Cup of Coffee: July 30, 2026

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

As I mentioned to my paid subscribers earlier this week, as of today I am traveling and will be doing so through late Monday. The travel, you will be shocked to hear, is to the United Kingdom. I know, crazy for me.

My trip is centered on two things:

• Seeing Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and friends at Preston Park in Brighton tomorrow. The best part of which is that our friend who is going to the concert with us and with whom we're staying lives about a ten minute walk from the park so the logistics are going to be immaculate. This is the same friend who found the creepy shoes in her wall a few months back and, yes, I will be sleeping in the room with the shoes in the wall. Here's hoping the ghosts of Edwardian children do not drag me to hell; and
• A secret second thing I am doing in London on Sunday. It is something fun and interesting and at least tangentially and philosophically/evolutionarily related to this newsletter and about which I will be writing next week. Which really means that I should be writing off this entire damn trip as a business expense. I'll have my legal and accounting team look into it.

In light of all of that the next few days, with a few cursory exceptions as news warrants, will be fully-blown mailbag days. Even with getting a head start on those on Tuesday and yesterday there are still a hell of a lot of questions to get through, so let's jump on in, shall we?

Scores

The White Sox won in a walkoff, Detroit blew a 7-0 lead in what very well could have been Tarik Skubal's last start as a Tiger, and the Cardinals – who were locked in a scoreless tie with the Cubs through regulation – were down by two in the tenth yet still won it in walkoff fashion. Otherwise:

• Marlins 8, Phillies 6
• Diamondbacks 3, Pirates 0
• Blue Jays 5, Nationals 2
• Orioles 10, Tigers 9
• Giants 16, Brewers 3
• Padres 3, Rockies 1
• Rays 3, Rangers 0
• Guardians 6, Reds 1
• Royals 4, Twins 0
• White Sox 6, Yankees 5
• Cardinals 3, Cubs 2
• Astros 7, Angels 4
• Red Sox 4, Athletics 2
• Dodgers 4, Mariners 2
• Mets 3, Atlanta 2; Atlanta 1, Mets 0

Bits and Bobs

• The Dodgers activated Edwin Díaz. He returned to action last night and gave up one run in the ninth but converted a save chance against the Mariners; 
• Bryce Harper and Don Mattingly are in a little spat in Philly over Harper's comments regarding whether the Phillies need to add talent at the deadline;
• The Rangers acquired catcher Logan O'Hoppe and right-handed reliever Chase Silseth from the Angels in exchange for minor league infielder Angel Arredondo;
• The Angels released former All-Star Alex Manoah. If you can't make it in Anaheim you may be done-zo; and
• Harrison Bader has been out of the San Francisco Giants lineup since May 29 with left plantar fasciitis. He was on the mend and poised to undergo some tests to see if he's ready to resume baseball activities but now that's out the window because, per the Giants, Bader's foot was further damaged in a scooter crash that occurred "Saturday night/early Sunday morning." They say that the crash has "changed the nature of his evaluation." Dude signed a two-year $20 million+ deal last winter and then he goes and busts himself up crashing a scooter in the wee hours. Maybe it was just a misguided Jeff Kent tribute?

Mailbag!

Q: So what would you do to turn the Angels back into an actual baseball team? Recent dumpage of the clueless team president and GM is a good start IMHO. – Jim Atkins

A. Honestly, I think there is no fixing the Angels under current ownership. Arte Moreno has shown that he has no interest in lasting and sustainable solutions or in building a foundation from which a winning team can rise. The Angels have been living on short-term solutions – and not even good short-term solutions; they just sign "names" who are past their prime – because Moreno is either too cheap or too impatient to invest in the long-term overhaul that is required.

Assuming he goes – or has a lobotomy which makes him into the sort of person who will allow the right things to happen – the Angels need to do one of those complete tear-down rebuilds that I normally dislike but which I can see no way around with this club. But again, it has to happen under a front office that is funded and empowered to build on a five to ten-year timeframe, complete with new scouts, new analysts, and new philosophies, alongside major investment in the player development pipeline all the way down to complex league ball.

Maybe John Mozeliak can oversee that, but new, forward-thinking people who have spent some time in successful, forward-thinking organizations need to be hired and be empowered to totally rethink everything the Angels have been doing for the past 15 years. Because even if Arte Moreno thinks otherwise, we've yet to develop the technology to take us back to 2005 again.

Q: Arte Moreno and John Mozeliak have tapped you to be the next General Manager of the Angels. On your first day they present you with these trade offers for Mike Trout.

• From Arizona: Nolan Arenado, James McCann, and Merrill Kelly
• From Cleveland: Connor Brogdon, Rhys Hoskins, Cade Smith
• From San Diego: Walker Buehler, Nick Castellanos, Wandy Peralta
• From Toronto: Patrick Corbin, Eloy Jimenez, George Springer

Which one do you accept? Which one does Arte overrule you and accept instead? – Mars Needs Guitars

A: These are all right up Arte Moreno's alley because all the proposals feature "name" players who mostly suck. I guess Cade Smith is the single most useful/flippable player here, so maybe the Cleveland package which I would handle Smith the way the Marlins handled Mike Piazza back in the day. But ultimately I just take the deal from whichever team is offering to take on biggest chunk of Trout's remaining salary. Of course given that he has 10-5 rights I'm guessing he rejects every one of these. Maybe he takes Cleveland though since they seem most likely to make the postseason? So yeah, Cleveland I suppose.

Q: I think all of us would agree that the food technology has improved immensely over the decades. Yet, with all of the choices available, nostalgia has firmly influenced my belief that there isn't a single treat available today that hits as hard as a melty chocolate malt eaten with a glorified tongue depressor in the upper deck at the Oakland Coliseum. What ballpark food are you jumping in a time machine to go eat? – Charlie Connell

Followup from Stephanie: I know I'm verging into "I drank from the garden hose" territory here, but man, that wooden spoon! I swear I can still taste it, and I would mow down a cup of that chocolate if it were right in front of me. Good choice!

Followup from Semi G: GREAT choice. Powerful sensory recovery. Any other application of wooden spoon activates a gag reflex at ten paces, but not this. I always thought, however, it was the malted that tasted like wood and the spoon added the chocolate flavor. Confirm or deny...?

A: It would never be any food on a wooden stick, as I have a horrible reaction to wooden sticks, wooden spoons, etc. Just thinking about them give me the chills and makes me squirm like nails on a chalkboard. Based on Semi G's followup note I suspect it's not an uncommon thing even if my family has always made fun of me for it. Like, when my kids were in elementary school they'd make a point of licking a wooden spoon in front of me because they knew it would absolutely ruin me.

As for my answer: I realize this may be nostalgia speaking, but I think the Ball Park Franks they served at Tiger Stadium in the late 70s and early 80s were bigger and tastier than the ballpark hot dogs you get now. And of course now that I said that I know one of you will likely explain to me that that's because they had, like, raccoon meat and cigarette ash in them back then. This is why nostalgia is a trap.

Q: You're named Commissioner For Life. What might you try to do to salvage the role of starting pitcher, both as a role that has meaning within the sport, and as a viable career within which guys aren't all sustaining major injuries within their first few years? – Colin

A: All of the ideas along these lines like the double hook (losing your DH when you remove your starter), mandatory minimum innings, roster limitations on relief pitchers, etc. strike me as gimmicky and doomed to either failure, efforts at circumvention, labor pushback, and unintended consequences.

Ultimately, I think the only way it can happen is for baseball's copycat culture to be leveraged. Like, if a true unicorn starter emerges – a 1980s-style rubber-armed (non-knuckleball) guy who has great command and changes speed and who makes it work despite topping out in the low-90s and who saves his team's pen every fifth day – those benefits will become apparent and other teams may try to develop a similar dude or dudes. Right now, though, I don't know how such a beast would emerge given that every team scouts for and prioritizes velocity and strikeouts. Maybe whoever we get to run the Angels will go all Moneyball but for junkballers?

Related question: Are some teams clearly better than others at developing starting pitchers without major injuries? Or is the nature of pitching in 2026 so extreme that no team has been able to solve this? – Colin

A: I don't think anyone has a significant advantage here. There are teams which consistently have more starting pitcher injuries than others, but I think that's less-explained by their development structure than it is by the fact that teams with deeper pockets – like the Dodgers, Mets, and Yankees – are more willing to take a chance on pitchers with injury histories because they can more easily eat their mistakes and wait for those guys to get better in time for the postseason. Just watch that happen this year, again, with Los Angeles. Not everyone can afford to pay top dollar for a guy who only makes four starts a season but is ready to go in October.

Q: As a fan of bleak 70s - 80s movies like "Night Moves," "Thief," and "Blow Out," I was wondering if you had any recommendations for other movies of that ilk. Could you also include an elevator pitch for them? – John B

A: There are tons of 1970s and early 80s movies with the broad vibe you're looking for, but if I wanted to specifically home in on movies like the three you mentioned I'd go with the following:

The Driver (1978): A Walter Hill film which features Ryan O'Neal as a getaway driver pursued by a detective, played by Bruce Dern. It's got all kinds of minimalist cool about it, and it directly influenced Michael Mann, the director of "Thief" and "Heat," Quentin Tarantio, who aped some scenes from it in "Pulp Fiction" and the "Kill Bill" movies, and was given great homage in both the fantastic Ryan Gosling movie "Drive" and "Baby Driver" which is really good as long as you can ignore Kevin Spacey; and

Cutter's Way (1981): One of the last handful of those sorts of movies features a young Jeff Bridges and John Heard investigating a murder in a sun-soaked yet nonetheless dark southern California. A good bit of post-Vietnam paranoia pervades the movie, as does the sense that, if any of this happened just a year or two later into Reagan's America, the bad guys would've won. Which they sorta do anyway now that I think about it.

If you're asking for an elevator pitch for the whole genre as opposed to just those movies, how about "You may suspect that the world is a dark and uncaring place: actually, it's way worse."

Q: I’ve had an inkling of late to move back to the Midwest: Milwaukee, Michigan, Illinois after 3 decades in Nashville (I moved here from Flint at 14)

What’s your opinion on the Northern part of the Midwest in general. I love lakes and pretty things and as I get older and my kids go out into the world I feel less inclined to participate in the constant discourse about the awfulness of everything and just enjoy my life. Discuss. – Shaun O

A: I slag on Ohio and the Midwest in general an awful lot in this space, but I'm a native myself and have spent 43 of my 53 years on this planet here, so I've obviously had to have made my peace with it at some point. The Midwest has its good points. Most prominent of which is the near total lack of aggravating life friction that one finds in larger cities in coastal areas. Things are generally affordable, easy to get to, and non-hostile and it's easy to overlook those non-sexy selling points when you're focusing on the stuff the Midwest doesn't do well. When I'm fed up with life where I'm living I make a point to remind myself of how "unsexy but convenient" has a lot to recommend it, especially as you get older.

You asked specifically about the northern part of the Midwest, however, not just the Midwest. I'm interpreting that as Minnesota, Wisconsin, the parts of Michigan above our mutually native Flint, and depending on how you define the Midwest, possibly the Dakotas. For that I have far less information as I have only traveled through those places. For what it's worth, I found them all to be pleasant and, unlike Ohio, which even those of us who have made generally good lives here like to complain about, people who live in those places tend to talk about their homes in glowing terms rather than disparaging ones, and that has to count for something.

So for this I throw it to the crowd: Minnesotans, Wisconsinites, and northern Michiganders: sell Shaun on where you live.

Q: What are your thoughts on umpires that have over 60% of their calls overturned on ABS to stop calling balls and strikes? – Dave Bowers

A: If you had asked me before ABS went into effect I'd have said "wow, they suck worse than we thought! Fire the bums!" But now that I've seen how large a percentage of umpire misses are by a matter of an inch or two – sometimes by just a few centimeters of the ball clipping or missing the zone – I find myself actually impressed by how well they generally do. Pitchers throw fast, catchers try to deceive you, and that has to be a really hard job.

Q: I can’t wrap my head around how bad the Blue Jays are this season, given how good they were last season. Injuries explains some of it, but not all. Any thoughts as to why? Were they just not that good? Nearly winning the World Series suggests to me they were good, which makes it hard to fathom. P.S.: I like your name – Craig Daniels

A: Teams can handle it when a key player or two has a down year. Teams cannot handle it when virtually all of their key players have down years. This year the Blue Jays have watched Vlad Guerrero Jr., George Springer, Alejandro Kirk, Ernie Clement, Daulton Varsho, and Addison Barger all underperform compared to 2025 and they lost Bo Bichette to boot. Meanwhile, no one has stepped up at all. They went from the fourth best offense in all of baseball in 2025 to the deadass worst offense in baseball this year. You can't recover from that.

As for why: I suspect we'll eventually hear that some of those guys are harboring hidden injuries. Sure, Springer is getting up there in years and was going to sharply decline eventually, but it doesn't explain everyone else. So until we hear something to the contrary, I'm just going to assume it's a horribly timed run of bad luck for multiple dudes with a stubborn oblique or a potential degenerative back issue thrown in for funsies.

Q: You're building a gated community called Calcaterra Village for 53 y.o. + empty nest couples. Where in the U.S. would you build it and what five amenities would it have? – Orange Julius

A: Central coast of California because that, in my mind, is perfect weather and weather constitutes an extremely large part of my happiness. Summer highs of 68-70 or so and winter lows which rarely go below the mid-40s? Sign me up, partner. The five amenities:

• A repertory movie theater curated and programmed by someone who knows their shit and which brings in filmmakers, writers, and other experts to give talks and stuff;
• A 24 hour diner that does breakfast all day, has extensive gluten-free options, and is otherwise A-rated for other food allergies and sensitivities. This is America, dammit, and everyone should be able to eat diner food at any time;
• A proper English-style pub. Since this is America it can have a back area – down a very long hallway with soundproofing – that has TVs for sports and stuff, but the main area is for beer, conversation, and sitting by the fire;
• A library with comfortable seating – like leather armchairs – and soft lighting. It's both a lending library and a place where you can just go sit and read or write or whatever. It has to have a robust reference/map collection as well; and
• An extensive system of walking/running trails that wind through both wooded areas and along the coast and has some moderate to serious elevation gains which can nonetheless be bypassed for those days when you're just not feelin' it.

I don't think that's too much to ask.

Q: You were ahead of the game with your hatred of JD Vance. In fact, I first learned to hate him from you. I'd love to get a brief history of your background on this cretin. When/how did you first hear of him? How did you initially discover how terrible he was? How has his terribleness evolved over time as he went from anti-Trump to the chief Trump toadie? – Ryan

A: When Hillbilly Elegy came out a number of people – almost all of them lefty/liberal types – knowing I'm from West Virginia and that I have opinions about class and politics and stuff, suggested I read it. I'm pretty sure they expected me to like it too because it spoke, broadly, about things I've talked and written about in the past. I went in completely cold, not knowing anything about the book or its author other than the fact that it was a growing sensation.

I read it in a single day and I almost threw the goddamn thing across the room. The book was obviously written to create a permission structure for well-off and the educated to stop having to worry about poor, working class people. I think that's a big reason why, initially at least, most of the juice behind Hillbilly Elegy came from liberals. Dealing with poverty and addiction and stuff is super difficult and a lot more folks than you realize would love to have a get-out-of-caring-about-that-stuff card as a means of simplifying their politics while still being able to call themselves good people. Vance's book offered that. It was clearly calculated to do that.

Knowing only that, I knew its author had to be terrible person himself or, at the very least, a dupe of terrible people, with his friendly "aw shucks" writing style softening the edge that is usually obvious with those types. And I was right. It was only after I read the book that I learned that Vance was an acolyte of Amy Chua, Peter Thiel and others who have a vested interest in scapegoating the poor and the disadvantaged for their own plight, in cutting social services, in favoring business and the wealthy, and in doing it all without getting the kind of heat that the Newt Gingriches of the world used to get. Vance was their shield.

Trump changed the calculus for those people and for Vance. What they thought had to be brought in via stealth turned out to be totally viable to just say out loud when the right messenger came along. This created some problems for Vance at first – remember he had to majorly backtrack off of his "Trump is evil" stuff when it turned out Trump was actually electable – and he has spent most of the last decade overcompensating for his original miscalculation. I'll give him credit for demonstrating such a level of shamelessness in that regard that he was able to go from being on the wrong side of Trumpism to an Elvis-killing-sized bowel movement away from the presidency, but that obviously only gave me a worse opinion of him than the already extraordinarily low one I had of him.

Q: How would you rank each all of the Ohio Poultry Association's deviled egg "Americana Flight" flavors? – Michael Harper

A: 1.Brisket; 2. Mac & Cheese; 3. Hot Dog; 4. Ranch; 5. Apple Pie; 6. Birthday cake. I can handle savory on deviled eggs, but sweet sounds barftastic. To be clear, though, I suspect the only two that are genuinely good are Brisket and Mac & Cheese.

In other news, the building housing the Ohio Poultry Association should be razed and the ground on which it sits should be salted. It's just an abomination factory.

Q: We share a love of Chandler and hard boiled fiction and it was here that I learned of The Annotated Big Sleep. I found Haruki Murakami a number of years ago due to the noir feel of The Wild Sheep Chase and Hardboiled Wonderland. I have gone through some of the Scandanavian crime. I have recently been into Japanese writers and noirish oddities like the Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa. Occasionally I read a Hardcase crime book for the straight forward stories which are fun. Haven't really gotten into procedurals.

You write about your non-fiction reading interests from time to time, but I am curious about your fiction reading. Particularly newer noir writers, but other recommendations thoughts welcome. – Craig R

A: I have been on an almost exclusive non-fiction binge – almost all of it either history, popular science, or film-related stuff – for like three or four years now. I'm not entirely sure why, but I think I've been trying to glom on to topics that aren't nightmare inducing the way current events are and to read books which reinforce the idea that there is such a thing as objective reality when almost everyone and everything wants to make you question it.

As for fiction: I may be stretching the definition of "newer" here, but I like Walter Mosely's Easy Rawlins books. I enjoyed S.A. Cosby's My Darkest Prayer and should probably read his more recent books. Charlie Huston wrote a trilogy of books about an ex-ballplayer named Hank Thompson caught in the New York underworld. I hadn't heard of them until last year when they made a movie out of the first one, Caught Stealing, so I read the book. It was pretty good. Not life-changing or anything, but it scratched the crime novel itch. Non-noir: The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes may be my favorite novel that's come out in the past 10-15 years. Which, ugh, I think it came out in the last 10-15 years. Like I said, I've been really off of fiction lately.

Q: I have a son and a daughter, ages 6 and almost 9, and my wife and I are doing pretty well at the moment. It seems like you're a pretty great dad and I'd like to take any pro tips on future stuff I'm ignorant about at the moment. What are some tips you could offer on how to be a good parent as we start getting into the middle school and high school years? My intentions are not to be the overbearing parent that my mom was during my years from 8-18. I'd like to be more laid back than control freak if you know what I mean. – El Guapo

A: If I had surefire advice about raising kids I'd be making millions writing parenting books. I don't know. I think I did OK, but I write about my family selectively so you all only hear about the good stuff, the funny stuff, and the wins. All parents, even the ones who seem like they have it all figured out, experience bad stuff, unfunny stuff, and take Ls. We all do things we regret or second guess ourselves after the fact all the damn time.

In light of that, the only advice I feel super comfortable giving is to give your kids space to figure out who they are and what they want to do and be. If you played sports, for example, don't assume right off the bat that they want to. If you were an arty kid (or are an arty adult) but your kid wants to be a jock or join the Future Farmers of America, don't impose yourself and your values (though be sure to communicate your values in neutral settings as often as you can). Always be prepared to give advice or to relate your own experiences, but make sure they feel like they have control over their own path.

And yeah, I know we all nod at that and think "of course" but it's amazing how many little things we do as parents that signal our own preferences and put pressure on our kids. They see more than you think they do. They hear more than you think they do. They are not clay for us to mold. They are wonderful sponges that can absorb anything, so be sure that everything you do and say are things you'd be happy for them to hear, to repeat, and to emulate.

Q: Why am I always too intimidated to ask anything in mailbag enquiries? – Barrenlens

A: Because you can't handle the truth bombs I'm droppin' here.

Have a great day everyone.