Cup of Coffee: August 21, 2025

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

Let's do it.

And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Pirates 2, Blue Jays 1: Johan Oviedo made just his second start since coming back from Tommy John surgery and it was a good one, as he allowed one run on two hits in five innings and picked up his first win since 2023. Tommy Pham doubled in two runs in the first inning and that held up. I figure that he's pissed off about that for some reason but I really don't wanna know.

Phillies 11, Mariners 2: Jesús Luzardo was great, allowing one run and striking out 12 in six innings. He didn't have to be that good, though, as the Phillies lineup recorded at least 20 hits for the second time in this three-game series. Trea Turner had five of them and a pair of RBI while Kyle Schwarber homered and drove in five runs. He has 110 RBI on the year and leads the NL in homers too. He won't win the MVP because he has no defensive value and stuff, but he's having the sort of year that would've won him the MVP before the early 2000s. A Juan González All-Star kinda guy. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Tigers 7, Astros 2: The Tigers beat up Framber Valdez for six runs in the first inning, two of which came on wild pitches. To his credit he hung around for five innings to help save the pen a bit but, nah, wasn't his day. His counterpart, Charlie Morton, went six, allowing just two runs. He had one bad start on August 9, but his other three starts since coming over from Baltimore have been pretty dang good. Javy Báez had a couple of RBI singles. Dillon Dingler tripled one in.

Worse news than just the loss for Houston: outfielder Taylor Trammell was carted off the field after crashing into the center field fence in the first inning. He was being evaluated for a concussion after the game.

Diamondbacks 3, Guardians 2: Cleveland took a 2-1 lead into the ninth thanks to a great start from Parker Messick but they couldn't hold it as Lourdes Gurriel Jr. homered in the bottom half to force extras and Adrian Del Castillo singled home the Manfred Man for the walkoff win in the tenth. Arizona takes two of three in a series that Cleveland really needed to win in order to stay in the thick of things.

Marlins 6, Cardinals 2: The good Sandy Alcantara showed up, allowing two runs in seven frames – just one of which was earned – while striking out nine. Heriberto Hernández had three hits and drove in a couple. Máximo Acosta homered for his first-ever MLB hit. Miami avoids being swept.

Nationals 5, Mets 4: Josh Bell homered and drove in two. Drew Millas tripled one in. When things got tight in the middle innings the Nats' rose to the occasion. Brett Baty of the Mets hit a 450+ foot homer in the fifth, but for as exciting as that was it only counted for one run. Them's the rules.

Atlanta 1, White Sox 0: Hurston Waldrep – man, that's a name right out of Faulkner, ain't it? Straight outta Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi! – tossed seven scoreless innings and the pen completed the four-hit shutout. Chicago got great pitching from Martín Pérez and gang too, with Atlanta's only run scoring on a fielding error.  

Yankees 6, Rays 4: The Yankees hit nine homers on Tuesday and they hit five more here. This time they came from Trent Grisham in the first and eighth innings, Austin Wells in the fifth and tenth, and Giancarlo Stanton in the tenth as well. It was all needed as the Yankees blew a 3-0 lead – a lead they got while starter Cam Schlittler was shutting out the Rays into the seventh – before ultimately prevailing. Despite the loss, my man Bob Seymour had a big game, hitting his first major league home run in the eighth inning and singling in a run in the tenth. Sorry for the loss, my man, but Go Bob.

Athletics 4, Twins 2: Another extra inning game, with this won by Shea Langeliers who hit a two-run homer in the top of the tenth to put the A's over. Langeliers has 28 homers on the year. Sixteen of them have come since the All-Star break.

Rangers 6, Royals 3: This one was tied at three heading into the ninth but the Rangers didn't feel like working late last night so they loaded the bases against Royals reliever Sam Long and then Kyle Higashioka hit a bases-clearing double. Sams are not quite as uncommon as Bobs these days but I'm all for more Sams as well. Ralphs too, but I'm not holding out hope.

Cubs 4, Brewers 3: Michael Busch hit a three-run double off of young phenom Jacob Misiorowski and Matt Shaw added a solo homer. Chicago has taken three of four in this series so far and has won five of six overall. This long series concludes with game five today. They trail Milwaukee by six games. With yesterday's win they have secured the season series.

Rockies 8, Dodgers 3: Hunter Goodman had three hits and three RBI and Rockies starter Tanner Gordon gave up one run in six innings as Colorado wins for the seventh time in its last nine games. In other news, can I say how little I've cared for the Shohei Ohtani pitching show this year? It's been decidedly mid as far as results go, I figure it's probably making him more tired than he needs to be, and whether or not it's a coincidence, the Dodgers have been pretty average as a team in that time as well. Here Ohtani got rocked by the Rockies, giving up five runs on nine hits in four innings and he got hit on the right leg by a line drive that caused him to limp and grimace in pain. Feel like maybe it's worth just being happy with your all-world slugger rather than enduring this sort of stuff.

Angels 2, Reds 1:  Yusei Kikuchi threw seven strong and unusually-for-him economical innings, giving up just one run and needing just 88 pitches to get that far. He got a no-decision as things were tied at one at that point, but it was a nice job. Luis Rengifo hit a tie-breaking RBI single in the eighth to give the Halos the win. Reds starter Nick Martinez was good too, getting a no-decision after allowing just one run and two hits in six innings.

Padres 8, Giants 1:  Gavin Sheets hit two homers and Manny Machado and Ryan O'Hearn also went deep. Fernando Tatis Jr. robbed Rafael Devers of a homer with a leap at the right field wall in the top of the first inning. At one point in this game a kid ran onto the field and Petco Park security absolutely manhandled him. Like, he was already corralled by security and was clearly not trying to get away after hands were on him, but then another guard tackled him and the kid ended up at the bottom of a multi-person pile. I get that you can't be jumping out onto the field of play like that but dear lord you don't need to be so rough on a literal boy. For what it's worth crowds tend to cheer when a field-rusher gets got by security but here they booed them for being so rough. While watching what was happening, Padres pitcher Jason Adam grimaced when the kid was tackled and then appeared to say, “He’s a kid.” 

The Daily Briefing

Kyle Tucker has had a broken hand

Kyle Tucker has been struggling mightily for some time and, as a result, the Cubs have given him the last three games off. It was just reported for the first time yesterday, however, that he's not just struggling, he has a hairline fracture in his right hand. It's been there since June and he and the Cubs have known about it for all that time. From ESPN's Jesse Rogers:

Tucker was injured while sliding into second base against the Cincinnati Reds on June 1. X-rays on his right finger were initially negative – the team indicated it was a jammed finger – but further imaging showed a slight fracture on the top of his hand, near where the pinkie and ring finger meet. More tests in mid-June showed the injury was healing, but it was still affecting Tucker, who might have begun favoring his hand by then, leading to poor mechanics.

Tucker is hitting .189 with only four extra-base hits since July. How he wasn't placed on the IL then, when the Cubs had a decent lead in the NL Central is beyond me. Seems like some really, really bad injury management.

Félix Bautista has shoulder surgery, won't be back for at least 12 months

Last week it was determined that Orioles closer Félix Bautista had a “significant” shoulder injury. Turns out it was about as significant as it gets for a pitcher: he underwent surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff and a torn labrum yesterday. The right-hander is expected to miss 12 months, which means that he'll probably miss all of the 2026 season.

Bautista had missed all of 2024 due to Tommy John surgery, but came back this year. He posted a 2.60 ERA (154 ERA+) and had 19 saves in 35 appearances for Baltimore, striking out 50 and walking 23. He had been sidelined since July 20, however, when he had a terrible outing in which he walked three batters in an inning and experienced sharply diminished velocity. Now we know why.

In 2023 Bautista put up an amazing season, with an ERA of 1.48 (277 ERA+) in 56 games. He earned his first All-Star selection that year and got some downballot Cy Young votes. Now he's facing yet another lost year. Which will make for two and a half lost seasons in the space of three years. Just a really, really bad break.

Report: MLB is selling MLB.tv to ESPN

This was teased a week or so ago, but on Tuesday evening Kendall Baker of Yahoo Sports reported that Major League Baseball's new TV rights deals are “close to being done." What he's hearing:

• Apple is no longer in the running for broadcast rights, so its current product, Friday Night Baseball, will likely be gone;
• NBC/Peacock are, as I mentioned last week, likely to get Sunday Night Baseball and an exclusive Friday thing, which is likely the current Apple game. They will also get rights to at least one of the Wild Card rounds;
• Netflix is getting the Home Run Derby; and
• The league is going to sell MLB.tv to ESPN, "for a boatload of $$$," to quote Baker.

That last one is obviously the big one, though what it means specifically is unclear at the moment.

Will ESPN simply be taking over the current MLB.tv product as it is? Will the branding of local broadcasts which MLB has taken over in the wake of the regional sports network collapse switch to ESPN? Will production change? Will this only be for out-of-market games, with MLB continuing to try to move toward a world where teams sell in-market games directly to consumers or is the future of local broadcasting gonna be an ESPN-or-nothing affair? And how much is "a boatload of $$$" and what does that mean for the owners and, in turn, the game itself?

Obviously a ton to watch here, but it seems like we're on the verge of a very, very big change in the way we watch baseball games.

What in the hell is this?

A story came out in The Athletic yesterday about a shortstop the Yankees drafted last month. His name is Core Jackson, and he was drafted out of the University of Utah. He began his college career playing for the University of Nebraska, however, but he left that school during his freshman year, several months after he drew a swastika on the dorm room door of a Jewish student. The kicker: the Yankees were aware of this – and of a subsequent DUI arrest just last fall – and they drafted him anyway.

The bulk of the story focuses on what happened in between the swastika incident and Jackson being drafted. His apology for what he did focused on the fact that he was "blackout drunk" when he did it which, sure, maybe. But the whole explanation sounds pretty improbable. He says he didn't really understand what he did and that he didn't know who lived in the dorm room on whose door he drew the swastika. So I guess it was just a grand, horrible coincidence that he happened to write the most racist/antisemitic symbol in existence on the door of a person of the religion and ethnicity against whom those who venerate that symbol have most infamously and viciously attacked? What bad luck! But no, sorry, not buying his ignorance let alone his innocence.

Then there are a lot of words devoted to the damage control mounted by Jackson and his agent, Blake Corosky. Specifically, they worked with Elliot Steinmetz, who is the coach of the Yeshiva University basketball team and who happens to be the father of one of Corosky's other baseball clients, Jacob Steinmetz. The Steinmetzes are Orthodox Jews and offered some words about Jackson "doing the work" and such. Then the story turns to the Yankees side of this, and it's hard not to give the team some serious side-eye. Particularly from Damon Oppenheimer, the Yankees' amateur scouting director:

The Yankees were “looking to find the good in this,” Oppenheimer said.

“He’s shown his accountability here,” Oppenheimer said. “I think his actions have shown his remorse. He’s acknowledged it. I think he’s taken the right steps to continue to learn, to understand what he’s done.”

Call me cynical, but I think a lot of "the good in this" from the Yankees' perspective is that, due to the bad vibes around Jackson, they were able to draft and sign him to a bonus of $147,500 at a slot that normally gives draftees a $411,1000 bonus.

But even if that wasn't a consideration, the whole story reads as a pre-packaged and preemptive defense of the Yankees drafting an antisemitic dickhead with a pretty obvious drinking problem. This guy basically committed a hate crime yet it's being treated in the same way, and with the same tone, as some baseball narrative about a player overcoming adversity. It doesn't sit well with me and I cant imagine it sits well with what I would guess has one of the largest if not the largest Jewish fan base in professional sports.

That's sports, though, right? All manner of teams and players and coaches and executives and media outlets talking about how important character is but willing to make all kinds of excuses for bad character if the player's stats are projectable.

Some serious chutzpah

American sports owners have been buying European soccer teams for several years now, so I suppose it was inevitable that they'd bring their signature move overseas with them: fleecing taxpayers for new stadiums.

A few months ago I wrote an item about how the Glazer family, owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Manchester United, are building a big new stadium for United. They're paying for the stadium itself, but there's a huge rail freight depot that will have to be relocated in order for construction to begin. That's going to cost hundreds of millions if not over a billion pounds. The Glazers want the UK and the local government to pay for it and they're touting the fantastic economic benefits such an expenditure will create for the community for doing so. And you would not believe how comically out-to-lunch their claims about the economic benefit of the project are:

The plan’s proponents back it by promising it would confer grand economic benefits to Greater Manchester – 92,000 new jobs! 17,000 new homes! 1.8 million additional tourists! – and would be worth over £7bn annually to the UK economy. Sebastian Coe, the chair of the Old Trafford Regeneration Taskforce and a key organizer behind the 2012 London Olympics, has said “I don’t think I’m overstating when I say this actually has the potential to be, not only a bigger project than London 2012 but, in terms of European scope and scale, probably the biggest thing that’s ever really been undertaken.”

The notion that a single football stadium that houses 19 matches a year – maybe in the 20s if it's a good year and they're involved in European play – in a metropolitan area with fewer than three million people is going to create 92,000 jobs is objectively insane. As is the idea that the stadium will cause Greater Manchester to draw two million more tourists than already go there.

Maybe the Glazer's are claiming these outlandish numbers because they believe that British politicians aren't as inured to such horseshit as their American counterparts are, I don't know. But oh my God.

Other Stuff

Inside a whites-only housing development

We managed to go several decades in this country at least generally agreeing that the Nazis were the bad guys and that racial segregation was both bad and illegal. Now, thanks to Donald Trump granting every bigot in the country permission to be their worst selves, we've got people happily talking to the New York Times about building whites-only housing developments. Like these guys in Arkansas, who are trying to create a community strictly for white, heterosexual people called Return to the Land:

In the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, nearly an hour from the closest city, a small group of homesteaders is building an exclusive community from scratch. Applicants to the community are screened with an in-person interview, a criminal-background check, a questionnaire about ancestral heritage and sometimes even photographs of their relatives. The community’s two architects — a classically trained French horn player who has livestreamed his own sex videos, and a former jazz pianist arrested but not charged for attempted murder in Ecuador — say they must personally confirm that applicants are white before they can be welcomed in.

This is not some subtle thing like you might've seen in a restricted country club in the 50s. One of the guys behind this place comes out and tells the paper that “[s]eeing someone who doesn’t present as white might lead us to, among other things, not admit that person.”

The guys behind this are real pieces of work. One of them is described as "a classically trained French horn player who has live-streamed his own sex videos" who "moonlights as a Platonic scholar on YouTube." The other is described as "a former jazz pianist arrested but not charged for attempted murder in Ecuador" who stands accused of stealing tens of thousands of dollars from a vegan community there. They invited the New York Times to visit their offices. The reporter noted that, "[b]efore a photographer could snap pictures, he pulled a copy of 'Mein Kampf' from a bookshelf and turned it around to hide its spine."

I hate what has been unleashed in this country over the past decade, but I'm at least somewhat consoled by the fact that the people at the vanguard of this ugliness are some of the least competent and most toxic people around, greatly increasing the odds that they'll destroy themselves before too terribly long.

Springfield, Ohio is about to reap what it sowed

Last year's presidential election was ugly in a number of ways, but the ugliest episode by far was the demonization of the Haitian population of Springfield, Ohio. Led by J.D. Vance but amplified by Trump and the entire right wing media-political universe, Springfield's Haitian community was slandered as terrorists and disease-carriers who steal and eat people's pets. It was the most openly vile racist attack on a people I've seen from American elected officials in my lifetime.

The attack on the Haitian community there came despite the fact that they have been an economic boon to Springfield. The once-proud industrial town had fallen on some pretty hard times in recent decades but when the Haitians started moving in things turned around in a pretty dramatic way. Businesses relocated there to take advantage of the new workforce. The tax base increased, existing businesses saw an uptick in customers and revenue, and many new businesses began. Housing vacancies declined. The fact that Ohio's Republican governor and local business leaders spoke positively and openly about Springfield's new residents – at least before Vance and Trump started attacking them, at which point they fell into line – underscored how great a story it was for the community.

But that all changed when Vance and others, seeking to exploit racial resentment both in the area and across the country, began demonizing then. That exploitation worked. Trump's share of the vote in Clark County, where Springfield is, actually increased last year, no doubt because of the local backlash to Haitian immigration upon which Vance and his friends seized. And, of course, since Trump and Vance took office they have followed through on their threats to destroy the Haitian community. Work permits have been revoked and, come February, the protected immigration status of Haitians as refugees will be as well. When that happens they will be subject to arrest, imprisonment in concentration camps and, eventually, deportation. Not surprisingly, a great many of them have left Springfield or are in the process of leaving.

And that, per this story in the New York Times, is about to bring some serious hurt to the town:

Across Springfield, there are disquieting signals that there are not enough workers to fuel economic growth. Home sales have stalled. Rentals are no longer in demand.

Amazon, after being forced to dismiss hundreds of Haitians at its warehouse outside Springfield, has in recent weeks sent text messages to former employees who are eligible to work. One said: “Miss us? We’ve got tons of roles with great pay — and no interview.” Jamie McGregor, chief executive of McGregor Metal, said that employers were bracing for further losses that “will have a profoundly negative effect on our ability to function.”

Vance and Trump's campaign against the Haitians had its roots in local resentment and racism which they eagerly leveraged. Now that resentment and racism is going to result in significant harm to the very people who helped foment it. Just another example of how, for a great many people in this country, racism is more important than anything. Even to the point of self-defeat.

Target's CEO is out as retail's all-time greatest self-inflicted wound festers

Target's CEO is stepping down after 11 years. The company's official statements are all benign things about new directions and how the old guy did so many great things but it's time for fresh voices and blah, blah, blah. But make no mistake: this is 100% because sales at the once high-flying retailing continue to plunge.

It's a plunge which began and is still largely being powered by a consumer boycott in the wake of the company's cowardly retreat from its diversity and inclusion policies that was 100% calculated to kiss Donald Trump's ass. Sure, there are other economic headwinds facing retailers today – tariffs, slowing job growth, and other stuff caused largely by Trump's ruinous policies – but other retailers aren't taking it on the chin to the extent that Target is. That's no doubt due to the fact that, unlike the other retailers, Target's DEI retreat served to alienate its most loyal and fervent clientele. Most notably younger people and liberal suburban women. And it's not like bowing to the fascists was ever likely to improve sales among the sorts who support the fascists because they don't care for Target to begin with.

The thing about it, though, is that what started as a boycott has likely led to a simply lifestyle change that is not gonna make the shoppers who abandoned Target over the past six months return to Target in the future. I think this post from Kendra Pierre-Louis gets to the core of it:

Too many people have gone too long without shopping there and realized that they were just buying junk. For a lot of people Target was a habit they used to self soothe and their position on DEI forced people to change the habit.

Speaking as one of those liberal types who had long shopped at Target, I believe this to be true.

One of the biggest drivers of Target's success was not its stuff, most of which you can get anywhere, but its branding and goodwill. The sense that going to Target was a thing beyond just shopping that so many retailers have tried to create but who have usually failed. Target had that. It had people joking about how they'd go there for toothpaste and still walk out having paid $100 for various things because, lol, that's just how Target is. This wasn't a complaint! They loved it! And Target totally fumbled it. It's gotta be one of the biggest own-goals in retail history.

"Zero Zen"

Following on this week's theme of tourists not respecting the places they visit, Reeves Wiedman of New York Magazine has an article about how tourists are kinda ruining Kyoto. And a lot of other places too, as the article talks about how tourism to basically everywhere has exploded and is becoming a big problem. But Kyoto may be the most overrun when compare the number of visitors to a place's population and footprint.

There are anecdotes in there about ugly Americans doing ugly American things like just opening up people's doors, thinking they're in Disneyland or a museum or something, and interrupting families trying to watch TV. A whole lotta people renting polyester kimonos and engaging in thoughtless cultural appropriation while thinking they're doing something meaningful and zen. But it's not just that and it's not just Americans. It's Canadians, Europeans, Indians, Chinese, and everyone else taking part in what has become an historically unprecedented tourism boom.

A lot of it sounds positively stupid:

The Canadians had only a day in Kyoto and were trying to pack 1,200 years of history into approximately 12 hours. “You’ve got to do all the TikTok stuff,” one of them said. They had already tracked down a viral matcha tiramisu and were about to call an Uber for the half-hour drive across town to Arashiyama, a spectacular forest of supertall, skinny bamboo stalks. After that, another Uber to Nara, an hour south, which is famous for the wild deer that mingle with people in the streets, before the group hustled back to Kyoto Station for a train to their hotel in Osaka. It was already midafternoon, and I didn’t see how they could possibly fit everything in. “Well, ChatGPT says we can,” one said. Their faith in machine learning was undiminished by the fact that it had sent them to an abandoned Hello Kitty café.

I've started to travel a good bit since my kids went off to college. And, the overrunning of certain places notwithstanding, I think that travel is a good thing. I truly believe what Mark Twain wrote about how travel is "fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." It really does change how you view the world, and almost uniformly for the better.

But I don't understand travel that is driven by tick-it-off-the-list death marches. Or travel driven by an accumulative mindset, be it the "we must collect all of the antiquities" thing that drove wealthy travelers in the past or the "we must take photos of ourselves in front of all of the things the social media influencers say we must photograph" of today. That seems exhausting to me. And stressful.

Have a great day everyone.