It’s Wednesday night here at BCB After Dark: the coolest club for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come on in and sit with us. We’ll make room for you. There’s no cover charge. The dress code is casual. The hostess will seat you now. Bring your own beverage.
BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started,
but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.
Last night, I asked you how many home runs you thought Seiya Suzuki would hit in 2026. A large plurality think he’s going to repeat his 2025 season with 30 to 34 home runs. We actually got a nice bell curve on this one as 35 to 39 got 23 percent and 25 to 29 got 22 percent.
Here’s the part where we listen to music and talk movies. You’re free to skup ahead if you want.
I don’t think I’ve featured young superstar vocalist Samara Joy in a while, so here she is in Tokyo last year singing “No More Blues.”
I’m going to take a break from my countdown of the BFI Sight & Sound top ten films of all time in the 2022 critics poll because I’ve been paying so much attention to the World Baseball Classic that I haven’t done the kind of research that I want to in order to give the respect the number-seven film Beau Travail (1999) and the number-eight film Mulholland Drive (2001) deserve. Especially Mulholland Drive, a film near and dear to my heart even if it’s a mess. Actually, especially because it’s a mess. It’s one fantastic mess.
So I thought I’d talk about the Academy Awards tonight and ask for your predictions and/or choices. As I’ve said in the past, I don’t put a lot of stock in who wins the Academy Awards. I don’t think I’ve watched the ceremony in 15 years.
However, I do find they very interesting as trivia. I also think they’re invaluable for film historians (and frankly, just historians) to see what people, and in particular, people who work in the movie industry, valued. I am under no illusions that the best films or best performances win an Oscar. Of the top ten films on the BFI list of the greatest films of all time, only Citizen Kane was even nominated for a Best Picture Award and it lost to How Green Was My Valley. Admittedly a good film, but Kane is better. None of the non-American films were even nominated for the Best International Feature Award. (Although Tokyo Story wasn’t released in the US until 20 years after its Japanese premiere and Man With a Movie Camera predates the International Award by almost 20 years, so the Academy has excuses there.)
So the Oscars do not represent quality, but they represent what people value at the time.
I’ve only seen two films nominated for Best Picture. As you can tell, I prefer watching old movies to new ones. I’ve seen One Battle After Another and F1 and let’s be honest, F1 had no business getting nominated, although I did enjoy it for the race scenes. I want to see Sinners except I don’t want to because you know my feelings about horror. Maybe it’s OK for the squeamish. I’ve seen a few other films that have major nominations (Blue Moon, Song Sung Blue) but I don’t think I’ve seen enough films to have any thoughts on who should win.
Who will win, I think I can have some thoughts on because as I wrote, it has little to do with quality. It does seem that based on nominations and the general vibe, the Best Picture Award is going to come down to One Battle After Another against Sinners. I think it’s going to be OBAA for a few reasons. It’s won more of the pre-Oscar Awards. Paul Thomas Anderson probably has more friends in the Academy than Ryan Coogler. Plus, the Academy tends to reward more experienced directors and Anderson has ten films directed to Coogler’s five. Plus, one of those films is a Rocky sequel and two of them are Marvel movies. While the Academy will reward actors who come out of nowhere, directors almost always have to pay their dues first. (Robert Redford is an obvious exception, but it’s not like Redford hadn’t been around for a while as an actor when he won for Ordinary People.)
So here’s your chance to tell us your thoughts about the Academy Awards. Will you watch? Do you have a favorite? Do you care you wins? What are some of your favorite films of 2025, whether they were nominated or not?
Welcome back to those of you who skip the music and movies.
Francisco Cervelli , Vinnie Pasquantino and Team Italy bailed out Team USA’s rear tonight with a convincing 9-1 win over Team Mexico. With the win, Italy wins Pool B of the World Baseball Classic with a 4-0 record. The US finished second in the pool at 3-1 and Mexico falls to 2-2.
Of course, as everyone knows by now, a low-scoring win by Mexico would have sent Team USA home early. This was a team that was touted by many as “the Dream Team,” yet they had to be bailed out by a non-traditional baseball power to make the elimination rounds.
After the 8-6 loss to Italy, USA manager Mark DeRosa came in for a lot of criticism. For one, it seems like he realized too late that Team USA had not already punched their ticket for the quarterfinals.
Sara Sanchez has a good wrap of all the weird goings on in that game. Somewhere between DeRosa getting Clayton Kershaw up in the bullpen and when Mason Miller actually came into the game, someone got word to DeRosa that Team USA had not qualified and that it could go to a tiebreaker based on runs allowed.
What should be acknowledged that even had DeRosa not screwed up, Italy still might have won. Team Italy beat Mexico much more convincingly than Team USA did. While Italy doesn’t have the big stars that Team USA has, they have several quality major leaguers like Pasquantino, Jakob Marsee, Aaron Nola and Michael Lorenzen. Italy wasn’t the pushover that Great Britain and Brazil were.
DeRosa certainly managed the game against like there wasn’t much on the line. So tonight I’m going to ask you what was his biggest blunder. Yes, he made many of them, but what was the stupidest thing DeRosa did?
Starting Nolan McLean was the first one. Paul Skenes was unavailable because he started against Mexico. It made complete sense to start him against the team expected to be Team USA’s biggest rival in the group. But McLean was an odd choice for a game against a team with several quality hitters. For one, he’s still technically a rookie. McLean only has 48 innings in the majors under his belt. They were 48 very good innings, but that’s a small sample size. He really hasn’t established himself as a quality major league starter.
Now maybe the Tigers’ restrictions placed on Tarik Skubal prevented him from pitching against Italy rather than a poor Great Britain team. DeRosa certainly should have tried to get Skubal to start against Italy, but maybe that wasn’t possible. But he had Logan Webb, a guy who has gotten Cy Young Award votes in each of the past four seasons, start against a very poor Team Brazil. Are you saying he couldn’t have given the Brazil start to McLean and put Webb up against Italy? DeRosa also could have used Matthew Boyd as a starter rather than McLean, although he wasn’t great against Mexico and even without the benefit of hindsight, I can see the logic of trying to get through the Mexico game with Skenes and Boyd rather than trying to get multiple innings out of relievers.
Speaking of which, DeRosa went to Ryan Yarborough after pulling McLean against Italy. Yarborough probably shouldn’t have even been on the team. He’s an eight-year veteran and he’s only had one season that argued for inclusion in the WBC and that wasn’t even last year. (It was 2024) But Gabe Speier, David Bednar and Mason Miller were all better choices than Yarborough. All three of them threw scoreless innings after the game got out of hand. Then there is Brad Keller, who would have gotten out of his start clean had he not thrown the ball away on a potential double play.
DeRosa also rested several starters against Italy, thinking that moving on was guaranteed. I’m not going to criticize starting Pete Crow-Armstrong over Byron Buxton. PCA had two home runs against Italy and narrowly missed a third. I’m also not going to criticize starting Gunnar Henderson over Alex Bregman. Bregman has more experience, but they’re roughly similar in quality. And Henderson also homered.
But starting Paul Goldschmidt over Bryce Harper, Will Smith over Cal Raleigh and Ernie Clement over Brice Turang are clear downgrades. To be clear, Smith and Clement at least are still quality ballplayers. But they aren’t as good as the guys they repaced.
One thing I’m not going to criticize DeRosa for is the post-game celebration after the win over Team Mexico that went on until 12:30. For one, that’s also on the players as well. Secondly, it was an 8 pm Central time start and you can’t tell me that a major leaguer can’t get to bed by 1 am and get enough sleep for an 8 pm start. But if you want to go off on that, vote “other” and talk about it in the comments.
Finally, I want to say how thrilled I am that people are upset about DeRosa. We’re getting some World Cup levels of complaining out of the fans, and that means they care. We should be screaming about bad managing in the WBC. It’s a sign that the WBC is becoming the major sporting event that I think it should be.
So now it’s time to vote.
Thanks for stopping by tonight. It’s been great to have you tonight and all week. Don’t be a stranger. Get home safely. Recycle and cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again next week for more BCB After Dark.
