Cup of Coffee: August 1, 2024

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

And away we go . . .

And That Happened 

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Royals 10, White Sox 3: Freddy Fermin had four hits including a two-run homer, Vinnie Pasquantino added a two-run shot and finished with three RBI, and Sal Perez had three hits and drove in two as the Royals romped to the three-game sweep. That’s 17 straight losses for the White Sox. After the game Pedro Grifol said “We're in the middle of it now. We're in the fricking eye of the storm here.” I do hope someone in the room told him that the eye is the calm part and that things get much worse after it passes over you.

It’s also worth noting that Bobby Witt Jr. finished July with 44 hits and a .489 batting average. The last MLB player with at least that many hits and that high of a batting average in a calendar month was Lou Gehrig in June 1930. Yes, a great month for Witt. But while I don’t wanna take anything away from him, it’s sorta unfair to compare what he did to what Gehrig did because, based on what was going on in the news and the whole vibe of it all, I am pretty sure that July 2024 lasted 247 days.

Atlanta 6, Brewers 2: Matt Olson and Travis d'Arnaud went back-to-back twice, once in the fourth inning, once in the eighth. Austin Riley’s two-run single accounted for the rest of the scoring. They take two of three from the Brewers, have won four of five overall, and stand 6.5 games behind Phillies. They were 10 back on July 5.

Marlins 6, Rays 2: Jake Burger and Jonah Bride homered and Xavier Edwards drove in three runs. And then after the win the Marlins players introduced themselves to one another, what with half the damn roster turning over this past week. A two-game split.

Yankees 6, Phillies 5: D.J. LeMahieu was a one-man gang, hitting a grand slam in the second and knocking in two more with a sixth inning double. Nestor Cortes wasn’t great but he got the win. The Yankees have won five in a row. The Phillies have dropped four in a row and six of their last seven.

Orioles 10, Blue Jays 4: Jackson Holliday got called back up to the majors and hit a fifth-inning grand slam in his first game back. And it was his first career home run to boot. Colton Cowser also went deep for the Orioles. Bad news: All-Star third baseman Jordan Westburg suffered a broken hand after he was hit by a pitch. More on that down in The Daily Briefing.

Twins 8, Mets 3: The Twins were outscored 17-2 in the first two games of the series but every day is a new day in baseball. Here Matt Wallner and Byron Buxton hit dingers and Pablo López pitched six innings of three-hit ball as the Twins avoided a three-game sweep.

Cardinals 10, Rangers 1: Tommy Pham continues to enjoy his return to St. Louis. Here he notched three hits and drove in two. Brendan Donovan drove in three and Michael Siani and Alec Burleson each knocked in a couple on a day when the Cards rattled out 14 hits.

Diamondbacks 5, Nationals 4: Zac Gallen allowed one run over six as the Dbacks sweep the series. It was their fifth straight series win. The Nationals have lost four straight and seven of nine.

Red Sox 3, Mariners 2: This one started fun as George Kirby, who is not a knuckleballer, opened up the game with a knuckleball, almost certainly as a tribute to the late Tim Wakefield. Nice touch, man. This one was 2-2 by the sixth and stayed that way until the bottom of the tenth when Rafael Devers hit a leadoff double which scored the Manfred Man for the walkoff.

Cubs 13, Reds 4: The Cubs pounded Cincinnati with a 17-hit attack. Nine of those hits were doubles. One was a two-run homer from Ian Happ. Seiya Suzuki knocked in three runs, Happ, Cody Bellinger, Patrick Wisdom, and Pete Crow-Armstrong each drove in two. Chicago avoids a three-game sweep.

Astros 5, Pirates 4: Pittsburgh took a 4-0 lead in the second but Framber Valdez settled down, struck out 10 batters in six innings, and the Pirates wouldn’t score another run. Houston’s comeback began with runs scored on a wild pitch and a throwing error. Yanier Díaz’s RBI double in the third made it 4-3, and Mauricio Dubón’s two-run pinch-hit homer in the sixth put Houston up for good.

Padres 8, Dodgers 1: It wasn’t Clayton Kershaw’s night as the future Hall of Famer gave up seven runs — three earned — on six hits, didn’t strike out a single batter, and did not escape the fourth. Dylan Cease did not pull a Johnny Vander Meer but he was effective, going five and two-thirds and allowing one run on three hits. Jurickson Profar and Luis Campusano each knocked in a couple. San Diego takes both games from L.A. and stand just four and a half back.

Rockies 2, Angels 1: Kris Bryant hit an RBI single in the first and Brenton Doyle hit a tie-breaking homer in the eighth which made Kyle Freeland (7 IP, 6 H, 1 ER, 6K) the winner. Rockies snap a five-game losing streak.

Giants 1, Athletics 0: Logan Webb pitched a complete game shutout, allowing only five hits and needing only 106 pitches to get through it. Brett Wisley’s fifth inning sac fly was the game’s only offense. The game lasted only one hour and fifty-five minutes. A real Greg Maddux special.

The Daily Briefing

Jordan Westburg suffers a fractured hand 

As alluded to in the recaps, Orioles third baseman Jordan Westburg suffered a broken hand when he was hit by a pitch in Baltimore’s win over Toronto yesterday afternoon. Brandon Hyde said after the game that there is no immediate timetable for his return, but that he hopes Westburg will be able to return before the end of the regular season.

Westburg has been outstanding for the O’s this year. Entering play yesterday he was hitting .271/.317/.500 (132 OPS+) with 18 homers and 58 RBI while playing solid defense, primarily at third base but with a lot of work at the keystone as well.

The silver lining here is that Baltimore has pretty dang good infield depth in the organization, even after Tuesday’s trade of Connor Norby. Jackson Holliday was just called up and hit a grand slam yesterday. While he’s better served at second base, Ramón Urías can cover third and provide decent defense. There is also the possibility of calling up top prospect Coby Mayo, who has raked in the minors while primarily playing third.

The Astros DFA Rafael Montero

The Houston Astros designated reliever Rafael Montero for assignment. Montero has struggled mightily this season, posting a 4.70 ERA (86 ERA+) and an ugly 23/19 K/BB ratio over 38.1 innings in 41 appearances. And that’s making him look better than he’s been, given that he has a FIP of 6.19 at the moment. It’s also worth noting that he was pretty bad last year too, posting an ERA of 5.08 (84 ERA+) in 68 games, though with better peripherals.

The kicker here is that those two seasons were the first two years of a three-year $34. 5 million contract he signed following the 2022 season. Earlier this year the Astros similarly refused to succumb to the sunk cost fallacy with respect to José Abreu, who was DFA’d early in the second year of a three-year, $58.5 million contract.

So kudos to the Astros for understanding when to cut bait. Now if only they could figure out how to avoid making these kinds of signings in the first place.

Anonymous Yankees official trashes Jack Flaherty’s health

Here was Ken Rosenthal yesterday:

For what it’s worth, Rosenthal refers to a back issue Flaherty recently had that forced him to miss a start, though he quickly notes that since then Flaherty has made three starts, two against the Cleveland Guardians and one against the Toronto Blue Jays, producing a combined 1.53 ERA in 17 2/3 innings. The Dodgers, obviously, did not take issue with whatever it is the anonymous Yankees source Rosenthal spoke to was citing.

Given that teams are generally restricted from talking about players’ medicals, we can’t know for sure if Flaherty has health concerns or not. But there is a pretty long and rich tradition among teams who get a lot of press coverage — the east coast teams mostly, like the Yankees, Red Sox, and Mets — in which front office people anonymously trash player or managers or whoever as a means of deflecting heat. In this case I could totally see how it might work: A lot of people expected the Yankees to get a starter. They didn’t get one. The club wants to signal that it wasn’t their fault that they didn’t.

It’s my least favorite genre of baseball news story, and I don't think reporters should enable that kind of garbage if people won't put go on the record.

“Who Killed Tyler Skaggs?”

That’s the headline of Gus Garcia-Roberts’s Washington Post story which takes a long look at the death of Tyler Skaggs and the criminal conviction of former Angels employee Eric Kay.

Kay, as you no doubt know, is now serving a 22-year sentence on federal charges of drug conspiracy and distribution of a controlled substance resulting in death. A month or so ago I linked an article which suggested that Kay was done a disservice by his lawyer strongly urging him not to take a plea deal that, in hindsight — and let’s be honest, at the time as well — he should have taken. This new story goes deeper than that. Among other things, it suggests that Kay’s lawyer made a massive mistake in failing to introduce certain evidence which may have gotten Kay off the hook.

To be sure, the evidence would not have exonerated Kay in a larger, cosmic sense. Everyone agrees that Kay, a drug addict himself, supplied Skaggs and other Angels players with narcotics over a long period of time. Everyone likewise agrees that Kay supplied some of the drugs that were in Skaggs’ system at the time he died (Matt Harvey, testifying under immunity, admitted to giving him other drugs). There was a lot of gray area as to which drugs were the “but for” cause of Skaggs’ death, however, so the forensic evidence was not slam-dunk stuff. But there was also evidence that Kay’s attorney did not introduce which could very well have caused the jury to think about both Skaggs and Kay in a completely different light.

Specifically, there were text messages from Skaggs’ phone going back for several years which showed that his drug use long predated his relationship with Kay. What’s more, it included evidence that Skaggs was himself dealing drugs to friends and teammates when he was much younger. They also showed that Skaggs, as opposed to Kay, was the dominant person in their relationship.

This is significant to me as a trial lawyer because at trial, and in the P.R. campaign mounted by Rusty Hardin, the high-powered attorney hired by the Skaggs’ family in their civil case against the Angels, Kay was portrayed as someone who pushed drugs on Skaggs, who was portrayed as inexperienced in his drug use. When you have an innocent victim and you have a bad actor, it doesn’t take much for the jury to convict the bad actor, even if causation is a bit more fuzzy than prosecutors might like. But if you have a messier and more nuanced story to tell about the actors involved, it changes things pretty significantly.

Now, I want to be clear here: I am not suggesting that Kay’s attorney should’ve mounted some bald victim-blaming defense. But it’s absolutely the case that in a prosecution like that one, where there was a lot of gray area when it came to the forensic evidence, the story in which Kay was portrayed as the drug-addled corrupter of the young, innocent athlete proved to be a very powerful one. If that was not the actual dynamic — and it appears that it was not — it would’ve really helped Kay’s defense for the jury to know that. But they didn’t. Because the same lawyer who browbeat Kay into not taking a good plea deal did not introduce the text message evidence which could’ve changed the trial in important ways.

Kay’s lawyer says he has his reasons for not doing so. Notably, they were not evidentiary rules reasons. Nor do I think any evidence rules would come into play here given that the prosecution made “Eric Kay the corruptor” the center of its case, which opened the door for the defense to push back against that. Based on what the lawyer said, he likely didn’t put the texts into evidence because there were texts with Kay on that phone that didn’t make Kay look all that good and you don’t want to make your client look bad. But when your defense is “Tyler Skaggs killed Tyler Skaggs” — and that is exactly what the defense was, with that phrase being used — I don’t know how you don’t put on evidence that makes that seem more plausible.

Again, I don’t want to make Kay out to be some railroaded victim here. I’m not arguing that he did nothing wrong. He made tons of bad decisions for many years before and up to the time of Skaggs’ death. He enabled drug addicts. He lied to investigators the day Skaggs was found dead and continued to hide his own involvement in Skaggs’ death for a long time after. He also, infamously, disparaged Skaggs and his family while on a prison phone after his conviction and before his sentencing. He’s not a good guy and he’s not an innocent guy, broadly speaking and quite possibly legally speaking. I’m merely saying that it sounds like his lawyer could’ve done more to give him a better defense. One in which he very well might’ve created some reasonable doubt but failed to.

Other Stuff

Trump goes full racist

When Biden stepped down and Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, Republican leaders urged the party to avoid racist attacks against her. They had a closed-door meeting about it and then said as much to the press afterward. It was clear that they realized how badly it would play for their campaign to center on ugly bigotry. That was a big ask for a party which advocates for all manner of bigoted policies, pathologically denies the existence of the racist chapters in this country’s history, and which is home to a hardcore base of proud bigots on which it desperately relies. But if they were careful — if they stayed on-message and ran something approaching a disciplined campaign for just three months — they could’ve probably pulled it off.

Then yesterday Donald Trump went full Leeroy Jenkins and in doing so all of those plans went up in smoke.

Trump was in Chicago yesterday afternoon for an event at the National Association of Black Journalists conference, where he sat for a Q&A. Over the course of the proceedings Trump spewed some of the most racist stuff we’ve heard from him in a long damn time, even going so far as to deny and mock Harris’ identity as a biracial woman.

After sparring with the moderator about Republicans who have called Harris “a DEI hire” — Trump pretended not to know that “DEI” has become a Republican euphemism for the n-word — he was asked, “Do you believe that Vice President Kamala Harris is only on the ticket because she is a Black woman?” Trump:

The proceedings never got better for him and eventually he left to go to a rally in Pennsylvania where he told jokes about the man who was murdered by a bullet meant for him back on July 13. No, I’m not kidding.

Trump’s campaign tried to spin all of this as some trenchant commentary about “unity” or whatever — it made absolutely no sense — and then some Trump surrogates and fanboys leaned into it, bellowing about how, unlike Kamala Harris, they’re not confused as to their ethnic roots or posting photos of Harris’ birth certificate and pretending that since her father was listed as “Jamaican” on it rather than “Black” she somehow isn’t Black.

I also saw people on both the left and the right, in the hours afterward, acting as if this was all some conscious pivot by Trump, made in order to jolt the race and inspire his base. Several right wingers joined with the “Harris isn’t really Black!” nonsense. Some people on the left seemed to begin to enter some kind of doom loop in which they worried that all of this will, actually, help Trump because his base eats this racist shit up and they’ve sadly conditioned themselves to wallow in helpless loserdom.

I’m not gonna say what sort of effect this will have on the race because I don’t know any better than anyone else, but I’m pretty sure everyone is overthinking it. Trump did not execute some act of deft, premeditated jiu-jitsu here. He’s a sad old bigot whose brains are turning into mush before our eyes, he was being challenged by a Black woman moderator in a campaign against a Black woman, he resents both of those things on a primal level, he hates that he’s been slipping in the polls, and so he let fly with his racist id.

No need for thinkpieces. This isn’t 3D chess. He went on TV and said something that will probably damage him and his campaign pretty significantly and no amount of spin from the right or worry from the left will change that. The hardcore Trump cultists will run with it like it was some brilliant gambit, but a nakedly racist campaign does not have any legs at all, let alone three months worth of legs, even in a fallen country like this one.

Comment of the Day: Dehumanization and Atrocity

Subscriber Eric Martell had this to say yesterday in response to the newsletter item on the death of William Calley:

I don’t have any special insight myself into what causes military/police atrocities, but based on everything I’ve read about it it’s tied up in dehumanization and a siege mentality, often unjustified but instilled in them nonetheless.

And yes, it’s the same thing that happens on the political level. We’ve seen it over and over again throughout history. Everything about Trump campaign and modern Republicanism in general is operating by that playbook. It’s pretty goddamn terrifying and it’s why they must be stopped.

J.D. Vance just endorsed a book calling for the extrajudicial murder of political opponents  

Speaking of dehumanization, a book came out three weeks ago advocating for the extrajudicial execution and torture of political opponents of the Republican Party and right-wingers in general, which its authors refer to as "unhumans."

I am not making that up. It is not an exaggeration. Indeed, the book itself is titled Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them). It was written by Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec, who are two right-wing extremists who lean very, very hard into what can only be described as fascism and white supremacy. Nathan J. Robinson of Current Affairs read the whole thing and wrote a detailed breakdown of the book yesterday. The broad overview:

As Robinson notes, the book repeatedly and explicitly praises Spanish dictator Francisco Franco and Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who employed mass killings, torture and the systematic illegal detention of their political opponents in order to maintain power. Pinochet was notorious for throwing people to their deaths from helicopters, which is something the authors of Unhuman specifically praise because, hey, Chile didn’t have any communists, right, so whatever Pinochet was doing was fine.

But again: the book is not just looking back at history and saying “good job, fellas.” It’s a forward-looking manifesto advocating for American leaders to employ similar methods to crush what they view to be rising communist hordes of “unhumans” here, but which are clearly just Democrats, socialists, liberals, and other people who lean left. It’s absolutely chilling stuff from two men who are nothing short of psychopathic. For his part, Robinson says, “it is perhaps the most paranoid, hateful, and terrifying book I have ever picked up. (I say this as someone who has read Mein Kampf.)”

Why am I mentioning all of this? Because J.D. Vance provided an endorsement of the book. Blurbed the damn thing with his name right on the back cover. His exact words:

Again, this is not something Vance wrote years ago when he was young, dumb, and naive. The book came out three weeks ago. I’ve blurbed a lot of books and I know the lead time for that sort of thing, so it’s absolutely certain that Vance read and endorsed this book within the last six months or so.

The past week or so of calling J.D. Vance "weird" has been fun, but make no mistake: he's evil. I don't use that word lightly. One cannot write what he wrote about this book — a book advocating for widespread political violence, including murder, which Vance considers good instruction as to how “to fight back” — without being evil.

He should be asked about this constantly. He should answer for this. And he should, under no circumstances, be allowed anywhere near the levers of power.

On a lighter note . . .

I realize that was a lot of heavy stuff today, but there was a lot of humor to be found yesterday as well. For example: at the same event where Trump went full-racist, he was asked by Fox News host Harris Faulkner whether his running mate, J.D. Vance, would be "ready on Day One" to assume the presidency if needed. This was Trump’s answer to what should’ve been the simplest, softball yes/no question imaginable:

And then, as noted above, Trump essentially pivoted the entire campaign into demonizing biracial people like Vance's own children.

I'm sure Vance will stand up for himself soon, right? Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t anyone with an ounce of pride or self-respect?

Have a great day everyone.