Cup of Coffee: May 29, 2025

Good morning! They may take our lives, but they'll never take our Free Thursday!!!

You have bled with Wallace!

[unsheathes his sword]

NOW BLEED WITH ME!

And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

White Sox 9, Mets 4: Andrew Benintendi homered, hit an RBI triple, and an RBI single while driving in four, Mike Tauchman hit a two-run double, and Lenyn Sosa had three hits and knocked one in. Mark Vientos hit a three-run homer and Pete Alonso had an RBI double in a losing cause for New York. The Mets' four-game winning streak ends. The Chisox avoid the sweep.

Guardians 7, Dodgers 4: Clayton Kershaw pitched a season-high five innings and allowed just one run as Los Angeles took a 4-1 lead into the bottom of the seventh. Cleveland came back once he was gone, however, with Carlos Santana singling in a run in the seventh, Nolan Jones, who had three hits on the day, singling in two in the eighth, and Ángel Martínez hitting a three-run, go-ahead homer immediately thereafter to help the Guardians avoid the sweep.

In other news, I hardly see any Guardians games because I'm blacked out from them on regular MLB dot TV an I do not wish to play $200 or whatever it is for the Guardians-only tier that is available to me via that service. Which means that if Carlos Santana had been dressing like this all season, well, it's news to me:

I'm just gonna assume that, immediately after the game, Santana had to run to an audition for a revival of "A Chorus Line" or, perhaps, a reboot of the John Travolta-Jamie Lee Curtis movie "Perfect." God I hope he gets it. I hope he gets it. How many people does he need?

Tigers 4, Giants 3: Another comeback win for an AL Central team over an NL West squad. Here the Giants led 3-0 thanks to a two-run homer from Heliot Ramos in the fifth. The Tigers got on the board in the bottom half, however, when Colt Keith doubled in two and then Justyn-Henry Malloy singled in two more to give Detroit the lead. Four and a third innings of shutout relief sealed it for the Tigers.

In other news, a member of the Comerica Park grounds crew stumbled and hurt his leg while raking the infield dirt during the seventh inning stretch. While he was on the ground being attended to by the trainers he flipped off the cameras:

A bit rude, sure, but I get it man.

Brewers 6, Red Sox 5: Another day, another come-from-behind extra innings walkoff for the Brewers against Boston. Wilyer Abreu hit a solo homer to tie the game up at four in the seventh and a Manfred Man-enabled fielder's choice in the top of the tenth gave the Sox a 5-4 lead. A Kristian Campbell throwing error in the bottom half allowed Milwaukee to tie it and then Caleb Durbin walked it off with a sac fly. Not quite as exciting as Tuesday night's walkoff grand slam from Christian Yelich but a win's a win.

Rays 5, Twins 0: Drew Rasmussen (6 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 5K) shut the Twins down while he was in and three relievers finished the six-hit shutout. Brandon Lowe and Junior Caminero homered in the fourth to give Tampa Bay a 3-0 lead. Jonathan Aranda singled in a run in the fifth and then scored himself on an eighth inning balk. Aranda was on board for Caminero's homer too, so he was all over the damn place yesterday.

Astros 5, Athletics 3:  Zach Dezenzo homered and Victor Caratini drove in two runs in Houston's three-run seventh. Lance McCullers Jr. allowed five hits and three runs in a season-long six innings in his fifth start since returning from his two-year+ injury sabbatical. Houston has won four in a row. Sacramento has lost 13 of 14.

Pirates 10, Diamondbacks 1: Paul Skenes was both excellent, tossing shutout ball into the seventh, but also had copious run support to help him record his fourth win on the year. Guy has a 2.15 ERA but still sits at 4-5. Also sorta mind-boggling: he has not permitted more than six hits in any of his 35 major league starts, which the good folks at the Elias Sports Bureau say is a major league record to begin a career. Oneil Cruz hit a two-run homer. Arizona has lost seven of eight.

Marlins 10, Padres 8: A big game for young Agustín Ramíre, who had four hits, including a home run, a go-ahead two-run single, and four RBI as Miami came back from a 6-1 deficit one day after they lost a game in which they had a 6-0 lead.  Eric Wagaman and Otto Lopez added three hits each with Lopez hitting a three-run homer. Javier Sanoja hit two doubles. Sandy Alcantara got a no-decision after giving up six runs in four innings. The no-decision is sort of an improvement though as the former Cy Young winner had lost his previous seven starts. 

Cardinals 6, Orioles 4:  Brendan Donovan hit a two-run homer, Jordan Walker hit a two-run single, and Masyn Winn had four hits, drove in one, and scored three times to give this Battle of the Birds to St. Louis, two games to one. It was a rainy one, so call it a bird bath.

Royals 3, Reds 2: Royals starter  Noah Cameron pitched one-run ball into the seventh, scattering six hits, all of which were singles, to help the Royals avoid the sweep. Bobby Witt Jr. had an RBI double and a sac fly while Drew Waters singled in a run. Tyler Stephenson and Spencer Steer each had three hits but there wasn't much else doin' for Cincinnati.

Cubs 2, Rockies 1:  Matthew Boyd tossed six innings of four-hit shutout ball, Seiya Suzuki doubled in a run, and Pete Crow-Armstrong homered in the fourth on a ball that was basically at his shoelaces. The Cubs sweep the series, have won four in a row, and ten of 12 overall.

Blue Jays 2, Rangers 0: Five Blue Jays pitchers combined to spin a one-hit shutout with 13 strikeouts. Indeed, Texas' only hit of the game was leadoff hitter Josh Smith's single in the bottom of the first inning. It remained zilch-zilch until the ninth, however, when Bo Bichette hit a pinch-hit two-run homer with two outs to give Toronto what proved to be the winning runs. Toronto won two of three in a series that featured only seven combined runs. Feel the excitement.

Yankees 1, Angels 0: New York got the game's only run on a first inning sac fly and everything else was goose eggs. Which makes me wonder how this game pushed three hours long. Clarke Schmidt and three Yankees pitchers combined on a five-hitter. The Yankees complete the three-game sweep. They have won five straight and nine of ten.

Nationals 9, Mariners 0:  Robert Hassell III, who came to Washington as part of the first Juan Soto trade, had three hits, including his first big league home run, and Luis García Jr. and Josh Bell hit back-to-back jacks as Washington won by the forfeit score. Trevor Williams tossed six shutout innings as the Mariners managed just five hits all night.

In other news, I had missed this before posting yesterday's recaps, but something horrifying happened during Tuesday night's Nats-M's game:

Nothing short of drinking from the wrong grail could make me feel older, faster than that. Criminy.

Atlanta vs. Phillies – POSTPONED:

🎶 It's raining again,
I'm hearing its pitter patter down.
It's wet in the street
Reflecting the lights and splashing feet,
Nowhere to go,
And nothing I have to do, have to do.It's raining again,
I follow the Christmas lights down town.
I'm leaving the flow
Of people walking all around,
Round and round,
I hear the sound of rain falling in my ears
Washing away the weariness like tears.
I can feel my troubles running down,
Disappear into the silent sound. 🎶

The Daily Briefing

Rich Hill is a step away from returning to the big leagues

Yesterday Rich Hill, who recently signed with the Royals at age 45, was transferred from the Arizona Complex League to Triple-A Omaha. Hill had pitched eight innings in Complex play which, no, is not super relevant for how he'll do at Omaha, let alone in Kansas City, but it at least it shows he's healthy.

A couple of good weeks in Triple-A and a bunch of you who were born after March 11, 1980 but before February 20, 1983, which is Justin Verlander's date of birth, will once again be able to say that there's a major leaguer older than you.

Ronny Simon got some support

On Tuesday night Marlins infielder Ronny Simon committed three errors that led to two unearned San Diego runs. All of that helped the Padres come back from an early 6-0 deficit and win the game. Simon had been charged with a fourth error that was later changed to a hit by the official scorer. He was taken out of the game after that and was seen wiping tears from his eyes as he left the field.

That's a tough situation for a young player – Simon was playing in just his 19th big league game – but he did get some comfort and support from people. From his teammates, obviously. But he also got support from several members of the opposition as well. From SI:

An act of sportsmanship after the game did not go unnoticed by Simon. He told reporters, including Sammy Levitt of 97.3-FM, that Padres Manny Machado, Luis Arraez and Fernando Tatis Jr. texted him words of encouragement . . . Simon said he previously knew Tatis and Arraez, who began last season with the Marlins. Former Padres infielder Robinson Cano called him, too.

I'm guessing that hearing from Machado had to particularly help because, in addition to being a six-time All-Star, he himself committed three errors in a single inning last week against the Blue Jays. It can happen to anyone. Sometimes it's just not your day.

Ronel Blanco to have Tommy John surgery

Houston Astros right-hander Ronel Blanco last pitched on May 17 and was placed on the injured list a few days later with inflammation in the elbow. Yesterday it was announced that he will have Tommy John surgery and will thus miss the remainder of the 2025 season.

Blanco, 31, is 3-4 with a 4.10 ERA (97 ERA+). He has 48 strikeouts and 20 walks in 48.1 innings across nine starts this season.

Blanco is just the latest in a long string of Astros pitchers who have lost a year or more after going under the knife. Righty Hayden Wesneski underwent Tommy John surgery last week while Luis Garcia and Cristian Javier are both still recovering from earlier Tommy John procedures.

Zack Wheeler does not like pitching in Sacramento

Phillies ace Zack Wheeler pitched last Friday night in Sacramento against the Athletics. Despite pitching fantastically – he shut the A's out into the seventh inning and got the win – he didn't much care for the mound in Sutter Health Park:

"The mound was terrible. That was really it. I felt great today and that's why I was frustrated, because I felt great and the mound was bad. It was like cement right in front of the rubber and if you did break it up, there were little bumps in it. It probably doesn't sound like a lot but when you're used to pitching on similar mounds throughout the league, just that little difference messes with you. Couldn't really get into the dirt to drive, was kinda throwing all arm tonight. It was a little different. I just had to make little adjustments out there as it went."

Major League Baseball and the Athletics put a lot of work into trying to make a minor league park into a major league one but, at some point, there were limits to how much they could do. I suspect that players have been encouraged to keep a lid on their complaints about it in the early going but I also suspect that we will hear more and more about how below-par life is in Sacramento as the season goes on.

Stadiums are the only thing we can build anymore

Binyamin Appelbaum dropping truth in the New York Times:

People who say that the United States can’t build anything anymore must not be sports fans. Barely a year goes by without the debut of a sparkling new stadium or arena, often in the very cities where it’s most difficult to build almost anything else . . . Because the system makes it hard to build anything other than luxury projects, cities are increasingly for rich people. And make no mistake: Stadiums are playgrounds for the wealthy, thinly disguised as public spaces . . . Our stadiums are monuments to the poverty of our civic ambitions and our inability to summon the collective will to use the land we have for the things we need. They are distractions from our inability to build anything else.

America: plenty of money for circuses, less for bread, and basically nothing for anything else.

The Pope will deliver a message at Rate Field

The Archdiocese of Chicago announced earlier this week that Pope Leo will deliver a “special video message to the young people of the world,” which will premier at Rate Field in Chicago, home of His Holinesses Chicago White Sox, on June 14. The message will be part of a full Catholic Mass, music, and film and in-person testimonials about Pope Leo, who was born on the South Side and is a lifelong White Sox fan.

The usual tenants of Rate Field will be playing in Texas that evening because God's light does not shine upon the White Sox and has not for a very, very long time.

This is a solid baseball question

Seen on Bluesky:

I followed that thread a bit and it seems that no one has done it, though nine people have done it at three of the four parks, two of whom – Paul Goldschmidt and Joc Pederson – are still active. Goldschmidt has not hit the fountains in Kansas City. Pederson has not hit the pool at Chase. The Yankees play in Kansas city June 10-12 and the Rangers play in Arizona from September 1 through September 3, so here's hoping.

Doug Gray, one of Cup of Coffee's many Cincinnati correspondents, told me on BlueSky that Adam Dunn homered into the Ohio River – out of Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati – the Chase Field pool, the Kansas City fountain, and McCovey Cove. He did not homer into the Allegheny River in Pittsburgh, however. Absent a bold move by Ben Cherington this summer, he's not going to get a chance to do it, unfortunately.

Happy Birthday to Baseball's Antitrust Exemption

On this date in 1922 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “the business of giving exhibitions of base ball” did not take place in interstate commerce and that Major League Baseball was therefore not subject to either antitrust laws or interstate commerce regulation. The opinion, Federal Baseball Club v. National League, 259 US 200 (1922), was the culmination of a lawsuit which had been brought by the Federal League’s Baltimore franchise which, unlike the other franchises of that upstart league, did not fold or get absorbed into the National or American Leagues and blamed the NL and AL’s anticompetitive tactics as the reason.

While there are far worse Supreme Court decisions on record – unlike some Supreme Court decisions, no one died, was enslaved, or suffered the deprivation of basic human rights or the infliction of indignities, relatively speaking, due to this case – it does stand as one of the worst-reasoned high court decisions ever. Mostly because it’s obvious that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes really, really just wanted the baseball owners to win, logic and the law be damned. In this he was a lot like our current conservative Court majority today, one of whom — Alito, natch — once gave a full-throated defense of the Federal Baseball decision, which underscores his status as The Most Wrong Man in America.

Back in 2019 I wrote a full breakdown of the case, the subsequent history of baseball’s antitrust exemption, and its implications. I also explained why Justice Alito is full of shit about it separate and apart from his being full of shit about everything else, basically all the time. I think the piece still holds up. If nothing else it’s a good article to send to someone who asks you why baseball teams can carve up geographic territories and keep owners from selling their teams to people Rob Manfred and the other owners don’t like.

Other Stuff

The political press will not save us

The baseball press used to have a pretty ugly habit in which it would treat a ballplayer who did not want to talk to the media as if they had committed a capital offense. Really, you'd sometimes get two-to-three day stretches of columns from guys in New York or Boston going after players for not giving comments. Their teammates could go a collective 0-for-57 but, ultimately, a stretch of bad team play would be laid at the feet of some outfielder or shortstop who, per the beat writers and local columnists, was the real cause of team strife for refusing to "face the music" or whatever the hell.

Happily that dynamic has mostly left sportswriting these days. But it's still alive and well in political coverage. Just ask the folks at Politco, who rate Donald Trump as the superior president to Joe Biden because he talks to them more than Biden did:

THE SOUND OF SILENCE: By lunchtime today it will have been 48 hours since Donald Trump stepped in front of a TV camera for a speech or Q&A — the first time that’s happened (outside of the weekends) since he returned to the White House on Jan. 20. Whatever your politics, that’s a remarkable record of public availability, especially when compared to his famously sheltered predecessor. And look how that turned out.

By the numbers: A quick trawl through the archives suggests Trump 2.0 has done media on 111 of his 138 days back in office — an 80 percent hit rate that includes weekends and must put him on course to being just about the most-accessible president in modern history. And aside from the lamentable attempt to ban AP, he’s basically taken questions from all-comers. It’s impressive stuff.

And it matters: In case anyone still needs this hammering home for them, the Joe Biden experience shows just how important it is that leaders are held up to regular scrutiny. Trump’s answers may sometimes be rambling, erratic — or even downright unpleasant — but every American voter can see where he’s at.

Sure, Donald Trump may be destroying the 80 year-old post-World War II Order, gutting governmental capacity, crashing the economy, throwing people into foreign gulags, illegally steering public contracts to his friends and allies, accepting bribes, extorting businesses and institutions, and blatantly stealing public funds in order to enrich himself and his family, but at least he gives rambling, incoherent, and lie-filled press conferences on the regular, so he's clearly the better chief executive. "Impressive stuff" indeed, Politico!

Quote of the Day:

Here's Education Secretary Linda McMahon, explaining to the public her understanding of academic freedom:

"Universities should continue to be able to do research as long as they're abiding by the laws and in sync, I think, with the administration and what the administration is trying to accomplish."

Which means that, in the space of a week, we've had one cabinet secretary define Habeas Corpus as "the president can do whatever he wants to do with no oversight whatsoever" and a second cabinet secretary say that freedom of speech and expression are only allowed if it aligns with the president's political positions.

The kicker here: because of the corruption of the country's media and information ecosystem by the straight up propaganda of Fox News and other right wing outlets, and the abject fear of the more mainstream press of being seen as adversarial to the Trump Regime, a solid majority of Americans – perhaps a supermajority of Americans – have no idea about this and likely would not believe you even if you accurately told them about it.

Anyway: the years 2021-2024 were rife with putatively serious columnists and commentators claiming, with a straight face, that the biggest threat to free expression were college students and lefties in activism and media circles that no one has ever heard of. Now that the actual president and all of his cabinet members are explicitly and punitively enforcing conformity of speech and thought, however? Crickets.

Harrison Ruffin Tyler: 1928-2025

Harrison Ruffin Tyler died this past Sunday at the age of 96. If you knew who he was it was either because you went to The College of William and Mary, where there were buildings and departments named after him, or, more likely because of who his grandfather was. His grandfather was John Tyler, the tenth president of the United States, who was born in 1790 and became president when William Henry Harrison died in 1841. Yes, until four days ago, President Tyler still had a living grandson.

This was possible because the Tyler men had kids very late in life for a couple of generations there. President Tyler had 15 children, one of whom was Lyon Gardiner Tyler, who was born in 1853 when the former president was 63 years old. Lyon Gardiner Tyler, in turn, had two children with his second wife: Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr. in 1925 when Tyler Sr. was 72 and Harrison in 1928 when he was 75. Tyler Sr. died in 1935 at age 81. Tyler Jr. died in 2020 at age 95. Harrison passed on Sunday, 235 years after his presidential grandfather was born, 180 years after he left office, and 163 years after he died.

All of the John Tyler stuff is fascinating, but I think it's equally wild that, until this past Sunday, there was still a guy alive whose dad remembered the Civil War. And, for that matter, it's pretty wild that there was a living Civil War widow alive until late 2020.

And finally . . .

I was unaware that a person could get a postgraduate degree in LGBTQ. Maybe I've misinterpreted what people meant when they told me about how they experimented in college? Regardless, it sounds like WAY more fun than the stupid law degree I got. Missed opportunities, man.

Have a great day everyone.