Dodgers’ spring leadership question has faded away

• April 13, 2023

SAN FRANCISCO — The Dodgers have answered their leadership question – by not even asking it.

With Justin Turner departed for Boston, a popular question this spring centered on who would fill his leadership role in the Dodgers clubhouse. Manager Dave Roberts acknowledged that it was an issue on his mind as spring camp opened and that he might give “an easy nudging” to Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman to step forward and take greater leadership roles than they had in the past.

But once Roberts saw the dynamics of a clubhouse featuring veteran additions Jason Heyward, J.D. Martinez and David Peralta, he decided that wasn’t necessary.

“Once I got a chance to get to spring and see our guys together, I didn’t have that conversation. And I don’t think I needed to or still need to,” Roberts said. “I just felt that with the guys we brought in and seeing them assimilate I just feel that we have enough guys doing and saying the right thing. … To have Freddie and Mookie do something more than they’ve already done in the past, I just didn’t think it was necessary.”

Freeman did take the lead in organizing a team dinner when the Dodgers traveled to Arizona last week for the first road trip of the season and is mulling over arranging something on the day off between series in Chicago and Pittsburgh later this month.

“I’ve never been one to say, ‘You’re going to be a leader. I’m going to be a leader.’ That doesn’t make sense to me,” Freeman said. “I think it just naturally happens.”

Freeman said he has seen Betts taking more of a leadership role in his own way, particularly speaking up during hitters’ meetings and offering positive support.

“Yeah. I think if you talk to anybody in this organization, Mookie has taken that step which is awesome,” Freeman said. “I mean, he’s a superstar – not just in baseball, in every sport in this world, he can do it all. He’s a special person. He cares.

“He’s comfortable now. In life, it’s comfort. Once you get comfortable, you’re still the same person but you can do more. Mookie’s comfortable now.”

Betts shrugged off any suggestion that he has become more vocal – or that a new leader had to be identified.

“Nobody pays attention to who the leader is. We’re just playing,” Betts said. “I feel like me and Freddie aren’t very vocal leaders. We’re not top-step, screaming and cheering. We lead by example. We play the game hard, we play the game the right way, we play every day. That’s who we are. You can’t tell somebody to be rah-rah if that’s not who they are.

“Maybe (I’m speaking up more). It’s not on purpose, I will say that. It just kind of happens. My wife always tells me I’m just a leader and I don’t really realize it.”

WALK THIS WAY

The Dodgers went into Wednesday’s game leading the majors in walks drawn (65). They led the National League and finished second in the majors in walks each of the past two seasons.

But this year’s total is notable for the contributions of rookies Miguel Vargas and James Outman. Those two have combined to draw 21 of the walks, with Vargas (12) entering Wednesday tied with New York Mets outfielder Brandon Nimmo for the major-league lead.

“For me, just Vargas and Outman, to be able to take walks and have good at-bats, I think in some ironic way it’s kind of incentivizing the veteran players to have those same type of at-bats and take walks when they’re presented,” Roberts said.

So far this season, both Vargas and Outman have shown higher walk rates in the majors than they did during their minor-league careers.

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“It’s very positive that they’ve taken the free passes,” Roberts said. “That’s really good because guys always want to swing the bat, to get knocks. But to have the discipline to not chase, it shows a lot of maturity, which is something we bet on coming into the season.

“They’re both smart guys. I say that because when you’re a smart player you know that if you swing out of the strike zone you’re not going to have success. … Sometimes you have to take the walk instead of the 0 for 1. Those guys just really get it and understand that.”

UP NEXT

The Dodgers are off Thursday.

Cubs (LHP Justin Steele 1-0, 0.75 ERA) at Dodgers (RHP Noah Syndergaard, 0-1, 6.30 ERA), Friday, 7:10 p.m., SportsNet LA, 570 AM

​ Orange County Register 

UCLA team launches ocean carbon capture project at Port of Los Angeles

• April 13, 2023

Prof. Dante Simonetti stood on a 100-foot barge Wednesday morning, tethered close to shore just outside one of AltaSea’s massive warehouses at the Port of Los Angeles.

In one hand, Simonetti, who helps head up UCLA’s Institute for Carbon Management, held a copper block called an electrochemical reactor. When a jolt of electricity is applied to the device and ocean water passes through it, he explained, a chemical reaction turns any dissolved minerals from that seawater into powder-fine solids.

In Simonetti’s other hand, he held a small plastic container filled with powder-like bits of limestone and brucite created through this process.

The point of it all was locked inside that powder, where carbon dioxide that had once been absorbed and dissolved into the sea gets trapped, sequestered from our acidifying oceans and ever-warming atmosphere for more than 10,000 years.

Even better: Once there is less carbon dissolved within the ocean, physics tells us the ocean will naturally pull more carbon from the air. And if the ocean starts absorbing more of the carbon that humans can’t seem to stop churning out, that could potentially help us all avoid learning firsthand what more extreme climate change will do to our planet.

With that goal in mind, Simonetti and his team spent two years scaling up that handheld ocean carbon capture system, making it about one million times larger. On Wednesday, they showed off that first-of-its-kind system, with multiple large electrochemical reactors, water tanks and other equipment rigged up on a barge that in a previous life hauled cargo to remote villages in Alaska and the Arctic Circle.

Gaurav Sant, director of UCLA’s Institute for Carbon Management, said in about a week his team plans to launch a similar demonstration system in Singapore. Each shore-side pilot, which they’ve dubbed Project SeaChange, will be capable of drawing more than 40 tons of carbon from the air each year, removing up to 4.6 kilograms of carbon dioxide from each cubic meter of seawater processed.

As these demonstration projects come online, UCLA joins a small but growing group of startups working to address the climate crisis by using technology to remove carbon from the ocean so it will pull more carbon out of the air.

Last year, Pasadena-based Captura, which grew out of research at nearby CalTech, beat UCLA to the punch by launching a pilot ocean carbon capture system off the coast of Newport Beach, though it was a much smaller system, capable of drawing down just 1 ton of carbon each year. By June, Captura says it will launch a pilot that can scrub 100 tons of carbon a year, with plans in the works for a third system that should hit 1,000 tons.

Fenfang Wu, lead pilot engineer and lab manager of Captura, shows off the membrane contractor portion of a system that aims to remove 100 tons of carbon from the ocean each year. The pilot project is under construction at Captura’s laboratory in Pasadena, CA, on Wednesday, February 15, 2023. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Demand for such projects — if they prove feasible and cost effective — is nearly a lock. With global goals to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius, most industries on the planet are facing intense pressure to reduce their carbon emissions. One of the most attractive ways for them to do that is to buy carbon offsets, where they can continue operating but pay to run programs that help reduce atmospheric carbon.

To date, most proposals to remove carbon from the atmosphere have focused on trying to scrub the greenhouse gas directly from the air. But that form of carbon capture is so far proving to be a pricey and underperforming endeavor. So the teams at UCLA and Captura are banking on selling carbon offset credits as they look to roll out industrial-scale ocean capture plants commercially in the next few years.

The UCLA team’s technology offers another potential benefit. Its process, which differs in a few elemental ways from Captura’s, also produces hydrogen as electrolysis breaks seawater down into its element parts. Hydrogen is another hot commodity in the modern green economy, with startups and major corporations working on ways to use hydrogen to power everything from airplanes to trucks to cement production. So in addition to selling carbon credits, the UCLA team’s spinoff business, Equatic, hopes to also sell hydrogen.

That hydrogen could be used to power the company’s carbon capture plants, too. The pilot project at AltaSea requires two megawatt hours of electricity for each ton of carbon dioxide removed from the sea, Sant said. The system is plugged into the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s Green Power program, where its electricity is supplied from renewable sources. But as systems come online in other places, Sant said they could use hydrogen generated by the plant to supply some of the power needed to operate the system. He said some electricity would still be needed, though, so they’re looking to prioritize using renewable energy whenever possible, with the potential of someday using offshore wind turbines or solar systems as power sources.

If Equatic’s systems run entirely on renewable energy, that will not only make them better for the planet, but also make both the carbon credits it offers and the hydrogen it supplies even more valuable.

One other potential revenue point for UCLA’s team is the carbon-containing solids created during the process. Simonetti said that material could be used to replenish sand on beaches, or made into building materials such as cement. But much of it, he said, would likely be released back into the ocean due to the volume that will be created.

Still, the team insists its system will have “minimal to no effect” on the surrounding ecosystem, since they’re not putting anything in the sea that wasn’t already there.

“We design vessels that can rebalance our seawater to ensure that we have the same ion composition, pH, salinity, dissolved solids and other fundamental properties of seawater before we discharge,” Simonetti said.

They also have fine-mesh filters over their pumps, to keep aquatic life from being pulled into the system.

Regulators and private investors are demonstrating with their wallets that they’re optimistic about the potential of UCLA’s system. The company’s financing includes a $1 million grant from the Department of Energy, $1.5 million from Volkswagen’s settlement over an emissions cheating scandal, and a $21 million pledge from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

The Department of Energy has set financial targets — $100 a ton for carbon removal and $1 per kilo for hydrogen — to make them commercially viable. Sant didn’t share how those prices pencil out now, noting that pilot projects are always expensive. But he said he’s confident they’ll hit those targets quickly as they scale up.

While the pilot projects in L.A. and Singapore are set to run for six to nine months, Sant said his team already is designing industrial-scale plants capable of drawing down millions of tons of carbon dioxide from the air each year.

The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has estimated that we’ll need to remove 10 to 20 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year, starting in 2050, to avoid hitting 2 degrees Celsius of warming. Thousands of large ocean carbon capture plants, at a cost of trillions of dollars, would be needed to hit that target.

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Of course, retrieving carbon from the ocean isn’t the only solution on the table, with billions in federal dollars being invested into proving various carbon removal systems. But Sant said the biggest limitation ahead isn’t just nailing the technology, but building them out at the scale and speed the climate crisis demands.

“That really is the fundamental metric that you’ve got to keep in mind,” he said. “It’s also probably the hardest one, because this is a scale of growth that is unprecedented.”

​ Orange County Register 

How baseball’s new rules are changing the game, and how they aren’t

• April 13, 2023

Around this time a year ago, complaints about the state of baseball were not limited to pedants, pundits, and old men yelling at clouds. The league-wide batting average by the end of April 2022 was .231. Mario Mendoza, the light-hitting infielder of the 1970s and 1980s whose name is synonymous with below-average hitting, batted .231 in 1981. To some, the game had changed beyond recognition.

As it often does, batting average crept up as the season progressed. By the end of the season, it reached .243, still the lowest over a full season since 1968. Then as now, Major League Baseball decided it was time to change the rules.

Batting average is about as helpful to diagnosing the balance between hitting and pitching as a digital thermometer is to diagnosing a sick patient: useful, but incomplete. It tells us a lot about the effectiveness of the new rules, but not everything.

Here are a few early observations about what’s changed, and what hasn’t:

1. Batters are being rewarded with more hits ― and not just lefties

The rise in batting average tells us two things. One is more obvious than the other.

By restricting where infielders can stand – both feet on the dirt, with two men on either side of second base – it only makes sense that more ground balls are getting through to the outfield. Sure enough, batting average on grounders was .249 through Tuesday, up from .241 a year ago.

Here’s where the numbers get interesting. Left-handed hitters have always been shifted more frequently than right-handed hitters. Yet right-handers’ batting average on grounders is up 13 points compared to last year, while lefties have gained only three points.

Where lefties hold the early advantage is on line drives: their batting average on liners has jumped 42 points (.628 to .670), compared to 20 points for righties (.633 to .653).

2. Home runs are surging, too

Here’s another one the new rules didn’t see coming: a year ago, one out of every 10 fly balls hit in April resulted in a home run. So far in 2023, the home-run-per-fly-ball rate is up to 12.7%.

MLB has attempted to standardize the physical properties of baseballs ever since home runs surged at record rates in 2017 and 2019. (Ironically, the league acknowledged using two different baseballs in 2021.) Even if no new rules were implemented this year, the question of how easily the ball carries would have been an important one to ask. The answer: pretty easily.

Isolated power, which subtracts batting average from slugging percentage, is tracking at its third-highest March/April rate since at least 2002. If the current HR/fly ball ratio holds, it will be the highest by the end of April in all but three recorded seasons (2017, 2019 and 2021).

Note that home run rates will need time to be judged fairly. Toronto’s Rogers Centre, which changed its dimensions over the winter, has hosted two games. Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg has hosted nine. But the percentage of hard-hit balls (grounders, line drives and fly balls included) is so far the third-highest ever recorded too. No matter where they stood, fielders might be having a harder time catching baseballs this year.

3. More stolen bases

Bigger bases, fewer pickoffs, less time to improvise on the mound: all of these initiatives were intended to increase stolen bases. To the surprise of no one, they’re working.

The rate of attempted steals per game (0.85 through Tuesday) is the highest since 2012, but still well below the heyday which MLB is unabashedly attempting to replicate. The league attempted 1.21 steals per game in 1987. What’s changed is the success rate: at 81.3%, the average thief in 2023 is now successful as often as Ichiro Suzuki was during his major league career. If anything, this might lead to more stolen bases as the season goes on, as teams get more daring on the basepaths and batting average on balls in play increases.

Philosophically, this might rub old-school fans the wrong way. After all, defensive shifts were not the norm until recently, so a rule that repositions two fielders on either side of second base is effectively restoring the game to a previous version of itself. Eighteen-inch bases and limits on pickoff attempts were never the norm. Rather than gently nudging the balance between offense and defense in one direction, these rules forcibly move the needle someplace it’s never been.

4. More double plays

One unintended consequence of the shifting rule to keep an eye on: 2.32% of all fielding chances this season have resulted in a double play, up from 2.25% in 2022. That’s a subtle change that anecdotally seems more pronounced in person.

It’s also somewhat counterintuitive. After all, if more ground balls are getting through the infield, shouldn’t it be harder for teams to turn double plays?

Two factors, I think, are working in the fielders’ favor. One is that if the balls are being hit harder – which they are – fielders should have more time to throw the ball around the infield on double-play attempts. The other is that if batting and on-base averages are up – which they are – there ought to be more runners on first base to double up. Expect that trend to be more pronounced as BABIP rises this summer.

5. True outcomes

Pitchers are still throwing harder than ever, and more breaking balls than ever, so perhaps it is unsurprising that strikeout rates are still sky-high. Through Tuesday, the strikeout rate was essentially unchanged from a year ago. The weird one: the league-wide walk rate is on pace to be the highest in April since 2010.

Combine those figures with the high home run rate, and baseball is still a game of “three true outcomes.” The rate of balls in play is essentially unchanged. What has changed is the difficulty in turning those batted balls into outs.

6. Time (and pace) of game

MLB boasted on its official Twitter account that 10 of the 13 games played Monday ended by 9:30 p.m. local time. Unless you’re a vampire, that’s good news.

You probably knew that the average time of a nine-inning game has fallen by nearly half an hour. Fortunately, Baseball Reference is tracking the more subtle pace-of-game metrics too: Through Tuesday, the average time between plate appearances is down 24 seconds and the average time between balls in play is down by 33 seconds. Thank you, pitch clock!

With all these quicker games, perhaps MLB can reconsider the “need” for an automatic runner on second base in extra innings.

​ Orange County Register 

Grand Prix of Long Beach: Jim Michaelian thrilled about Historic F1 races

• April 13, 2023

It doesn’t take much to get Jim Michaelian revved up this time of year, so it was no surprise to hear how excited he is about a couple of 20-minute Historic F1 Challenge races that will be among the support series for this weekend’s 48th running of the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach.

The Grand Prix of Long Beach began in 1975 with the Formula 5000 series as the main event. The next year it switched to Formula 1 and stayed that way until 1984 when it switched to Champ Car, which merged with IndyCar in 2008.

The Historic F1 Challenge races will be run Saturday at 11:20 a.m., the day before Sunday’s NTT IndyCar main event, and again on Sunday at 10:45 a.m. Best of all, most of the cars that will be on the grid were driven there decades ago.

“There’s 19 cars now and I think the last count it was like 15 actually ran here from ’76 to ’83, 15 out of the 19,” Michaelian said.

To say Michaelian is thrilled about this development is putting it mildly.

“First, the few of us who were around then, it’s a great chance to reminisce about the sights and the sounds of those cars on the circuit,” he said. “But I think more importantly, for those who didn’t have the opportunity, this is a chance for them to see and to hear the sounds of those engines.”

That alone is worth taking in the race, Michaelian intimated.

“There’s Cosworth’s V8’s, there’s a flat-twelve, there’s a V12,” he said of the engines. “I mean, those are totally different sounds than you’ll ever hear anymore. So it’s not only a look back, but it also is for many people a new experience.”

The IMSA Weathertech SportsCar Grand Prix is the main support race in Long Beach. It will last 100 minutes on Saturday. There is also the Porsche Carrera Cup, the Stadium Super Trucks and the Super Drift Challenge.

INDYCAR REPEAT?

Sebastien Bourdais won three Grand Prix of Long Beach main events from 2005-07, but there was not a repeat winner again until Alexander Rossi pulled it off in 2018 and 2019.

Josef Newgarden is the defending champion and he comes into this race off a victory at the Texas Motor Speedway for the second consecutive year.

Related links

Grand Prix of Long Beach: Graham Rahal still fighting for positive results
Grand Prix of Long Beach: Oh, baby, what a time it was for Josef Newgarden

​ Orange County Register 

Grand Prix of Long Beach: Legge, Monk carry women in motorsports flag well

• April 13, 2023

Katherine Legge and Sheena Monk are a couple of determined, resilient race car drivers. That they are women might be neither here nor there, but they are part of the growing population of women in motorsports.

Legge, of England, has been around for quite a while, having made her first big splash as a driver in the U.S. by winning the Champ Car Atlantic race at the Grand Prix of Long Beach in 2005.

Monk, of Newton, Pa., has been driving competitively since 2017 and she made a name for herself by not only surviving a wicked high-speed crash into the tires at Laguna Seca in 2018 that left her with nine broken bones after her car went airborne but by coming back to continue her incredible passion for racing.

Legge got through her own crash two years later while testing in France, suffering two broken legs – one was badly broken – that had her in a wheelchair for some time.

Tough, indeed.

Along the way, they have become a shining example to other women aspiring to join the motorsports world in some capacity.

Just last year this newspaper did a story on three women working as either engineers or mechanics for Chip Ganassi Racing, one of the premier IndyCar teams.

Legge and Monk will be driving partners for Gradient Racing on Saturday in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar series race at the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. They make up the only full-time all-female team in the series, which is the main support race for Sunday’s NTT IndyCar main event.

Legge, 42, and Monk, 34, on Wednesday shared their journey and their happiness about the rising number of women in motorsports.

“I think you can say across the board that it’s growing because it’s becoming more normal and less gimmicky and more acceptable,” Legge said. “You see it, you can be it. I think even fans, right? You couldn’t really market to female fans 20 years ago, but now the demographic is significantly more equal and so I think it’s just across the board.”

She thinks it’s in line with what is happening globally.

“If you look at the way population in society is developing, there are more women running companies, there are more women running countries, there are more women doing all the things that were taboo a hundred years ago,” Legge said. “And motorsports are a reflection of that in some way, shape or form.”

Legge is on the board of the FIA Women in Motorsport Commission, which began in 2009 as a way to support women in motorsports in every aspect. Jim Michaelian, CEO of the Grand Prix Association of Long Beach, supports it wholeheartedly.

“It’s a fabulous initiative,” he said. “We certainly need and welcome more female drivers in all of the various series, including the opportunity to compete in the NTT IndyCar series on a full-time basis. … And the byproduct of that is the public – if you remember back when Danica Patrick was running – the public is very engaged in their exploits and to see how they’re doing.

“So I think the more the better as far as that whole initiative is concerned.”

Monk said her father was a professional motorcycle racer, which drew her to racing. But she was a lover of cars, thus the path she chose. She recalls the early days when there were no true peers with whom to share her passion.

“I could talk to other boys about cars, but very few girls in my life understood,” Monk said. “I used to read the car magazines cover to cover. At the school library, I would take out books about cars and it was really unrelatable, right?”

That is changing, and she loves it.

“In general, to see women that are more involved in any capacity at the race track, it’s just neat to have that kind of camaraderie and just understand that there are people like you because again, growing up, I never really had that,” Monk said.

When Monk had her accident in September 2018, she saw the ugly side of what some think about women driving race cars. She broke her pelvis in four places, broke her sacrum and also sustained four broken ribs.

“At the time of the accident, I remember a lot of the comments were directed toward me like, this is why they shouldn’t let women race, and she shouldn’t have been texting, and she doesn’t know what she’s doing, or she’s not strong enough to drive the car,” she said.

Monk admits it hurt, especially with her family seeing the same comments, but it did not deter her.

She said when her brother asked her if she was going to race again while she was in the hospital, her initial reaction was to tell him she was done. A second later, she knew that was not the right answer.

“As soon as the words came out of my mouth, it was like, ‘No, that’s so wrong,’” she said.

Of course, it was.

“I think what brought me back was just, you know, it’s hard to be that passionate and that interested for your entire life, like literally obsessed, with one thing and then you finally get an opportunity and just because there is strife and struggle, to just give it away?” she said.

She said she has since had former Formula 1 drivers tell her they did not know if they would have come back after suffering all those injuries.

“I think people knew that I was serious about wanting to do this after that point,” Monk said.

As for Legge, she jokingly said if doctors knew what she did to figure out if it was right to come back after her accident, they “would kill me.” She had to know if she was going to be both physically and mentally capable of continuing her driving career.

Legge was still in her wheelchair at the time and coaching a friend for a race. She got out of her wheelchair and entered the car.

“I drove it on track just to see if I still got it, I can still do it,” Legge said. “Obviously, I didn’t drive very fast, I didn’t take any risks. But I felt fine being in the car again and got rid of those worries and that actually helped me be able to get through the rehab and the physical therapy and everything that I needed to get through to get back to racing.”

Tough as they can be.

Related links

Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America 2018. Race 1 Laguna Seca Raceway. Sheena Monk Huge Crash – YouTube
Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach: Trio embraces Women In Motorsports campaign
Grand Prix of Long Beach: Oh, baby, what a time it was for Josef Newgarden

​ Orange County Register 

Ducks coach Dallas Eakins hoping to return to finish the job

• April 13, 2023

IRVINE — In the end, Ducks coach Dallas Eakins simply wants to finish the job that has been started in Anaheim.

Eakins will coach his 291st game with the organization against the visiting Kings on Thursday in the regular-season finale for both teams.

With the final chapter of this season about to close for the Ducks (23-46-12), there are questions looming about the future of players and coaches on expiring contracts, including Eakins himself. Just when they will be answered is a decision for general manager Pat Verbeek, who is wrapping up his first full season with the Ducks.

“It’s as simple as that for me,” the fourth-year Ducks coach said. “I’ve got my fingers crossed, I hope there’s a process to it. We’ll see where it goes. That’s just pro sports.”

Equally unclear is Verbeek’s timeline. He’s under no obligation to instantly make his call.

“That’s Pat’s decision,” Eakins said. “Respect the hell out of him. I think he’ll make the decision that he thinks is right for our organization at this time. I’m certainly going to respect that one way or the other because I only want the best for here.”

Eakins was talking about a tumultuous 2022-23 season for the Ducks, which has them in contention for last place overall heading into the finale. In an interview in the dressing room at Great Park Ice after the Ducks’ final practice of the season Wednesday, Eakins touched on the future.

“For me, personally, I have zero interest in going to somewhere where it’s rainbows and butterflies. That kind of ‘walk in and win right away’ mentality,” Eakins said. “There’s a part of me that enjoys going through the mud part of it, because the payoff down the road will be an incredible experience, to watch these young men develop and watch a team develop and do something far different that it has been this year.”

After three losing seasons under Eakins, the Ducks are sitting in second-to-last place in the NHL, one point ahead of the Columbus Blue Jackets. They started the season slowly – failing to win in regulation until Game 20 – and are finishing in roughly the same manner, having not won in their last 12 games.

There is a potential pot of gold at the end of the rainbow this year, in the person of Regina Pats center Connor Bedard, the consensus No. 1 draft pick who is widely considered to be a franchise-changing talent.  By virtue of their poor season, the Ducks are one of a handful of teams to have a legitimate chance at getting Bedard.

“I’ve said it before. I’m inspired by the ownership,” Eakins said. “I understand Pat’s plan and the patience and the work ethic that it’s going to take to get it there. When my coaching days are over here – and I hope they are not – I want to be a Duck forever.”

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If coaching isn’t in his immediate future, Eakins would welcome a chance to stay in the organization in a different capacity,

“I want to go do something else here,” he said. “I just think this is an incredible organization that is well led. When you find a place that is inspiring to work, I don’t think you should be trying to go look somewhere else to do whatever you’re going to do.”

KINGS AT DUCKS

When: Thursday, 7 p.m.

Where: Honda Center

TV: Bally Sports West, Bally Sports SoCal

​ Orange County Register 

Providence St. Joseph Hospital Orange celebrates 1,200 transplants

• April 13, 2023

In honor of National Donate Life Month, more than 1,200 butterflies were displayed across Providence St. Joseph Hospital’s lawn to commemorate the 1,200 organ transplants the hospital has performed in the last 50 years.

And as the hospital celebrates the 50th anniversary of its transplant program, it announced it has been approved to do even more soon: Providence St. Joseph is getting ready to begin performing pancreas transplants. The hospital is already scheduling candidates with physicians and plans to begin procedures within six months, said James Chisum, a spokesperson.

Some diabetic patients who become dependent on insulin are prone to kidney failure, said Yasir Qazi, a transplant nephrologist with Providence St. Joseph. In those cases, Qazi said, the best option for both quality of life and years of life is for those patients to undergo a kidney and pancreas transplant simultaneously.

“The kidney transplant takes them off dialysis, and the pancreas basically cures the diabetes,” Qazi said. “So you walk in being a diabetic and come out not being a diabetic and not having to be on any insulin or medications. We’re excited to now be approved for kidney and pancreas transplants.”

During the ceremony in Orange, a green and blue “Donate a Life” flag was raised in honor of the celebratory month.

“We fly the flag 365 days a year,” said Richard Rodriguez, a manager at the kidney transplant center at Providence St. Joseph Hospital. “It’s a constant reminder of those who have paid the ultimate price and were able to donate … but it’s also a constant reminder of the fact that there are so many people that need transplantation of tissue organs.”

Rodriguez hopes this ceremony will inspire more folks to register to become a donor.

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​ Orange County Register 

States eye solutions as medical debt bankrupts millions

• April 13, 2023

By Jesse Bedayn | Associated Press/Report for America

DENVER — Cindy Powers was driven into bankruptcy by 19 life-saving abdominal operations. Medical debt started stacking up for Lindsey Vance after she crashed her skateboard and had to get nine stitches in her chin. And for Misty Castaneda, open heart surgery for a disease she’d had since birth saddled her with $200,000 in bills.

These are three of an estimated 100 million Americans who have amassed nearly $200 billion in collective medical debt — almost the size of Greece’s economy — according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Now lawmakers in at least a dozen states and the U.S. Congress have pushed legislation to curtail the financial burden that’s pushed many into untenable situations: forgoing needed care for fear of added debt, taking a second mortgage to pay for cancer treatment or slashing grocery budgets to keep up with payments.

Some of the bills would create medical debt relief programs or protect personal property from collections, while others would lower interest rates, keep medical debt from tanking credit scores or require greater transparency in the costs of care.

In Colorado, House lawmakers approved a measure Wednesday that would lower the maximum interest rate for medical debt to 3%, require greater transparency in costs of treatment and prohibit debt collection during an appeals process.

If it became law, Colorado would join Arizona in having one of the lowest medical debt interest rates in the country. North Carolina lawmakers have also started mulling a 5% interest ceiling.But there are opponents. Colorado Republican state Sen. Janice Rich said she worried that the proposal could “constrain hospitals’ debt collecting ability and hurt their cash flow.”

For patients, medical debt has become a leading cause of personal bankruptcy, with an estimated $88 billion of that debt in collections nationwide, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Roughly 530,000 people reported falling into bankruptcy annually due partly to medical bills and time away from work, according to a 2019 study from the American Journal of Public Health.

Powers’ family ended up owing $250,000 for the 19 life-saving abdominal surgeries. They declared bankruptcy in 2009, then the bank foreclosed on their home.

“Only recently have we begun to pick up the pieces,” said James Powers, Cindy’s husband, during his February testimony in favor of Colorado’s bill.

In Pennsylvania and Arizona, lawmakers are considering medical debt relief programs that would use state funds to help eradicate debt for residents. A New Jersey proposal would use federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act to achieve the same end.

Bills in Florida and Massachusetts would protect some personal property — such as a car that is needed for work — from medical debt collections and force providers to be more transparent about costs. Florida’s legislation received unanimous approval in House and Senate committees on its way to votes in both chambers.

In Colorado, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts and the U.S. Congress lawmakers are contemplating bills that would bar medical debt from being included on consumer reports, thereby protecting debtors’ credit scores.

Castaneda, who was born with a congenital heart defect, found herself $200,000 in debt when she was 23 and had to have surgery. The debt tanked her credit score and, she said, forced her to rely on her emotionally abusive husband’s credit.

For over a decade Castaneda wanted out of the relationship, but everything they owned was in her husband’s name, making it nearly impossible to break away. She finally divorced her husband in 2017.

“I’m trying to play catch-up for the last 20 years,” said Castaneda, 45, a hairstylist from Grand Junction on Colorado’s Western Slope.

Medical debt isn’t a strong indicator of people’s credit-worthiness, said Isabel Cruz, policy director at the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative.

While buying a car beyond your means or overspending on vacation can partly be chalked up to poor decision making, medical debt often comes from short, acute-care treatments that are unexpected — leaving patients with hefty bills that exceed their budgets.

For both Colorado bills — to limit interest rates and remove medical debt from consumer reports — a spokesperson for Democratic Gov. Jared Polis said the governor will “review these policies with a lens towards saving people money on health care.”

While neither bill garnered stiff political opposition, a spokesperson for the Colorado Hospital Association said the organization is working with sponsors to amend the interest rate bill “to align the legislation with the multitude of existing protections.”

The association did not provide further details.

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To Vance, protecting her credit score early could have had a major impact. Vance’s medical debt began at age 19 from the skateboard crash, and then was compounded when she broke her arm soon after. Now 39, she has never been able to qualify for a credit card or car loan. Her in-laws cosigned for her Colorado apartment.

“My credit identity was medical debt,” she said, “and that set the tone for my life.”

Jesse Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

​ Orange County Register