you probably know that the Barstool sports community and aesthetic is inherently racist and sexist and overall shitty as well. But we’re just people out here with opinions and folks who like the whole Barstool thing either ignore or deny our mere opinions.
But it’s a special kind of fun when actual academics conduct an actual study in an effort to objectively describe the nature of the Barstool sports ecosystem and come up with conclusions like these.
Existing across multiple media platforms, Barstool Sports (“Barstool”) is one of the most important sport brands in the United States. While Barstool’s critics frequently assert that the company is “racist,” few, if any, detail how their racial politics work. Through a brief genealogy of Barstool’s cultural history and a close critical reading of “The Barstool Documentary Series,” we show how Barstool’s racial politics operate through gender—specifically the affective appeal of Big Man sovereignty and the homosocial bonds of White fratriarchy —to create and normalize racially exclusive and White male-dominant social worlds that dovetail remarkably with racial and gender ideas that organize what Maskovsky calls Trump’s “White nationalist postracialism” and the Proud Boys’ “Western chauvinism.”
That’s a from like 18 months ago and I’m just seeing it now but who cares.
God I love science.
A nepotism case from back in the day
The nepotism-in-broadcasting article made me think about something that happened in my legal career nearly 25 years ago
My first job out of law school was at a small but prestigious litigation boutique which was run by the two named partners who, along with some other guys, had recently defected from the large international law firm Jones Day. It was a pretty spiffy practice with major international clients and powerful and well-known local ones. I did my summer associate gig there in 1997, was asked to come back full time after I graduated, and took the bar exam and began regular work in the summer of 1998.
In those early days I met Named Partner A’s two sons, Son 1 and Son 2. Son 1 was just finishing law school himself. He decided to leave town, however, moved up to Chicago and got a job with a huge law firm where he still works today. Good for him and his no doubt massive bank account. Son 2 had just graduated college and was still trying to figure out what he was going to do with himself. He ended up taking the LSAT and applied to law schools in late 1998 for admission the following year.
One day that fall Partner A came into my office and told me that Son 2 was going to have a tough time getting into law school and he asked me if I’d be willing to help Son 2 with the essay for his application. I did so. I didn’t write it for him or anything, but it was something beyond a basic edit. Which, whatever. We all get help with that kind of stuff at some point or another. Son 2 got into law school.
In the summer of 2000, Son 2 came to the firm for a clerkship. The firm, as a rule, did not hire clerks who had only finished their first year of law school — it was a very small, 2L clerkship class only — but an exception was made because Son 2 was Partner A’s son.
During that summer I and several other lawyers in the firm were working with Partner A on a major case that was both big news here in Columbus and, unlike most cases, was kinda fun and sexy because it involved sports and media and some famous and important figures. At one point in June there was a big hearing that required a ton of work to prepare for. All-nighters were pulled. Then hearing day came. As a young pup I obviously would not be taking a major part in the hearing itself, but I had done a ton of work to prepare for it and it’s an important part of every young lawyer’s development to attend such hearings as part of the team and to “hold the bag,” as they say.
Except a couple of hours before the hearing, when the whole team was in the conference room handling final preparations, Partner A said that I would not be going to the hearing. His son, a first year student law clerk who hadn’t even worked on the case at all, would be. A lot of questioning glances were exchanged in the room but no one said anything because you didn’t say anything to Partner A. The team went to the hearing while I stayed back at the office. Later, I was told that not only was the partner’s son at the table with them, but that he and he alone accompanied Partner A in a conference back in the judge’s chambers in which the only other ones there were the client and opposing counsel. Even other senior lawyers on the team didn’t accompany them. There was a LOT of bitterness about it.
The writing was pretty much on the wall at that point. It was a small firm, the guy’s dad’s name was on the door, and despite the fact that he was four years behind me, he’d functionally be senior to me forever and he’d effectively be my boss before too long. I had no interest in that so it wasn’t long after that hearing that I began looking to lateral to another firm, which I did. Twenty-four years later and Son 2 is a partner at his dad’s firm, so yeah.
I’m not gonna sit here and claim that everything I’ve achieved in my life has been done on raw merit. Indeed, I once wrote something in which I examined how luck and privilege, both in my lifetime and before I was even born, have helped me along the way. But I decided a long time ago that life is too damn short to allow myself to be enmeshed in situations where overcoming nepotism was an implicit part of the job description.
But continued good luck to Son 2. He was a pretty nice guy all things considered, even if he got a massive leg up. I wonder if he knows that he did?
Have a great weekend everyone.
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