BCB After Dark: Who won the Rafael Devers trade?

The late-night/early-morning spot for Cubs fans asks

It’s Wednesday evening here at BCB After Dark: the coolest club for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come on in and dry off with us. We still have some room. The dress code is casual. If you need to check anything, let us know. Don’t lose the ticket. 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.

The Cubs and Brewers were rained out this evening.

Last night, I asked you who should be removed from the Cubs bullpen when Porter Hodge and Eli Morgan are ready to return. On that subject: [Bluesky link]

Still, room will have to be made for Hodge and when Shōta Imanaga returns in under two weeks time (we hope), then either Colin Rea or Ben Brown is going to the bullpen and the Cubs will have to make room then.

In any case, 48 percent of you think “last in, last out” as you voted for Génesis Cabrera to get designated for assignment. Another 22 percent voted for Ryan Brasier.

Here’s the part where we listen to music and talk movies. You’re free to skip those parts.

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In 30 Rock, NBC executive Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) makes a video of advice for his infant daughter to be watched in the event of his death. One of his bits of advice was:

Do not hire Sting to play your wedding reception. He’ll insist on doing jazz versions of Police songs and it’s just (pause) demoralizing.

So is anyone here getting married right now? Because we’re going to feature Sting doing jazz versions of Police songs.

(I know from personal experience that a good way to get people into jazz is to play jazz versions of songs they are already familiar with. Plus, they’re popular with non-jazz fans and we aim to be inclusive.)

This is a brand-new release from the Christian McBride Big Band that has Sting on vocals and Andy Summers on guitar. (No Stewart Copeland. Sorry.) This is “Murder By Numbers.”

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Tonight I’m looking at one of my dreaded “musical biopics,” but I obviously have a good reason. With the recent death of Beach Boy Brian Wilson, I watched the 2014 musical biopic Love and Mercy, which was directed by Bill Pohlad (of the Minnesota Twins family) and stars John Cusack, Paul Dano, Elizabeth Banks and Paul Giamatti.

To lay my cards on the table, I’m a Beach Boys fan who thinks Pet Sounds is the greatest piece of pop music ever made. I walk into the film already knowing a lot about the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson. I’m not one of those obsessive fans who has memorized every song and has analyzed all the studio outtakes (more on that later) that have been released in box sets, nor have I listened to all the dreck the band made after Brian mostly left the group. But I do know more about the Beach Boys and Brian than the average person who sings along with “California Girls”, “Surfing USA” and ‘Fun, Fun, Fun.”

Love and Mercy is definitely a Brian Wilson movie and not a Beach Boys film. The other band members are only present when they interact with Brian and even then, only in one half of the film. Love and Mercy also doesn’t try to tell the entire story of Wilson’s life. Instead, it focuses on two periods in Brian’s life—the mid-sixties when Brian (Paul Dano) is creating Pet Sounds/Good Vibrations/SMiLE and the late-eighties when Brian (John Cusack) is under the control of his abusive psychiatrist, Dr. Eugene Landry (Paul Giamatti). The film switches back and forth between the two time periods throughout the film. The overriding theme is the mental health struggles that Brian dealt with throughout his life and how two authority figures, Brian’s father Murray and Dr. Landry, abused and exploited Brian.

As you may have noted, Love and Mercy casts two different actors to play Brian to very different results. Dano, wearing a Brian Wilson sixties wig, actually looks and sounds a lot like Brian during that time frame. Cusack, on the other hand, is an odd choice to play Wilson. To be fair to him, Cusack does get down Brian’s speaking cadence and mannerisms, but despite Pohlad’s protests to the contrary, doesn’t really look or sound anything like Brian did. That might be OK if Dano wasn’t doing a dead-on performance, or maybe if the film wasn’t constantly shifting between the two time periods. But as it is, Love and Mercy feels like it is about two different people, despite the theme of mental illness connecting them.

Dano had the advantage that a huge chunk of his scenes take place in the studio where Pet Sounds was recorded and we actually have large sections of conversations in there recorded on tape. Many of them are even available to the public on box set re-releases. As such, from the best of my Beach Boys knowledge, the sixties section of Love and Mercy is exceptionally accurate for a biopic. I think the film portrays Mike Love as more of a horse’s ass than he actually was—not that they show anything Mike actually didn’t do, they just don’t show Mike’s better side much except briefly when he helps inspire Brian to write “Good Vibrations,” and even that downplays Mike’s role in the song. But overall, if you want the quick story of how Pet Sounds got made and what Brian’s frame of mind was during that time, Love and Mercy is excellent.

The real villain of the sixties section isn’t Love but Brian’s father Murray Wilson (Bill Camp). Murray had already been fired as the Beach Boys manager by the time Pet Sounds was made, but Brian is still trying to win the love of a father who returns his requests for affection with sneers, venom and rage. Camp aptly captures the arrogance, rage, narcissism and manipulativeness that was Murray.

The late-eighties section of the film is more problematic, and Cusack is actually not the reason why. The biggest problem with the second section is that it simply isn’t Brian Wilson’s story. Instead, it’s the story of Melinda Ledbetter (Banks), who would become Brian’s second wife. The film is going for a love story that saves Brian from the evil Dr. Landry, which makes cinematic sense but it’s far from the whole truth.

It makes sense that the film would prioritize Melinda’s story—she served as a consultant on the movie whereas Brian just stopped in from time to time to offer a few notes. (Brian did approve of the film, to be clear.) But while it may have seemed to Melinda that she was fighting alone to free Brian, the truth of the matter is she played a very secondary role. In reality, Brian’s brother Carl and his cousin (and former NBA player) Stan Love (Mike’s brother) had been working for years to free Brian from the conservatorship that Dr. Landry had him in before Melina even arrived. Brian’s daughters Wendy and Carnie (two-thirds of Wilson Phillips) also played a big role and are only mentioned in the film in that Dr. Landry doesn’t allow Brian to see them. But the film makes it seem like Melinda did all the work and Carl just signed the paperwork at the end and from my understanding, that just isn’t so. But Carl was dead when the film was made and Melinda wasn’t.

Eugene Landry was a celebrity psychiatrist with unorthodox theories who, essentially, broke Brian’s drug addictions by making him completely dependent on him. He controlled every aspect of Brian’s life. Landry overprescribed prescription medicine to keep him helpless and refused to allow him to do anything without his approval. He also drained Brian’s bank accounts and wrote up contracts giving him large shares of Brian’s future royalties.

Melinda said that the film downplays how abusive Landry was and Giamatti admitted he had to tone down Landry in his performance because the man was such a real-life cartoon character that he simply wouldn’t be believable on-screen. Still, you won’t have any trouble detesting Dr. Landry. He’s vile and you won’t have any problem picking him out as a charlatan from the beginning, although you can see how a drugged-out and mentally-ill Brian could be taken in by him.

The problem is we don’t really get anything from Brian’s point of view in the late-eighties story. It’s Melinda meeting Brian, Melinda falling in love with Brian, Melinda seeing Dr, Landry abuse Brian and Melinda trying to stop it.

For Brian’s point of view, we have to go back to the sixties, and fortunately the film is strongly edited so that points made in the eighties are often immediately followed by explanatory scenes in the sixties. The sixties story does do a very good job of re-creating Brian’s schizophrenic symptoms and drug abuse and how they affected him. You also get some flashbacks in Brian’s mind to his childhood. Some of them portray an idyllic suburban California life with his two brothers. Others are a house of horrors.

What I can’t argue with the film is that it does give the audience a sense of Brian’s genius. If you weren’t already convinced of the greatness of that mid-sixties Beach Boys music, you will be after seeing how it was created. To it’s credit, Love and Mercy doesn’t play all the hits and limits itself to the Brian Wilson songs that advance the themes of the film. That means the recording of “Sloop John B” gets short shrift, which is too bad because it’s a great story. But it’s not really Brian’s story, so I get it. They do play the song, however, and you see the film recreates the famous video the Beach Boys made for it. Although the actor they got to play Mike Love (Jake Abel) even looks evil in the recreation, whereas Mike doesn’t in the actual video.

As a film, Love and Mercy works well enough. The sixties sections are excellent. The love story works fine and Cusack captures Brian’s charisma and character (if not his looks and voice) well enough that you can see how this woman would fall in love with him despite (looks around) all that baggage. To finish out the “Heroes and Villains” theme, Camp and Giamatti play terrific bad guys.

There’s no arguing with the case the film makes for Brian Wilson’s genius. For hardcore Beach Boys fans, the film is still valuable for Dano’s young Wilson, but they are more likely to argue with the film’s focus on Melinda Ledbetter at the expense of Brian. For casual Beach Boys fans or the non-fans, there’s an interesting story of a sick and abused genius being saved by love that’s been a staple of movies for a long time.

Here’s the trailer for Love and Mercy.

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Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.

We don’t normally do this for a trade that doesn’t involve the Cubs, but since the deal that sent Rafael Devers from the Red Sox to the Giants is the talk of baseball, I thought I’d let you weigh in on it.

Just to recap, Devers had been disgruntled in Boston since they signed free agent third baseman Alex Bregman without consulting with him first. Devers was the Red Sox incumbent third baseman and had signed a ten-year, $315 million deal before the 2023 season to be the Red Sox first baseman for the duration. Eventually Devers agreed to move to being a full-time DH, but then balked at moving to first base after Triston Casas went down for the season with an injury.

So the Red Sox were saddled with an unhappy star and a huge contract. Despite this, Devers was having his best season at the plate since he led the majors in total bases in 2019.

The Giants were looking for a big bat. Third baseman Matt Chapman was going to miss a bit of time with an injury. Big winter free agent signing shortstop Willy Adames has been a disappointment so far. Incumbent first baseman LaMonte Wade Jr. was so bad that he got designated for assignment and traded to the Angels. Outfielder Jung Hoo Lee had bounced back from an injury-plagued first season in North America, but otherwise the Giants offense was a mess. San Francisco’s pitching was keeping them in the hunt for the playoffs, but they wouldn’t stay in that hunt without some more bats.

So the Giants dealt promising (but so far maddening) young left-handed pitcher Kyle Harrison to Boston. Also going was right-hander Jordan Hicks, who had been a very good reliever for the Cardinals and Blue Jays before the Giants tried turning him into a starter, an experiment that can only be described as a failure.

Two minor leaguers went along with Harrison and Hicks. Outfielder James Tibbs III was the Giants’ first-round draft pick last year and one of the best college hitters, for average, on-base percentage and power, over his three-year career at Florida State. Tibbs is off to a decent start to his professional career. He’s not hitting for average, but he is drawing walks and hitting home runs. Jose Bello was a bit of a throw-in lottery ticket. Bello is 20 and pitching in rookie ball, striking out 14 batters per nine innings down there. He doesn’t have a big fastball, but his sharp slider is potentially elite.

But the big thing that the Giants gave up for Devers is that they agreed to pay all of his contract that has about $250 million and 8 ¹⁄₂ seasons left on it. The players that the Red Sox got back in the deal are nice, but none of them have the potential to be as good as Devers. But the Red Sox won’t have to pay $250 million to a disgruntled star.

The baseball press have been pretty universally negative on the return the Red Sox got for Devers. However, some articles that asked rival executive—the ones who actually make trades—to anonymously comment on the deal and most of them seem to think the Red Sox did great getting rid of Devers’ contract (The Athletic sub. req.) although a few criticized Boston for letting the situation between them and Devers deteriorate to the point that they had to deal him. Some said the fact that the Red Sox got players and prospects that are at least decent in return while not having to eat any of Devers’ contract was a win for Boston.

But enough of those people. Who do you think won the Devers trade?

Thanks for stopping by tonight and all week. We appreciate all of our customers, but especially those who take the time to vote and comment. Please get home safely. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again next week for more BCB After Dark.