Cup of Coffee: August 20, 2026

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Yankees 5, Orioles 3: A George Lombard Jr. RBI single broke a 3-3 tie in the eighth and then a run scored on a wild pitch gave us our final score. Earlier Ryan McMahon singled in a run, Lombard had hit a sac fly, and Ben Rice homered. Pete Alonso, homered in the third and then, in the bottom of the seventh, nearly went deep again, but his first-pitch fly to left was initially called foul. It looked really damn close on the replay, but the call stood and Alonso struck out. The Orioles are hopping mad about it, too. You be the judge:

Looked fair to me. If it had been called that way it wouldn't have been overturned. Giving a bad call by an ump major deference like MLB does is dumb. It would've changed the entire ballgame.

Pirates 4, Tigers 3: Detroit had a 3-1 lead after five and still led 3-2 heading into the bottom of the ninth. That's when A.J. Hinch called in Kenley Jansen to close things out. He did not close things out, however. Instead he gave up a game-tying homer to Rafael Flores Jr. – it was Flores' second homer of the game – and then with two outs gave up a walkoff homer to Brandon Lowe. Per Sarah Langs, the Tigers have lost 19 games that they've led in seventh inning or later this season. That's two more than any other team in the league. Woof. In other news, Paul Skenes got his first start in a week and, while the velocity was better than it had been, his command was off and he allowed three runs in four and a third innings with four walks and he stood to be the loser before the late inning heroics.

Mets 4, Padres 2: Carlson Benge hit a two-run homer in the fourth and Jared Young capped a two-run eighth with an RBI single. The Mets take the series and have won five of six overall.

Twins 6, Atlanta 4:  Kody Clemens and Brooks Lee had RBI singles in the seventh inning to break a 4-4 tie. Clemens knocked in three in all, having hit a two-run double in the fifth. Taj Bradley allowed one over five. The Twinkies sweep the three-game set.

White Sox 3, Cubs 0: White Sox pitchers twirled a combined two-hit shutout, with José Urquidy handling six innings and striking out eight in a bulk role between the third and the eighth. It was a scoreless tie until the sixth when Andrew Benintendi singled in the game's first run and Braden Montgomery doubled in two more in the eighth. Cubs take two of three. Sox maintain a four-game lead on Minnesota and now lead Detroit by five and a half.

Diamondbacks 7, Red Sox 6: It was tied at five from the sixth on into the tenth, when Nolan Arenado singled in the Manfred Man after which Red Sox reliever Hivani Moran walked three straight Diamondbacks batters to force in their seventh run of the game. Boston got one back in the bottom of the tenth but that was that. Earlier Lars Nootbar hit a pinch-hit two-run homer and Gabriel Moreno a two-run double for Arizona. The Snakes avoid a sweep.  

Phillies 4, Marlins 1: Aaron Nola was great, allowing one over seven. Luis Arraez of all people hit a two-run homer while Trea Turner doubled in a run and Garret Stubbs singled one in. A three-game sweep for Philly and six straight wins overall.

Giants 1, Guardians 0: A combined six-hit shutout with Adrian Houser coming into the game in the third to handle the bulk role for five innings. Victor Bericoto had an RBI single in the fourth and it was the game's only run. Cleveland starter Parker Messick struck out ten while allowing one run on six hits in six tand two-thirds innings, but when no one scores for you that earns you an L.

Reds 5, Cardinals 4: Sal Stewart hit a three-run homer in the sixth – he now leads all of baseball with 94 RBI – and a bunt single + throwing error and an infield single in the eighth gave Cincinnati its fourth and fifth runs. Chase Burns allowed two over five and, while the Cardinals plated a couple on the ninth, the Reds held on.

Rays 7, Blue Jays 6: The Rays led 7-1 before Toronto scored four runs in the fifth and another in the sixth to make it a one-run game. But the Rays’ bullpen shut down Toronto's last 12 batters, with Bryan Baker getting the last three outs for his major league-leading 36th save. Yandy Díaz hit a two-run homer. All that early run support gave Drew Rasmussen his 13th win on the year even if he didn't pitch all that well.  Alejandro Kirk homered and drove in two runs for Toronto.

Royals 9, Athletics 7: The A's led 5-1 after five and 5-2 after seven and then gave up seven runs came in the eighth. The big shot there was John Rave – which I'm pretty sure is the name of a third-tier Silver Age Marvel character – hit a tiebreaking, bases-clearing double with two outs. Earlier that inning Vinnie Pasquantino and Kyle Isbel had RBI singles, Isaac Collins had a sacrifice fly, and Maikel Garcia, who had led off the inning with a triple, had an RBI single. Pasquantino had homered earlier.

Mariners 7, Brewers 5: Seattle got right up off the mat following their 22-0 drubbing on Tuesday by scoring four runs in the top of the first and three runs in the second in a game they'd never trail. All of those runs came off of Dustin May, who allowed seven over just two innings before hitting the showers. Dominic Canzone, Josh Naylor and Taylor Ward each drove in two. The only guy who showed up for Milwaukee was Joey Ortiz, who hit a two-run homer and drove in four.

Nationals 6, Rangers 0: Cade Cavalli tossed six scoreless innings with 11 strikeouts, one walk, and three hits allowed. This comes on the heels of his eight inning, one-hit performance against the Cubs a week ago. Indeed, he’s gone at least six innings in eight straight starts without allowing more than three runs in any of them and has six wins over that eight-game span. His next two starts come against the Marlins and the Rockies at home, so this roll may continue too. Andrés Chaparro had three hits including a three-run homer  José Tena hit a solo shot. The Nats lead the league with 182 homers and counting on the year.

Astros 3, Angels 2: Christian Vázquez homered in the third, Jose Altuve doubled in a run in the fourth, and Cam Smith had a sac fly later that inning. Houston starter Ethan Pecko was making his big league debut in this one. It wasn't great, as he only went three and two-thirds and needed 89 pitches to do it while leaving the game 2-1, but the bats got him off the hook and the Astros bullpen turned in five and a third scoreless innings.

Dodgers 6, Rockies 4: The Dodgers blew a 4-0 lead in order to enjoy extra innings here, but they did pull it out. Mookie Betts scored in the second, homered in the fourth, and singled home an insurance run in the top of the tenth. That came after Freddie Freeman broke a 4-4 tie by hitting a Manfred Man-scoring sac fly. Enrique Hernández is the one who singled home Betts in the second and he too homered in the fourth, hitting a two-run shot. L.A. sweeps the three-game set.

The Daily Briefing

Ratings for the Field of Dreams game were down sharply

The numbers are in from last week and it turns out that Netflix drew an average of 1.66 million viewers for the league’s first Field of Dreams game in a few years. In 2022 the Chicago Cubs-Cincinnati Reds matchup on Fox averaged 3.10 million viewers. In the inaugural Field of Dreams game in 2021 the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox averaged 5.9 million viewers.

While I will take every opportunity I possibly can to slam the idea of the Field of Dreams game, my guess is that the low ratings are not about people being tired of the gimmick. Indeed, if ancillary stories and columns and stuff are any guide, people seem to love it more now than they did a few years ago. Rather, I think it's overwhelmingly a function of the game being on Netflix as opposed to Fox or ESPN. Same thing happened with the Home Run Derby which also debuted on Netflix this year.

I suspect that most people – especially regular baseball fans, who skew much older, while Netflix users are considerably younger – simply don't realize that Netflix is broadcasting baseball. My guess is that unlike network or traditional cable channels, would-be viewers are not reminded of it via home screen prompts on any digital cable or smart TV home screens. It's in a black box whose viewers open the app primarily for scripted dramas and reality TV.

I'm sure MLB loves the deal from a financial perspective, but it's just another example of the league doing things that limits the reach of the sport but scattering its games across a tangled web of broadcasters that hardly anyone can really keep track of.

Quote of the Day: Josh Donaldson

2015 AL MVP Josh Donaldson has a podcast now and the topic of reliever Jeff Hoffman being traded to the Twins came up. Donaldson, who played for the Twins for two seasons, does not think a player should expect much when heading to Minnesota. From Twins Daily:

"He's going to get to go to Minnesota, where it's 'Minnesota Nice' . . . people in Minnesota . . . I don't think they even care about baseball that much . . . Playing there for two years, I thought it was mediocre at best," Donaldson said.

Josh Donaldson posted 3.5 bWAR over two years in Minnesota. A league average player is, generally speaking, expected to put up around 2 WAR in a given season. Which, by definition, means that Donaldson was mediocre at best while with the Twins, so I guess he knows of what he speaks.

Other Stuff

Writing leads to thinking

Bertie Fielding is a molecular biologist at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. He recently submitted a piece to the publication Nature that was accurately flagged as being almost 100% written by AI. The publication sent it back to him and asked him to rewrite it. Instead he wrote a long column excusing his use of AI and arguing that the product spit out after he puts the prompts into ChatGPT or Claude or whatever constitutes legitimate scholarship:

I had submitted an opinion piece to Nature Africa. It was not a research paper. It was a piece of public commentary, drawn from my own experience and written as I now write many pieces of this kind: with AI. Please read that carefully. I said with AI. I did not hand AI a topic and allow it to invent what I think. At least, that was the distinction I had been making . . . The ideas in that opinion piece were not borrowed from a machine. They came from years of leading, teaching, doing science, making mistakes and trying to communicate difficult work beyond my own discipline.

I am not claiming expertise in how the underlying models are built. But I do claim expertise in the subject on which I was writing, and I do regard myself as a thought leader in that field. That claim rests on experience, judgment and original thinking, not on whether I personally typed the final sentences . . . The ideas are mine. The expertise is mine. The experience is mine. The responsibility is mine . . . AI did almost all of the writing. I remain the expert and the thought leader behind the piece. Does that also make me its author? I do not expect everyone to agree. But that is the debate I think we now need.

At the outset, anyone referring to themselves as a "thought leader" unironically is not a person one should take seriously. But even if that doesn't bug you, never fear, there are many other reasons not to take this person and his arguments seriously.

At bottom, the whole column is an exercise in cope. It's a guy who was rightfully called out for not doing his job claiming that his job is something else entirely. "I come up with the ideas, so even if someone else writes it, I'm the writer" is the equivalent of "I chose my entrée, therefore I'm the chef." Yes, I'll agree that you had some input when it came to this meal – and perhaps your experience traveling in Japan gives you greater insight into the wonders that can be found in a properly-prepared miso-glazed black cod than the rest of us have – but you didn't cook it, buddy. Someone else did, and you're a disingenuous fool for taking credit.

I suppose I could insult this guy all day. Instead I'll merely link this unrelated piece by Lynn Hunt about the essential links between writing and thinking and how merely doing the latter and not the former defeats the bloody purpose:

Everyone who has written at any substantial length, whether prose or poetry, knows that the process of writing itself leads to previously unthought thoughts. Or to be more precise, writing crystallizes previously half-formulated or unformulated thoughts, gives them form, and extends chains of thoughts in new directions. Neuroscience has shown that 95 percent of brain activity is unconscious. My guess about what happens is that by physically writing—whether by hand, by computer, or by voice activation (though I have no experience of the latter)—you set a process literally into motion, a kind of shifting series of triangulations between fingers, blank pages or screens, letters and words, eyes, synapses or other “neural instantiations,” not to mention guts and bladders. By writing, in other words, you are literally firing up your brain and therefore stirring up your conscious thoughts and something new emerges. You are not, or at least not always, transcribing something already present in your conscious thoughts.

A simpler way to put that, and the way I have always thought about it, is that while anyone can have an idea, the act of writing forces one to interrogate one's own thinking. One's own premises. Every writer ever will tell you just how often they have begun working on something – putting down ideas that they believed at the outset to be an expression of insightful genius – only to have the act of actually putting words to page or screen reveal its flaws. It's ultimately a good thing when this happens because it keeps one from pushing bad ideas and looking like a fool and helps you figure out where you need to go to make your writing come together in a coherent and accessible way.

More cheerfully, the act of writing often causes one to think of greater, deeper insights into the initial idea which changes the product for the better. It's why one writes rough drafts and then refines them. Doing this is not mere grunt work that we can mindlessly outsource to AI. It's most of the goddamn undertaking. That saying about genius being "one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration" may be an exaggeration, but it's only a slight one and it applies to writing as much as it applies to anything. If you doubt this, go talk to that friend of yours from college and ask him how that idea for a novel he thought up 19 years ago is coming. Having the idea alone is not enough, brother.

Expect to see more of the sorts of excuses Fielding is offering in his self-serving, ass-covering essay going forward. Indeed, I suspect that the whole "I merely used AI to execute my vision" thing will be repeated, ad nauseam, by lazy charlatans for some time. Don't let them get away with it. There is no shortcut when it comes to human thought, exploration, and expression. And that's the case no matter how many tech companies and those who carry water for them tell you otherwise.

Or you could just choose not to think

Sticking with AI for a moment, Zach Weinersmith, the person behind the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal webcomic – which I actually like a great deal – wrote a little thread on Bluesky on Tuesday that sorta gets at the incoherence of pro-AI folks. I've put it in straight prose form for readability's sake:

If you're opposed to machine learning making outputs based on training on copyrighted art, are you opposed to ai in general doing it, or opposed to the current types of models doing it? That is, if you had C-3PO, would the same rule apply? I have this idea I call the C-3PO test, which I haven't seen anywhere.

Scenario: C3PO exists. Although he is a machine, he easily passes any known test of consciousness or personhood that doesn’t include knowing in advance that he is a machine. He is capable of suffering and sadness.

One day C3PO tells you he loves art. He has also looked at a great deal of art, and would suffer greatly due to not being allowed to make art. Is it ethical to forbid him from making art?

If yes, you have to agree that personhood isn't sufficient for the right to free expression. If no, then the use of copyrighted art to train an AI can't be wrong in principle. You can only object that the model is not sufficiently conscious or not sufficiently a person.

Upon reading this I thought of a bunch of jokes – and shared some rather pointed and flippant responses on Bluesky that were less than polite – but with a few hours to let it all marinate I'll simply say that if one needs to create a fantastical science-fiction scenario based on a character that was created purely for comic relief 50 years ago in an homage to old Flash Gordon serials in order to make one's point, one's point is not as good as one thinks it is.

Put differently: a straw man is still a straw man even if he's made out of metal. And an argument that goes "maybe AI is OK if AI has consciousness and feelings!" is not just a straw man, it's a straw man that directly serves the purposes of the current felons who run the major AI companies and who, like our friend Bertie Fielding, are searching for any and all excuses possible to allow them to keep doing what they're doing as far as stealing copyrighted material to train AI goes.

Vindication of a sort

Yesterday I took my kids out for lunch. Afterward Anna and I swung by an auto parts store because she needed new wiper blades for her car. I bought the blades and, when we got back to her mother's house where her car was, I decided that she was going to watch me put them on so she knew how to do it herself next time.

This seemed like a great idea at the time, but after we left the store I remembered just how many times I struggled to put a new back wiper blade on that Subaru Forester when it was mine. The front two are simple J-hooks, which are about as easy as it gets. The back wiper bracket, however, was apparently designed in an illegal engineering lab in the darkest forests of Eastern Bloc Hungary and requires special, dark magical incantations to fully understand and conquer. I always did manage to replace the blade when I had to, but it was always an ordeal that involved consulting YouTube videos, breaking bracket adapters and a great deal of cursing. Whatever. I was committed at that point so I hoped it'd go well this time.

As expected the front two blades went on easily. The back one, though, was trouble from the jump. While taking off the old one I cracked its little plastic adapter. Which wasn't that big a deal because it was destined for the trash anyway, but the fallback of "well, crap, I'll just put the old one back on" was now off the table. Cortés had burnt his ships. Accidentally. But there was now no way out but through.

So I fussed with what looked like the correct of the three new adapters that came in the wiper's package for a bit, but none of them looked or fit quite right. Anna is bright, so I told her to look at the instructions to see if she could figure out what I was missing. But if I've learned anything in my own experience it's that being bright does not always translate to practical skills, and it turned out that she was just as flummoxed as I was. I had hoped Anna would be spared that legacy, but I have regrettably visited it upon my first born. Anyway, we fussed and made jokes about the impossible wiper assembly for a good while. It made us feel better but it didn't get us any closer to our goal.

While we were doing this, Anna's mother came home from work. We get along just fine and our history is ancient at this point, but on some level I wasn't super jazzed about looking incompetent over a damn wiper blade in front of her house. And I certainly didn't want her to suggest, as I figured she might, that she go inside and ask Anna's stepfather to come out and do it because, well, honestly, do I have to explain why I wouldn't really want that? Thankfully, however, Anna's mom saw what we were doing and before we could say anything exclaimed just how much of a pain she and him have always had with those things and how, in the past, they've just had the guy at the auto parts store do it. Phew! I was off the hook I had immaturely imagined myself to be on.

Anna and I then decided it was too hot out to keep futzing with the wiper blade so we drove back to the auto parts store and I told the guy that I had just bought the blades from that I couldn't figure it out and asked him to help me. "No problem!" he said. "We do it all the time!" The insecure part of my psyche which has not shaken its adherence to traditional masculinity tropes whispered to me, "yeah, for elderly people who have lost motor function!" but I told it to shut up and followed the guy back out to Anna's car.

Then we watched him struggle. For a good while. Then he went inside and came back outside, telling me when he had to get his phone to watch a video about how to do it. Then he struggled some more, went back inside, then he came back outside with a different wiper blade and, eventually, with a good bit more struggle, got it on. I don't know if the one we had had gotten cracked or if, somehow, I had just bought the wrong blade, but he didn't say either way. We bid him adieu, Anna dropped me back at my car, and I went back home.

There's nothing better for one's self esteem than shared incompetence. If your boat is taking on water it's way better if a lot of people are going down with you. At least that's what I've always told myself. I'm sure it's a healthy mindset.

Have a great day everyone.