Stick to baseball, 5/9/20.

I was back writing this week, with three new pieces for The Athletic: how MLB’s decision to cut the draft to five rounds hurts players and the sport; a look back at the 2004 draft and what might have happened had the Padres taken Justin Verlander at #1 overall; and a profile of Dodgers prospect Brandon Lewis, who changed his diet and conditioning habits to transform his body and become a fourth-round pick .

My second book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, is now out, and you can buy it anywhere you buy books, like here via bookshop.org, which supports independent bookstores directly or by providing logistics and delivery for them. I’m donating my proceeds from sales of my book through my affiliate account there to charity, sending $100 this week to the Food Bank of Delaware, our local food pantry.

WIRED excerpted part of the first chapter of The Inside Game, on anchoring bias and why it tells us to move to an automated strike zone; the link made Pocket’s Best Of list this week. I also spoke to Inside Science about the book.

I appeared on the Poscast this week with Joe Posnanski and Ellen Adair, which you can listen to on The Athletic, Apple, Spotify, or Stitcher; and on the Inquiring Minds podcast, which you can get on Apple or Stitcher. On The Keith Law Show, I had Meghan Montemurro, our Phillies writer, on to talk about that team and the Athletic’s ongoing OOTP simulation of the 2020 season; you can listen on The Athletic, Apple, Spotify, or Stitcher.

I sent out another edition of my email newsletter this week to subscribers – it’s free, and easy to sign up, and no one has ever complained that I send it too often.

And now, the links…

• Longreads first: Donald Trump has long claimed he was a top high school baseball player who was scouted by a couple of MLB teams. Leander Schaerlaeckens looked into this at length for Slate, and found the answer is “not bloody likely.” The piece includes a quote from me in reaction to hearing some of the stats Schaerlaeckens was able to unearth.
• ExplainCOVID.org is a new site, launched by Emily Oster, Professor of Economics at Brown, and Galit Alter, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, designed to answer common questions about the virus, how to protect yourself, and what you should (or shouldn’t) believe in the news.
• The LA Times ran with a story last week about how SARS-CoV-2 had already mutated into a new, more dangerous strain … but that report was wildly premature, says Ed Yong, author of We Contain Multitudes and an essential writer on anything COVID-19 right now.
• Coronavirus cases continue to spike in Arizona, but the state is already reopening as if everything were fine. This could have a huge impact on MLB’s schedule – it’s hard to imagine the season restarting if Arizona is in an unplayable state.
• This is after the state government in Arizona told university researchers to stop modeling COVID-19 outcomes and limited the researchers’ access to data, presumably because the models showed the Arizona government to be making reckless policy decisions that will lead to more deaths and serious illnesses.
• If you’re pushing to reopen the economy, you probably don’t need or care about child care.
• Texas is also reopening, too soon, and the governor even admitted in a private phone call that the reopening will lead to a new surge in cases. They don’t care how many people die, as long as they’re okay financially.
• Anti-vaxxers are trying to use COVID-19 to recruit more people to their delusional cause.
• Why do Republicans keep comparing COVID-19 public health policies to the Nazis? Pennsylvania State Rep. Chris Dush (R) did it, and now multiple Ohio legislators have done the same.
• A Native American health center in Seattle asked the federal government for COVID-19 medical supplies. The Trump Administration sent them body bags.
• Mosquitos infected with the fungal parasite Microsporidia MB may have total immunity to the genus of parasites that causes malaria, Plasmodium, notably P. Falciparum, which is the most common and lethal agent of transmission. It’s an early study but notable in that Microsporidia MB has many biological and ‘lifestyle’ similarities to Wolbachia, a gram-negative bacterium that protects mosquitos from many viruses and has potential to limit their ability to spread malarial agents as well.
• Six people were killed in March 2019 when a flawed pedestrian bridge built by FIU in Sweetwater, Florida, collapsed just five days after it had been raised. FIU just announced plans to replace it, although nobody has actually been held accountable for what appear to be multiple failures in the design and construction process last time around.
• I felt personally attacked by this (parody) column called “No One Wants to Play Your Weird German Game About Trains, Dude.” Russian Railroads is a fine game and I don’t care what you say.
• Days of Wonder announced Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam, the third mini-TtR game after New York and London.
• Two Kickstarters of note: High Noon, a tactical card game that promises to be easy to learn but takes 1-2 hours to play, already passed its goal this week; while the narrative board game Sea of Legends funded in just six hours after launching the same day.