What lurks beneath the lid?

I’ve always loved coffee, but it’s Suz who bears responsibility for turning me into a bonafide java-snob. Your dark roasts, your light roasts, your medium roasts–I love them all. Whether it’s an exotic peaberry from Tanzania, a pure Kona from Hawaii, or a humble-but-hearty house blend, I’ll never say no to Joe. And while I frequent several lovely independent cafes, more often than not I end up swinging by my local Starbucks to feed my addiction.

So imagine my joy when I ran across Starbucks Gossip, the unofficial blog of the chain’s baristas. And imagine my voyeuristic sense of satisfaction when I read this post on what the celebs drink and found it to contain several ballplayers. Coffee and baseball! Two of my favorite things! Commingling in caffeinated bliss!

Assuming you don’t share my obsession with celebrity gossip, I’ve thoughtfully pared down the list to just baseball players:

Posted by: SoCalBarista | August 17, 2008 at 02:49 PM

Derek Jeter came in to our store a week ago and ordered a double tall non-fat latte.

Should've gotten decaf.

Posted by: Will | August 18, 2008 at 08:31 AM

Roger Clemens orders a Venti Earl Grey and Venti no-whip Caramel Frap

Jeff Bagwell gets a tall nonfat latte and tall awake.

Posted by: :) | August 18, 2008 at 04:43 PM

For the baseball fans, Joe Nathan, one of the top pitchers in the country, of the Minnesota Twins came to my store. He ordered a grande vanilla bean creme frappiccino and a banana loaf. He was really rude. Drove up and on his cell phone, wouldn’t even acknowledge me, and no tip of course. I also found it weird that an athlete was having such a fattening non-caffeinated bev.

Posted by: Borrowed Partner | August 18, 2008 at 08:46 PM

Roger Clemens got a caramel frap and a slice of lemon pound cake at my old store. Tipped well and was very nice.

Posted by: Boston Starbucks Rebel | August 18, 2008 at 08:51 PM

JoeTori [sic] came into my store and got a caramel macchiato.

But really, you should read the entire thread. There’s something oddly compelling about seeing Barack Obama, Cameron Diaz, and Chuck Norris all jumbled together through the barista lens. Plus, you find out things like that Tiger Woods doesn’t tip, that Michael Jordan only tips the change (but pays with a $20, so it’s okay), that Kevin Garnett gets his coffee venti-sized (TOP OF THE WOOOORLD! TOP OF THE WOOOORLD!!!!), and that Chad Johnson double parks in the handicapped space (why am I not surprised?). Sometimes, they are who we thought they were. But other times (I’m looking at YOU, Joe Torre) the beverages offer up a surprise.

Personally, I’m a grande bold with room, tips the change. Or I did until I read this post.

At least I’m still ahead of Taylor throws-the-drink-back-through-the-drivethru-window Swift. C’mon Taylor…that’s not our song!

“Never fuck with a winning streak.” – Crash Davis, from the movie “Bull Durham.”

“Get on Torre. Don’t blame me.” – Manny Ramirez, explaining who’s to blame for his recent slump.

As the LA Times’ T.J. Simers explains, “The Dodgers were playing like a powerhouse after Ramirez’s arrival — until the Dodgers’ hair-challenged manager insisted on Samson cutting his dreadlocks, Ramirez complying and hitting .250 ever since, the Dodgers going 4-7 in that time.”

In addition to his reduced batting average, Ramirez has 5 RBI and 1 home run over that period.

The Dodgers just lost four in a row to the Phillies, a team they beat four times in a row prior to Manny’s haircut. They’ve fallen one game below .500. and three games behind the Diamondbacks.

Come on, Joe. Don’t you know? Never fuck with a winning streak.

Joe Torre is insane.

We already knew that he has a longstanding penchant for destroying his setup men by overpitching them to a ridiculous extent, but this season he is apparently also determined to destroy his team’s best position player too.

By which I mean the Dodgers’ all-star gold-glove catcher Russell Martin.

Granted, Martin is an amazing player. On a rather offensively challenged Dodgers team, he is batting .312, has a ridiculous .428 OBP, is on pace to walk 112 times, and walks more than he strikes out.

But what is even more ridiculous is that Martin is on pace to play in 162 games. As a catcher.

That’s right - we are more than 25% finished with the 2008 season and Martin has yet to have a single day off. Apparently Joe Torre thinks starting Martin at third base and then moving him back behind the plate in the later innings counts as an adequate day off, but I’m going to have to go ahead and say that is sheer madness.

I may not know much about baseball, but I do know that you are not going to have a very long career if you play all 162 games and spend 99 percent of those games behind the plate as a catcher.

Granted, with the fact that the only backup catcher Ned Colletti handed Torre was no-offense, no-defense Gary Bennett, who has now apparently contracted Mark Wohlers/Rick Ankiel disease as well, it is somewhat understandable that Torre might be loath to sit Martin, but Jesus Christ.

25-year-old, gold glove catchers who OBP .428 do not grow on trees, and it is lunacy to ask one to play every single game for an entire season. There are still 4 months left in the season, so Torre may yet give Martin a day off, but even to ask a catcher to play even two months without rest is pretty insane.

Given the fact that Martin has worn down in each of the last two seasons from overuse, he is almost certain to wear down again this year, if not have a serious career-threatening injury. If you have Martin on your fantasy team, I suggest you trade him now, as Torre is showing no signs of easing up and seems determined to drive the budding young star into the ground.

Another week of matchups has come and gone in UmpBump’s head-to-head fantasy league. Must be time for our weekly rundown of who’s helping us out and who’s kicking us to the curb.

Sarah: Say what you will about the managerial style of Joe Torre—and here at UmpBump, we have—but I would like to take a minute and thank that good man for putting on the double steal so many times last week. I’ve got three young Dodgers on my team, and largely thanks to Torre telling them to run, run, run like the wind, I racked up 10 steals—and would have had 12 if Jacoby Ellsbury had shown up in the lineup before Sunday’s game (he was a last-minute add when David Ortiz was scratched). Nonetheless, I was content as my offense exploded for 44 runs, 58 RBI, and 112 total bases and carried me to a 7-4 win over Coley and back up to third place in our 12-team league. Not bad, considering that my pitchers’ ERAs looked like this: 1.46, 4.50, 4.50, 5.14, 6.00, 6.00, 7.50 12.00, 32.40. I look forward to coughing up the pitching categories for the foreseeable future, as my ace, Yovani Gallardo, tore his ACL bumping into someone. Hey, at least my staff is still better than Detroit’s. Blazingly hot: Matt Kemp Regular hot: Xavier Nady, Russell Martin, Ryan Braun, Matt Cain Tepid-to-cool: Gallardo, Johnny Cueto, Eric Gagne, Kyle Lohse Ice Cold: Troy Glaus.

Coley: These are dark days indeed for the fantasy team. Nevermind that I got beat by Sarah, a fantasy virgin. I got beat by Sarah – a girl! Now I’m in last place, deep in the cold, dark cellar, grasping desperately for a light switch. It’s all very perplexing. Aside from the recent injury to Jorge Posada, my team has been relatively healthy. Many of them are simply underperforming. I don’t know how Carlos Pena managed to hit .287 last year, I really don’t. Because he swings for the fences on every pitch. And what happened to Vlad Guerrero? Does anybody know? Fortunately, Jose Reyes seems on the verge of emerging from his funk. Maybe he could share some positive vibes with his teammate, Oliver Perez, who fell off the map this week. Oh, and I don’t mean to rant, but can somebody explain how I managed to crush Sarah in ERA, WHIP, and K/BB, but lose Wins? Don’t bother, I’ll tell you how: I got one win, and that came from my closer, Brad Lidge. Pathetic. Hot: Brad Lidge Not: the rest of my team.

Alejandro: Another week, another Center Field Stud win. Don’t look now, but a team that was at one point in the very bottom of the standings is suddenly near the happy middle (a place I’ll probably stay at for a good chunk of the season as I’m six games behind 6th place). This week my offense checked in in all six categories, but my pitching continues to be my weak spot. Can’t expect Tim Lincecum to be a stud every week (no wins, but he did manage to rack up 9 Ks and a 2.08 ERA). I picked up Fred Lewis, Emil Brown and Edwin Jackson, hoping to get something good out of them. So far, only Fred Lewis seems to be paying off, though Brown had a couple of games where he seemed unstoppable. Edwin Jackson got smacked around by the Red Sox, but he may rebound so I’ll hang on to him for now. Hot: Connor Jackson, Chipper Jones, Carlos Lee, Aaron Rowand, Magglio Ordoñez, Fred Lewis. Not: A.J. Pierzynski, Dustin Pedroia, Emil Brown, Alex Gordon, Kerry Wood, Edwin Jackson.

Paul: (Just for kicks, I think I’m going to file my fantasy report pretending to be Mr. Jacopo “J” Peterman. So here we go.) Elaine, do you know what it’s like to look up and see nothing? It’s ab-so-lute-ly damning. No mountains to climb, no sky to gaze at, no rufous-bellied eagles to inspire you… When you’ve achieved perfection - total and un-com-pro-mised per-fection - all you can do is sigh. That’s exactly what it’s like being in first place of the UmpBump.com fantasy baseball league, Elaine. Here I am, wearing my Mongolian-themed mocassins, knowing full well that this road I travel can only lead me to some place that’s already all too familiar, or worse. Yes, it’s true. ElDuquesInjuryReport was victorious once again this week, vanquishing the comically named Pirates in 08! (how delightfully absurd!). My heroic pitching staff had performed admirably. Why, not even the most accomplished musketeer in all of Hongwu Emperor’s armies could have been more precise! Greg Smith was just brilliant in both of his outings (14 IP, 6H, 3R, 15Ks), and Andy Sonnanstine was equally stellar (8IP, 6H, 1R, 5K) in his lone appearance. And a hearty welcome back to Scott Kazmir. While I was correct to leave you on the bench for your first start of the season, I’ll be counting on you to help lead the club to Xanadu! Hot: Geovany Soto, Andy Sonnanstine, Greg Smith. Not: Jhonny Peralta, Jim Thome, C.C. Sabathia.

This is one of a series of posts in which we rip each team for their offseason blunders and praise them for their wily moves.

If the Dodgers had done absolutely nothing at all this whole offseason, I would have given them an “A” grade, because given this year’s free agent class and the incredible amount of talent already in the Dodgers system, I honestly feel that would have been the best course of action. Indeed, the Dodgers failed to contend last season, not because they didn’t have the right players, but because they had the right players and refused to play them until it was too late.

Just think: even if the Dodgers had not signed a single free agent, they could have put this team on the field (2008 ages in parentheses):

C Russell Martin (25)
1B James Loney (24)
2B Jeff Kent (40)
3B Andy LaRoche (24)
SS Rafael Furcal (30)
LF Delwyn Young (26)
CF Matt Kempt (23)
RF Andre Ethier (26)

Outside of Kent, that is an incredibly young, incredibly talented team with lots of upside and would have had no real holes anywhere in the lineup. The Dodgers would also have had an already set bullpen and rotation, and even if someone went down with an injury, they would have already had reasonable in-house replacements - Nomar Garciaparra at 1B and 3B, Juan Pierre and Jason Repko in the outfield, Chin-Lung Hu and Tony Abreu in the middle infield, and Hong-Chih Kuo, Eric Stults, and Johnathan Meloan in the rotation and bullpen.

Of course, we all knew that there was no way in hell that Ned Colletti would stand pat and run that lineup I have proposed out there, given his completely lack of trust in anyone younger than 30 and his deep, abiding love of the big name. And sure enough, Colletti ran out and splashed around in a pool of Frank McCourt’s money, signing new manager Joe Torre, centerfielder Andruw Jones, and Japanese starting pitcher Hiroki Kuroda. These moves drew a lot of positive press, but did they really help the team for 2008? Let’s have a look…

Joe Torre is one of the most respected managers in the game, and if the Dodgers had one spot they could have upgraded after last season, it was at the end of the bench, where Grady Little showed a disturbing lack of ability to keep control over his clubhouse, which fell into backbiting and bickering as the Dodgers fell out of contention. So it seems pretty hard to take issue with the Dodgers signing a manager who is widely regarded as one of the best around at handling a major league clubhouse.

But I am going to take some issue nonetheless. As I have argued previously in this space, I think that Torre’s in-game managerial skills are overrated at best, and downright suspect at worst. Also, as right as he may have been for the Yankees in the late 1990s, I am not at all convinced that Joe Torre is the right manager for this Dodgers team, now, in 2008, ie a team whose chances of contending absolutely depend on a manger who is willing to play largely untested but supremely talented kids over proven but inferior veterans, a manager I am not at all sure Torre is capable of becoming.

For example, Torre has already gone on the record as saying he is likely to view Juan Pierre as a starter:

“I’ve always been one to favor experience….Juan Pierre brings so many things. He plays all the time, he gets 200 hits, steals 60 bases. We know he has no power, but he’s a gamer. He’s the type of player that fits into a winning situation.”

Ouch. That is not a good sign.

Meanwhile, Torre remains the highest-paid manager in the game, and I am not sure that money wouldn’t have been better spent elsewhere - say signing a top-flight middle reliever or something.

Similarly, the press also rained praise upon Ned Colletti for signing Andruw Jones, despite the high price tag, hailing it as a case of buying low and minimizing risk by not locking the team in to Jones’s mid-30s decline years. But Andruw Jones was pretty helpless at the plate last year, and while he is extremely unlikely to repeat last year’s showing, and certainly represents a big upgrade from Juan Pierre in center, both offensively and defensively, it is not at all clear that the Dodgers have made themselves a better team by giving Jones Manny Ramirez money for the next two years, unless Colletti and Torre are committed to forcing Pierre into a bench role, which there is no sign that they are. If, as seems to be the plan, Juan Pierre is shifted to left field, the Dodgers may actually be a worse team for having signed Jones, because if Juan Pierre is allowed to take away even 200 at-bats that would otherwise have gone to Matt Kemp or Andre Ethier, the Jones signing becomes worse than a wash.

The third big offseason move the Dodgers made was to sign highly sought after Japanese starter Hiroki Kuroda to a 3-year $35.3 million deal. While Kuroda definitely pitched like an ace in Japan, most projections have him pitching more like a 4th starter in the major leagues, which means that at $12 million per year, he would be one of the most expensive 4th starters around. Evaluating the Kuroda deal comes down to the question of whether Kuroda would outpitch Esteban Loiza this year (the man he is bumping from the rotation), and even though he probably could, it is very questionable whether the difference in their performance would be worth all that money.

The only other move the Dodgers have made all offseason at the major-league level was to sign veteran Gary Bennett to be their backup catcher. While this deal didn’t make big headlines, I think it was another questionable move by Ned Colletti, signing a veteran where a rookie or a no-namer would do. I can’t help asking myself the question, “Is Gary Bennett even replacement level?” We are talking about a guy who has had an OBP under .300 for the last five seasons in a row, and has never walked more than 24 times in a season. And given that everyone recognizes that star catcher Russell Martin was probably overused last year and will need to be rested more often this season, it would have behooved Colletti to have come up with a backup catcher who could at least achieve replacement level output when he plays.

Sill, when all is said and done, the Dodgers’ offseason has to be accounted a success this year, because Colletti somehow resisted the temptation to trade away Matt Kemp, James Loney, and Clayton Kershaw, and didn’t make any truly terrible deals as he has done in past years with Juan Pierre and Jason Schmidt. Assuming Colletti can show similar restraint going forward, Dodgers fans have reason to be cautiously optimistic about this coming season, and especially the next few years after that.

Offseason Grade: B

Additions: Joe Torre, Andrew Jones, Hiroki Kuroda, Gary Bennett

Losses: Luis Gonzalez, Randy Wolf, David Wells, Mark Hendrickson, Mike Lieberthal, Olmedo Saenz

Projected Lineup, Rotation, and Closer:

SS Rafael Furcal - .270/.333/.355, 25 SB
LF Juan Pierre - .293/.331/.353, 64 SB
1B James Loney - .331/.381/.538
CF Andruw Jones - .222/.311/.413, 26 HR
RF Matt Kemp - .342/.373/.521
2B Jeff Kent - .302/.375/.500, 20 HR
C Russell Martin - .293/.374/.469, 21 SB
3B Andy LaRoche - .226/.365/.312

RHP Brad Penny - 16-4, 3.03
RHP Derek Lowe - 12-14, 3.88
RHP Chad Billingsley - 12-5, 3.31
RHP Hiroki Kuroda - 12-8, 3.56 (Japanese stats)
RHP Jason Schmidt - 1-4, 6.31

CL Takashi Saito - 1.40, 39 SV

- Hot Offseason Action Index -