Stick to baseball, 12/17/22.

Five new posts this week for subscribers to The Athletic:

• The three-team Sean Murphy trade
• The Mets’ deal with Kodai Senga
• The Giants’ deal with Carlos Correa
• The Yankees’ deal with Carlos Rodón
• The White Sox’ deal with Andrew Benintendi & Blue Jays’ deal with Chris Bassitt

I’ll try to do a Klawchat this upcoming week as my schedule permits; I’m trying to fill my days with calls for the prospect rankings package that will run in late January or early February.

My top ten games of 2022 article is already in my editor’s hands at Paste, so that should be up any day now. I’ll update here when it runs.

My guest on the Keith Law Show this week was Boston Globe writer Alex Speier, talking about the Red Sox’ confusing offseason so far and apparent desire to act like a small- or medium-payroll team. You can listen and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I’ve got a new email newsletter about half-written, so I’m really hoping I can finish that off tonight or tomorrow. You can sign up here, for free. Also, you can buy either of my books, Smart Baseball or The Inside Game, via bookshop.org at those links, or at your friendly local independent bookstore.

Finally, I caved and set up an account on Mastodon, @keithlaw@mastodon.au. Perhaps that’ll prove a better place for actual discussions with readers as the bird site becomes overrun by trolls – even my post saying I was on Mastodon attracted three randos who seemed only there to mock anyone who said they were leaving Twitter (which I’m not).

And now, the links…

And now, the links…

• Longreads first: The New York Times ran a “Lives They Lived” piece on twelve children murdered with guns in 2022, as gun violence has surpassed auto accidents as the leading cause of death for children in the United States. I think I was most affected by the one on a 17-year-old boy whose brother was also shot and killed several years previously. No way to prevent this, says only nation where this happens regularly.
• ProPublica opens the window on CIA-led night raids on Afghan civilians, for which the U.S. has never taken responsibility. Mission Accomplished, though, right?
• Adam Serwer, writing for the Atlantic, writes about conservatives’ invention of the “right to post,” although it doesn’t seem to apply to everyone, just them, as Twitter suspended a bunch of journalists who report on Elon Musk’s doings. NBC promptly beshit themselves by failing to back up Ben Collins, even taking him off the air for a few days for defending evolution failing to insufficiently worship Musk.
• Also in the Atlantic, the solution to our growing problem of homelessness is to create more housing. That’s it.
• Leading Republican figures had no problem gathering with ardent white nationalists talking about “total war” at the New York Young Republican Club’s recent gala.
• This Twitter thread on the extreme right-wing concept euphemistically called “Common Good Constitutionalism,” which believes hardcore Christianity should be the guiding principle for our country, should terrify the rational among us regardless of our political leanings.
• A professor at Chico State had an affair with a student and threatened to kill two co-workers, but the university only suspended him for a third of a semester while leaving any mention of the incident out of his personnel file. He’s since been suspended again through the end of this academic year after a new outcry over the school’s mishandling of the matter in 2020.
• Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has been under indictment for seven years for alleged securities law violations, sought information on Texas residents who changed the genders on their driver’s licenses amidst the state’s push to punish trans people for existing. If he can do this, I’m not sure what prevents any state official from demanding a list of residents who are Black, Jewish, etc.
• Also in Texas, Carroll ISD no longer protects students against discrimination based on their gender, religion, or sexual orientation. Texas’s lurch towards theocracy continues virtually unimpeded.
• Florida passed a law in June that was supposed to address the state’s shortage of about 5000 teachers by putting military veterans, even those with zero educational experience, in the classroom. The state has hired seven.
• One member of Twitter’s now-disused Trust & Safety Council explained to Slate why she quit the board after Elon Musk bought the company.
• Harassment and threats of violence, encouraged by Musk himself, forced former Twitter head of Trust & Safety Yoel Roth to flee his home last weekend.
• The Kickstarter for a new printing of the 2017 game Sol: Last Days of a Star is already funded at over $140K pledged with two weeks to go.