Cup of Coffee: July 28, 2022

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

As subscribers know, I’m still in the UK. We fly back home tomorrow. I’ll talk some more about how the trip is going below but, for now, we continue our vacation edition of the newsletter, made possible by the fact that (a) I am five hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time; (b) I still wake up pretty early, even on vacation; and (c) my kids continue to not wake up early, giving me a good bit of time before breakfast in the morning in which I can fart around online before the vacationy part of the day begins.

Baseball in Brief

• Phillies 7, Atlanta 2

• Tigers 4, Padres 3

• Angels 4, Royals 0

• Brewers 10, Twins 4

• Rockies 6, White Sox 5

• Dodgers 7, Nationals 1

• Athletics 4, Astros 2

• Diamondbacks 5, Giants 3

• Mariners 4, Rangers 2

• Reds 5, Marlins 3

• Mets 3, Yankees 2

• Rays 6, Orioles 4

• Cardinals 6, Blue Jays 1

• Guardians 7, Red Sox 6

Yankees acquire Andrew Benintendi from the Royals

The Yankees may have gotten swept by the Mets but they ended the series with some good news by acquiring Andrew Benintendi from the Royals for pitchers Beck Way, Chandler Champlain, and T.J. Sikkema, all of whom I presume to be fictional. Even more fun: the Royals begin a four-game series against the Yankees in the Bronx tonight, so maybe there was an awkward plane ride for Benintendi as well.

Benintendi his hitting .320/.387/.398 this year and plays good corner outfield defense. His game — getting on base — is the polar opposite of Joey Gallo’s, who has been ineffective this year and who he is replacing in the Yankees lineup. Gallo will likely be dealt or released in the coming days.

Benintendi can become a free agent at the end of this season. Now that the qualifying offer is back, his being traded is good for him because guys who get traded mid-season cannot have a qualifying offer placed on them.

The only outstanding question now is whether Benintendi, who was one of many Royals placed on the restricted list when the team went to Toronto earlier this month, will actually get a vaccine now that he’s on the Blue Jays’ division rival. He said he will if he goes to a contender which, ok, whatever, but we’ll have to see. The Yankees play in Toronto again at the end of September. They could, of course, face the Blue Jays in the postseason.

Mike Trout has a rare back issue

Future Hall of Famer Mike Trout has not appeared in a game since July 12 and, given the sorts of updates we’ve been hearing about him, it hasn’t seemed like he’s progressed toward playing much at all. Now we know what’s going on: he's been diagnosed with a rare condition called costovertebral dysfunction at T5, which affects the muscles and connective tissues between the back and the ribcage. He’s getting a cortisone shot and they’ll take it from there.

It’s being reported that the condition could prove to be severely career-limiting, though Trout is downplaying that, saying that it is being blown out of proportion. "I'm appreciative of all the prayer requests, but my career is not over," he told the press yesterday. He says he still plans to play this season and that the comments of team trainers were less about the condition negatively affecting his future and more about how trainers and doctors will have to monitor it for the remainder of his career.

Trout, who turns 31 next month, is hitting .270/.368/.599 (168 OPS+) with 24 home runs in 79 games this season. He played in just 39 games last year, and 2020 was the pandemic year. He has not played in more than 140 games since 2016.

Vacation Update

For those who care about my vacation, I’ve been posting (mostly) daily photo dumps with captions, summaries, observations, rants, jokes, and things over at my Facebook page:

• Update 1 (London arrival)

• Update 2 (Tower of London, British Museum, Highgate Cemetery, Camden Town)

• Update 3 (Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, etc.)

• Update 4 (Manchester)

• Update 5 (my train nightmare trying, and failing, to get to Edinburgh); and

• The latest update, from last night, which most of you haven’t seen yet, of our unexpected day in London, which involved our timeless little hotel and a boat excursion to Greenwich.

Those of you who read the update about the train fiasco on Tuesday may recall that the central issue was Train Company One, Transpennine Express, cancelling our train, dumping us on Train Company Two, The Northern Railway, for a short trip to a town called Preston, where Train Company Three, Avanti, was supposed to get us to Edinburgh. Apparently every traveler in northern England was funneled into Preston as well, massive overcrowding, more cancellations, and ultimate chaos which threatened to turn violent ensued and we were forced to hop on a train back to London or risk being stranded in Preston due to yesterday’s rail workers strike making travel almost anywhere impossible.

After collecting myself in London on Tuesday night I began the process of trying to get refunds on my train tickets. I predicted, however, that it’d be a massive hassle because, due to the UK privatizing British Rail back in the 1990s, the whole system is now run by something like 28 different rail carriers here which, in addition to turning the service, generally speaking, into crap, makes it super easy for any of them to point the finger at any other companies and claiming it’s not their fault, it’s someone else’s.

Specifically, I predicted that (a) Transpennine Express, who I paid for my tickets in advance, would say “we put you on a train leaving Manchester, so you can’t get a refund, sorry”; (b) that the Northern Railway, who only took me from Manchester to Preston, would say “we did the one thing we were expected to do here, so look elsewhere”; and (c) Avanti, which is the company whose lack of trains and inability to handle the situation caused most of the problems would say “you didn’t pay us anything, so why should we compensate you?”

Guess what? Yesterday I got an email from Transpennine Express saying exactly what I suspected they’d say. “Sorry dude, you got on a train. Take it up with someone else!”

Initially I planned to wait to deal with this when I got home either via an appeal or by simply disputing the charge with my credit card company because I didn’t want to harsh my otherwise lovely vacation buzz. I’m a degenerate tweeter, however, so last night I tweeted, tagging Transpennine Express in a thread that ended thusly:

Not surprisingly, that got some attention:

This Mariel person then provided me with a different link than the usual refund request link I had used the other night. I have yet to hear back regarding whether they are changing their decision, but I suppose I’ll hear today. I am struck, of course, by the notion that if I didn’t bitch about this on Twitter with a well-followed verified Twitter account I’d still be getting nowhere. Hell, maybe I’ll still get nowhere, but it’s nonetheless a hell of a thing to see.

Whatever. I don’t want to create the wrong impression here. That little hiccup aside, this has been one of the best vacations of my life and I’m continuing to have a hell of a good time. That good time will continue today, our last full day in the UK, with another hilariously fancy breakfast as described in the latest Facebook update, a trip to the Tate Modern, and, this evening, the kids and I going down to Brixton Academy to see Phoebe Bridgers in concert, which was an audible requested by my daughter the other day which I, like the sucker that I am, approved.

One more shorter update tomorrow, then I’m traveling home. Things will be back to business as usual at Cup of Coffee come Monday.

Have a great day, everyone.