Orix Buffaloes ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who is expected to be posted for MLB teams this offseason, won his third consecutive Eiji Sawamura Award, it was announced earlier this week. The Sawamura Award is Japan's equivalent to the Cy Young. Yamamoto has a chance to win this third straight Pacific League MVP as well.
"It wasn't all good," Yamamoto told the Japan Times about his 2023 season. "There were various problem areas as well, but at the end of the season, the team did win the pennant. I didn't have any injury trouble, and I was able to deliver some good performances. I credit my practice regimen for that."
Yamamoto went 17-6 with a 1.16 ERA and 176 strikeouts in 171 innings this season. He has struggled in the postseason, however, allowing 12 runs and 23 baserunners in 12 2/3 innings in two starts. That said, the Buffaloes are the defending champions and are playing in their third straight Japan Series, and Yamamoto has pitched very well in the postseason previously.
Unlike the Cy Young, the Sawamura Award has selection criteria. Historically, a pitcher had to reach the following thresholds to be considered for the award: 25 starts and 10 complete games, 15 wins and a .600 winning percentage, 200 innings, 150 strikeouts, and a 2.50 ERA or lower. Very few pitchers reach all seven thresholds these days, however.
Yamamoto turned only 25 in August and Orix is expected to post him for MLB teams after the season. He is likely to sign the largest contract ever given to a Japanese pitcher, beating out the seven years and $155 million the New York Yankees gave Masahiro Tanaka during the 2013-14 offseason. Here's more on Yamamoto:
Yamamoto receives high marks for his command over a varied arsenal. He throws his mid-90s fastball about half the time, with an upper-80s splitter serving as his main secondary pitch. He'll also work in a mid-70s curveball and a low-90s cutter. Each of those pitches has gone for a strike more than 65% of the time this season, nodding at his above-average geography. Yamamoto's splitter is his best pitch when it comes to generating chases and whiffs. He's listed at just 5-foot-10, but these days that could work to his advantage as teams have warmed up to the vertical approach angle concept.
Yamamoto joined Hall of Famer Masaichi Kaneda as the only pitchers to win three straight Sawamura Awards. He is the No. 2 free agent this offseason behind Shohei Ohtani. In a thin free agent class, Yamamoto should command north of $200 million, and just about every MLB team figures to check in given his age. Some will be more serious about signing him than others.
Once posted, Yamamoto will have 45 days to negotiate a contract with MLB teams. The posting fee owed to Orix is tied to the size of the contract and, for a contract over $50 million, the posting fee is $9.375 million plus 15% of the guarantee over $50 million. A $200 million contract would come with a $31.875 million payment to the Buffaloes.
Yamamoto and Hall of Famer Masaichi Kaneda are the only pitchers to win three consecutive Sawamura Award. Only three others have won three Sawamura Awards in their career. Yamamoto owns a career 1.72 ERA in parts of seven professional seasons.
The Kerala Government argued that the Governor subverted the Constitution and acted in a manifestly arbitrary manner by keeping the Bills passed by the State Legislature for an indefinite period. It also sought to get a declaration from the apex court that the Governor was bound to dispose of every Bill presented to him within a reasonable time. The Governor shall also be directed to dispose of the pending Bills without any further delay, the State submitted.
The Hindu had earlier reported that the Kerala Government and a CPI(M) legislator would together take the Governor to the top court on the issue of pending Bills.
Of the eight Bills passed by the Legislature, three were pending with the Governor for more than two years, and three others for more than one year. The conduct of the Governor threatened to defeat and subvert the very fundamentals and basic foundations of the Constitution, including the rule of law and democratic good governance, Kerala argued in the petition.
It further pointed out that the Kerala Private Forest (Vesting and Assignment) Bill, 2023, which was presented to the Governor on April 6, 2023, was disposed of by him on September 18, which indicated that the non-disposal of the earlier Bills was a conscious act.
The Governor, who failed to exercise the Constitutional provisions regarding the Bills presented to him and as mentioned in Article 200, appeared to be of the view that granting assent or otherwise dealing with Bills was a matter entrusted to him in his absolute discretion, to decide whenever he pleases, the State submitted.
A Governor who acts in gross disregard and violation of the provisions of the Constitution cannot be said to be functioning in the discharge of his duties as a Governor, pointed out the Kerala Government in the petition.
The secretary to the Governor and the Union of India were also made parties to the petition.
HBO programming chief Casey Bloys said on Thursday he’s already had to “adjust across the board” his slate for HBO and Max because of the impact of the recently ended writers and still-ongoing actors strikes. With SAG-AFTRA still picketing the Warner Bros. Discovery offices (and others), those adjustments are proving to be anything but final.
One-on-one with Bloys following a presentation of his 2024 slate, IndieWire asked what pending decisions still have to be made in the event a seemingly imminent SAG deal again proves elusive. Are there still potential cancellations coming? Could the axe even drop on a series previously picked up for another season? And could something as small as continuity seal the fate for a project that has sat on the shelf too long?
“All of the above,” Bloys responded. He’s been through lengthy shutdowns before; remember COVID?
Bloys, of course, hopes push does not come to shove, and he remains optimistic that the SAG-AFTRA strike will end sooner, rather than later. The chatter around town is that a deal could be struck as early as this week, and those on the studio side believe any later would make it near impossible to start production up in time before the end of the year. That, or those typically lengthy holiday breaks will be the things getting canceled.
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Still, we’ve been here before: it seemed imminent early in October before the studios walked away. Now that they’ve been back at the table, talks have been “cautiously optimistic” for the better part of a week. The actors guild revealed late on November 1 that the negotiating committee and AMPTP are still talking through a lot of issues around the nitty gritty of A.I.
“We would all like to get back to work,” Bloys said during Thursday’s press conference, but even more so he wants “everyone to come back to work happy.”
Bloys acknowledged that his decision-making is far from over, and he may even have to split some seasons into parts. “But I’m hopeful I don’t have to figure those things out. Obviously if it continues, we’ve got plans. It would probably involve moving some things,” Bloys said during the press event. “There are some shows that I showed you that are available earlier than others. So we’ve got scenarios that we would employ, but I’m really really hoping that we don’t have to.”
Among some of the changes already announced, “The White Lotus” Season 3 won’t come back until 2025, though it might have been on deck for a 2024 release, if not for the strikes. “The Last of Us” Season 2 will now shoot in early 2024 for a spring 2025 release. “Hacks” Season 3 is partly through production; that could be an example of a full season we end up consuming in two halves. “It” prequel “Welcome to Derry” was slated for Halloween 2024; it will now most likely be 2025.
Bloys was also asked if the increases the writers (and soon, it seems, the actors) will get in minimum wages and other bonuses will impact the content decisions HBO is able to make. Not really. “We’ve been through strikes before. They raise the costs. There’s nothing coming out of the strikes where I go, ‘Well, now I’m not going to make this show.’ It increases episodically the cost of course, but I don’t see a scenario where I go, well I was going to make another tentpole show, but now I’m not going to because now I have to pay X-amount more. I don’t think it works like that,” he said.
Bloys continued, “The bigger impact of this environment is dictated more by what’s the right amount of money to spend in streaming, how do you make money in that, as opposed to costs have gone up X-percent because of new minimums. I don’t see that affecting individual decisions. That’s something you have to take into account, but I don’t see it affecting the kinds of shows that we make.”
IndieWire later asked Bloys if the savings on production costs during the strikes can be reapplied in longer seasons, bigger budgets, or extra pickups. He said he’ll defer to the finance brains on this one, but we didn’t see Warner Bros. Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels by the cookie bar.
NAR released a summary of pending home sales data showing that September's pending home sales pace increased 1.1% from last month but fell 11% from a year ago.
Pending sales represent homes that have a signed contract to purchase on them but have yet to close. They tend to lead existing-home sales data by 1 to 2 months.
All four regions showed declines from a year ago. The West had the largest dip of 12.9% followed by the Northeast with a drop in contract signings of 12.7%. The South fell by 10.7%, followed by the Midwest with the smallest decline of 9.2%.
From last month, three regions showed increases in contract signings. The Midwest region had the biggest gain in contracts at 4.1%, followed by the Northeast, which rose modestly by 0.8%. The South increased by 0.7%, and the West region had the only decline of 1.8%.
The U.S. pending home sales index level for the month of September was 72.6. August's pending sales figures were revised to 71.8.
September's contract signings bring the pending index below the 100-level mark for the eighteenth consecutive month.
The 100 level is based on a 2001 benchmark and is consistent with existing-home sales above the 5 million mark.
The UAW’s tentative agreement with Ford also includes a cost-of-living adjustment that was nixed back in 2009 as Detroit carmakers teetered on insolvency. | Michael Swensen/Getty Images
The United Auto Workers have a deal. Deals, that is.
If the tentative agreements reached in recent days between the United Auto Workers and the Big Three automakers cross the finish line, it will mark a turning point in a year of labor unrest.
Union President Shawn Fain will have delivered his promised record economic contract — though falling short of his original ambitions — using the unconventional strategy of bargaining with all three companies at once, and perhaps accelerating growing support for unions.
It would also end a perilous chapter for President Joe Biden, a champion of the EV transition who has leaned on organized labor as a key political ally — but who risked seeing the economy take a substantial hit from a prolonged walkout.
The deals, which still need to be ratified, mark some of the final steps in ending the UAW’s strike against the companies.
Here’s what the union won, what it means politically and where things go from here.
What’s in the deals?
Though the final product would fall short of some of the the union’s most ambitious initial demands over the summer, including a 40 percent wage increase and 32-hour workweek, the UAW maintains the deals with Detroit’s car makers will be life-changing for members who made economic sacrifices during the Great Recession, as well as for an old-school union that’s sought what it sees as a just industry transition to electric vehicles.
The three automakers have each agreed to a top-line wage increase of 25 percent for workers across the life of their respective four-year contracts.
The UAW’s tentative agreement with Ford also includes a cost-of-living adjustment that was nixed back in 2009 as Detroit carmakers teetered on insolvency. It raises starting pay for temporary workers from $16.67 per hour to upwards of $40 by the end of the contract and speeds up their conversion to full-fledged employees. It also sweetens 401(k) terms and extends the right to strike over plant closures.
Stellantis and GM’s agreements are not yet public, but are expected to broadly align with what Ford offered. All three still need to be ratified by UAW members in the coming weeks.
The UAW has made a point of saying that the gains included in the tentative agreements eclipse those in every contract since the turn of the century, combined.
What about EVs?
The industry’s growing fleet of electric vehicles hovered over the negotiations, with the UAW fearing the transition will benefit non-union plants and displace workers since EVs require fewer parts than internal combustion engines.
GM workers for its joint venture battery company, Ultium Cells, would be included in the union’s master agreement under the agreement reached Monday, the UAW said. Workers at GM Subsystems LLC, a company subsidiary that wasn’t previously included in the master agreement, would also be added, according to the union.
Whether a plant is included in the master agreement is important because it would bring all the plant’s workers into the terms that the UAW went on strike for, rather than having to organize and bargain for individual agreements at the plants.
The union has provided the most detailed information about its agreement on EV workers at Ford. There, EV plant workers’ inclusion in its master labor contract with the UAW wouldn’t be automatic, but it would be made easier on the union.
To be included in the master agreement, a majority of workers at Ford’s battery plant in Marshall, Mich., or its EV assembly plant in Tennessee could submit cards saying they want a union, in a process known as a card check. It’s less of a hurdle to organizing than a full-blown union election.
The Tennessee plant, to which UAW members at other plants could get asked to transfer, might also come under the master agreement if a majority of its workforce is eventually made up of UAW members, Fain said Sunday. (Neither plant is open yet, and construction on the Marshall plant is currently paused.)
Labor movement consequences
Labor strategists, on both the worker and management sides, have been for weeks dissecting the UAW’s novel “Stand Up Strike” strategy — in which the union would periodically select a subset of targets with minimal notice to maximize pressure on the companies while conserving its war chest — for lessons that could be applied to other labor standoffs.
There are several factors unique to the UAW and the Big Three that could make the tactics difficult to apply elsewhere, even in other heavily unionized sectors. For instance, there are not many other industries where a union could play three large competitors off one another simultaneously, and not all businesses’ operations are as highly interconnected as auto plants — where a stoppage at one can quickly upend work at several others, multiplying the pain.
But the autoworkers’ success lends credence to activists who have advocated for new and more aggressive approaches to contract battles as a way to reinvigorate the labor movement.
The UAW’s tentative agreements come in the wake of the Teamsters’ deal with UPS that similarly saw the union win large pay increases and claw back some concessions made in previous contracts. Like the UAW, the Teamsters had recently elected a brash new president who argued that previous leaders had been too pliant in high-stakes negotiations.
Public support for labor unions has been at, or near, record highs for several years. However, union membership as a share of the overall workforce continues to wane, and organized labor is still seeking ways to reconcile those conflicting trends and reverse its decline.
View from the White House
Biden showed unprecedented support for the union during the strike: He took the essentially unheard-of step of joining workers at the picket line in September, after Fain called for his support. Biden’s alignment with the union means the relatively favorable deals now could be seen as a boon to his handling of economic issues for the working class.
“Today’s historic agreement is yet another piece of good economic news showing something I’ve always believed,” Biden said Monday. “Worker power, worker power is critical to building an economy from the middle out and the bottom up, and so is economic growth.”
There are still pieces left to fall into place, beyond just needing the contracts ratified. The union still hasn’t endorsed Biden in his reelection bid, making it an outlier among large labor groups after the AFL-CIO delivered its earliest-ever endorsement in favor of Biden. And with the contract details on the EV issue still not clear, particularly at GM and Stellantis, there’s still the possibility of a clash down the road between the union and the president, who has spent significant domestic political capital backing that very transition.
What’s next for UAW?
Part of the UAW’s ferocity at the bargaining table was done with an eye toward its future. Landing strong deals with the Big Three would give officials something to tout to non-unionized workers, demonstrating their ability to deliver on promises of better pay and job security.
In recent years, the UAW has been dealt a number of stinging losses in various attempts at organizing other car manufacturers, particularly in the South where “right-to-work” laws hamstring unions.
The UAW over time has evolved greatly, with roughly half of its membership coming from outside the car industry, including such disparate workplaces as hospitals, universities and casinos.
As the center of gravity for the domestic car industry continues to expand beyond just Michigan and its other traditional homes in the Midwest, the UAW’s ability to organize will be key to its continued survival, particularly as new facilities come online to produce electric vehicles.
“We demanded a longer contract because one of our biggest goals coming out of this historic contract victory is to organize like we’ve never organized before,” Fain said Sunday on Facebook Live, referring to the contract’s 4.5-year duration, six months longer than the union’s last agreement. “When we return to the bargaining table in 2028 it won’t just be with the Big Three, but with the Big Five or Big Six.”
At the same time, other U.S. car companies and foreign automakers may become even more resistant to unionization campaigns. These companies already have lower labor costs than the Big Three, and that gap is expected to widen if the tentative agreements are ratified.
Some, like Tesla, which has already faced accusations of illegal anti-union actions, may dig in their heels even more rather than give up those competitive advantages over the Big Three.
Matthew Perry's initial autopsy results are inconclusive pending a toxicology report, authorities said Sunday.
The cause of death has been "deferred," and further investigation has been requested before a determination will be made, according to a report released by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner.
Though an official conclusion isn't likely to be released for several weeks, the medical examiner's office said the body was ready to be released to the family.
Perry, the star of "Friends" and several other TV shows and movies, died Saturday in an apparent drowning in a hot tub at his home in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. He was 54.
A 911 call came in at 4:07 p.m. local time, according to a law enforcement source. The call was treated as a water rescue.
A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Fire Department, Brian Humphrey, said first responders went to a home in Pacific Palisades on Saturday night based on a 911 call responding to a "water emergency."
Perry was best known for playing Chandler Bing on "Friends," NBC's 1990s sitcom about a group of six friends in their 20s living in New York City. He joined the cast at 24.
The show ran for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004.
Perry also appeared in several other television shows, including “Boys Will Be Boys,” “Growing Pains,” Beverly Hills, 90210,” “The West Wing” and “Scrubs.”
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