Cup of Coffee: April 10, 2025

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

Back when I was younger and more stressed I used to dream about a world in which there were no rules and nothing really mattered but, folks, it's kind of a drag!

And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Blue Jays 2, Red Sox 1: A heck of a duel between Kevin Gausman (8 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 10K) and Tanner Houck (6.2 IP, 5 H, 1 ER), with both of the runs in regulation coming in the first inning. It was then bupkis until the top of the 11th when Bo Bichette knocked in the Manfred Man on a sac fly and the run held up. Vlad Guerrero had three hits, but he's counting two of them as walks for tax purposes.

[Editor: What?]

Read The Daily Briefing, Friendo. Read The Daily Briefing.

Pirates 2, Cardinals 1: Here's somethin' you don't see every day:

I don't believe in signs, portents, or even vibes, but when this happens and you're still tagged out, man, it may not be your year. Meanwhile, the Pirates catcher in that collision, Joey Bart, singled home the winning run with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 13th inning so fortune was smiling on him a bit more yesterday. Cardinals' starter Erick Fedde tossed no-hit ball for six innings and didn't figure into the decision. Pirates starter Mitch Keller pitched scoreless ball into the eighth and likewise got a no-decision, but at least he went home happy.

Marlins 5, Mets 0: Marlins starter Max Meyer carried a no-hitter into the sixth inning himself but he got the win thanks to a couple of RBI singles from his teammates in the fifth. A guy who hit one of those singles, Matt Mervis, added a two-run homer in ninth. Miami ended the day with a spiffy as hell catch by Dane Meyers in dead center. The Mets' six-game winning streak comes to an end.

Yankees 4, Tigers 3: It was knotted at zero into the seventh when Ben Rice hit a two-run homer. A two-run single in the ninth from Aaron Judge made it 4-0. Then Devin Williams did his level best to blow it, allowing three runs on two hits and two walks before Aaron Boone finally woke up and yanked him from the game. In came Mark Leiter Jr. who ended it with two pitches, easy-peasy lemon-squeezie. Max Fried tossed seven scoreless frames with 11 strikeouts.

Rangers 6, Cubs 2: Tyler Mahle was sharp, allowing one run on just two hits over seven. Corey Seager hit two homers. Jonah Heim went deep too. Texas avoids a three-game sweep.

Padres 2, Athletics 1: Randy Vasquez and four relievers gave up just two hits to A's batters. Oscar González singled in one and Gavin Sheets hit a sac fly. San Diego takes two of three.

Diamondbacks 9, Orioles 0: Brandon Pfaadt shut 'em out for six and two relievers finished the four-hit blankening. The first four guys in the Dbacks order hit homers. Not in a row, though, so it wasn't quite as cool as it could've been. Josh Naylor drove in three.

Giants 8, Reds 6: Is it just me or have there been more than the usual number of extra innings games this year? I feel like there have been but I'm too lazy to check. Extra innings games in the Manfred Man Era tend to be a drag because the whole dynamic changes, but sometimes they end cleanly. Like this one, which ended on a Mike Yastrzemski walkoff splashdown two-run homer into McCovey Cove. The Giants avoided the sweep and then they hopped on a plane to New York to face the Yankees this weekend.

Dodgers 6, Nationals 5: Los Angeles jumped out to a 4-0 lead before the Nats even had a chance to bat. Washington answered back with three of their own in the bottom of the first and then two more in the third to take the lead. The Dodgers got two back in the seventh, however, via an Andy Pages homer and an RBI single from Teoscar Hernández, who had homered earlier. Thus ends a 2-4 road trip for the champs.

Mariners 7, Astros 6: Houston took a 5-0 lead into the bottom of the eighth when Randy Arozarena hit a grand slam to make it damn close. The Astros made it a two-run game thanks to a wild pitch in the top of the ninth but Seattle showed some gumption – a trait not typically associated with Mariners teams over the past couple of years – by plating the tying and winning runs in the bottom of the ninth via a Julio Rodríguez RBI double and then Arozarena drawing a bases-loaded walkoff walk. All of that ruined Astros starter Hunter Brown's two-hit ball over six shutout innings but games are nine innings long so, welp.

Guardians 3, White Sox 2: This one ended badly for the White Sox and in this case I don't even wanna joke about it because it was just a bummer. Specifically: the White Sox were down by two and had the bases loaded with two outs in the bottom of the ninth when Miguel Vargas singled through the hole at short. Jacob Amaya scored from third and Mike Tauchman, running from second, seemed like he'd score the tying run easily. Except . . .  he injured himself while rounding third base – it ended up being a hamstring strain – and he was easily tagged out. Oof.

Rays 5, Angels 4: José Caballero hit a first inning grand slam and Yandy Díaz hit a solo shot in the seventh and the Rays held on. Kyren Paris – who has started this season on absolute fire – hit two more homers, bringing his season total up to five. It does sorta suck to have a monster game only to lose because your teammates didn't pull their weight, but if any organization can get a player comfortable with that dynamic it's the Angels.

Phillies 4, Atlanta 3: A tight game which made it to the ninth tied at three thanks to dueling home runs from Bryce Harper and Austin Riley in the seventh. Trea Turner's solo shot in the top of the ninth ended the scoring, however. The teams have split the first two games of this series. The rubber match is today.

Twins 4, Royals 0: Joe Ryan was on it, giving up just two hits over seven. Per the AP, that makes Ryan 7-0 in nine career starts against Kansas City with a 1.30 ERA. What if they made the WHOLE SCHEDULE out of the Royals? Matt Wallner and Ty France went yard.

Brewers 17, Rockies 2: Jackson Chourio homered and doubled and drioe in five  while William Contreras hit a two-run homer in a five-run third inning that represented the beginning of the non-competitive portion of this contest. Milwaukee would put up another five-spot in the fifth. Things got downright comical in the ninth when the Brewers put up a seven-spot thanks to some sloppy Rockies defense, Christian Yelich's two-run blast, and other assorted shenanigans. The Rockies are last in all of baseball in runs scored. What is even the point of a baseball team in Denver if it isn't scoring a crap-ton of runs?

The Daily Briefing

Sixty-five percent of Vlad Guerrero Jr.'s deal is in the form of a signing bonus

Yesterday details of Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s new contract came out and those details included a pretty big surprise: Guerrero is getting a full 65% of his compensation in the form of a signing bonus.

Yup: $325 million of the $500 million he'll receive from the Blue Jays is a bonus. But not an up-front bonus. Rather, both the bonus and salary will be distributed in varying annual amounts over the 14-year term of the deal. And yes, there are consequences for that designation. From Rosenthal:

For Guerrero, the benefit of getting the bulk of his money in a signing bonus would appear twofold. Signing bonuses are allocated to an athlete’s state of residence. Guerrero resides in Florida, a state without income tax. So, he presumably will avoid paying state tax on the bonus, generating millions in savings.

The other benefit is that signing bonuses are not contingent on the performance of services. Guerrero would receive his annual payout if Major League Baseball canceled games due to a work stoppage, a possibility with the sport’s collective bargaining agreement expiring on Dec. 1, 2026. He also would receive it if the league canceled games for some other reason, such as a pandemic.

Call me crazy, but getting a regular amount of money on an annual basis looks a hell of a lot like "salary" to me, even if it's classified as a "bonus" by the team and the player. I mean, if the $325 million is truly a bonus could Vlad just leave baseball next winter to become a graphic designer or a yoga instructor or something and keep it? I'm guessing not! And if not, that's salary, jack.

Which makes this seem like a tax-circumvention thing. Because while, sure, the Canadian or Ontario government may allow for "bonuses" to be treated like this for tax purposes, this is pretty clearly not a "bonus" in anything but name. It walks and talks like salary. And yes, the Canadian government is taking that position in litigation with a hockey player who has a similar setup right now, so if I was Vlad's lawyer I'd be pretty careful about what anyone says about this.

As for the second part: I'm guessing a lot of MLB owners may not like it much if players are increasingly paid in a way that they're relatively unaffected by a work stoppage. Like, if the league locks out the players in the winter of 2026-27 and players don't feel much in the way of financial pressure, does that not kill their leverage? Obviously that would not cause me to shed tears, but if you're Bob Nutting or Paul Dolan or one of the other cheap-ass owners I bet it makes you a bit cranky!

In closing: money was a mistake.

Cody Bellinger swears off chicken wings

Yankees outfielder Cody Bellinger missed Tuesday's game in Detroit. Why? Because he had food poisoning. Why? Because he ordered some wings to his hotel room while watching the Houston-Florida NCAA championship game. And he has some commentary on the whole episode:

"They were good coming in. But I woke up at 4 a.m. sweating and just started throwing up for a few hours. It was a tough morning . . . I can say I will not eat wings for five years. I swear. Because the thought of it right now makes me sick."

The five years is pretty specific. Like, he considered it a good while. I wonder if he considered the possibility that it was the blue cheese or ranch or whatever that came with the wings, though.

Justin Steele hits the IL with elbow problems

The Cubs have jumped out to a fast start but they just hit a bump: starting pitcher Justin Steele was placed on the 15-day injured list yesterday due to elbow tendonitis.

Steele leads the league with three wins but that's a bit misleading as he was pretty bad in his first two starts before tossing seven scoreless innings on only three hits while striking out eight this past Monday night. Either way, losing Steele for a while is not gonna be a good thing. If he's only on the IL for the minimum you figure that Colin Rea will be a spot-starter but if it's longer the club will need to search for a more permanent option.  

Meanwhile, in A-ball . . .

Someone alerted me to some amazing happenings from Florida on Tuesday night:

The Jupiter Hammerheads issued nearly a half-mile's worth of free passes – including a record 22 walks and three hit by pitches – to make Minor League Baseball history in a lopsided loss to the Dunedin Blue Jays.

The Hammerheads, a Single-A affiliate of the Miami Marlins, threw just 121 of their 267 pitches for strikes in the 19-5 setback Tuesday in Jupiter, Fla. The 22 walks are the most ever in a Florida State League game and the most in MLB stat portal history for a Minor League Baseball matchup.

See, Cardinals fans? Your pitching could be worse.

Man who does in-game interviews says in-game interviews are good

You can't get baseball fans to agree on very much but the one thing they almost universally agree on is that in-game interviews suck. They eliminate the play-by-play which distracts from the action on the field and they almost never yield anything even remotely interesting. To the extent they do it's the sort of stuff that could totally be obtained in press availabilities after the game.

Ken Rosenthal does in-game interviews for Fox, which broadcasts the sport's highest–profile games. Which is why it's not all that surprising that he thinks they're great. Via Awful Announcing:

“Those interviews, the ones in the dugout with the players, are a minute or less. That’s why I’m always amused when people say, ‘Get out of the dugout; those things are disruptive.’ No, they’re not disruptive. They take seconds . . . They can be really valuable . . . Now, is every interview great and revealing? No. But if you don’t try, you’re not going to get the good ones."

It's impossible to read anything Rosenthal says about this without thinking that he's talking about why it's good for Fox and for him as opposed to being good for TV viewers. Which has always been the reason for these interviews, by the way. They're for the network executives, producers, and personalities, not us. Getting MLB to let them do interviews is a matter of access. It makes them feel important and powerful. They're a "get" which is its own reward for people in that world but they do almost nothing to improve the broadcast for the people who watch, as opposed to produce, the broadcast.

Great Moments in Press Releases

For reasons which remain unclear I am still on the press release mailing list for several teams, including the Cleveland Guardians. Yesterday they sent one out which contains all manner of words that, in isolation, are recognizably English. As a whole, though, they comprise a word salad that makes me question the very viability of humanity:

The Cleveland Guardians, in collaboration with Landor, the world leading brand consultants, today announced the launch of “Outplay Ordinary” – a bold new brand platform and refreshed visual identity set to debut in the 2025 baseball season. This initiative marks a significant step in the team’s evolution of the Guardians brand, designed to deepen fan engagement, ignite excitement, and unite the club under a unified brand vision for seasons to come.

Harnessing its expertise in sports branding and brand experience, Landor collaborated with the Cleveland Guardians and Contempo Design + Communications to craft a holistic brand platform that speaks to both lifelong fans and the next generation of Guardians supporters. The process included immersive workshops, creative exploration, and fan-driven testing to ensure the platform reflects the spirit of Cleveland and the passion of its baseball community. 

And it just goes on and on like that for a few hundred more words. It's worth noting that the release came with zero (0) images, mockups, wordmarks, or anything. I was at least hoping for some suggestion about what this new "branding" was but it was left a complete and total mystery.

Because I hate myself I went back and re-read it a couple of times and it still sounded like a parody of MarketingSpeak. Like something you'd hear in a Kids in the Hall sketch in which they all play "businessmen." In the end, the most I could make of it was "hey fans, we just paid WAY too much money for some new graphic designers, so get excited!"

I'm just imagining a person in that front office who grew up loving baseball and sacrificed everything so they could work in the game, only to wake up one day and realize that they're editing and sending out gibberish like this. Though, now that I think about it I should probably be imagining the person who asked ChatGPT to come up with "enthusiastic copy about the marketing agreement I just scanned" and pasted the results into the email.

Other Stuff

And now we lurch chaotically in another direction

Seven days after Donald Trump's announcement of his "Liberation Day" tariffs – and after several days of market turmoil and economic anxiety that announcement caused – the Regime said it was "pausing" most of the tariffs for 90 days.

Which is a misleading way of putting things given that they're still keeping 10% across-the-board tariffs in place on the whole world – penguins included – and they're actually increasing tariffs on China to 125%. There likewise remain sector-based tariffs on steel, aluminum, lumber, and pharmaceuticals. Trump can call this a "pause" all he wants, but as of today the United States still has the highest tariffs in the industrialized world – roughly ten times higher than we had been imposing before this criminal regime took over – and they remain at or above the level of the disastrous Smoot-Hawley tariffs during the Great Depression. And, actually, it's quite possible that the huge tariffs leveled on China alone mean that there is more total commerce burdened with American tariffs now than there would've been had Trump not "paused" things and if he had kept China's burden where it was when we woke up yesterday morning.

Which is to say that the crisis is not averted. Far from it. We still have a huge problem. We have still set a powerful economic time bomb which will negatively affect the world economy and the markets in a major way going forward for no good reason whatsoever.

Despite that the markets – which, as I wrote the other day, are not that smart but, rather, simply react like single-celled organisms – moved up sharply yesterday. Which is fine and dandy for now, but given those still-existing tariffs and the fact that the entire world knows that America is a highly erratic and irrational economic actor at the moment I wouldn't expect that good market news to last. I mean, the Chinese tariffs alone are massive and, as we wake up this morning, this is NOT a market that has yet priced in the concept of "trade with China is essentially over." Beyond that, we simply cannot be trusted as a nation. Canada and the Asian and European markets know that very, very well. As I saw Chris Hayes put it on Bluesky yesterday, Trump, "set the house on fire, watched it burn, and then lost his nerve and put it out. He now has a partially burned house and no one trusts him at all."

The first thing a lot of folks thought when that announcement happened is that a people in the White House or in its favor likely got very, very rich on insider information yesterday. You can see evidence of that here and also here. Or, hell, just look at what Trump posted like a half hour before he announced the rollback:

Yup: Trump and his people are getting rich directly off the market chaos that’s ruining your retirement savings and your kid's college fund. In a world where laws applied to everyone this would be exhibit A in his insider trading trial. Sadly, we don't live in such a world. In our world the rich and the powerful commit crimes with impunity. You know, like the bribes which will now inevitably flow his way:

As for now, Trump and his sycophants have already fanned out and have told every reporter and every camera they can find that this was all part of a brilliant plan – Trump's famous deal-making! – but don't believe it. The man in charge is a chaos actor who doesn't know shit, he's surrounded by yes-men, and no one has any idea what they're doing. It was only when actual financial collapse appeared possible Tuesday night and into Wednesday that they reversed course in a panic and now they're saying, in the Pee-Wee Herman voice, "I meant to do that!"

I'd say "and now we'll wait for the next crisis," but this one is not over. Trump's incompetence has already raised the ire of Canada, China, and Europe and he's no doubt going to learn soon that you cannot go piss on someone's doormat and then expect to walk away as if nothing happened. Trump spent years learning that if he boned a vendor he could always find another one. Maybe that works when you're building shitty hotels and apartments, but that doesn't work on the international level.

Donald Trump has torched the world's trust in America. It'll be decades before we get it back, if we ever do. In the meantime we're simply going to flail around in ineptitude, illegality, and corruption.

Coal? Are you kidding me?

On Tuesday Trump stood in front of a group of coal miners and said this:

"One thing I learned about the coal miners – that's what they want to do. You could give them a penthouse on 5th Avenue and a different kind of a job and they'd be unhappy. They want to mine coal. She was gonna put them in a high tech industry where you make little cell phones and things."

I moved to West Virginia in 1985 and spent the rest of my adolescence around coal mining and coal miners. For nearly 20 years after that I was related to coal miners by marriage, with my ex-wife's grandfather, brother, and several of her cousins working in the mines in one capacity or another. My mother-in-law grew up in coal camp housing from the 1930s into the 1950s. My ex's grandfather had black lung disease. On April 5, 2010, Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch coal mine, not far from where I had lived, blew up. Twenty-nine out of thirty-one miners at the site were killed. One of the 29 miners killed was the father of one of my other in-laws.

None of that makes me an expert on coal mining, but it did put me close enough to coal miners to hear them all say, over and over again, that none of them wanted that life for their kids and those who were still in that life wanted out due to the danger and instability of the job. I'm not really connected to those people or that world anymore, but given that a new black lung epidemic is tearing through Appalachia and given that the Trump Regime just defunded the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which is the agency that’s been tracking black lung and other hazards of mining, I'm guessing that not much has changed when it comes to the eagerness of people to do those jobs.

I realize that there is a certain sort of person in West Virginia and other mining areas who has assumed a misguided and mostly ill-informed nostalgia for coal mining, and a certain sort of politician in those areas who has exploited that nostalgia for political gain, but none of that justifies the unadulterated horseshit Trump was spewing about this the other day. And that's before you get to the part where clean energy production such as solar and onshore wind power have been cheaper and more efficient than coal for several years now and that there are far more jobs to be found in those industries than in coal mining.

So damn much of what's gone wrong in this country over the past decade is a function of Trump and people like him just inventing some bogus alternate reality. "People love mining coal!" and "coal is our future!" are two of the more egregious examples of it. But I'll make Trump a deal: if he sends his kids down into the mines to work, I'll stop criticizing this kind of thing. If not, maybe he should shut the fuck up.

Reality is messing with my jokes

I was skittering across the Internet yesterday afternoon in an effort to find something to write about that isn't politics or the financial markets when I came upon an easy winner: a Hollywood Reporter article with the headline "20 Sexiest TV Shows Ranked."

Craig's newsletter-writer brain: "I should make a joke about how 'The Golden Girls' got robbed, lol."

Actual article:

Reality is gettin' hard to beat these days. So I'll change my joke to "'Sanford and Son' got robbed."

In related news, when "The Golden Girls" debuted on September 14, 1985, Rue McClanahan, who played Blanche, was 51 years, six months, and 22 days old. As of today your humble newsletter writer is 51 years, seven months, and 26 days old.

Thank you for being a friend, y'all, but it's probably time for me to die.

Have a great day everyone.