Cup of Coffee: October 16, 2025

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

The Jays got up off the mat and landed a haymaker last night. I missed half of it but, really, I didn't miss anything.

And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Blue Jays 13, Mariners 4: Last night I decided to skip watching this game – well, the first five or six innings of it anyway – to go see "One Battle After Another." Allison and I are Paul Thomas Anderson freaks and the movie has obviously gotten amazing word-of-mouth, but travel and illness and other crap had kept us from doing so before then, so off we went. I'm not gonna write a big review of it or anything, but needless to say the word-of-mouth was accurate, it was an amazing movie, and it should win a ton of awards. Also: Benicio del Toro's character needs is own spinoff movie.

The movie was certainly more entertaining than this slaughter appeared to be. It was 8-2 when I got home and it got to 12-2 before I could even pour my evening bourbon. It happens. And it certainly provided some major relief to the Blue Jays fans out there who have not been in a good place these past few days. Homers from George Springer, Vlad Guerrero Jr., Alejandro Kirk, Andrés Giménez, and Addison Barger led the way, Shane Bieber was solid as hell for six innings, and the Mariners weren't in it at all after the third inning. They'll dust themselves off and try to do better tonight.

The Daily Briefing

The Qualifying Offer for the 2025-26 offseason has been set

Major League Baseball has set the qualifying offer for this offseason: $22.025 million. Last year’s qualifying offer was $21.05 million, so this is a represents a $975,000 bump.

The qualifying offer, as most of you know . . .

• Is a one-year contract equal to the average of the top 125 salaries in baseball. It is offered, at a club’s discretion, to players on the previous season’s roster who became free agents after the season;
• If the free agent accepts he’s on a one-year deal with his old team at that amount. If he declines and signs elsewhere his old team gets a compensation pick after either the third or fourth round, depending on whether or not the club in question had a payroll above the CBT threshold last year; and
• Free agents who received qualifying offers in a prior year cannot be subjected to a qualifying offer again. Players who were traded from one team to another in the previous season are likewise not subject to qualifying offers.

Teams have until five days after the conclusion of the World Series to decide whether to issue the qualifying offer to any of their free agents. Players who are extended a qualifying offer have 15 days to decide whether to accept the one-year deal or decline it. They are free to speak with all 30 teams during that 15-day period so they're not betting blindly.

As far as this offseason's free agents, Alex Bregman, Pete Alonso and Cody Bellinger have all previously been given a qualifying offer so they cannot be hit with that again, making them somewhat more marketable to other teams. The same goes for Eugenio Suárez, Josh Naylor, Merrill Kelly and Ha-Seong Kim, assuming he opts out of his contract with Atlanta, as all of them switched teams mid-season.

Last offseason, teams issued qualifying offers to 13 players, one of whom – Nick Martinez of the Reds – accepted. This winter it's likely that qualifying offers will be extended to Kyle Tucker by the Cubs, Bo Bichette by the Jays, Framber Valdez by the Astros, Dylan Cease by the Padres, and Kyle Schwarber and Ranger Suárez of the Phillies. There's a very good chance that Brandon Woodruff, Edwin Díaz, Zac Gallen, and Trent Grisham will get one too. There are a lot of guys with team or player option decisions who could, in the event options are declined, be subjected to the qualifying offer as well.

Anthony Volpe had shoulder surgery

As we noted last month, Anthony Volpe spent much of the 2025 season playing through a partially torn left labrum. Why the Yankees ran a guy with a bum shoulder out there for 153 games, never once placing him on the injured list, I'll never know, but that's what they did and they got bad results from it.

We learned yesterday that Volpe had surgery earlier this week. There's no word on whether or not the procedure will affect his recovery time or preparation for next season, but one presumes that they held off on the surgery because doing so in the offseason would lead to the least possible amount of missed time. As if having Volpe out of the lineup would've harm the Yankees somehow this season.

Not that I want to pile on Volpe too much, as I'm far more taken with how badly the Yankees have handled him. They built their roster in such a way that he was deemed basically essential, which put a ton of pressure on him, and then they ran him out there injured every goddamn day for nearly five months. Seems like a bad way to handle things. It's like they set him up to fail.

Austin Hedges re-signs with Cleveland

Catcher Austin Hedges re-signed with the Guardians, agreeing to a one-year contract worth $4 million yesterday. It's the same base salary he had this past season. He can earn $500,000 in performance bonuses for starts, getting $125,000 each for 70, 75, 80, and 85 starts. He hasn't appeared in even 70 games since 2023, however, so that may all be hypothetical.

Hedges, 33, was set to become a free agent in a couple of weeks but anyone who pays any attention to the Guardians could've guessed that he was coming back. They love him, he loves them, and when teams find a reliable backup catcher with whom they're comfortable and who doesn't have ambitions to be the top guy someplace else they almost always try to hold on to him.

Hedges can't hit – indeed, he's been the worst offensive performer in all of baseball for most of his career – but he has a superior defensive reputation and pitchers and coaching staffs love him, so there you are. Figure the rest of the time he spends as a player is really just a training period for his inevitable managing career.

The Pope talks trash

The Pope – the Bishop of Rome, the Vicar of Christ, the Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, the Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, the Primate of Italy, the Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, the Sovereign of the State of Vatican City, and Servant of the Servants of God. – is a White Sox fan.

What's more, he's a White Sox fan who has no problem talking shit about the Cubs even from the back of the Popemobile:

While the Catholic Church still thinks I'm a member based on the paperwork, I'm no longer Catholic in any real way and I seriously doubt anything will ever change that. But this guy is testing me, man. He's a humanitarian who is pissing all the right people off, sure, but I could really be down with a sports talk radio Pontiff. If he flies that "L" flag the Brewers fans were waving last week from the top of St. Peter's Basilica I may even go to mass next Sunday.

Other Stuff

"Pearl clutching"

After a day of watching the news, it appears that the official GOP response to those leaked Young Republican chats is “why is everyone making a big deal out of guys flinging racial slurs every three seconds while praising Hitler? Isn't there anything more important for you to complain about?" J.D. Vance, for example, is calling outrage over this blatant Nazism "pearl clutching."

Pretty telling. And it makes me wonder what J.D. Vance's group chat history holds.

Oh, look, something else to clutch our pearls about

An aide to Ohio Republican Congressman Dave Taylor was on a Zoom call yesterday standing in front of an American swastika flag on a bulletin board or a cubicle wall:

This took place in Taylor's office in the Cannon Building in Washington, D.C. Congressman Taylor, whose district covers an overwhelmingly rural area in southern Ohio, issued a statement:

“I am aware of an image that appears to depict a vile and deeply inappropriate symbol near an employee in my office. The content of that image does not reflect the values or standards of this office, my staff, or myself, and I condemn it in the strongest terms.”

Well, shit, Dave, it obviously reflects someone's values in that office or else they wouldn't have put it up, so maybe stop with Captain Renault baloney, OK?

Cannot wait for J.D. Vance to minimize this as "pearl clutching" later today. Or maybe he'll say it was a tribute to Episode 6 of this season of "Peacemaker."

Dudes be crazy

Business Insider has an article – headlined "The Plight of the Trophy Husbands" – about how divorce rates go up among heterosexual couples when the woman earns more money:

Divorce rates in heterosexual couples rise significantly when a woman is more professionally successful than the man, be that in terms of fame or, more commonly, money. Perhaps even more strikingly, studies also show that the marriages most likely to endure are those that most closely fit the traditional pattern of male breadwinner and female homemaker. A 2023 report from the Institute for Family Studies found that couples in which husbands earn more than their wives have the lowest chance of divorce, and that when a man earns upwards of $38,000-a-year more than his wife, the chances of divorce are lowest. The wider the traditional wage gap, it would seem, the stronger the marriage.

I'm guessing that the real problem is less the income inequality for its own sake – though the story's opening anecdote certainly demonstrates that that can be a thing – than it is men who earn less/work less not being willing to take up a greater share of household responsibilities while the woman is out earning the bread. Like, if she's a doctor or a law firm partner working a zillion hours a week and my dude man over here is unwilling to shuttle kids to after school activities or do housework or take care of the cooking or something, there's gonna be a problem. And the problem isn't that the woman brings in more money. It's because the guy is a sexist jerk who is too invested in historical gender roles.

Whatever. Men are idiots. I've never been in that position, but I assure you, I'd be the best trophy husband ever. If Allison and my incomes were reversed she could give me an allowance and everything and I'd just smile and smile and smile.

Kevin Tighe

As mentioned above, I skipped the first five innings or so of the ALCS to go see "One Battle After Another." I'm not gonna go into it at length here, but I did want to (a) share this wonderful article about the cars used in the movie (warning: spoilers); and to (b) say how happy I was to see the actor Kevin Tighe show up for a scene midway through the film.

You may not know Tighe by name, but like so many great character actors, you know who he is just by his face. He most famously played DeSoto in the 1970s TV series "Emergency!" but from the 1980s-on he has been a reliable bad guy in movies such as "Roadhouse," "Another 48 Hours," "Eight Men Out" and others.

Tighe's post-"Emergency" career renaissance began with John Sayles' "Matewan," where he played a union busting private detective during the West Virginia mine wars of the 1920s. I've talked about "Matewan" in this space before. It's a movie that is very near and dear to my heart, and easily makes my top-5 of all time. That's partially because of the story of union coal miners, which I became deeply interested in as a kid growing up in West Virginia and which had a profound influence on my politics. It's also because they filmed "Matewan" very near to where I lived, which has allowed me to spend all kinds of time on the still-in-existence real-life sets of the film over the years. A lot of people from Beckley have stories about when that movie was filmed, and I have massive goodwill toward anyone and anything connected to it.

Tighe's appearance in "One Battle After Another" was a surprise because the 81-year old actor has been dealing with Parkinson's disease and some associated cognitive dysfunction for several years and had thus not been working. Paul Thomas Anderson wanted him for the role, however, so here he is, still offering his menacing gravitas, even if he only has a couple of lines.

Scott Tobias of The Reveal recently interviewed Tighe, talking about how he ended up in this film and about the larger arc of his career. A great deal of time is spent on how Tighe, with the help and accommodations of the "One Battle After Another" crew, worked through his symptoms to turn in his performance. It's touching stuff. Enough to even make me a little misty in the way I've tended to become in recent years whenever I read about people doing whatever they can to overcome obstacles to do work that they value. Even if it's small stuff like showing up in a part in a movie that they were born to play.

America’s Favorite Apple is "a Farmer’s Nightmare"

The Wall Street Journal has an article about the popularity of the Honeycrisp apple, and how farmers have a severe love-hate relationship with the immensely popular variety.

Honeycrisps, for those unaware, are a pretty new thing. The variety was genetically developed by University of Minnesota scientists in the 1970s, were only first planted in the late 1980s, did not come to market until 1991, and only hit grocery store shelves in 1997. But they have completely upended the market as apple eaters instantly gravitated to its combination of sweetness and tartness and its firm and satisfyingly crunchy texture.

Farmers love one aspect of the Honeycrisp: the price. They are more expensive than most other apple varieties – two and three times more expensive than old standbys like Galas and Red Delicious apples – and consumers have shown a great willingness to absorb that cost. The problem is that they are super fussy, hard to grow, hard to pick, and are more susceptible to blight and disease. It makes their cultivation and distribution something of a pain in the ass. As a result, fruit breeders have been trying for years to create applies that are crisp and flavorful like the Honeycrisp but which are easier to grow. You may have seen some of these at your stores already. Stuff like Cosmic Crisp and Suncrisp and the like.

I'm an apple eater and, folks, I love me some Honeycrisps. I got spoiled to them when I lived out in New Albany, as there's a pick-your-own orchard just a couple of miles from where I lived that brought Honeycrisps online several years ago. Since the trees remain smaller and relatively immature compared to older varietals, Honeycrisp Day – usually a weekend, actually – was the only time you could go there and get them right off the tree. When the orchard set that date each summer I'd put it on my calendar and go out to the farm and grab a couple of giant, overflowing bags of giant, wonderful Honeycrisps, getting their bright-ass early to beat the rush. And there was always a rush.

I haven't gone and got them at the farm the past couple of years as living downtown makes it a longer drive and I haven't gotten my shit together to go, but I'm gonna try to make a point to next year. Instead I've been living on supermarket Honeycrisps which, while OK, aren't anywhere nearly as satisfying as the fresh ones. I mean, they still beat the crap out of Galas and Red Delicious – I'm totally spoiled and I won't eat that trash anymore – but there's something of a falloff.

So yes, it's me. I am part of the Honeycrisp problem. And I really don't give a shit. You can take my Honeycrisps from me when you pry them from my cold, dead, sticky hands.

Have a great day everyone