Cup of Coffee: December 23, 2021

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

And, once again, there’s still time for a last minute Christmas gift:

The last day or two before Christmas is always a slow time in the world of baseball, but with a lockout afoot, woof. In that department we have a free agent rumor that is weak even by most free agent rumors, a rash of KBO signings of guys most of whom you probably don’t remember, and an item about gambling addiction which you will shocked — shocked! — to learn began spiking in 2018 for some reason.

Baseball news may be slow, but Other Stuff never sleeps. As far as that goes there’s at least some potential good news as far as the Omicron variant goes, I have another excuse to talk about Buicks, we have a Dystopia update, I fell off the Zillow wagon again, and some random, early morning thoughts about sugary cereals inspired me to outline a “Mad Men” reboot that pretty much has to happen.

The Daily Briefing

Cubs, Carlos Correa have a “mutual interest”

Bruce Levine of 670 The Score in Chicago reports that “there remains mutual interest” between the Chicago Cubs and free agent shortstop Carlos Correa. Given that there is a lockout going on they’re basically Laura and Alec in “Brief Encounter” and thus cannot act on their feelings, but I pass it along anyway because we’re hurtin’ for baseball news.

I’m finding it hard to believe that the austerity-era Cubs would lay out the ten years and probably $300 million or more that Correa is likely seeking, but then again I didn’t expect them to shell out the $71 million they did to get Marcus Stroman before the lockout hit, so who knows?

Speaking of Stroman:

The Cubs can’t reach out to free agents but their players can. How divisive of him.

There were a mess of international signings

If you’re a marginal player — some dude who might be on the big league-Triple-A shuttle next year — you’re probably pretty antsy about the lockout. After all, for someone like you, roster space is always harder to come by and money is gonna be a lot more scarce pretty soon. You can’t deal with the uncertainty as easily as, say, Mookie Betts can, so you probably have a bigger incentive than usual to look to Asia. Or, if you’re already there, to stay there rather than try to return to the U.S. It certainly does seem like we’ve had more signings in Japan and Korea than usual this offseason, and I suspect that’s why.

A bunch more hit yesterday:

• Shin-Soo Choo has re-signed on a one-year, $2.3 million contract with the SSG Landers of the Korea Baseball Organization. There were some rumblings that Choo was interested in returning to the majors earlier this offseason but he’s 39, he recently underwent elbow surgery, and it’s not likely that there’d be too much interest in him even if there wasn’t a lockout. Last year he appeared in 136 games for the Landers, hitting .263/.409/.450 with 21 homers and 25 stolen bases;

• Pitcher Drew Rucinski re-signed a one-year, $1.9 million contact with the NC Dinos in the KBO. He’s been there for a couple of years now, having last pitched in the bigs in 2018, but he’s done well and might’ve had an eye toward returning to the States had there not been a lockout;

• Outfielder Nick Martini signed a one-year, $440,000 contract with the KBO’s NC Dinos. Martini is 31 and appeared in only 25 games at the major-league level with the Cubs last year. He did hit a decent .267/.387/.444 with 11 homers across 323 plate appearances with Triple-A Iowa, though, so he might make some noise in Korea;

• Righty Glenn Sparkman signed a one-year deal with the KBO’s Lotte Giants. He briefly pitched for the Twins’ Triple-A club in St. Paul before signing with the Orix Buffaloes in Japan last season, where he posted a 6.88 ERA in 17 innings. He made 52 appearances, 36 as a starter, with the Blue Jays and Royals from 2017 to 2020;

• Wes Parsons, who used to pitch in the Atlanta and Colorado systems, re-signed on a one-year, $550,000 deal with the NC Dinos of the KBO. Last year he posted a 3.72 ERA in 133 innings for the Dinos;

• Nick Kingham re-signed on a one-year, $700,000 contract with the Hanwha Eagles of the KBO. He debuted in Korea last year and posted a 3.19 ERA over 144 innings;

• Pitcher Ryan Carpenter re-signed on a one-year, $750,000 deal with the KBO’s Hanwha Eagles. Last year he posted a 3.97 ERA over 170 innings;

• Former top Red Sox prospect Casey Kelly re-signed on a one-year, $1.2 million contract with the LG Twins, for whom he posted a 3.15 ERA in 177 innings last season. This will be Kelly’s fourth season in Korea. He’s somehow 32 now; and

• Aaron Wilkerson has signed with the Hanshin Tigers in Japan. He was with the Dodgers organization last season where he put up a 3.86 ERA in 112 innings at Triple-A Oklahoma City. He last appeared in the majors with the Brewers back in 2019.

Good luck, fellas. Don’t forget to write.

Gambling addiction has risen since 2018? Shocker.

There’s a story in this morning’s Los Angeles Times — seems to only be in the print/electronic edition so far, not on the web, so I don’t have a link for you — about how gambling addiction is on the rise. You will be absolutely shocked to know when it began to spike:

Hmm, what happened in 2018, I wonder?

Not an accident, I’m sure.

What’s more, given that every single story you read from sports business outlets about how the gambling and sports industries are looking to implement and expand gambling describes products and strategies that essentially depend on habitual and addictive behavior in order to be profitable, this is only going to get worse.

Other Stuff

And now for some good news

I don’t usually share good news because I’m just not wired to be a good news-giving kind of guy, but I feel like this is fairly important:

There has been no shortage of bad faith misinformation injected into the system by horrible people for the past two years. As a result, it’s super risky to make observations or characterizations which downplay COVID in even the mildest of ways lest people misuse those characterizations to claim that caution and vaccinations are unnecessary and that there is no danger afoot. That said, there are at lot of things, like this story for example, to suggest that as time goes on COVID will, increasingly, impact society in the way more common diseases like flus and things do as opposed to it being a mass killer and crippler of human activity.

We’re not there yet, but with spikes receding more quickly, deaths not coming close to tracking spikes like they once did, and promising COVID treatments coming online, I suspect we will eventually find ourselves in a place where we just go get our annual boosters like we do with the flu and, mostly, live with COVID. Like, actually live with COVID in a practical and prudent way as opposed to the rhetorical “we just have to learn to live with it” way that deniers and antivaxers and their ilk insisted upon a year ago and before.

Buick News

I returned that Buick I borrowed from a friend last week so, sadly, my near-luxury cruising days are over for the time being. But I can still look, right? Specifically, I can look at things like the last Buick Grand National — think souped-up Regal — ever built, which is going up for auction.

It’s a 1987 number, it only has 33 miles on the odometer, and it’s drop-dead gorgeous:

Yes, I realize I’m a Subaru driver and that fact quite validly implies a whole bunch of things about me which suggests that cars like this are not my thing. But I was born in Flint, Michigan, people, so at least part of me is hard-wired to like stuff like this.

I’m also hard-wired to wonder what in the hell Buick was thinking replacing that beautiful thing with this horrible grandma car for the 1988 model year:

“Let’s take away all of the cool angles and aggressive styling and soften it up, shall we? Let’s make sure no one will think they are cool driving this car. Also: triple the order for ‘sad 1980s GM light blue’ because we’re gonna put that on EVERY DAMN CHEVY AND BUICK WE MAKE FOR THE NEXT DECADE.”

Gonna call it now: that’s officially when America ended. It’s been all downhill from there.

Anyway: someone buy me that Grand National. I’ll, I dunno, give you a free subscription for six months maybe. And, of course, I’ll send you videos of me driving in it with no shirt on while wearing a mullet wig while cranking Foreigner’s “Hot Blooded” as God and Nature intended.

Dystopia Update

I’m struggling to think of a restaurant concept that is less appealing than this but I’m coming up empty:

Personally, I drink to escape the misery of modern capitalism, but if you’re into this, hey, good for you.

Seen on Zillow

The least interesting thing about this property on the coast just south of Santa Barbara, California is that it costs $160 million dollars. The most interesting thing is that to buy it requires imagining that it’s not gonna literally fall into the sea at some point in the not terribly distant future:

Me to seller: “I’ll give you $159,750,000 for it.”

Seller [confused]: “Why should I discount it by that particular amount?”

Me: “Because by next summer I’m pretty sure this patio area is gonna fall down into the remnants of the last patio area you can see on the beach below it.”

Seller: “Done.”

The next most interesting thing about this property is that, like a lot of stupidly expensive properties, it has a name: “The Sanctuary at Loon Point.” Which I can’t help but think describes both the land and home and anyone willing to bet over a hundred million dollars that their enjoyment of it will outlast the climate apocalypse which will inevitably put it underwater.

Sugar Pops

Yesterday’s item about cereal caused me to randomly remember something fun: when I was a kid, there were all kinds of cereals with “sugar” right in the name. Corn Pops used to be “Sugar Pops” and then “Sugar Corn Pops” before getting their current name. Honey Smacks were “Sugar Smacks.” Golden Crisp was “Sugar Crisp” and “Super Sugar Crisp” — can’t remember which order that was — and the mascot was “Sugar Bear.” Frosted Flakes were “Sugar Frosted Flakes.” There was also “Sugar Chex” but I'm not sure which Chex now that is. There are a LOT of varieties of Chex these days.

Obviously that kind of branding had to go as the basically lawless 1970s made way for the at-least-we’ll-pretend-to-care-about-our-health 1980s, but as a devotee of “Mad Men” I can’t help but imagine how that change all went down in real time. And that can’t help but make me imagine that show coming back to tackle the issues and trends of later eras.

I’ve tweeted about this before, but I've long thought that when the “Mad Men” cast ages enough they should resume "Mad Men,” start it in the late 1970s, and have it run into the 1980s, because there was so much INSANE advertising crap happening then.

In my mind, a middle-aged Peggy is the head of creative while Don is a graying eminence who has been marginalized in a lot of ways but is still around dropping some genius ideas from time to time. Through the two of them you can tackle all manner of societal/generational stuff — they HATE the young Boomers who are on the rise — have them handle debacles like New Coke, the Apple “1984” ad and all manner of other stuff. The “sugar” cereals thing would be their Lucky Strike arc in which they try to figure out how to keep selling bad-for-you crap in an aerobics/health-conscious era.

I’d write a spec script, but since I’ve screwed up every stab I’ve ever taken at dialogue pretty badly I’ll just stick to the thematic stuff. At some point in the run, though, I WILL need an episode set in 1985 in which the younger people in the office convince a 60-something year-old Don to try cocaine. He doesn’t care for it, but it does inspire him to create a new campaign for McDonald’s that combines his coked-out state with his longing for the simpler, classier aesthetic of his younger days:

Gold, I tell you. PURE GOLD.

Have a great day, everyone.