Cup of Coffee: August 13, 2026

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

The American League Wild Card race currently features five sub-.500 teams within two games of a playoff slot and a sixth team that is just four back.

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?

And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Cubs 12, Nationals 6: Alex Bregman had a helluva night, hitting three homers and driving in seven runs. He homered on Tuesday night as well. His first half was uninspiring but he's really turned it on since the break. Dansby Swanson homered and doubled in a run too but this was the Bregman show. The Cubs have won eight of nine and are now just three back of Milwaukee in the Central.

Astros 2, Giants 1: Houston used seven pitchers, only one of which went three innings and none of which otherwise pitched even two. It was effective but games like these are just ugly and stupid and I hate them so. San Francisco clung to a 1-0 lead until the seventh behind six shutout frames from Adrian Houser, but a Nelson Velázquez sac fly – proceeded by an error that put a runner on third – tied things up in the seventh and a Nick Allen sac fly in the eighth gave the otherwise punchless Astros their winning margin. Thrilling. Please keep a thought or a prayer in your heart for anyone who actually had to watch this one, because based on the box score it sounded horrible.

Twins 7, Orioles 5: Baltimore had a 4-1 lead in the the third but blew it. I am not even bothering to look right now, so I may be super, super wrong about his, but I feel like no team has blown more three-run leads in baseball this year than the O's. Again: I might be WAY off but based just on recap vibes for the past four and a half months, it seems like they have. Anyway, the Twins took the lead with a four-run third inning with Alan Roden's double putting them ahead. They got two more in the fifth and Baltimore didn't challenge.

Cardinals 7, Phillies 1:  Alec Burleson hit a two-run double during St. Louis' four-run fifth inning and he drove in three in all. Burleson finished 5-for-10 with two doubles and five RBI in the series, which the Cards took two games to one. All four of the Cardinals' runs in the fifth came with two outs. Wasn't Zack Wheeler's day. Kyle Leahy, meanwhile, went five innings, allowing one run on six hits and no walks while striking out six and the pen turned in four innings of no-hit ball.

Rays 8, Athletics 4: Liam Hicks hit a three-run homer in the fourth inning to turn a 4-2 game into a 7-2 game. He and his Tampa Bay teammates beat up A's starter Jack Perkins for seven runs on 12 hits in five innings. The Rays sweep the three-game series and have won nine straight times. Nine times? Nine times.

Rockies 6, Diamondbacks 4: Rockies catcher Brett Sullivan hit a three-run homer in a four-run second and Zac Veen hit a two-run shot a couple of innings later. Arizona tried to rally – and Rockies pitchers issuing ten walks in this one certainly helped that cause – but it wasn't happening. Colorado takes two of three.

Padres 4, Brewers 3: Dustin May held San Diego at bay for seven, allowing just one run, but Jake Cronenworth singled in a run to tie things up at two in the eighth. Gary Sánchez put Milwaukee up in the top of the 11th with an RBI double but the Padres tied it back up on Jackson Merrill's sac fly and walked it off on a Luis Campusano RBI single. San Diego has won five straight and has been surging for the past three weeks.

Guardians 6, Tigers 4: Jo Adell homered for the second straight night, this time bringing the Guardians back from one down to take a 4-3 lead in the fifth. Ángel Genao and Austin Hedges each had run-scoring base hits in the seventh to make it 6-3 and the Tigers could only answer with one more.

Marlins 8, Pirates 2: Janson Junk allowed two – but just one earned – over six, the pen kept the Pirates scoreless over the final three, and Griffin Conine and Heriberto Hernández homered. Xavier Edwards knocked in a couple. Miami has won four in a row.

Yankees 10, Mariners 5: Seattle took a 3-0 lead with a couple of early homers and held on to a 5-3 lead after the top of the fifth but after that it was all New York. Or I should say it was all Trent Grisham as the Yankees center fielder hit two homers, doubled in a run, and drove in four of the Yankees seven runs from the fifth inning on. Spencer Jones doubled in two in the third and doubled in another in the fifth. The Yankees go for the sweep later today.

Blue Jays 6, Red Sox 4: Ranger Suárez and José Soriano had themselves a nice pitchers' duel and the game remained 1-1 entering the eighth. That's when the Jays went off for five runs, with a two-run double from Myles Straw capping it off. Boston scored three off of Matt Waldron in the ninth but then Louis Varland came in to lock things down. That's three straight wins for Toronto who can complete a four-game sweep of Boston today.

Atlanta 6, Mets 3: Lane Thomas, Mike Yastrzemski, and Austin Riley homered for Atlanta while Tyler Mahle allowed one over six. The Barves take two of three.

White Sox 5, Reds 0: Luis Castillo's second start for Chicago was better than his first one as he tossed seven shutout innings, allowing just one hit, and striking out ten. Overall it was a two-hitter, with White Sox pitchers striking out 13 Cincinnati batters. Drew Romo and Chase Meidroth went deep. They'll go for the series win this afternoon.

Angels 5, Rangers 2:  Mike Trout had three hits and two RBI, Jose Siri hit a pinch-hit RBI double, and the Angels came from behind after a digging a small early hole. Starter George Klassen picked up his first big league win after allowing two over six.

Dodgers 4, Royals 2: Shohei Ohtani hit a two-run homer and Mookie Betts and Hunter Feduccia hit solo shots. Eric Lauter allowed two runs, one earned, while working into the seventh. Freddie Freeman took a header into the dugout chasing a foul ball, but he lucked out, didn't really hurt himself, and is day-to-day. A lot was happening.

The Daily Briefing

Mark Walter is selling the Lakers

Dodgers owner Mark Walter bought the Los Angeles Lakers less than a year ago. Now he's selling them. It was announced yesterday that a group led by Josh Kushner – brother-in-law of Ivanka Trump – and longtime Disney CEO Bob Iger are buying the Lakers for $12 billion. Walter bought them for around $10 billion, with the deal closing in October 2025.

This is, to say the least, interesting. Especially given recent reports that the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Guggenheim Partners, which Walter owns and runs, for high-level insurance fraud. So is this sale a coincidence? A merely opportunistic move? Or is Walter liquidating assets to protect himself and his position and to pay off what are sure to be some pretty massive legal bills and, potentially, fines? And are the Lakers the only asset he plans on selling?

This is also interesting for another reason. Yesterday I wrote about how the Yankees are worth an estimated $8.5 billion. While I'm willing to entertain arguments that the Lakers are worth more than the Yankees for various reasons – the brand is probably just as strong but the overhead is lower – but it's no sure thing that they are. And either way it strongly suggests to me that the Yankees are worth way more than $8.5 billion. Which further undermines the owners' arguments about their need for massive concessions from the players.

So yeah, this is worth watching even for baseball fans.

Miles Mikolas DFA'd

The Washington Nationals have designated starter Miles Mikolas for assignment. The move was made in order to make room for 23 year-old pitching prospect Jackson Kent, who was called up to start against the Cubs yesterday.

But it was also made because Mikolas has been dogshit this year. He has posted a 5.82 ERA (73 ERA+) over 116 innings while putting up one of the game’s lowest strikeout rates and giving up the third-most home runs in the majors. Last Thursday he was lit up for six runs on 12 hits over five innings in a losing effort against the Phillies. That also happened to be the exact day that Mikolas reached ten years of service time, which gives players full pensions after they retire, so it was a nice gesture by the Nats to keep him around as long as they did.

Anyway, this could very well be the end of the line for Mikolas, who hasn't been an effective pitcher for three or four years now. I presume he'll clear waivers and refuse a minor league assignment. At which point it would be funny if someone asked him – one of the game's more visible right-wingers – why no one wants to work anymore.

MLB vs. Scooters

Andy McCullough of the Athletic wrote a story earlier this week about electric scooters. How ballplayers love using them and how teams friggin' hate that they do. Which has become a more high-profile issue in the wake of Giants center fielder Harrison Bader’s season-ending scooter crash last month.

Bader is being docked pay and could have his whole contract voided as a result of his mishap. It's gray area right now, though, because while standard MLB contracts forbid players from engaging in “high-risk activities” and playing other competitive sports, scooters are not specifically mentioned and there's no precedent for including them in the category of "high-risk activities." That term usually means motorcycles and car racing and skiing and deep sea diving and other stuff. But scooters are dangerous, so that may explicitly change in the next CBA, with them and e-bikes officially falling under that designation.

And other things:

A recent proposal made by the owners in this upcoming labor negotiation features a list of more than 100 disparate activities for which players might be punished if they incur an injury — an array that stretches from billiards to bobsledding to using a balance beam — but also does not touch upon scooters or e-bikes. The vehicles have become a small part of the tapestry of big-league life.

I get scooters. I've had some friends really mess themselves up on those things and I can totally understand the danger. But billiards? Really?

That aside, I sometimes I wish Major League Baseball was more like the NBA or NFL, because if this was happening there you know damn well there would be some profoundly weird wide receiver or shooting guard who, it turns out, is a secret bobsledding enthusiast who would totally derail training camp by creating a giant bobsledding controversy.

Other Stuff

Cuppagentsia News

If you're a comments reader you know this already, but I'd like to congratulate longtime subscriber Doug Chapin for winning the Democratic primary for Minnesota's Sixth Congressional District on Tuesday (it's the DFL primary, actually, because Minnesota does its own thing).

[Editor: Wasn't Doug unopposed?]

Hey, you can't win if you don't play! And, actually, one of the Democrats' biggest problems over the past couple of decades has been its failure to contest every race, always. You have to do that because (a) you never know what might happen; and (b) not running gives voters permission to completely dismiss the party and that's really, really bad over the long haul. And that's before you get into just how much a campaign unsettles one's life and demands of a person, which makes what Doug did a truly impressive feat. Mad respect!

Anyway, Doug has a tough general election foe: Tom Emmer, six-term Representative and House Majority Whip. It's an R +10 district as well, so it will not be an easy race. That said, in the current political environment R +10 might even qualify as a swing district and the high-profile gubernatorial and Senate races in Minnesota are bound to boost turnout. If this district is ever gonna flip, this is the year it will do it.

While I rant about politics a lot, I don't engage in much straightforward electoral advocacy in this newsletter. But dammit, I'd love to have a Cup of Coffee subscriber in Congress! Sure, kicking Emmer to the curb and increasing the likelihood of a Democratic majority in the House is important, but it also increases the odds that I might be asked to give testimony on some bill or another and I've been practicing for that FOR YEARS! Mostly by watching "The Godfather Part II" and film of Joseph Welch laying in to Joe McCarthy back in 1954, but I feel like that's good enough.

Anyway, if you'd like to support your fellow member of the Cuppagentsia against the truly odious Tom Emmer, you can do so here. Give 'em Hell, Doug!

Inside the Air Force One catering truck scandal

We've all heard about Trump's whole Air Force One switcheroo that ended up with him being secretly moved to a different plane inside a catering truck when he left the NATO summit in Turkey in July. Just on the surface that's simultaneously hilarious and embarrassing, but as Garrett Graff of Doomsday Scenario explains in this piece, the whole thing is really five major-ass scandals in one.

Specifically, he explains . . .

• How Trump getting that plane from Qatar in the first place was insanely corrupt and poses a serious ongoing risk to national security;
• The way in which Trump's and his lackeys' egos caused severe corner-cutting when it came to both presidential and national security;
• How Trump's defensiveness about his own corruption and incompetence in connection with the plane's acquisition led to coverups and violations of press freedom that, at any time before now, would've led to a presidential impeachment;
• How the specific bit regarding switching Trump off of Air Force One and onto the other plane, in addition to simply being silly, created an unprecedented lack of transparency about the President's whereabouts while simultaneously putting scores of civilians and high-ranking government officials in danger without their knowledge or consent; and
• How all of that casts fresh light on just how misguided and dangerous the illegal war Trump launched against Iran truly has been and how the risks he has taken with the jet made it more likely that the war could escalate into something truly cataclysmic.

Living through history really, really sucks, man. But this is the sort of stuff that entire books will be written about. It's the sort of stuff that our grandchildren will wonder how we ever allowed to happen. Assuming, of course, that we're able to create a new post-Trump reality that is reasonable and sane enough to put this horseshit into full relief and proper perspective for posterity.

The final mailbag questions!

We finally made it! The final five mailbag questions from my call for mailbag questions like three weeks ago.

Full disclosure: there were a small handful of questions that trickled in after I started answering them because I neglected to turn off commenting on the mailbag post. I decided to just let those be because I had to stop someplace. So if I didn't get to your question, that's why. It was only a couple though.

Anyway, thanks for indulging this and, more importantly, participating in this. While the original idea was for me to be able to pre-write some stuff so that we'd have full newsletters while I was traveling, I found it to be a really enjoyable diversion from thinking about and writing about all of the political and social mishegoss that, of late anyway, has mostly just depressed me. Talking about TV shows, movies, weird baseball hypotheticals, and some off-center and/or cosmic topics was way more fun.

Next time I won't go two or three years between mailbags. Indeed, I'm thinking that I might make them my go-to thing for when I'm traveling for more than just a couple of days. The next such trip is in mid-October, so if you think of something to ask, write it down and save it because I'll likely be coming to you, hat-in-hand, for writing prompts, er, I mean your very important questions, just before then. Though next time I'll likely just pick and choose enough questions to fill the time I'm gone rather than answering them all. We'll see.

Anyway:

Q: The upcoming CBA negotiations are more than a little annoying. MLB has momentum. They have a game now that suits old fans and young fans. Everyone is making money ... owners, players, networks, and vendors. I generally side with the players but, that said, this is so unnecessary. I don't live in a MLB city. Traveling to a game requires some planning. Tickets went on sale in January last year. I wanted to go to Opening Day in St Louis. Would you buy one of those expensive tickets if you were a fan of them? – Rob Ferrara

A: My take, which I offered a week or two ago in this space, is that we'll get a lockout that lasts from December until some time in March, at which point the owners will drop their demand for a salary cap because they know they can't break the union over it. And, more to the point, because the owners cannot afford to miss tons of games given how leveraged they are and given how much they just fucking love money and cannot stand to lose any. I believe we'll end up with a slightly delayed season but one in which, I suspect, we'll get in like 145 games or something at the very least. I'm not sure what the policies would be for holding tickets for eventually canceled or postponed games, but check with the Cardinals ticket office and ask them how they'll plan to honor tickets for any games that might be canceled due to the lockout. Maybe they already have a policy in place?

Q: Re: the Dodgers visiting the White House: when one or two players decide not to visit. Do you believe that affects team chemistry? Do you also wonder if players agree to go so as not to upset other teammates? Or are professional athletes really just supposed to leave their personal feelings and beliefs behind and play ball and how exactly does one do that? – Pete9313

A: I don't think the players care if some of their teammates don't go to the White House. For any 26-man roster there are likely five super-plugged-in right-wingers, one or two progressive types, and most of the rest all lean to the right for a bunch of cultural and demographic reasons but they don't think super deeply about politics. I do suspect that there are players who go to the visits who might not be fans of the president but do it for team chemistry reasons or because "man, won't it be kinda nuts to get into the White House? Why not?" But again, most of these guys aren't living and breathing politics so it's a lot easier to blow it off and forget about it ten minutes later than it might be for many of us.

Ultimately, I don't think most of us truly understand how much major league ballplayers live and breathe baseball – and to a lesser degree golf and hunting and and cars and shit – compared to how much they think about almost anything else. And they're probably more in line with average Americans in that regard than lunatics like I am.

Q: Do you ever just get sick of baseball? I like ice cream, but with what you do, it must feel like you're being force-fed ice cream three times a day, every day, for 10-plus months out of the year. – Phil Ciciora

A: Nah, not really. I sometimes get tired of doing the daily recaps, but that's not because I'm tired of baseball as much as it is about me finding it harder and harder to think intelligently after 9pm the older I get.

Another thing is that baseball is cyclical and the same sorts of stories tend to happen at the same time every year. When you do what I do you see the various controversies or storylines happening way ahead of time because you've been closely following the rhythms of the baseball calendar for pushing 20 years now and it can be a challenge to write freshly about such things. That's become less of a problem since I left NBC, though, because now I have the luxury of simply deciding "nah, I don't feel like talking about that" whereas at NBC I was sorta obligated to write posts about every single thing that happened even if it was dumb and it was happening for the 16th time.

Whenever I ever find myself thinking "[sigh] I'm over this . . ." – which does happen from time to time – I pretty quickly remember how lucky I am to not have to care about clients or bosses and business-y things that don't appeal to me in any way outside of the need to care in order to get a paycheck. It's an amazingly curative line of thought.

Q: Jeff Bezos is reportedly buying a stake in Liverpool FC. Other than my gut reaction of "ugh", is there any reason to oppose this? I already don't like that ownership group; would Bezos make them worse? – SJ

A: I can't see getting too worked up about it. He's one part of a group that will get a 30% stake so, practically speaking, he'll have no power. John Henry and the Fenway Sports Group folks want his money and he wants to put "part-owner of a top team in the most glamorous sports league in the world" on his CV, to give himself an excuse to fly his PJ to England a half dozen times a year, and to hobnob with other elites who also own stakes in big time football clubs. That's pretty much it. That aside, there are far more problematic majority and minority owners around English football than Bezos, even if he's a dipshit. I mean, the guy who is, at least practically speaking, the majority owner of Newcastle United straight-up ordered the murder and dismemberment of a guy simply because he criticised him. We're talking very, very different leagues of evil when it comes to that world.

Q: We all know you were formerly known as The World's Biggest Marvel Mark™, but that fandom has decreased over the years. Is there another IP out there that you would be excited about seeing a cinematic universe version? – Earl Verdant

A: I continue to believe that they could've made a dozen Daryl Zero movies but moviegoing audiences were too dumb to appreciate genius when they saw it. What's more, the TV pilot they made out of it was horribly cast and executed so it never stood a chance. In my head, however, there's a raging controversy over who should be cast as "The Next Daryl Zero" after Bill Pullman decided that, at age 70 and 11 "Zero Effect" films, that it was time to step back from the iconic role.

Other potential franchises I'd be into:

• "The Remains of the Day"-a-verse. In the immediate sequel Stevens finds true love!
• Six more Elliot Gould-starring and Robert Altman-directed Philip Marlowe adaptations; and
• "The Conversation" parts II and III, followed by a reboot of the whole franchise. "They used him. They drove him crazy. They destroyed his apartment. But now Harry Caul will have his revenge!"

Finally, while I don't think it'd sustain an entire cinematic universe, I once had an excellent idea for a sequel for "Bull Durham," but we're many years too late for that to work with the original cast.

The short version: Nuke LaLoosh is finishing up a 250-win career, but just as he's on his way out he gets dealt as a rental to another team that is managed by . . . Crash Davis. The bulk of the movie is them having "My Dinner with Andre"-style conversations about the passage of time and the maturity that comes with age and experience. Annie, meanwhile, years-divorced from Crash, but amicably so, who happens to be teaching at a nearby college, thinks that Crash and Nuke are becoming boring old men so she shacks up with the team's 26 year-old shortstop. In the end, everyone has something to teach someone . . . but wither Annie's heart?

The thing would write itself but no one ever had the courage, dammit.

In other news, I don't think I'd last very long as a Hollywood executive.

Have a great day everyone.