Cup of Coffee: January 23, 2025
Minor signings, an A's reunion, Chipper cries foul, ranking the Star Trek movies, the new McCarthyism, "Get over it," and Soundwaves of Wax

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!
And away we go.
The Daily Briefing
Guardians sign Paul Sewald
The Cleveland Guardians have signed righty free agent reliever Paul Sewald to a one-year contract with a mutual option for the 2026 season. It's a guaranteed $7 million, consisting of $1 million signing bonus, a $5 million salary, and a $1 million buyout on a $10 million mutual option which may as well be vaporware entitled "CBT-AWAY."
Sewald spent last year with the Diamondbacks, posting a 4.31 ERA (98 ERA+) while striking out 43 batters and walking ten in 39.2 innings across 42 appearances. His season was impacted by trips to the injured list with oblique and neck problems, but despite that those numbers or more or less in line with what he's done over his entire eight-year career. He's good in stretches. He'll save some games if you let him. He's probably way better utilized in the middle innings, though, which he certainly will be in Cleveland given that they have the game's best closer in Emmanuel Clase.
Angels sign Tim Anderson
I'm pretty convinced that the Angels front office's game plan is to ask themselves "have casual fans heard of this guy?" And if the answer is "yes," they sign him. What else explains their signing Tim Anderson to a minor league deal yesterday?
Anderson, 31, had an awful 2025, hitting a mere .214/.237/.226 (30 OPS+) in 241 plate appearances across 65 games with Miami. He had a pretty horrendous 2023, too, with his OPS — .582 — standing as the worst among all hitters who qualified for the batting title while playing absolutely brutal defense as well. That lead to the White Sox declining his $14 million 2024 option. Last February the Marlins signed him to a one-year, $5 million deal, hoping for a bounce back that would allow them to flip him to a contender at the trade deadline but that obviously didn't happen and they DFA'd him in early July. He didn't catch on anywhere else in 2024.
Anderson showed such promise early in his career that it inspired the White Sox to sign him to a long-term deal when he had only one big league season under his belt. He ended up having three or four pretty dang good seasons during his run in Chicago, including winning the AL batting title in 2019, going to two All-Star Games, and winning a Silver Slugger Award. Unfortunately he fell off a dang cliff once he hit 30. Now he'll try to turn it around in Anaheim.
Dave Stewart is back with the Athletics
The Sacramento Athletics announced that franchise legend Dave Stewart has been hired as a special assistant for player development for the 2025 season.
Stewart was, until pretty recently, part of a group that was trying to get an expansion franchise in Nashville. A few months ago it was reported that he had left that group to join a group that is trying to buy the White Sox, but that never seemed to have much heat to it. All along he has been part of a company that sought to develop the Oakland Coliseum site but, again, that's not had any momentum for some time.
Stewart had active front office roles in Oakland and San Diego in the 90s, served some time as a pitching coach for the Padres, worked with the Blue Jays front office and then as their pitching coach and, then after some other coaching roles, became the Diamondbacks general manager in 2014. That was not a successful stint to say the least. Since then he's been doing business side things as mentioned above. My guess, then, is that age 67 this is more of a "coming home" kind of job like you see a lot of franchise elder statesmen get, but it's always good to see those guys back with the clubs where they gained their fame.
And that's true even if it's not actually a homecoming in this case given the club's relocation.
Chipper stumps for Andruw
This hit the wire after the Hall of Fame results came out the other night:

I know that's a popular argument among certain baseball fans but, really, there are several Yankees players who had good Hall of Fame arguments who didn't sniff Cooperstown despite the perception that Yankees players get some sort of unfair advantage. Willie Randolph should be in there and he never got Hall of Fame love. Thurman Munson didn't either. Those are two guys who, if Chipper Jones' thesis holds, would've been easily elected, but they weren't. There are many others.
I think that Chipper and others who like this sort of argument are mistaking press coverage for Hall of Fame support. It's probably fair to say that Yankees players have often gotten a lot more press and hype during their careers than comparable players. While that can be annoying, it's understandable because there are multiple major newspapers in that city and all of the national baseball press is based there.
But that has not, I don't think, translated into preferential Hall of Fame support. At least in the past 50 years or so. Sure, guys like Tony Lazzeri probably don't belong and probably got in because of Yankees associations, but there aren't many if any borderline post-Golden Age Yankees players who have gotten in thanks to wearing pinstripes. At least any that I can think of. Hell, the closest I can think of is Catfish Hunter and he got in based on his Oakland days, not his Yankees days.
Andruw Jones was the best center fielder I've ever seen play and I think, on the baseball playing merits alone, he has a good case for induction. If he fails to get that last ten percent or whatever he needs in the next two years, however, it will be because he cratered pretty young due to not taking care of himself and his conditioning and because he was arrested and pleaded guilty for battering his wife in 2012. That's the story.
Other Stuff
Ranking the "Star Trek" movies
Over at Rolling Stone Alan Sepinwall ranked the 14 "Star Trek" movies from best to worst. Well, worst to best.
Staring at the "worst" end, I have no real issue with numbers 14 through 9 as "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier," "Star Trek: Into Darkness," "Star Trek: Nemesis," "Star Trek: Insurrection," and "Star Trek: Generations" all belong someplace on the bottom half of the list (Sepinwall has the new straight-to-streaming "Section 31," which comes out on Friday, at 11).
I take pretty big issue with him putting "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" at 8. I get why audiences didn't love it back in the day – they were expecting either "Star Wars" or something lighter and zippier and they got a slow-moving, meditative, brainy bit of sci-fi – but it has aged wonderfully and it's easier to appreciate in light of the countless other "Star Trek" shows and films that have come out over the past 40+ years and which have served to help us contextualizes the franchise's various modes and moods. Seriously: if you haven't seen "The Motion Picture" recently, give it another try. You'll appreciate it a lot more.
"The Motion Picture" is certainly better than "Star Trek: Beyond," which comes in at seven according to Sepinwall. The final Chris Pine-led film had some fun sequences but was basically like a Trek TV episode with a big budget, which is weird given that the Pine cast never had a TV show. To pull that off you really need the familiarity and goodwill from the audience that can only be built up over a hundred or two episodes. And hell, even the TNG cast couldn't make that model work with "Insurrection," which was also a blown-up TNG episode.
Oh, and I'd also put "The Motion Picture" above "The Search for Spock" which Sepinwall has at number six. I don't hate "The Search for Spock" or anything but it was a pretty big letdown for me after "Wrath of Khan," to which it serves as a direct sequel. It's always left me a bit cold. I probably just need to watch it again. It's been a while.
Sepinwall's top five is as follows:
(5) "Star Trek" (the first Chris Pine movie)
(4) "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home"
(3) "Star Trek: First Contact"
(2) "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country"
(1) "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan"
I may even be tempted to put "The Motion Picture" at five and bump that first Chris Pine one down but I'm not gonna lie, the first Pine movie was a hell of a lot of fun. I'd almost certainly swap "First Contact" and IV. I'm a way bigger Next Generation fan than I am Original Series fan, and "First Contact" is easily the best of the TNG movies, but even I can appreciate that IV is better.
I think I agree with Sepinwall's top two. There are those who will slide IV in above one or both of those but at some point you gotta have guys in Federation starships blasting the hell out of the bad guys to be considered the best. I'd re-watch either of those two flicks every Friday for the rest of my life if I had to.
What do you think?
I'm doing my part!
One of Donald Trump's executive orders was to purge diversity, equity and inclusion programs and the people who work on those programs from federal agencies. As we've all seen, of course, the right's demonization of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts is really just blatant white supremacy. They use the term "DEI" as a slur and apply it to anyone in any position of even moderate authority who isn't a straight, white CIS man and take the position that any woman, any person of color, and anyone who is gay or transgender is inherently unqualified. Gee, I wonder why they think that.
Yesterday they took it a step farther, sending out memos threatening federal employees with “adverse consequences” if they fail to report on colleagues who defy orders to purge DEI efforts from their agencies. They literally set up an email account which workers are required to use to inform on their coworkers lest they themselves face discipline.
It'd be a shame if people attempted to gum up these efforts by sending their own emails to that account, which is open to anyone, not just federal employees. Emails such as this one:

I signed it "Sincerely, Concerned Citizen Craig Calcaterra." Which is not a lie, because I am concerned, even if it's not about the same things they are.
Fuck these McCarthyite bastards. Fuck them sideways with power tools.
Quote of the Day: Jamie Dimon
Trump's vow to impose big tariffs has caused most economists and people who know things about how the economy works to warn that, if they come to pass, we could be facing a global trade war and massive domestic inflation. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, however, doesn't see a problem with that. Here he was yesterday when asked about the dangers of Trump's tariff proposals:
“If it’s a little inflationary, but it’s good for national security, so be it. I mean, get over it”
Call me crazy, but I seem to remember that most of the 2024 election was about how inflation was the worst possible thing that could befall American society. Now, though, people should "get over it."
I suppose this is like how dangerous it was for us to have an old, clearly deteriorating president until the very moment Joe Biden dropped out of the race, at which point no one seemed to care about having an old, clearly deteriorating president like the one who just took office. When Democrats are in power we have problems and limits and concerns. When Republicans take over we just need to get over it.
"Welcome to another day of listening to my late father's record collection"
As I mentioned the other day, I don't use TikTok. In the past year or so I have taken to randomly watching Instagram Reels as a time killer, but I don't actively follow anyone who makes them or like or forward them to people, so I sorta just get whatever the algorithm decides to give me. I occasionally see genuinely cool things this way, but for me most of the fun is paying attention to the patterns and imagining how hard the system is working to find stuff I might like enough to keep me coming back. And yes, I realize that my own habits, even subtle ones, influence it all, but my feed is still pretty much all over the map due to my mostly hands-off habits. Meta knows I'm an old man and that I post photos from England, so I get a lot of stuff related to wars, shipwrecks, and British tourism and history, but for the most part it's pretty damn random.
One that started popping up in my feed a couple of months ago was Soundwavesofwax. All of that account's videos follow the same pattern: a young, dark-haired woman appears, standing in front of a wall full of LPs, looks at the camera, and says, "Welcome to another day of listening to my late father's record collection. What are we going to listen to today?" She then introduces an album, plays part of a cut from it and, as the music plays, you get shots of the album spinning and the woman subduedly grooving to it. Sometimes her cat makes an appearance. She then gives a brief description and a quick review of the album. The reviews are more like explainers, done from the perspective of and for the benefit of someone who knows little or nothing about the artist or genre of the album. And that's basically it.
Obviously the "my late father's record collection" part is what grabs you, because the woman who makes these is not much older than my kids and it immediately makes you realize that, oh shit, her father likely died young. And, as you watch more and more of them – she makes a new one almost every day – it makes you think about how she probably mounted this project as a means of communing with her late father. I mean, she wouldn't otherwise be jamming to Little Feat or Rickie Lee Jones or whatever, one doesn't imagine. I still haven't formally followed the account, but I suppose I've refrained from skipping past enough of them that the algorithm knows I like them, so I tend to see them most days.
And I'm not alone. The account has more than 460,000 followers and her videos get millions of views. Over the weekend the Washington Post ran a story about the account. The woman who makes the videos is named Jula (pronounced you-lah). She lives in Alberta, Canada. She doesn't give out her last name or any other identifying details, which I totally get, because people are horrible, men are especially horrible, and the world is already unsafe enough for women as it is. But we do learn enough about the project to know that, yes, this is about Jula's connection with her father and her efforts to preserve her memories of him and her connection to him.
She says in the article, “In a way, I’m doing that for him and with him, which is, like, the most beautiful way for me to process this . . . His spirit is holding me in this time, and is just chering and dancing with what I’m doing with what he has left.”
There isn't a lot of profundity to be found on algorithmically-fed social media, but that's pretty damn touching.
Have a great day everyone.
Comments ()