Cup of Coffee: October 8, 2026

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

There were four games yesterday. It was the last time there will be more than two games that actually count on the same day until next March. And given the labor situation even next March is not a given.

Best part: three of those games ended up eliminating someone. I love decisiveness. It's a trait I, personally, lack of course. But, like athletic feats, I love to witnesses it in action.

And That Happened

Guardians 9, White Sox 3: I think it was Oscar Wilde who wrote, "To give up an RBI triple, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to give up two RBI triples looks like carelessness." I dunno. It's been a minute since I read any Wilde so I may be mucking that up. But Jo Adell did hit a bases-loaded triple in the third to turn a 1-1 game into a 4-1 game and José Ramírez did hit a two-run triple in the eighth to make a 5-3 game into a 7-3 game. Ramírez scored a couple of runs too, one of which came on a nice sequence in the fifth inning in which he doubled, stole third, and then rushed home on contact on a Chase DeLauter groundout, beating the throw home for a fielder's choice that was a lot more exciting than your typical fielder's choice. I think I'm partial to Chicago in this series because they're a better story, but Ramírez is one of my favorite players in the game today and it's nice to see him making stuff happen after several months of not being himself.

I wish it was nice to see the pitching here but there's nothing nice about a pitching change two outs into the damn game and 14 pitchers being used overall, only four of which went as many as two innings. I'm so tired of this spring training bullshit. This postseason has been absolutely rotten with it thus far.

Cleveland staves off elimination for at least one more day. Game Four from Chicago is at 8PM this evening.

Dodgers 4, Atlanta 1: The Dodgers become the first team to advance to a League Championship Series and Atlanta becomes the first team eliminated in the Division Series. It's Los Angeles' third straight NLCS, their quest for a three-peat still intact.

This was a rare 2026 postseason game in which both starting pitchers worked into the fifth inning. I didn't think that was even legal anymore. One thing that remained consistent, however, were most of the Atlanta bats failing to show up. Michael Harris II had two hits and Ozzie Albies had one and that was it. Everyone else took an 0-fer. And it's not like Tyler Glasnow was locked in or anything, as he walked five guys in four and two-thirds. But other than Harris scoring on a wild pitch in the first inning the Barves hitters were wholly incompetent. That was a big letdown for Tyler Mahle, who pitched into the seventh, allowing only two runs – one earned – on three hits, but when there's no support there's no support.

Andy Pages had a two-run single. Max Muncy homered in the ninth for some insurance. Edwin Díaz closed it out 1-2-3 in the ninth. About 30 seconds before the Muncy homer The Athletic pushed a new story into my inbox about how Ronald Acuña Jr. has become the first MLB player to partner with/shill for Kalshi. As if Atlanta's vibes weren't rancid enough already.

Enjoy the offseason, Barves.

Rays 4, Yankees 3: Enjoy the offseason Yankees, too, as the Rays sweep their butts into their Cancún getaways. On paper it was a close series – the three games were decided by a total of five runs – but it never felt that way. The Yankees just never felt like they were in it on some level. I suppose quiet bats and bad defense cast that kind of pall.

Ryan Vilade hit a solo home run and Victor Mesa Jr.'s two-run homer in the sixth broke a 2-2 tie. Then, in the bottom of the sixth it appeared, at least for a moment, that Anthony Volpe had tied it up with a two-run homer but . . . nah.

Volpe hit a deep drive to left field that was initially ruled a home run but after a lengthy video review the call was overturned and it was ruled fan interference. Mostly because it was crazily obvious fan interference with the dude in question reaching way over the wall to pull in a ball that was likely to be caught by Mesa or, at the most, rattle off the wall for a double:

Review got that call right, Volpe was instead awarded an RBI double, and that merely cut the Rays' lead to 4-3. New York fans threw shit on the field when the call came down, which is bush league. The fan who grabbed the ball was booted out of the stadium, as he should have been. The Yankees now go home, as most of us probably felt they would at the conclusion of this series.

Brewers 3, Padres 1: I'd like to say I stayed up and watched this one but we are men and women of action. Lies do not become us. The best part of a Division Series ending, as this one has now ended, is that there are no more late-ass start times like this one.

Like the Yankees, the Padres only mustered three hits. One of them was a leadoff homer from Fernando Tatis Jr. in the third. The other two were singles in the first inning, one of which came on a bunt. They were no-hit for all three outs after the Tatis homer in the third and over the final six innings of their season. Just some inner-circle offensive futility befitting a team whose season is now over.

Milwaukee wasn't exactly the Al Simmons Philadelphia A's or anything, but Garrett Mitchell singled in a run in the third, tripled and scored the tie-breaking run in the fifth inning, and made a great catch to rob Manny Machado of what would've been a game-tying home run in the eighth. Sal Frelick, who had scored on that Mitchell single, added a sac fly.

Between the end of the regular season and the Wild Card round, the Padres had won 19 of 22 games before losing three of four to Milwaukee. Remember that the next time someone wants to sell you on momentum heading into October.

The Brewers, meanwhile, snapped their 12-game postseason road losing streak and have now reached the LCS for the fifth time. And, like last year and back in 2018, they'll have to go through the Dodgers if they want to make it to their first World Series since 1982.

The Daily Briefing

MLB plans to scrub their website of players' identities when the lockout starts

Back in December 2021, on the first day of the lockout, MLB and the clubs immediately scrubbed all player images and videos from their websites. All the archived game news and videos disappeared too and the players' faces disappeared from their bios. Manfred gave the players the old Nikolai Yezhov treatment!

That came as a surprise at the time, and when asked why in the hell it did that, MLB gave a really non-persuasive answer in which it claimed that labor law required that it do such a thing. I wasn't a labor lawyer myself but even I knew that was horseshit. Labor lawyers who weighed on it generally agreed, but MLB did it anyway.

We learned via Evan Drellich's report in The Athletic from last night that they're going to do it again. Except this time Manfred and the owners will underscore the legal lockout with a bunch more petty little performative things than they did in 2021. Among them:

• Scrubbing the websites and video archives like last time;
• Prohibiting teams from sending holiday cards to players and their families; and
• Allowing team personnel to attend player weddings but setting forth strict instructions of how they should conduct themselves if they go.

All of that and much, much more came down from Dan Halem, MLB’s second-in-command, in a confidential, 34-page memo to owners and high-ranking team executives last week. Guess it wasn't that confidential if Drellich got it, though.

There were some more substantive things in the memo as well such as how teams should handle injuries and players' health that were sustained before and after the lockout, whether teams can stop players from playing winter ball or overseas, and the like. Drellich's article has a pretty good rundown of it all.

As for why the league is doing this? The thin claim of it being a legal requirement notwithstanding, I suspect Manfred believes that the ol' Vanishing Commissar treatment will cause the absence of baseball to become immediately apparent which will, in turn, cause the fans to be annoyed in December rather than waiting until games get canceled months later. I think his assumption is that, the more the consequences of the strike are felt by the public, the more pressure the public will put on the players.

I think MLB is wrong about that. I think it's more likely that its ridiculous-looking, player-free websites will just remind people how, without players, there is no baseball. But no one ever consults me on such matters.

Trump to give Roger Clemens the Presidential Medal of Freedom

The Presidential Medal of Freedom, alongside the Congressional Gold Medal, is the highest honor a civilian can receive from the U.S. government. It was created to recognize people who have made "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, or cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."

Yesterday Donald Trump said he's going to give the Medal of Freedom to goddamn Roger Clemens of all people:

“We’re giving him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And, along with the Congressional Medal of Honor, it’s the highest award bestowed upon anyone. He’ll be in the Hall of Fame someday, but he deserves it. One of the greatest athletes, and maybe the greatest pitcher, of all time.”

A lot of professional athletes have gotten the Medal of Freedom. And, thanks to Trump, a lot of morally corrupt shit birds have gotten it too. Clemens checks both columns, so it was only a matter of time I suppose.

In other news, I find it interesting that both of the baseball players Donald Trump has advocated for this year – Clemens and Pete Rose, who he demanded be reinstated and for whom he has further demanded be put in the Hall of Fame – were involved in the exploitation of girls who were no older than 15 at the time. What a weird coincidence.

The Qualifying Offer for the 2026-27 offseason has been set

The qualifying offer for the upcoming offseason has been set. It's $23.15 million. Last year’s qualifying offer was $22.025 million, so this is a represents a $1.125 million 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 Competitive Balance 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.

Last year, 13 players received a qualifying offer and four accepted it: Trent Grisham, Gleyber Torres, Brandon Woodruff, and Shota Imanaga. This year's free agent class is a fairly thin one, and a couple of the biggest names like Tarik Skubal, Sonny Gray, Michael King, Imanga, Clay Holmes, Luis Arraez and several others are ineligible either due to being traded in 2026 or having received a QO previously. But it's a pretty good bet that Randy Arozarena, Seiya Suzuki, Brandon Lowe, Trevor Rogers, and maybe Jazz Chisholm Jr. will get them.

Of course it's unclear how the impending lockout and labor uncertainty might affect this. Maybe negotiations make it clear, internally, that the qualifying offer is going to go the way of the dodo in the next CBA. Maybe teams simply refuse to issue them for fear that they'll be accepted by players looking for certainty in an extremely uncertain market given the likely labor disruption. Hard to say. But if they are extended and accepted, they will be for $23.15 million.

Buy me some . . . well, just Cracker Jack

If you went to Yankee Stadium in the middle of the season and it felt like the vibes were off this, from Front Office Sports, might explain it:

Fans who attended a game at Yankee Stadium in August or September may have noticed peanuts were difficult to find. For weeks at the end of the summer, the classic ballpark snack was unavailable at most locations throughout the stadium.

“We had delays in receiving product toward the end of the summer,” a Yankees spokesperson told Front Office Sports. 

Legends Global—the food and hospitality company that services Yankee Stadium and is jointly owned by the Yankees, Jerry Jones, and private equity firm Sixth Street—called it a “temporary disruption” from Bazzini, the nut conglomerate, and told FOS it “supplemented with other brands of peanuts starting in late August” to make up for the shortage. 

The final line of the story: "Legends Global says Yankee Stadium will be fully stocked with Bazzini peanuts for the rest of the playoffs." Which, given what happened last night, was probably not too tall an order.

Kenny Albert's game prep

So, as you likely noticed, Fox broadcaster Kenny Albert filled in for Joe Davis on Tuesday night for the Los Angeles-Atlanta game due to Davis getting sick and losing his voice. What you may not have known is that if Fox had alerted Albert to the need for him to head down to Atlanta any later than they did he may have been unavailable too due to a . . . fluid situation.

The decision to sub-in Albert came on Monday night. He was alerted to it after he had already taken his first dose of prep for the colonoscopy he had scheduled for Tuesday morning:

Anybody who’s had a colonoscopy knows you have to take several doses of medicine to painfully clean out your bowels. But there was no decision for several hours. With Davis still uncertain, Albert went ahead and took his first dose around 9 p.m. But he also started prepping for the baseball game. That’s when the situation became fluid, pun intended.

Around midnight, Fox told Albert they wanted him in Atlanta just in case. He scrambled to get a flight at 6:30 in the morning from the New York area and cancelled the colonoscopy. Thankfully, Albert skipped his second dose around 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday. He hopped on a flight, flew in Tuesday morning, then called the Dodgers’ 3–1 win at Truist Park with color commentator John Smoltz and reporter Ken Rosenthal.

Good show everyone. But reschedule that colonoscopy, Kenny. It could save your life!

Other Stuff

The Best Sandwich Shop in America is, allegedly, in Columbus, Ohio

Someone alerted me to the fact that OG blogger Jason Kottke shared a video in which it is claimed that Wario's Beef and Pork of Columbus, Ohio is "The Best Sandwich shop in America." Here's the video, in which the reviewer, Rob Martinez, visits Wario's, talks to the owner, and gets the full experience:

I'm not sure what to think about this.

On the one hand I think Wario's is pretty great. I don't get it a lot because Allison has celiac disease and I tend not to get things she can't have when she's around, so Wario's is only a few-times-a-year thing for me. Usually an impulsive Door Dash when she's off on a solo trip or something. But everything I've had from there has been outstanding.

On the other hand, I can't say I've ever thought, while eating it, "this is from the best sandwich shop in America." Not because of any fault I've ever found in the product – honestly, Wario's is fantastic – but because the core ethos of Columbusites is that if we get a great thing here it's great because it comes reasonably close to a much better version of that thing in other, more notable cities.

Indeed, outside of college football, there isn't anything Columbus people ever claim to have the best version of. That may be wrong on the merits – self-deprecation and false modesty is a hallmark of Midwestern life – but being "almost as good as you can find in Chicago" or "pretty dang close to the one I had in New York" is the essence of Columbusness no matter what is being discussed. Now I feel like I gotta get Wario's again soon and see if I can step out of my terminal Columbusocity and accept the possibility of actual local greatness.

The star of this video, though, is not a sandwich. It's Wario's founder Stephan Madias who seems like the coolest person in town.

If you're in Columbus and you want to check out Wario's, there are two locations. The main spot is downtown, right next door to Nationwide Arena where the Blue Jackets play. The other one is up in Clintonville, on High Street, about three miles north of Ohio State's campus.

Gosh. I have no idea what to do with this feeling of . . . local pride this video inspires. It's a feeling that almost never comes up and it has me all flustered.

Caryn Rose on Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy in Detroit

My friend Caryn Rose is a music journalist. She lives in Detroit and she was at that the same Michael Shannon/Jason Narducy "Lifes Rich Pageant" show at the Majestic Theater I went to a week ago Saturday. She wrote up a review of that show for Salon which dropped yesterday.

It's worth your time on the merits, but I would like the record to reflect that I am the friend referenced here:

There was a palpable wave of holy sh*t, a sharp collective intake of breath, when “Fretless” began. (I told a friend, “I think I stopped breathing.”) The song was on that stellar example of movie soundtrack sequencing, Wim Wenders’ “Until the End of the World.” It remains one of R.E.M.’s strongest compositions, an entire sonic landscape that morphs instantly into a whole other world. That means it’s an ambitious choice. I did not stop to think, “This is one of my favorite songs and I’ve never heard them do it so please don’t fu*k it up.” They gave us reason to trust them almost instantly.

I'm still so stoked about having been able to see that song live, even if it wasn't the real R.E.M. performing it and even if I suspect that's where I caught that cold I had last week.

Get over it

From Washingtonian:

A DC attorney recently launched a podcast, Off the Top, that features engaging interviews with bald men. It’s worth a listen even if you’re not a member of the bare-headed club . . . Though the topic is baldness, Off the Top should appeal to anyone who feels self-conscious about aspects of their appearance—which is more or less everybody. For Moyer, the idea is mostly to feel better about his own hair loss. “I know logically it’s silly to think about this so much, but emotionally I don’t feel okay with it yet,” he says. “It’s been 20 years, so I’ve got to try to address this: ‘Let’s talk about it, let’s surface these issues. Do other people feel the same way?’ ”

As a bald man, I would love to go on this podcast if for no other reason than to tell the host of his thing that being emotionally bothered with going bald 20 damn years after the fact does not call for someone to start a podcast. It calls for someone to start therapy.

I'm sorry if that sounds insensitive, but I went bald in my 20s. Like, my early 20s. Photos of me kneeling at the damn alter during my first wedding in 1995, two weeks before my 22nd birthday, are how I realized I had a growing bare patch in the back. By the time I graduated law school in 1998 my hair was largely gone and I was doing full shave-overs by the time I was 28. I've not owned a comb or a brush since before my children were born. Genetics are a bitch.

I understand that it might be harder to date if you're bald, but there are a bunch of things about you that are gonna be dealbreakers for someone. That's life. You don't want to be with someone so superficial that being bald is a dealbreaker anyway. I think I have a lot going for me, but I'm no physical specimen by damn sight and I managed to attract a young, beautiful woman when I was a bald, divorced, 38 year-old with two kids, which isn't exactly the most stellar set of characteristics. You work with what ya got, and everyone's got a lot more than the hair on their head as long as they lean into their strengths and worry less about their weaknesses.

I try to be an empathetic guy but whenever I meet a fellow baldy who's all in their feelings about it I wanna go all Don Corleone-slapping-Johnny-Fontaine on 'em and tell them to act like a man. These are the cards we've been dealt and there are way, way worse cards that a man can be dealt. Suck it up, buttercup.

Maybe I should calm down and reach out to this guy and ask to go on his podcast. I'm subject-relevant, as I was living in D.C. when most of my hair fell out. Don't tell the guy I told him he needed to go to therapy, though. He may not have me on.

Have a great day everyone.