Cup of Coffee: May 5, 2022

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

There was a lot of fun to be had around Major League Baseball yesterday, what with a couple of doubleheaders, Madison Bumgarner going (justifiably) apeshit and getting ejected in the first inning, Rowdy Tellez going crazy at the plate against the hapless Reds, and the Yankees watching their 11-game winning streak come to a close. There were also a couple of signings, a notable injury, and we learn of a team taking a new approach to mental health.

In Other Stuff the nation passed a grim milestone, we got our first glimpse at Disney+’s “Obi-Wan” series, some college jocks near me are about to get rewarded for good grades, we — well, at least I — learn a new word, and we learn of another reason why the Jimmy Carter White House represented the apotheosis of American culture.

And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Brewers 18, Reds 4: Bloodbath. Rowdy Tellez homered twice and had a two-run double, driving in eight runs in all. He’s homered four times in his last four games, in fact. Kolten Wong also homered for the Brewers, Andrew McCutchen went 4-for-5, scored twice and had four RBI, and Christian Yelich was 2-for-4 with three runs scored and two RBI. The Reds are now 3-21 have lost eight straight, 19 of 20, and are 13.5 games out of first place. It’s barely May. Their run differential is negative 82. We’re entering Cleveland Spiders territory here.

Diamondbacks 8, Marlins 7: Madison Bumgarner got ejected during a foreign substance check by first base umpire Dan Bellino at the end of the first inning. And folks, MadBum was hot about it:

As you can see from the early part of the video, Bumgarner was barking at home plate umpire Ryan Wills about some ball/strike calls as he walked off and that escalated while his hand was being checked by Bellino. Normally I’d have more jokes at the perpetually redassed Bumgarner’s expense here, but Bellino — who later said that Bumgarner was ejected for directing profanity at an umpire — seemed to be the one who escalated this, staring down Bumgarner, presumably because he didn’t like the pitcher jawing at Wills. As if that was his business to police there.

Bumgarner was replaced by Corbin Martin. It was 1-0 Miami at that point. In the top of the fourth the Snakes came out and scored five thanks in part to a two-run triple from Sergio Alcántara and a two-run homer from Daulton Varsho. They lost that lead and fell behind in the eighth but a ninth-inning homer from Pavin Smith — his second dinger in as many games — put Arizona back over and gave them the ballgame.

Rays 3, Athletics 0: It feels like every game I recap these days is “[Starting Pitcher]” tossed six shutout innings and [number] relievers finished the [three or four]-hit shutout.” Fill in the blanks here with “Corey Kluber,” “three” and “four.” The runs scored via a two-run single from Manuel Margot and from Domingo Acevedo balking in a run. Frankie Montas got a hard luck no-decision for the A’s despite shutting out Tampa Bay for six. The Athletics finished their homestand 0-6. The A's drew a crowd of 4,838 for this one and a combined 10,096 during the three-game series against Tampa Bay. I’ve been a lot of individual Columbus Clippers games with more people than that.

Cardinals 10, Royals 0: Nolan Arenado hit a three-run homer in the Cardinals five-run first and later added a two-run single on his five-RBI day. It never got any better for the Royals after that. A big part of that was because Adam Wainwright tossed one-hit shutout ball through seven. Kansas City notched only four hits on the day.

Tigers 3, Pirates 2; Pirates 7, Tigers 2: In the first game a Ke'Bryan Hayes error with two outs allowed two Tigers runs to score in a three-run fifth inning. All of the runs were unearned. Hell, Detroit only had three hits all game. Meanwhile the Tiger bullpen, which entered the game with a major league-best 1.97 ERA, tossed four and two-thirds scoreless innings to reduce that number even further. Pittsburgh won the nightcap — well, daycap — by taking it to that Tigers’ bullpen, which turned a 2-2 game into a laugher after coughing up five runs. In the seventh they were junk runs — a wild pitch and a sac fly — and in the ninth it was a Ben Gamel RBI single and a two-run homer from Dan Vogelbach.

Atlanta 9, Mets 2: It was scoreless until the sixth when Atlanta put up a seven-spot via a bases-loaded walk, a two-run double from Adam Duvall, a run-scoring wild pitch, a Dansby Swanson RBI single, a Ronald Acuña Jr. RBI single, and a Matt Olson groundout which plated a run. Guillermo Heredia later later hit a two-run jack. Ian Anderson held the Mets to one run in five and a third. He wasn’t sharp but he benefitted from a couple of inning-ending double plays and a fantastic catch from Heredia in right field in the second:

Padres 5, Guardians 4; Guardians 6, Padres 5: Mike Clevinger, making his first start since 2020, faced off against his former team in the first game but got a no-decision when he couldn’t go five. Manny Machado hit a two-run homer, though, and a two-run sixth inning broke a 3-3 tie. In the nightcap San Diego jumped out to an early 3-0 lead and were up 5-2 in the eighth when the wheels came off. Three Guardian RBI singles tied it up and forced extras and then in the 10th Steven Kwan singled in the Manfred Man for the walkoff win.

Astros 7, Mariners 2: Justin Verlander picked up his third win of the year while allowing two runs and working into the seventh. His ERA is now 1.93, so it looks like he’s picked up where he left off a couple of years ago. Alex Bregman went 3-for-3, drove in three, and scored twice. Michael Brantley hit a pair of RBI singles. José Altuve left this game early due to “right groin soreness.” See if you can figure out why:

Rangers 2, Phillies 1: The one was scoreless after nine, thanks to a fantastic duel between starters Martín Pérez and Zack Wheeler who tossed seven and seven and two-thirds innings of shutout ball, respectively. In the tenth a line-out put the Manfred Man on third and a walk and a stolen base put two men in scoring position for Texas after which Brad Miller singled them both home to make it 2-0. Philly scored one in the bottom half on a groundout but that’d be it. The Rangers sweep the two-game series and have won four in a row overall.

Orioles 9, Twins 4: Cedric Mullins and Ramón Urías each hit two-run homers during Baltimore's six-run third. Trey Mancini had three hits, none of which left the infield. Dylan Bundy, a former Oriole, allowed nine runs and 11 hits in three and two-thirds innings. If these were countries instead of baseball teams he’d be taken from the field and placed on trial for being a sleeper agent.

Blue Jays 2, Yankees 1: Matt Chapman homered, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit a tie-breaking RBI single, and Yusei Kikuchi allowed one run over six. Thus endeth the Yankees’ 11-game winning streak.

Angels 10, Red Sox 5: Boston blew three, admittedly small, leads in regulation, with the last blown lead coming via a Jared Walsh RBI single in the ninth. Los Angeles would then put up a six-run tenth inning in which Walsh hit a three-run homer and Taylor Ward hit a two-run shot. Anthony Rendon singled in a run in that last frame too.

White Sox 4, Cubs 3: Chicago wins! The Cubs had an early 3-1 lead but José Abreu and Leury García homered and Lucas Giolito struck out 10 while working into the sixth. The Cubs rallied late, putting the potential tying and go-ahead runs on base with no outs in the eighth, but Matt Foster came into the game and retired the next three batters he faced to end the threat. That’s some big boy relieving right there.

Rockies 5, Nationals 2: In the fourth inning Alcides Escobar booted a ground ball that could’ve been an inning-ending double play, after which Jose Iglesias hit a two-run double and Connor Joe hit a two-run triple. It was one of three errors on the night for Washington. Escobar also struck out three times and the Nats into four double plays. Just that kind of night.

Dodgers 9, Giants 1: Mookie Betts and Max Muncy homered, Freddie Freeman hit a two-run triple, and apart from an early Brandon Crawford homer the Giants could get nothing going against Tony Gonsolin and four relievers. It was just a two-game series, but any time you can say you’ve swept your rival it’s a good day. The Dodgers have won four of five and 15 of 20.

The Daily Briefing

Trevor May will be on the shelf for a while

Mets setup man Trevor May has been placed on the injured list after being diagnosed with a stress reaction in the lower part of his humerus bone. I had not heard of “stress reactions” until this year and now I’ve heard the term twice, both times related to Mets pitchers. This is important. This means something.

Like Jacob “Stress Reaction” deGrom before him, May will be shut down for at least the next four weeks and very likely much longer.

May, 32, had struggled in the early going this season but he was solid for the Mets last year and pretty darn good in the three years before that with the Twins.

Blue Jays sign Derek Holland

The Blue Jays have signed Derek Holland to a minor league deal. We learned this because Holland posted a photo of a dog with a Blue Jays cap on it and said “new profile pic.” I’m guessing someone actually confirmed it but, gonna level with ya, I’m not spending a big part of my day tracking down the proper attribution for a Derek Holland minor league deal. If it turns out to have been a grand hoax absolutely none of us will ever remember that I posted this little blurb. Nothing matters. Eat at Arby’s.

Holland, 35, had signed a minor league deal with the Red Sox but opted out after he wasn’t called up by May 1. He’s mostly a reliever now. He’s still somewhat effective against lefties but righties mash him. He’s an insurance policy — organizational depth, if you will — for Toronto.

Josh Reddick signs in Australia

Josh Reddick took to social media early this morning to announce that he has signed to play with the Perth Heat of the Australian Baseball League. Reddick played for the Diamondbacks last year, was let go in August, signed with the Mets but did not play for them and then was released by the Mets. He hit .258/.285/.371 (76 OPS+) for Arizona in 2021. For his career he’s a .262/.321/.426 (104 OPS+) hitter in 13 big league seasons. He won a Gold Glove ten years ago and got a couple of downballot MVP votes.

Not too many guys with big league experience go play in Australia. Especially if they don’t have any ties to the country to begin with, which I do not believe, at least, that Reddick does. Cool to see a guy who wants to keep playing baseball get to keep playing baseball. Not that we’ll get to see it for a while as the ABL season runs from November to February.

The Rangers take a new approach to mental health

I’m pretty sure that, in an absolute sense — like by sheer number of hours — my family consumes more mental health resources than most small-to-moderately-sized countries. Seriously, at one point the other day there were three people in my house doing separate therapy sessions via telehealth simultaneously. The Calcaterras are a goddamn treat these days.

Because of that I am, not surprisingly, drawn to stories like this one by Levi Weaver of The Athletic talking about how the Texas Rangers are trying to change the way in which professional sports teams approach such matters.

Whereas you often see teams designate certain employees as “mental skills coaches” or “coordinators” or something, those sorts of folks are not proper therapists if, for no other reason, than they do not have the same duties of confidentiality that proper therapists do. Weaver:

Reminder: neither HR nor vaguely-titled “mental skills coaches” have your best interests, as opposed to the company’s, in mind.

As Weaver notes, however, the Rangers, and a few other clubs, like the Royals, are trying to fix that by hiring actual therapists and counselors for players, both on the big league roster and in the minors, to help them deal with the stresses and difficulties all of us feel at one time or another. And to try to help keep them from becoming much bigger problems. It’s good to see that sort of thing spread.

And it’s probably good that there isn’t a major league team in my town, because, frankly, we have all of those resources tied up here and they’d have to look elsewhere for mental health talent.

Other Stuff

U.S. COVID death toll passes one million

We did it, everyone:

This wouldn’t have been possible, of course, without leaders and citizens who worked overtime to undermine sensible public health measures, to undermine faith in public health officials, and to spread malicious misinformation about masks and vaccines for the past two years. Many of these same people, by the way, go out of their way to tell you that they are pro-life, so they truly contain multitudes.

Take a bow, folks.

Obi-Wan

The trailer for the new Star Wars series, “Obi-Wan Kenobi” dropped yesterday:

Not gonna lie, I’m psyched for it. That despite how bad I thought the Boba Fett show was.

Part of it is that Ewan MacGregor is an actor I like a great deal. Part of it is that, while I think the Star Wars universe spends too much time on the Skywalker/Vader saga and not enough time exploring what would be a rich and fascinating fictional universe if they gave it half a chance, the “how did Kenobi spend his years in exile” question is one Star Wars fans have been asking since the 1970s. So hey, let’s give it a chance, shall we? Might be good?

And yes, I say this despite the fact that this entire show’s quality will rise or fall based on how well they can retcon some explanation for why Kenobi, knowing he is marked for death by the most powerful force of evil in the galaxy, decided to hide both himself and that force of evil’s son on the force of evil’s home planet without changing their surnames.

Oh well. That’s the not the dumbest thing in Star Wars anyway. What’s the dumbest? That jazz music in the Star Wars universe is called “jizz.” No, I am not making that up.

Exploiting Inefficiencies

Ohio State University announced yesterday that it will begin paying academic bonuses to athletes this fall, with athletes eligible to receive up to $5,980 for a year based on academic achievement.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I wrote a paper or three for some folks when I was at Ohio State, including one athlete of at least modest renown. Doing some back-of-the-envelope math, I figure that even if term paper prices have risen lockstep with inflation in the past 30 years, $6K bonuses + academic fraud still allow for a pretty hefty profit margin for a sporty frood who really knows where his towel is, so get writing, nerds.

Holy xenotransplantation, Batman!

I’m mostly posting this because I had never heard the word “xenotransplantation” and my God is that a great word. Also, we have a couple of subscribers around these parts who have recently undergone transplant surgery and I imagine they have some insight into all of this. On its own, however, the story, about a genetically-edited pig heart being transplanted into a human, is interesting.

They thought it was a success. Indeed, for over a month the recipient of the heart, a 57 year-old man, was doing great. Then he got sick. And then a month later he died. Why? Because the pig had a virus and researchers suspect that the man may have lived if the virus had been detected before the fact.

Come for the fascinating explanation of gene editing pigs, stay for the almost casually tossed-off mention of concerns that xenotransplantation could lead to infections of the medical team and then into the general population which could wipe out humanity. It’s the sort of thing that, three years ago, we would’ve freaked out about. Now if it happened most of us would probably nod and say, “yeah, that tracks.”

The Official White House Copy of “Trout Mask Replica”

Washingtonian has a story about the official White House record collection. Which was, basically, what you expect it was: a professionally curated collection of popular (and some not-so-popular) contemporary music, on vinyl.

I am speaking of it in the past tense because, according to the article, it was only maintained from the early 1970s until Reagan took office in 1981 at which point they shipped it out of there and stopped updating it. The collection still exists, however, and was brought to light by Jimmy Carter’s grandson of all people who heard older family members talking about playing records in the White House which made him wonder where they came from and what happened to them. About a decade ago he went on a quest to find them and, eventually, was given access to them:

The collection, curation of which was eventually managed by legendary Columbia producer John Hammond, was pretty hip for the time. There was Funkadelic, Captain Beefheart, the Stones, Talking Heads, the Clash, the Ramones, Donna Summer, Willie Nelson — obviously — you name it. Of course the White House ceasing to maintain the collection once Reagan showed up is datapoint number four thousand and eighty that American civic culture peaked with the Carter administration. That’s a hill I’ll die on, people.

Indeed, if only Carter hadn’t been so unreasonable as to ask the country to make very tiny sacrifices to deal with high energy costs and other then-quite solvable problems we wouldn’t be in year 43 or 44 of an insane, reactionary national temper tantrum that has (a) made any sort of progress or betterment of the world impossible; and (b) prevented there from being an Official White House Copy of The Minutemen’s “Double Nickels on the Dime” and both of those developments are shameful.

Have a great day everyone.