Cup of Coffee: July 24, 2025

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

And away we go.

And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Giants 9, Atlanta 3: Back in his DH slot after a night at first base, Rafael Devers hit two homers, with a solo shot in the fifth and a three-run blast in the sixth. Matt Chapman hit a two-run shot in between those Devers dingers as this game went from 0-0 through four to a 9-0 San Francisco lead by the seventh. Justin Verlander went five, allowing just one hit, and thanks to all that run support picked up his first win of the 2025 campaign in his 17th start.

Rockies 6, Cardinals 0: There are bad losses and then there are demoralizing losses and I think getting shut out by the 2025 Rockies at Coors Field – the first shutout for the Rockies since May 15, 2024 – counts as demoralizing. Tanner Gordon blanked the birds for six innings and two relievers finished the five-hitter. Ezequiel Tovar homered, Jordan Beck doubled in a run, and the other four scored via RBI singles. Colorado wins the series. There will be stories in the next few days about the Cardinals' needs at the trade deadline, but the only thing this Cardinals team needs to be doing at the trade deadline is selling, I think.

Royals 8, Cubs 4: Vinnie Pasquantino hit two two-run homers, one in the first and one in the fifth, Sal Perez hit a two-run shot of his own, and Tyler Tolbert joined the two-run homer party as well. If you hit four two-run homers in a game you're gonna win most of the time. That's just a fact.

Reds 5, Nationals 0: Nick Lodolo tossed a complete game shutout, allowing just four hits, striking out eight, and requiring just 105 pitches. It was close as hell until the eighth, but Noelvi Marte hit an RBI double and Jose Trevino hit a sac fly in the eighth to make it 3-0 and Matt McLain and Elly De La Cruz each had an RBI in the ninth make it noncompetitive.

Marlins 3, Padres 2: Some vintage Sandy Alcantara on display as the one-time Cy Young winner went seven while allowing just one run. It was tied at one until the fifth when Jesús Sánchez hit a two-run homer. Agustín Ramírez singled in a run in the first. Miami has won six of eight.

Pirates 6, Tigers 1: Andrew McCutchen homered in the first and Spencer Horwitz hit his first career grand slam in the second inning to end this one early. Bucs starter Bailey Falter went seven, allowing just one run, while striking out eight. Detroit's skid continues as they drop their third in a row and their ninth in their last ten games.

Mets 6, Angels 3: Brandon Nimmo hit a solo shot in the first and Pete Alonso hit a three-run homer in the third. Francisco Lindor had two RBI singles. Sean Manaea went five to pick up the W. New York sweeps the three-game series and wins their fourth in a row.

Astros 4, Diamondbacks 3: Houston picked up two in the sixth thanks to an error and a wild pitch and a third run on a Mauricio Dubón RBI single in the eighth. Arizona tied it back up in the bottom of the eighth thanks to RBIs from Corbin Carroll and Josh Naylor but Houston went back ahead on a Christian Walker RBI single in the top of the ninth. The Astros sweep the series. Their lead in the West is back up to six over the M's because . . .

Brewers 10, Mariners 2: Milwaukee gets right back to winning thanks to seven strong innings from Quinn Priester and a 17-hit attack which plated ten without the aid of a dinger. Brice Turang knocked in three while William Contrearas and Blake Perkins each drove in two.

Dodgers 4, Twins 3: Tyler Glasnow was great, striking out 12 in seven innings of one-run ball while Shohei Ohtani homered for the fifth straight game. Unfortunately, the Dodgers bats were quiet and their bullpen once again betrayed them, so L.A's early lead did not hold. Speficially, Kirby Yates loaded the bases on walks in the eighth which led to two Twins runs scoring that, along with an earlier Royce Lewis homer, put Minnesota up 3-2. This time the Dodgers showed some gumption, however, mounting a two-out rally with Mookie Betts singling – doing so after he probably swung at strike three but didn't get called for it – the Twins intentionally walking Ohtani, and unintentionally walking Esteury Ruiz, after which Freddie Freeman hit a two-run walkoff single. I suppose Twins fans can be mad at the non-cal on that Betts swing but if you walk Esteury Ruiz in a key situation you probably deserve to lose.

Guardians 3, Orioles 2:  Steven Kwan singled home Bo Naylor –  always a good day when you can give a shoutout to both Naylor boys – with two outs in the eighth inning to but the Guardians ahead. The Guardians have won 11 of their last 13 games.

Red Sox 9, Phillies 8: Philly had a 5-0 lead after four but blew it as the Sox put up a six-spot in the fifth thanks mostly to Romy Gonzalez' grand slam. J.T. Realmuto's homer tied it at six in the eighth and it was on to extras. The sides traded runs in the tenth to send it to the eleventh. That's when Carlos Narváez decided to make this series notable for reasons other than his multiple catcher's interference calls by hitting a two-run homer. That lead held.

Blue Jays 8, Yankees 4: Chris Bassitt struck out eight over seven and two-thirds innings, Bo Bichette hit a two-run homer, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. drove in two runs and scored twice. The Yankees played bad defense, which is sort of a thing they've been doing lately. The Jays take two of three from the Yankees and have a four-game lead in the division.

White Sox 11, Rays 9:  Colson Montgomery hit a three-run homer in the second inning and a two-run double in the eighth to help power Chicago to victory. Kyle Teel also homered – his first in the bigs – for the Sox. He finished with four hits and scored three times. Chicago takes the series, two games to three, and completes its road trip with a 5-1 record. Ain't that a hell of a thing.

Rangers 2, Athletics 1: Patrick Corbin allowed just one run while working into the sixth and the pen didn't allow any more the rest of the way. Corey Seager homered for the second straight night and Jonah Heim doubled home the go-ahead run in the seventh.

The Daily Briefing

Ketel Marte lost over $400,000 in a burglary

Late last week it was reported that Diamondbacks second baseman Ketel Marte's house was burglarized while he was in Atlanta for the All-Star Game and that he needed to take a day or two away from the team to deal with it. I didn't write an item about it because the news broke on Friday and didn't seem like so crazy a story that it was worth updating about it on Monday even if it was unfortunate.

Yesterday, however, we learned that it was no small burglary. From The Athletic:

Marte found out about the burglary last Tuesday before the All-Star Game; he went on the restricted list Friday and was reinstated Sunday.

“Everyone is clear that it’s not a situation that we can feel good about. I’m losing about $400,000, and I think that’s a lot,” Marte told reporters in Spanish after Sunday’s 5-3 win against the St. Louis Cardinals.

The losses were probably that great because of some super nice jewelry and things, but I'd like to think that it was really because Marte is running an illegal manatee smuggling operation or is a big operator in the black market for rare antiquities. I'm imagining Marte dressed in a dinner jacket, holding lavish parties for vaguely sketchy European types of hard-to-pin down national origin where his highly sought-after wares are brokered. "Welcome to my home," he says magnanimously, while nonetheless knowing that violence or intrigue could unfold at any moment. This possibility is, to man like Marte, is not frightening, but intoxicating.

But like I said, it was probably just jewelry.

Manfred gets some pushback in Philly

A couple of weeks ago I shared a story from The Athletic about Rob Manfred's strategy to split the union by convincing players in face-to-face meetings that the MLBPA doesn't have their best interests in mind and, actually, they'd be way better off with a salary cap. I was surprised that Manfred cooperated with that story because it may as well have been headlined "Rob Manfred explains how he plans to fool the players into doing things that are against their own interests," but I suppose he knows what he's doing or else doesn't care.

Yesterday Hannah Keyser of the baseball newsletter The Bandwagon had a report about one of Manfred's little meetings. It was the one with the Phillies clubhouse, after which Nick Castellanos told her what went down and how it was received.

Per Keyser, Castellanos said the meeting was "passionate" and that while he ultimately said it was productive, at times "the conversation did get heated enough for players to express some version of 'well, in that case, you can leave' to the commissioner." It also sounds like Manfred was trying to sell them on a salary cap without calling it a cap but that the players responded to Manfred "sternly" when it came up.

Castellanos did add, however, that a lot of the players in the clubhouse seemed like they weren't really following or that they weren't as informed about the issues Manfred was talking about as they could be. I'm sure the union makes a point to get the players better up to speed as CBA negotiations get closer, but it's probably always a battle, with some guys like Castellanos being interested and engaged while others really aren't.

Preach, Tito

I don't know the context of this interview, but I sorta don't care:

Rob Manfred hasn't said anything about the Cleveland name change demand yet but that's probably because he's been too busy making plans for Trump to throw out a golden baseball at the World Series.

Those are some choices

Blue Jays closer Jeff Hoffman had his whole family with him at his bobblehead night earlier this week:

Tytan, Houstyn, Jetsyn, and Lennyn are definitely some choices for names. And my guess is that at least three of those choices will be altered to some degree by the kids themselves when they reach adulthood.

Other Stuff

So much winning

This was the intro to Axios' national news newsletter yesterday morning:

President Trump, in terms of raw accomplishments, crushed his first six months in historic ways. Massive tax cuts. Record-low border crossings. Surging tariff revenue. Stunning air strikes in Iran. Modest inflation.Yet poll after poll suggests most Americans aren't impressed. In fact, they seem tired of all the winning.

Why it matters: Trump appears to be losing by winning. The more he does (including issues beyond his legislative wins), the more the general public, especially independents, shrug — or recoil.

This paradox is unfolding in what could be the very best chapter of his presidency, before tariffs push prices higher or midterms pose risks to his GOP majorities.

The most charitable interpretation of this framing is that Axios views political news as sports and can only contextualize it in terms of who is "winning" at any given time, to the exclusion of all other things. In that framing the above passage is roughly equivalent to a sports columnist complaining about how Alabama beat Mississippi State by four touchdowns yet, somehow, got passed up in the polls by a Michigan team that barely escaped Happy Valley with a last second field goal. Which is fine in sports because it doesn't have any real implications for anyone outside of the sporting event, but it's pathological when it comes to talking about politics and policy.

The more likely explanation is that the folks writing this piece pretend to be objective members of the political press but are actually hardcore Trump supporters who simply cannot understand why the brutalization of minorities, the immiseration of working people, the massive handouts to the super-wealthy, and the evisceration of our 250 year-old Constitution – things which they're totally cool with because they reflect their values – isn't polling better.

It ain't just Fox News, folks. Most of the national political media is either consciously in the bag for fascism or is institutionally wired to submit to it.

The genius of Trump's tariffs

On Tuesday it was announced that the United States and Japan have agreed to mutual 15% tariffs on imported goods. So a Toyota that is manufactured wholly in Japan, faces a 15% tariff when imported into the United States.

Meanwhile, U.S. automakers who import parts and raw materials from Canada and Mexico or who manufacture cars in Mexico and Canada face 25% tariffs each time a car or a part crosses the border. That means that General Motors vehicles sold in the United States have an effective tariff rate of somewhere between 25% and 50%.

Put more simply: Donald Trump is charging Americans a 15% tax to buy a Toyota, but is charging them a 25%-50% tax to buy a Chevy, a Buick, or a GMC. Which makes it unsurprising that, on Tuesday, GM announced that profits fell by over a third after the company took lost over $1 billion in the second quarter of the year because of the tariffs.

I wonder how all of the people who wave flags and demand that people buy American products and who overwhelmingly support Donald Trump are gonna blame this on immigrants and trans people.

Thoughts While Visiting the U.S. National World War I Memorial

From the Angry Staff Officer blog about the National World War I Memorial on the National Mall in Washington:

The other day I went and stood in front of the new section of the World War I memorial in Washington, DC and looked at it. Memorials are meant to make you feel something. I felt nothing. I felt nothing when I looked at the figures. So I looked at the equipment. I looked at the uniforms. I looked at the faces. I looked at the setting. I still felt nothing. I stepped back and looked at it holistically. Then I went up close and looked at each detail bit by bit, and then I finally felt something. I felt anger. 

What follows are some interesting words about both memorials and wars.

I'm no art critic, but I do know more about World War I than your average person and I can say with authority than any memorial, depiction, or description of the First World War that does not center its pointlessness, its brutality, and its infliction of then unheard of human suffering has failed the assignment.

Frank Lloyd Wright's last surviving client

There's a man named Roland Reisley who lives in Westchester County, New York. He is 101 years old and he is the last living client of Frank Lloyd Wright. In fact he still lives in the Usonian home designed by Wright in 1952 when Reisley was a young husband and future father in his mid-20s and Wright was in his mid-80s. NPR has the story of Reisley, Wright, and the house in question.

I'm a great appreciator of Wright's work and, despite all of their issues with leaks and other bullcrap, I would probably do unspeakable things to be able to own a proper Wright house. But the thing that struck me from the article was this bit from Reisley:

Reisley believes that his devotion to the home and the community are what have kept him in such good health all of these years.

"Neuroscientists tell us that awareness of beauty in one's environment for a long time, reduces stress, can have physiological benefits, perhaps even longevity," he explained. "And I realized that there's not a day of my life that I didn't see something beautiful."

He said some days he's captivated by the way a stream of sunlight hits the wood paneling. Other days, he said, he sits enthralled watching the leaves dance in the wind through the windows. After more than seven decades, he's convinced. "That's my explanation. That's the secret."

Personally I prefer articles about centenarians in which they credit their old age to super random crap like one (1) Winston cigarette and a glass of whiskey a night, ten (10) pickles a week, or exactly 1/3 cup of Cream of Wheat and 8oz of buttermilk every morning, but Reisley's explanation is a lot more emotionally satisfying.

Winter MLS?

Yesterday Major League Soccer club owners met down in Austin to talk league business and one of the big items on the agenda was shifting the MLS schedule from the Spring/Summer/Fall slot it has held for the league's entire existence to the sport’s international standard of Fall/Winter/Spring. They had previously agreed to at least discuss the shift a few months ago.

On the one hand making such a move makes sense. Almost all of global soccer, including the Big Five European leagues – the UK's Premier League, Spain’s LaLiga, Germany’s Bundesliga, Italy’s Serie A, and France’s Ligue 1 – all play on the fall-to-spring schedule. If MLS were to conform to that it would be better able to participate the player transfer windows and breaks for international competition thereby boosting the league’s international standing both commercially and competitively.

On the other hand, weather exists. Yes, climate change is making North American summers increasingly brutal – many international players complained about the hot and humid summer conditions here during the recently concluded FIFA Club World Cup – but winter is still a thing, and playing December-February matches in places like Montreal, Toronto, Boston, New York, Columbus, Chicago, Minnesota, Denver, Salt Lake City, and several other MLS cities which get legit cold weather ain't ideal.

My guess is that MLS does make the switch because the gravity of the sport on a global scale is too much to resist. But I feel like it's gonna be a rocky transition for some of the more northerly-based clubs.

Oh dear

Someone on Bluesky posted early yesterday morning that they could not believe that Ozzy Osbourne was just 76 when he died because, in their words, "I remember watching 'The Osbournes' and thinking he was the oldest man alive."

I just went and looked at the Wikipedia page for "The Osbournes." That show aired from 2002 to 2005. The first season filmed in 2001. At the time of filming, then, Ozzy Osbourne, who was born in late 1948, was 52 years old. Which is how old I am right now.

I suppose I'll take solace in the words of Indiana Jones who once said "it's not the years, it's the mileage."

The best albums when you were 16

The other night I was scrolling on BlueSky when I saw a prompt that asked people to name the best album that came out when they were 16. I turned 16 in 1989 and the first album that came to mind which came out that year was Pixies' "Doolittle" so I figured, sure, I'd play that game. But before I posted I wanted to check to make sure I wasn't forgetting an even better album that year and did a quick search for what came out in 1989.

Folks, I did not answer the prompt with an album, because there were too damn many bangers to choose from:

• Pixies: "Doolittle"
• Beastie Boys: "Paul's Boutique"
• Stone Roses: "Stone Roses"
• De La Soul: "3 Feet High and Rising"
• The Cure: "Disintegration"
• Tom Petty: "Full Moon Fever"
• Nine Inch Nails: "Pretty Hate Machine"
• Janet Jackson: "Rhythm Nation"
• Madonna: "Like a Prayer"
• Bob Dylan: "Oh Mercy"
• Mötley Crüe: "Dr. Feelgood"
• Neneh Cheri: "Raw Like Sushi"
• Prince: "Batman" soundtrack
• Lou Reed: "New York"

And, at the risk of angering the punks among you, I'd even consider Don Henley's "The End Of Innocence," which while not perfect, is a really, really strong album that hit just right at the time it came out.

I'll never be one of those old guys who insists that music just so happened to peak when he was young because those people are absolutely insufferable. But if I were to become one of those old guys who insisted that music just so happened to peak when I was young I'd probably spend a lot of time citing 1989 to make my case.

Have a great day everyone.