Weekly Scorecard: Dec. 29, 2025 - Jan. 5, 2026

Before I get to the main attraction, I would be remiss not to greet the massive wave of new subscribers thanks to a very generous highlight of FS2S in this morning's Cup of Coffee. To that end: Hi! Welcome! I feel like I walked into a surprise party and am still a bit confused as to how everyone got into my house. Cups are in the cabinet above the sink, the bathroom is down the hall to your left, and my about/bio/etc. pages are in the navigation header at the top. Thank you immensely to Craig for your generosity in promoting my work and your faith in me to keep being, as you put it, "damn sharp".

A quick crash course on what to expect (besides baseball):

• I like to think I express myself similarly to what you've been reading in Cup of Coffee, which is to say: I have a lot of strong opinions about baseball and also lots of other things, and I share them relatively freely. Likewise, many of those opinions overlap heavily with what you'd read in Cup of Coffee, so I doubt much (if any) of what I write will be a shocking affront to your expectations.
• I am a full-time student who happens to be on break right now, so my blogging schedule is not wonderfully consistent. If Cup of Coffee is your morning pick-me-up, FS2S might be more of a brunch mimosa, or possibly your final drink in a 9-9-9 challenge (though with substantially less regret).
• I'm over on Bluesky for pithier commentary and reacting to news as it happens, since not every free agent signing around the majors is going to inspire an essay.

Finally, of course, I have absolutely zero tolerance for racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and all other forms of bigotry, including the fascistic and genocidal operations of the U.S. government. Which leads us to my real first topic...

Venezuela

To be honest, I'm not sure what there is to say on this that hasn't already been said. Craig and Molly Knight and many, many others have articulated my thoughts very well; I'm not a journalist, and so I'm not going to pretend to be a news source on this issue. Instead, I'll encourage you to read the actual news coverage, and sum my feelings up here: what Trump is doing in attacking Venezuela, and what the rest of the government is condoning—either explicitly or through a complete failure to counteract it—is deeply criminal, profoundly immoral, and agonizingly in-character for the United States. It is so beyond fucked up and somehow still only a fraction of the evil that this era of U.S. imperialism has perpetrated or will in the future. The truth and the gravity of it weighs on me every day, and I don't know what the average person can do concretely moment-to-moment to change it, except to be very, very loud about its horrors without reservation.

I did yell about it a little bit on Bluesky, in response to people dismissing reports on MLB players potentially affected by the attacks as valueless distractions. I'd like to reaffirm the points I made by saying that this is as good a time as any to read up on MLB's history with Venezuela and the exploitative nature of the international drafting system, because any news about this crisis related to baseball that you see going forward is rooted in that history. I'm primarily aware of a couple brief primers on the subject—on Baseball Prospectus here and here—so if anyone has suggestions for further reading, please recommend them in the comments!

Market Moves

You've likely heard about all the notable free agent signings this week, and there are many more important things to talk about, so I won't belabor the point. To very briefly recap:

• Tatsuya Imai signed with the Houston Astros. This kind of sucks for me as a Mariners fan.
• Kazuma Okamoto signed with the Toronto Blue Jays. This is making people float the idea that they definitely aren't re-signing Bo Bichette, which is a concept that makes me sad. I did talk about this a little on Bluesky, but I'll succinctly say that I don't really see this as a problem for them re-signing him, because they don't actually have a replacement for his offense yet.

As I was drafting this blog post, I saw the news that Seattle Mariners and New York Mets icon Daniel Vogelbach is joining the Brewers as a hitting coach. Okay, sure, why not? I guess that can also happen.

Pitcher Perfect

If you ever see a photo on here and think to yourself, "Wow, that looks really cool!", it's probably the work of my friend/colleague/partner-in-crime Daniel Wilder, who just launched the beginnings of his portfolio here. I'm very excited to see his photography get a platform beyond my usage of it, and I really enjoy the accompanying narratives as well. He very generously allows me to use his work free of charge, so I will go ahead and use some of it in service of showing off his talents here:

Home Plate

There have been quite a number of baseball-related developments for me in the last week:

• Obviously, I launched this blog! It had been in the works for a while, but I actually brought it to life on January 1st. Then a lot of news started happening immediately after.
• I picked up a couple baseball books: Moneyball and The Baseball 100. I've seen the iconic movie of the former and enjoyed it a lot, so I'm looking forward to reading the book. And I've already started reading The Baseball 100, which I have a lot of thoughts about so far; once I finish it, I will most likely put together a review to go on here.
• I began writing a Python tool for searching my baseball card catalog, because I already write code for a living and wanted to look things up in my collection (as well as put it on GitHub for professional development). My father keeps trying to get me to use some sort of app, but I have grown very fond of my spreadsheets. The cataloging itself is a bit of a Herculean task, but at least I can see how many cards I have for players with last names starting with "Sch" using the CLI (it'll have a better UI later):

• I finished watching Ken Burns' Baseball, and started the 2022 A League of Their Own show.
  • In case you couldn't tell already, I loved Baseball. Naturally, I have some quibbles, because I have had quibbles about damn near everything ever since I could talk. I still need to watch The Tenth Inning, so I would love to rewatch the entire series and review each part.
  • I have watched—and greatly enjoyed—the original ALOTO, which was actually the first piece of baseball cinema I voluntarily engaged with a couple months ago. However, its erasure of both queer women and Black women was disheartening, especially given how many queer female players it's outright based on. The new TV show was on my big list of Baseball Things to Watch, so I got around to seeing the first episode with my mom. Is it as good as the movie right off the bat? No, not even close. But it is gay, and I'm also very invested in Max's story, so I will be watching the rest.

The Backstop

To wrap up this hefty week of news, here are some odds and ends of lesser import:

• MLB totally, definitely ripping off my incredibly original, never-before-heard prediction of Julio Rodríguez winning MVP this coming season. (To be clear, this is a joke. But I really did predict it first.)
• My really good podcast idea:

• Ragebaited myself by looking at a HOF ballot and its explanation. Not sure why I keep doing this. The only one that hasn't made me mad is the anonymous David Wright voter, because I am a Mets fan and I needed the laugh.
• Last but not least, I just finished watching Heated Rivalry and it made me feel every feeling in the human consciousness at once, I think (which is good!). I actually have a lot to say about it artistically, but also have had some thoughts towards a future piece on queerness in baseball that I would like to talk about it in, so keep your eyes open for that.

That's all, folks! Best wishes for the week ahead.