Empire Actor Jussie Smollett Re-indicted In Hate Crime Case
Last year Empire actor Jussie Smollett claimed to be the victim of a hate crime that he claimed was perpetrated against himself because of his race and sexuality. The police report was filed and a massive investigation began, including over 100 interviews and in depth investigations. This led to Olabinjo and Abimbola Osundairo, the two brothers who carried out the supposed attack accusing Smollett of paying them to fake the attack in order to increase his salary on Empire. More chaos ensued, but as of March 2019, the case was dismissed. Until now.
A new look into the dismissal has found that the case did not have enough evidence to be dismissed and so Jussie Smollett has been re-indicted on 6 charges of false report. He is scheduled to appear in court on February 24th.
Read a full recap of all of the events leading up to this here
How has it affected his career?
Chicago Special Prosecutor revived the case
More on the repercussions of the case
This case may have an effect on the race for state attorney in Cook’s County
Which Three Teams Won the Off-Season? Two May Surprise You.
Ordinarily, assessing which teams had the “best” and “worst” off-seasons in Major League Baseball is limited to acquisitions and subtractions, filling needs, failing to fill needs and other player-related maneuvers. However, 2019-20 is shaping up to be one of the most consequential off-seasons in baseball history and much of it is unrelated to on-field matters. With that in mind, the combination of those concerns factor in to the subjective categorization of the three best and three worst off-seasons in MLB. This post will assess the three best. (As a teaser, off-field factors will predominate the three worst.)
Los Angeles Dodgers
Had this been written two weeks ago, the Dodgers would have been in the subsequent post about the teams that had the worst off-seasons. Acquiring Mookie Betts and, to a lesser degree, David Price is enough to vault them from there to here.
The Dodgers, having lost in the World Series in 2017 and 2018 and then getting bounced by the Washington Nationals in the 2019 National League Division Series, were justifiably viewed as taking a major step back. When teams are projected to win a World Series, get to the precipice and fail not once but twice, then follow up those failures with an early-round playoff defeat, there can be a calculated determination that a bold move to shake up the clubhouse could be beneficial.
Often, that involves firing the manager. With the Dodgers, firing Dave Roberts made little sense because his replacement would be…Dave Roberts, only with a different name. In other words, the Dodgers manager will follow edicts from the front office no matter who it is, so it’s no more than a cosmetic solution.
After being rumored to have interest in Gerrit Cole and Anthony Rendon, but getting neither, the Dodgers sat by and waited for the Boston Red Sox to get serious with their attempts to trade Betts. As is their custom, the Dodgers crafted a creative series of trades to get Betts without surrendering their best prospects and even managed to get some prospect and draft capital in return to soften the blow by trading Kenta Maeda to the Minnesota Twins.
They pulled this off even after there was a holdup due to the Red Sox having concerns over Brusdar Graterol’s medical records, so the Dodgers ended up with him as well. While the Red Sox wanted him as a starter and the consensus is that he profiles as a reliever, the Dodgers are moving him to the bullpen where he is expected to contribute in 2020.
Losing Maeda and Hyun-Jin Ryu will not impact them after the acquisition of Price and shifting Julio Urias to the starting rotation. The Dodgers were wise not to stand pat despite having won 106 games. Change for the sake of change would have been a positive. They went beyond that and acquired one of the five best players in baseball along with a veteran starting pitcher (only paying half his salary) who should benefit from the Dodgers’ defense and bullpen.
Atlanta Braves
After a 97-win season, a second straight National League East title and a second straight loss in the NLDS, the Braves lost third baseman Josh Donaldson to free agency. Starting pitchers Dallas Keuchel and Julio Teheran also departed as free agents.
To replace Donaldson’s offense, the Braves signed Marcell Ozuna and Travis d’Arnaud. To boost their starting pitching and be better prepared for the postseason, they signed battle-tested veteran Cole Hamels. Finally, for the bullpen, they signed former San Francisco Giants closer Will Smith.
Ordinarily, the loss of Donaldson would be a massive hole to fill, but the Braves are relatively well-suited to at least counteract a portion of Donaldson’s lost production on the field. Off the field, it’s slightly more complicated because he is a clubhouse leader and the type who other players look to as a spokesman. Hamels can handle a portion of the off-field aspect. On the field, the Braves need to trust that Austin Riley can build on his up and down rookie year at third base with Johan Camargo as insurance.
D’Arnaud experienced a resurgence in Tampa Bay after the Rays acquired him from the Los Angeles Dodgers who had acquired him from the New York Mets. Injury prone and streaky, the combination of d’Arnaud and Tyler Flowers should be sufficiently productive behind the plate.
Ozuna signed a one-year contract comparable to the one Donaldson signed after 2018. The difference is that Donaldson had been injured the previous year and Ozuna was basically the same player he’s always been. Problematically, the free agent outfield market for 2021 is far stronger than it was in 2020 so Ozuna might not do any better in 2021 than he did in 2020. From the Braves’ perspective, he will be supremely motivated to have a big year, just as Donaldson was.
Chicago White Sox
The White Sox are in the process of moving forward from their long-term rebuild and are now signing proven talent. This is a marked difference from one year ago when they talked about jumping in on Manny Machado or Bryce Harper (or Manny Machado and Bryce Harper) and got neither with reports that their offers were doomed to fail from the start.
Adding Keuchel, Yasmani Grandal, Edwin Encarnacion, Gio Gonzalez, Nomar Mazara and Steve Cishek addresses many of their needs. They were 13th in the American League in runs scored in 2019. Their starting pitching was short behind Lucas Giolito. Their offense and starting rotation have been upgraded.
Grandal is not only one of the best pitch framers in baseball, but he throws well and is an offensive force. Encarnacion is a pure run producer and strong voice in the clubhouse. Keuchel is a craftsman on the mound and positive veteran presence. Their bullpen was one area that was relatively effective in 2019 and is bolstered with Cishek.
Designating a team as having a good off-season does not necessarily mean they need to jump from being bad or mediocre to realistic contention. The 72-89 White Sox will now be better. Whether that means contention hinges not on their free agent and trade acquisitions, but on the players who were already on the roster and in the high minors.
In the American League Central with the Kansas City Royals and Detroit Tigers still in the recesses of their own rebuilds, the White Sox should have a certain number of accruable wins to hover around the fringes of the Wild Card race. They have the right to expect an improvement of 10 wins. After that, their chances of getting from 82 to 87-90 will come down to luck and what they can do at mid-season.
The Cleveland Indians are slightly weaker than they have been in recent years. The Twins added Donaldson to a team that won 100 games. A 41-16 record against the White Sox, Royals and Tigers helped them achieve that number. They and the rest of the American League will not be bludgeoning the White Sox to that degree anymore.
5 Year Old Killed by Family Pit Bull
On February 10th the 12 year old pit bull of a family in California killed the 5-year old of the family. Per the babysitter, a cousin of the child, they left the room to grab a video game controller and came back to the Pit Bull holding onto the child by the neck, refusing to let go. The child has since died from the injuries. The family never expected this, stating that they have had the dog for 12 years and have never had any incidents before. The cousin of the victim said in a statement: “He was not a vicious dog, but how he snapped, we don’t understand”
Read more on the story here
Paramedics were called but were unable to save the child
The dog has been taken into custody by Animal Control
Denver, Colorado is lifting the 30 year old ban on Pit Bulls
The Mookie Betts Trade, Rebooted
The mediocrity of the DC Universe (not just in comparison to Marvel, but in general) has led to re-imagined origin stories, standalone films and assertions of Bigfoot-like sightings of film cuts that are drastically different and better than the convoluted dreck that was released to theaters. Usually, it takes some time for the reboot to come about, but in Major League Baseball and the Mookie Betts trade, it happened in a matter of days.
A previous post assessed the original deal from the perspectives of the three teams involved. They get to reboot, we get to reboot. Is it better or is it worse?
Let’s see…
Boston Red Sox
The Red Sox will deny it, but it’s possible that the viscerally negative reaction to the return on the original trade – Alex Verdugo, Brusdar Graterol and major salary relief – caused them to think twice about okaying it. Conspiracy theorists can suggest that the Red Sox used Graterol’s injury history to raise red flags about his medicals and either extract more from the Los Angeles Dodgers or Minnesota Twins or back out of the trade entirely.
This is an inherent problem with trades being reported before they are official. Even if teams say they’re not impacted in any way by the public reaction, they could fall prey to seeds of doubt. This is especially true for the non-baseball people in positions of power – namely the owners. John Henry is intimately involved in the Red Sox baseball operations and is already getting figuratively hammered for slashing payroll. Trading Betts and David Price for a lambasted return takes significant fortitude and they need to believe in their baseball operations people to pull the trigger on it.
Chaim Bloom does not appear to have the same power his predecessor Dave Dombrowski was granted. Dombrowski essentially had a stamp of approval to win a World Series by any means necessary, which he did. Bloom is working under constraints and more complex mandates. Henry wants to get the bloated payroll under control, rebuild the farm system and get back to the 2004 model rather than the 2007, 2013 and specifically, the 2018 model.
Are they to be blamed for that?
Red Sox fans and the Boston-based media have gotten greedy. As much as they hate to hear this, they are comparable in behavior and demands to their nemesis, the New York Yankees, in thinking every year without a World Series win is a failure. It was a natural progression amid their success and that success comes with a cost. They’re trying to restrain that cost.
Acquiring Verdugo, minor-league infielder Jeter Downs and catching prospect Connor Wong appears, on the surface, to be a better deal than getting Verdugo and Graterol. It’s easy to scour the web for random and subjective analysis for young players the overwhelming majority have never seen play. Much of it is regurgitated information. Suffice it to say that the Dodgers are good at scouting and drafting and Bloom knows what he got. The Red Sox trading for a player named after Derek Jeter is funny and ironic on its own.
Just as before, the Red Sox are punting 2020. After 2020, they can pursue Betts as a free agent, will have these prospects, and be free of half of Price’s contract. That’s pretty good.
Minnesota Twins
True, they’re basically getting Maeda free of financial cost since the Dodgers are sending $10 million and he’s owed $12 million through 2023. However, they are giving up Graterol who, despite his ideal role being in question and his health being scrutinized, was still their top pitching prospect with a 100-mph fastball. The competitive balance draft pick they’re sending to the Dodgers also has value.
The only reasonable conclusion is that they’re enamored of Maeda. While he’s versatile, reliable and solid, is he worth all that? On paper, the answer is no.
Los Angeles Dodgers
They’re officially getting Betts and taking Price as a conciliatory gesture to reduce the price on their primary target. The Dodgers taking Graterol and Price ties into their overall philosophy – one that has been remarkably effective for them under Andrew Friedman. They know how to exchange dollars for value and it’s not simply about paying players.
The medical records issue is a no-win situation for anyone. If Graterol gets hurt, the Red Sox look smart and the Dodgers look dumb. If he is healthy and effective, it’s vice versa. Like anything else, medical opinions will vary. The Red Sox doctors obviously had concerns and the Dodgers were willing to take the risk. That the Dodgers are planning to use Graterol in the bullpen is a marked contrast and might have been the tipping point to complete the deal with him going to Los Angeles instead of Boston.
The Dodgers use their starters for limited innings and pitches, relying heavily on the bullpen. Traditional roles are largely irrelevant for them. The Red Sox still have the relatively traditional starter-reliever blueprint. Grateral as a reliever has more value to the Dodgers than he would for the Red Sox, especially when the Red Sox are trading one of the five best players in baseball to get him.
The planned trade of Joc Pederson and Ross Stripling to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim as a next move fell through, but that is unimportant. From the Twins, they exchanged Maeda and most of his contract for Graterol and Luke Raley, who was originally a Dodgers farmhand and had been traded to the Twins to get Brian Dozier. Clearly, they like him. They also get the 67th overall pick in the 2020 MLB draft.
It’s a great haul in exchange for nonessential personnel.
Elon Musk and Sacha Baron Cohen Slam Facebook. Again.
Elon Musk has long been against Facebook, going as far as deleting his companies pages from the popular social media site back in 2018. One of his main problems, at least the one that he talks about the most, is the use of AI on the Facebook platform. Per Musk, AI is “biggest risk we face as a civilization” and Facebook uses it for everything.
Sacha Baron Cohen recently slammed Facebook, specifically Mark Zuckerburg in a post that compared Zuckerburg, and his haircut, to Julius Caesar and a dictator. Baron Cohen’s real issue is the refusal to remove hate speech from posts on Facebook. “This is about giving people, including some of the most reprehensible people on earth, the biggest platform in history to reach a third of the planet. Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach.” Elon Musk replied to this tweet with “#DeleteFacebook It’s lame.”
Read more about this here
A budding bromace between Elon Musk and Donald Trump?
SpaceX Starship production is well underway
New Tesla Engine is revolutionary
A.J. Hinch’s Tightrope of Contrition and Denial
Obviously, Major League Baseball, the Houston Astros and those who bore the brunt of the penalties for the sign-stealing scandal – former general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch – were hoping that the uproar would have died down by now. The passage of time has quieted the story to a degree. It’s still discussed, but the passion and intensity has reduced substantially. It’s not every minute of every day now.
However, it has not and will not go away completely until there is the perception of resolution. MLB saying it’s resolved and their investigation is concluded is secondary to how the rest of baseball, the media and fans react. Once the games start and it’s known how the Astros behave and play under new GM James Click and manager Dusty Baker; how other teams treat them and whether there is an overt attempt to extract a pound of flesh with vigilante on-field justice, it will bubble beneath the surface.
Since he was the manager, Hinch has been cast as being part of the problem. There is good reason for that. But for the most part, he seems to be categorized as having been caught in the crossfire with few good options to deal with the scheme as it was in progress. For Hinch, the first step at rehabilitating his image involved an interview with Tom Verducci on MLB Network. His response, tone, and general demeanor would be key factors for his future in baseball – if he even has one.
Hinch is taking the contrition route. He genuinely seems sorry and embarrassed, but it’s difficult to discern whether that is due more to his failure to act to put a stop to it or because of what the players did under his watch when he was in a position – in fact, it was his job – to regulate his players and set the rules. It’s a dual-edged sword to have a manager who is merely a conduit to the front office and not someone who has legitimate power. Hinch might have been well-regarded for his intelligence, but there’s no doubt that he was the former.
There was precious little he could realistically do to put a stop to the sign-stealing. Despite the Astros players’ assertion that had Hinch told them to stop, they would have, how could he have known that? He was in a situation where his role was clear to those who were supposedly under his charge; his bench coach, Alex Cora, was intimately involved in the plot; he was disposable to a front office that believes the manager is fundamentally replaceable; and the players might have simply ignored him had he told them to stop no matter what they said after the fact.
The lack of say-so granted to managers today has been discussed before, especially with the Astros. What is key here is how far Hinch’s interview will go toward laying the foundation for him to work in baseball again.
He is complicit, but he’s also an innocent bystander. To a degree, that does assuage his guilt for failing to act; it does not protect him from punishment; but it is an explanation.
Looking uncomfortable and meek in the interview, Hinch may have realized that leaving himself at the mercy of the viewers and MLB itself is the only way he can hope to get another chance for a job. Problematically, he gave lawyerly responses to Verducci’s questions as to whether the sign-stealing went beyond deciphering, relaying and garbage can banging. Regarding the allegations that the Astros players wore buzzers to get signals as to what pitch was coming, he did not say no. He said MLB did an investigation, that it was thorough, and he believes in it.
This behavior was prevalent throughout the interview. It could be argued that the contrition was as legitimate as his disapproval of the sign-stealing and his actions betray a similar impotence. He did not go far enough. This was not a tell-all interview; it was the beginning of an apology tour.
Will it work?
Baseball people have returned from suspensions, arrests and convictions. Hinch is well-liked. Although he’s got this black mark against him, that affinity will undoubtedly help him. As mentioned before, he didn’t stop the sign-stealing, but he didn’t start it either. That’s no excuse, but it is a defense to give him an opportunity to work again. Certainly, it would need to be gradual. A job in a front office could be followed by a stint as a bullpen coach. He could advance to a base coach and then bench coach before getting managerial interviews again. Teams would need to be prepared for the relentless attacks they would be subjected to, but if it’s a few years down the road and more information comes out to exonerate him or reduce his role in what is increasingly appearing to be Luhnow’s overall responsibility, perhaps Hinch can get a job as manager.
Still, there is always a chance that the toxicity of the Astros will stick to everyone involved. It’s next-to-impossible to envision Luhnow getting another job in baseball not just because of this, but because of the widespread animus he accumulated and enemies he made. Luhnow is not the type to apologize. His response will be calculated. If he does express remorse, his ability to come across as sympathetic is in question.
As for the others like Hinch, Cora and Carlos Beltran, the key is whether their post-scandal behaviors are sufficient to quell the anger and stop the story from continually being rehashed with the same level of anger there is now.
It should be noted that the wounds are still fresh and have not had the chance to scab. Judging by the initial reaction to the Hinch interview where he might have been thinking about how it would look as much as expressing his regret, he’s got a long way to go.
El Paso Shooter May Face Hate Crime Charges
A new report on the proceedings against the El Paso shooter, Patrick Crusius, claim that he is being charged with a federal hate crime as well as the obvious murder charges. The Texas native surrendered to police on scene after slaughtering 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas last August. Since then, a manifesto has been uncovered stating that the intent of the shooting was to encourage Mexicans to leave the US. This coupled with a statment at the time of the shooting, “I was targeting Mexicans,” has kept him in custody since the shooting. Crusius has since pled not guilty to state capital murder charges.
Read more about the original shooting here
Source wants to remain anonymous
See how the medical personnel working that day were honored
Prosecution Rests in Harvey Weinstein Trial
Two weeks, 28 testimonies and multiple graphic accounts of unwanted and aggressive sexual advances and the prosecution rests on the case against Producer Harvey Weinstein. The charges against Weinstein are five counts of rape, criminal sexual act and predatory sexual assault are on based on the testimony of Miriam Haley who claims that he forced oral sex on her in 2006. Four other accusers have come forward and have now all testified, with some cross examinations take more than three days. The defense began calling witnesses for the defense on Thursday, athough Weinstein is not slated to be called to the stand at any point during the trial.
Read more details of the cross-examinations here
Read a re-cap of the trial here
First witness for the defense claims Harvey Weinstein is a sex addict
Witness makes disparaging remarks about accusers, calling them a “dogpile of women.”
Writer with connection to the case writes SVU episode based on the Weinstein case
Jeff Bezos Rakes in the Dough, Selling over 2 Billion Dollars Worth of Amazon Stock
Jeff Bezos has stated in the past that he intentionally, and on a schedule, sells around 1 billion dollars worth of Amazon stock a year in order to fund other projects, such as Blue Origin, the space program. In the last year, however, he has garnered around $6 billion from stock sales. In August of 2019 he sold $2.8 billion worth of stock, and so far this week another $3.4 billion has been sold. This is much higher than his usual, and supposedly preferred, $1 billion a year. Is this money going to Blue Origin or some other Amazon holding? Neither Bezos nor Blue origin has made any comment, and speculation is wild.
More on the stock sales here
Amazon passes $1 trillion market worth
How wealthy is Jeff Bezos, really?
Jeff Bezos is very active on Instagram
Is Bezos in a feud with a White House Economist?
