Stick to baseball, 8/21/17.

This week’s links post is late because I spent the weekend at GenCon in Indianapolis along with 70,000 of my closest friends. I’ll have a big wrap on all the new games I saw (including some upcoming app releases) later this week for Paste.

My annual look at the players with the best tools in MLB started today (for Insiders) with a look at the best hit, power, run, and plate discipline tools. The next two days will feature the best pitches and the best fielding tools. I also held a Klawchat last week.

Last month, I was invited to give a Talk at Google about Smart Baseball, which you can now watch online. My book also got a mention in my alma mater’s alumni magazine.

This morning, I was back at the helm of the Baseball Tonight podcast and was joined by Eric Karabell, Jerry Crasnick, and Alex Speier. I’m often asked by readers if I’ll podcast regularly again – I don’t have a good answer for that, but if you’d like to hear more of me, then spread the word about today’s show (and tomorrow’s, and maybe the three I hosted last week). A good audience for my guest-hosting shows won’t go unnoticed.

And now, the links…

• Over at the Hardball Times, Stephanie Springer looks at the ineffectiveness of baseball’s Joint Drug Agreement by looking at the chemistry of PED metabolism and testing.
• Deadspin looked at the questionable labor practices of SB Nation, which profits by using barely-paid and unpaid writers to provide most of its content.
• Investigative journalism efforts from several outlets, including ProPublica, has led to federal lawmakers seeking Kushner company records on its tenements in Maryland, where the President’s son-in-law has been accused of violating federal housing standards.
• McClatchy freelance reporter Austin Tice has been held by terrorists in Syria since 2012, and the Sacramento Bee, a McClatchy flagship paper, is pushing for the federal government to work towards his safe return – and reminding everyone that reporters like Tice put their lives on the line to bring us #realnews.
• The FCC, when it’s not busy dismantling the Internet, is using an obscure loophole to let pro-Trump broadcaster Sinclair dominate local television in a merger that probably shouldn’t clear antitrust muster.
• Candida auris, a drug-resistant fungus that originated in Japan, is spreading through UK hospitals.
• Ed Yong, who wrote the marvelous book I Contain Multitudes, reports on a study in India that found probiotics may help prevent sepsis in newborns. Probiotic products are a multi-billion dollar market in the west, but there’s little evidence they actually do anything good for your body.
• Also at Deadspin, Jeff Pearlman looks at a local sportswriter’s prank gone awry, with fallout that lasted decades.
• The New Yorker looks at how Driscoll’s ruined the strawberry by emphasizing appearance – because that’s what consumers want – over flavor.
• I also thought the New Yorker had the best piece on the ‘battle of Charlottesville’.
• I’ll just let this headline sit here: North Carolina No Longer Thinks It’s A Great Idea To Shield Drivers Who Hit Protesters With Cars.
• The Federalist, a fairly major and very conservative opinion site, ran an editorial last week saying “Donald Trump Needs To Not Be President Yesterday.”
• Hawai’i state representative Beth Fukumoto shared a racist letter she got from a Trump supporter.
• Should Memphis defy state law and remove Confederate statues, given how toothless the punishments would be? (Yes, of course they should.)
• Why is Gucci adamantly denying that its employees protested Trump’s visit to their Manhattan building, which he owns?
• Tweet of the week, from the man who coined what is now known as Godwin’s Law:
  

  By all means, compare these shitheads to Nazis. Again and again. I'm with you.

  — Mike Godwin (@sfmnemonic) August 14, 2017