→ May 16, 2020
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Stick to baseball, 5/16/20.

I posted my first mock draft of 2020 on Wednesday for subscribers to The Athletic, since we are now just 26 days away from the first night of the draft, which will only be five rounds. I wrote last week about the impact of the shorter draft on players and the sport as a whole, and also did a “what-if” lookback at the Padres’ decision to take Matt Bush over Justin Verlander in 2004. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday, my first in ages.

My new book, The Inside Game, is now out and you can buy it everywhere fine books are sold, including here on bookshop.org; I’m donating my affiliate commissions from sales of my book through the site to my local food bank. The Eugene Register-Guard has a nice review of both The Inside Game and Brad Balukjian’s The Wax Pack.

My guest on this week’s episode of The Keith Law Show was San Francisco Chronicle baseball writer John Shea, whose book 24: Life Stories and Lessons from the Say Hey Kid, co-authored with Willie Mays, was released on Tuesday. I’m scheduled to have Cubs infielder/outfielder Ian Happ on the show this upcoming week to talk about his charitable endeavors with artisanal coffee. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify.

At Paste, I reviewed The Sherlock Files: Elementary Edition, a new card-based deduction game that played better than I expected, although the Sherlock character isn’t remotely involved in the game’s story or mechanics. My review of the excellent digital adaptation of Sagrada is up over at Ars Technica.

I sent out another edition of my email newsletter on Friday night to subscribers; it’s free and you can sign up here.

And now, the links…

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→ May 14, 2020
→ By

Klawchat 5/14/20.

Starting at 1 pm ET. My first mock draft for 2020 is now up for subscribers to The Athletic. I also reviewed the deduction game The Sherlock Files: The Elementary Entries for Paste.

Keith Law: I didn’t mean to take you up all your sweet time. Klawchat.

addoeh: I know your default statement is all 1st rounders sign.  Will that still apply this year?
Keith Law: I don’t think so. Too much uncertainty on both sides. Strong possibility a team takes a player and offers him 50-60% of slot, says “take it or leave it,” and if he doesn’t sign just takes the compensatory pick next year. (I’d have a lot to say over on The Athletic if that happens.) Also, I think a lot of HS kids will just choose junior college or their original college commitments if they aren’t drafted where they expected they would be.

joshkvt: Isn’t all talk about starting sports premature until we have a national testing plan (or even pretend to have a federal response)? MLB/NBA etc. burning through 10s of thousands of tests for entertainment when sick people of less means and grocery workers can’t be tested seems a recipe for long-term resentment by rational people.
Keith Law: Testing and contact tracing. I know Delaware is moving forward with a contact tracing plan before we reopen too many places, but other states are rushing to reopen without anything of the sort. I’ve mentioned the Arizona data a few times, because I don’t know how baseball restarts if Arizona doesn’t have the pandemic under control yet – the U of A’s site has the state’s Rt at 1.18-1.23, which is nowhere near “under control.”

Nick: I recently made it to the episode of The Wire with Prezbo’s quote that you used in your book. Started watching the show since I’ve seen you praise it a couple of times, and I’ve very much enjoyed it. Also really enjoyed your book!
Keith Law: Excellent choice. It’s a big commitment but IMO worth it in the long run. Never seen a series that tackled that many important topics while also working in so much entertainment value.

Aaron C.: Wife’s been ordering weekly boxes of produce from local farmers. Any preparation recommendations with the occasional eggplant, acorn squash or bok choy in the box, Klaw?
Keith Law: Roast or grill the eggplant to scoop out the center and make baba ghanoush. Bok choy is the perfect ingredient for homemade soup with ramen or soba (you can buy instant dashi powder online for the broth). I am not a huge fan of acorn squash but you can roast it, let it drain a little as it cools, then mash it to make gnocchi.

Aaron C.: Acknowledging that pretty much EVERY celebrity encounter is mundane, do you have a memorably mundane celebrity encounter?
Keith Law: I remember seeing (but not talking to) Fred Schneider of the B-52s on a bus in lower Manhattan in 1992. Maybe 15 years ago I spotted Doug Wilson, one of the designers on Trading Spaces, in a Starbucks in Manhattan. He saw me recognize him, so I gave him the ‘hey’ head-nod and he returned the gesture. I don’t think it gets more mundane than that.

Ryan: Ok so I used to write in these that the GOP was tanking for better draft picks, but I didn’t realize it also meant their tanking involving killing thousands of people …
Keith Law: How can satire survive when one political party is openly advocating for a higher death rate to save the economy?

Dave: Hi Klaw. Just wanted to say that I’m enjoying The Inside Game. I was also wondering if you’re going to send your daughter back to school in August/September because “young people are in great shape” and since “you can be driving to school and some bad things can happen”. Also hoping you can enlighten me as to how a scientific fact can be unacceptable.
Keith Law: Those pesky scientific facts always getting in the way of poll numbers!
Keith Law: (I hope schools reopen, but I’m not an optimist, not on this subject.)

Matthew: Do you think music criticism is an important discipline and do you have any recommendations of any must-read music writers?
Keith Law: I’m not sure how to answer the first part, but no, I do not read any specific music writers as I do with the work of some movie critics.

Ben B: You’re back! No question. Just a sincere thank you for the chat. I’m sure you get trolled to the max and get so many covid questions that there are no answers to, but we appreciate you holding the chat and giving us some kind of interaction to look forward to during these hard days.
Keith Law: I’m sorry it took me so long to do one, but I felt like there wasn’t enough real baseball to talk about – at least now with my mock draft, and a scheduled draft date, we can get back to that amongst your various board game, food, and book questions.

Andy: Any chance Veen or Hancock make it to the Rockies at 9?
Keith Law: Right now, I would say no, zero chance.

Guest: What impact do you think the draft changes will have on 2021, 2022 and 2023 high school graduates?
Keith Law: I think 2021 is significantly altered, because many players from this year’s draft will try again next year (college players returning as seniors/fourth-year juniors, HS kids who try junior college). Then there will be a smaller ripple effect into 2022, and so on. It’s beyond those players’ control, however, so it’s best to just focus on what they can control – their performance, skills, conditioning – and let the draft fall where it may.

JR: I’m sure everyone will ask this…but your current best guess, do we get MLB this year?
Keith Law: I believe the various sides will push something through – there is too much internal and external pressure to make a season happen – but that it will likely happen before the public health situation is sufficiently stable, and there will be a high risk of a shutdown to the resumed season.

Mike: You had the Red Sox going safe in the 1st round with Chris McMahon – do you expect Boston to try to save a little bit of $ at 1-17 to use later given the lack of a 2nd rounder?
Keith Law: No, I think they’ll be one of many teams staying college/conservative because of the way this spring unfolded. Not a permanent change in philosophy but a reaction to this year’s unusual events.

Leo: Would you say Austin Wells is the best college bat in the class after Martin, Gonzales, Kjerstad? Which would be the best comp for him and why he’s not getting the buzz he should?
Keith Law: I don’t think he is the next-best college bat; he’s not getting more buzz because teams don’t think there’s any chance he can catch.

KirkGibsonfan: I think your mock was what you think will happen. If you ran the Tigers – would you take Torkelson or Martin? As a Tiger fan – should I be disappointed that the Tigers take a right handed hitting 1B at 1?
Keith Law: If Martin had come out this spring with the same arm he showed last year, he’d be the easy 1-1 for me. He had some throwing trouble in the first few weekends, and nobody knows (as far as I know) if it was a blip or something serious. I remember Anthony Rendon dealing with a sore shoulder his junior year that affected his swing, but it turned out to be nothing and he should have gone 1 or 2 in that draft. Maybe this is the same?

Tony: With no baseball, I’ve been doing a lot of looking back. As a Hall of Fame voter, how much value do you place on peak vs longevity? For example, if Cole Hamels ends up with 70 WAR and 3,000 strikeouts, is he a Hall of Famer, even though he never had a noticeable peak, just a lot of 5ish WAR seasons?
Keith Law: My gut reaction is ‘no,’ because I want stars in the Hall, not just the good-for-a-long-time types like that or Buehrle. No disrespect to such players, but the plaques should go to the very best.

Aaron C.: Nothing but respect for MY president *checks notes* Blake Snell?!
Keith Law: Indeed. Slapdicks represent!

Peteprz: Think a team in the teens taking JT Ginn would be reaching? How high is the chance of that happening?
Keith Law: I think he’s someone’s second pick. Perfect candidate for that.

Guest: Just finished Smart Baseball (fascinating!), which spurred me on to read Moneyball (almost done!). What should I read next?
Keith Law: Russell Carleton’s The Shift.

Karen: Any new news with MILB/MLB Contraction plan?
Keith Law: I haven’t heard anything at all since the column I wrote about a month ago. Don’t think the two sides have had formal talks.

Mike: What’s the major factor on Mick Abel falling to #23? Is it the lack of data points from this spring, his price tag, or just general riskiness of HS RHP?
Keith Law: Not so much “falling” as representative of the high risk of HS pitching and the desire to play it safer this year with players we know better. I think Abel is the one definite HS pitcher to go in the first. Kelley might. Bitsko seems more likely to be someone’s second pick too.

Kevin w: i have friends for over 25+ years I’m on the verge of dropping due to continued trump/gop support. Have you had to make this kind of decision in last 4 years?
Keith Law: Not close friends, but I’ve certainly drifted away from some people for their support not just of the man or the party, but of specific policies that I think rely on racist or other bigoted beliefs.

Condor: Dr. Bright appears to be damaging the administration today. Will anything be done?
Keith Law: LOL of course not.

Jeff: Could a team drafting in range of picks 5-10 in the first round, get the player they rank 1-1 by offering 95% of their full draft $ to this one player, signing ncaa seniors for minimum with their picks in rounds 2-5?
Keith Law: That’s the Mike Ditka/Ricky Williams draft strategy, right? I doubt anyone would dare try that this year.
Keith Law: I don’t think it’s illegal, though.

Zach: I saw today that Republicans trust Trump by more than 20 points over Fauci. Not even a bungled pandemic will shake the Trumpers from their cult loyalty. I’m at a loss for how we go forward as a country when intelligence and expertise is so proudly ignored by half the country.
Keith Law: Many people have warned us for years about this rising tide of anti-intellectualism – The Cult of the Amateur, The Death of Expertise, The Age of American Unreason have all tackled this subject in the last 12 years – and I am convinced nothing will work on that subset of the population. They’re simply lost to reason.

Jeff: Who blinks on this revenue split – owners or players?
Keith Law: Owners. I don’t think the negotiated agreement from March even allows owners to revisit this.

Jordan: I’m trying my best to be a good citizen and follow rules, etc., but it’s hard when we have no national plan + I feel like the goalposts keep moving. At first it was “two weeks to flatten the curve” then it was “stay home longer to crush the curve” and now it feels like it’s “stay home until we get a vaccine/treatment” at some point, don’t we have to move into an assumption of risk period – especially now that hospitals aren’t being overrun?
Keith Law: I don’t know you, or your medical status, but it sounds like you’re not the one assuming the risk. Do you want tens of thousands of Americans, most of whom will be high-risk people like the elderly or the immune compromise but some of whom will be otherwise healthy children and young adults, to die so you can go get your hair cut? The goalposts aren’t just moving arbitrarily, but as we learn more about how contagious SARS-CoV-2 is, how it spreads, and how severe restrictions on movement have to be to keep the Rt under 1, some states and countries have tightened their policies to adapt. Dogma does not change in response to new evidence. Science does.

J: Do you have a favourite baseball book? I just finished Prophet of the Sandlots and I found the story interesting (though not so much the author as the subject)
Keith Law: Lords of the Realm.

Jake: Although I think it’s been true for a few years now, it struck me reading through your team lists that you are the only public prospect analyst who does not use some kind of unifying grade. BA, Pipeline, FG, BP and now ESPN with McDaniel’s Top 100 – all publish a grade aligned to the 20-80 scale to help make cross list comparisons easier for non-top 100 prospects. Do you think you might add something like that to your team lists? If not, what’s the reason you choose not to? Thanks.
Keith Law: I will not. They’re not useful, as they fail to convey much relevant information on a player, from the details of how the player is likely to get to that value to the often-wide variance expected around those numbers.

Freddie P: What are your thoughts on Biden/his shortcomings and the trivialization of rape allegations? Personally, I’m leaning towards a 3rd party vote (in a state that Biden will win without issue), as terrible as Trump is.
Keith Law: Biden might not have been in the top 10 for me among candidates in the original Democratic field, but I said from the start I’d vote for any actual Democrat to defeat Trump, and that’s still true, despite Biden’s shortcomings, the possibility that these allegations are true, and some of my policy disagreements with Biden.

Colin: What do you think the players will resist most in the latest offer from the owners? Safety issues? Money? Other?
Keith Law: It’s all safety. Testing, medical protocols, etc. There was no revenue proposal – and, whoa, no dates – this week because, I believe, owners can’t change what they already agreed to do.

Kip: At some point you mentioned writing a paper in college about the use of light in 1984 and Brave New World.  Is that available to read anywhere?  Also, finally starting The Master and Margarita and really looking forward to it.  Your new book will follow.  Thanks for all the great content.
Keith Law: That paper was in high school, and I’m afraid it’s long gone. My mom gave me a bunch of stuff she’d kept from my school years and it wasn’t in there. My college essays were, though!


Ray: Noticed you reviewed The Warmth of Other Suns and thought I’d mention, Isabel Wilkerson announced a new book coming out this summer. Keith Law: Ooh, that’ll be a must read.

Zach: Were there any high school showcases occurring during shutdown, or will teams have to draft solely on junior year performance? Think that will tilt preference towards college kids?
Keith Law: Nothing. MLB forbade scouts from even going to meet with players.

Brian: I have a baseball question but first I would like to say I understand how the dark ages happened. Seeing how many people even today just blatantly ignoring science and believing the crap being spewed by people “in charge” leaves me dumbfounded. Anyway, you have the A’s drafting a catcher at 26, is that because you think they really like him or on your board he was the best player available?
Keith Law: Down in the 20s I went with BPA and team philosophies. I have since heard, however, that Dingler is likely to go higher than 26.

Dr. Bob: Does fewer rounds mean more unsigned players? Don’t teams still need players? Or is it that they won’t pay as much to undrafted players?
Keith Law: No short-season baseball this year (or maybe ever) means teams need ~30 fewer new players this year.

Guest: How impressive is it that Jordan hit .202 and a .289 OBP in AA at 31 with 14 years away from Baseball?
Keith Law: In a vacuum, it sounds impressive. I don’t know what it actually looked like.

Mike: What is going to happen to minor leaguers if there is no season? How do you choose who to protect in a rule 5 draft.  It’s going to be chaos
Keith Law: Yep. And think of all the lost development time.

Greg: Does Atlanta stay college/conservative? Seems like that’s the route Anthopoulos and Brown went last year in the early rounds.
Keith Law: I heard yesterday they were one of the most likely teams to go all high school.

Chris: With Jerry dipoto being on the record for wanting “up the middle talent” at 6, why do you think he’d pass on Gonzales?
Keith Law: Teams were a bit scared off by how he looked vs Texas A&M, and he’s not a long-term shortstop anyway.

Julian Casablancas: I know you didn’t include The Strokes’ new album in your May music list, but they changed their style a bit and I really think you’d like some of the songs (Ode to the Mets, Selfless, etc)
Keith Law: I did hear several of those songs but they didn’t really do it for me.

Pat: Isn’t there a real chance that players not signing this year if they’re offered only 50-60% of slot end up in worse shape next year because the 2021 draft is loaded with 2021 players AND 2/3 of the 2020 class,so the player’s draft spot is lower?  It stinks, no good answer for a player in that position.
Keith Law: Yes, and some teams may try to take advantage of that situation by offering 50-60% of slot. “Take this, or maybe get less next year, or face a second shutdown and a worse situation overall.”

Matthew: Haven’t seen the Rockies connected to Max Meyer at all. Do you think he would be an option for them at 9? I see him as a better prospect than Detmers but he seems to be the consensus selection for them.
Keith Law: I wouldn’t be surprised at all if they took Meyer.

DJ: So… what exactly are we expected to do if we “never have a vaccine” or, based on latest estimates, it’s 4 to 5 years away? I’ve tried asking liberals this question, but don’t get a realistic response, and there’s no way everything will be shut down that long. We just have to physically lock grandpa and grandma up and get back to it at some point, don’t we?
Keith Law: Four to five years? That’s extremely pessimistic and not supported by anything I’ve seen. I enjoy how much you’re willing to limit the liberty of people older than you are, though. Forgive me for thinking of my parents, my partner’s parents … and perhaps your parents too.

Deeks: Curious what you would do as a GM/SD in this year’s draft, philosophically. It seems the plan to go so college heavy leaves prep players the value as early as the middle of Round 1. If you’re a team picking 10-20, do you sit in the weeds and snag Veen or Kelly? They seem like the rare example of the type of HS talent in this class you don’t pass on for the safety of the college pick.
Keith Law: Don’t see Veen getting out of the top ten. As for Kelley, or Abel, I keep hearing that teams in the top half of the round are hesitant to take HS pitchers given how uncertain the entire year is – lack of scouting looks, limited data, the revenue loss, etc.

Pat: With expanded rosters will we see  players like Pearson, Etc be on big league rosters out of the gate?
Keith Law: I hope so.

Leo: If the owners end up blinking, players know they will suffer the consequences of that in the future? For example this very next free agencies
Keith Law: The owners are going to pay less to free agents this winter no matter what.

ronald: I see your prior answers that kids low balled in the draft go back to school, but what if school is closed? does it behoove a kid to start a career under a professional teams watch rather than sit out a season?
Keith Law: We can’t really know now, or even in late July, if schools will be open the following spring.

Steve: Why do people against “opening up the economy” always resort to BS about people wanting a sense of normalcy just to get a fucking haircut? Some people are legitimately suffering from this due to not being able to work, and there’s a common-sense compromise in this situation. It just angers me at the stereotypes prevalent as if this is over something trivial like missing Happy Hour or wanting a haircut.
Keith Law: Arizona, with an Rt well over 1, just opened … fitness centers and public pools. Doesn’t get more trivial or reckless than that.

Pat: You think Milb just plays complex games?
Keith Law: I think there would be some sort of games, maybe like minor league spring training games, on back fields, but not close to four or five full teams’ worth per org. Just enough for a taxi squad of sorts for every club

Scherzers_Blue_Eye: I’m with Freddie P. Biden is horrible. His only saving grace is that Trump is worse. Is that what we want in our leader? “Well, he’s not the worst president we’ve ever had” isn’t a screaming endorsement. The “team” mentality in politics is destructive. The 2 party system is pointless and destructive. That’s the real problem
Keith Law: Okay, and what do you plan to do about it? Your vote for a third party will do nothing to advance that party. You’d have to get millions of people to do the same. I’ve been hearing this same story for nearly 40 years now, and it never changes. No third party candidate has won a single state since George Wallace, ten pounds of racism in a five pound bag. Ross Perot got 5% of the vote, but I don’t think another billionaire is what anyone is asking for right now. You have two choices: Biden, with all his flaws; or four more years of anti-science policies, including massive regulatory rollbacks and no preparation for public health crises, as well as the crushing of reproductive rights, LGBT rights, anti-discrimination protections, benefits for the poor, and much more. That ain’t a choice.

Michael: I think you made a joke about learning the characters by reading Smart Baseball first.  Seriously though, we can read them in any order right?
Keith Law: Yes.

Ivan: What is your most / least favorite and or realistic baseball movie?
Keith Law: Favorite is Sugar. Least favorite is Trouble with the Curve.

Mark W: I didn;t swing by here today to talk COVID, but I wanted to respond to the moving goalposts comment. When we all agreed to stay home to “flatten the curve” we assumed that the Feds would step in, announce a national plan for PPE, Ventilators, testing, contact tracing, etc. Can anyone here explain how the Fed response looks like anything other than a surrender?
Keith Law: (nods)

Robbie: Hey Keith, hope you have been staying healthy! This may take more than a chat to answer but how will a missed year impact teams strategies with their top prospects? Do you think we will see some of them skip stages as they have aged a year while missing a year of development? Or will teams send their top players where to the league that they should be in knowing they lost a possible year of their 20s
Keith Law: Excellent question without an answer.

Bryan (Montclair, NJ): Keith –  Given the potential length of this virus’ impact, the “stay at home” orders are tough without an end date in sight, particularly for those struggling financially.  It feels like we have to just sit back and take the hit.  Have you seen any rollout plans by states yet that seem to make sense to you?
Keith Law: Delaware is slowly reopening, allowing some more businesses to do curbside service, while there’s also a plan in place for increased testing and contact tracing. Maybe that’s easier here, in a state with under a million people where the worst outbreak is actually in the rural southern third (especially among immigrant populations, where access to medical care is limited by a number of factors), but that seems like a rational plan that acknowledges the economic hardships many people are facing.

Tom: The MLB draft isn’t the most exciting/watchable event of all time; in this day and age where we are all clamoring anything sports related on tv, anything MLB can do to make the draft more exciting for the casual fan?
Keith Law: Allow trades!

CR: I used to work as a barista back in my college days, but just got back into home espresso as a result of stay-at-home orders. I have a Breville Bambino Plus I’m happy with, and a solid lower mid-level grinder. I was wondering which roasters and blends you’re into, especially if they do mail order. While I have a few local roasters in my area, and some I’ve visited while traveling, I’m always down to try new things and support small businesses in the process. Thanks for the chat.
Keith Law: I’ve gotten beans during the shutdown from Spiller Park (which sells several roasters’ products), Re-Animator, Intelligentsia, Foxtail, Cartel, and Archetype. All are great.

Zachary: If MLB adds a team, is “Wyverns” a great name, or the best name?
Keith Law: A great name. I’m here for more teams taking nicknames from monsters from D&D. Although I would say the Nashville Gelatinous Cubes might be a bit too far.

Ed: Not trolling here. And as a married man who’s a feminist, I find it a really tough question. But here goes. If sexual assault doesn’t matter to republicans making their choice for president, why should it matter to democrats?
Keith Law: That’s not an unreasonable question, but I would answer that with “When they go low, we go high.” Democrats can still hold themselves to a higher ethical standard. I would argue that the standard might be lower than we’d want, because at some point the standard becomes an obstacle to winning, but it should be higher than the other side’s.

Mike: In a dream scenario, Biden wins with Warren as his VP, day one Biden resigns.  Even with a Dem Congress, could we then follow the New Zealand model and pay people to stay at home for three months to get this thing eradicated?  Or could that never happen in this country?
Keith Law: I can hear the screams of “welfare!” from Americans for Prosperity and the Club for Growth already.

Brian: I know it’s relative but doesn’t this lost year of development disproportionately hurt guys who are like 23 or 24 and on the cusp but need another year in AA or AAA compared to a teenager who would’ve been in High or Low-A?
Keith Law: Yes, and a lot of college players will be hurt as well, not playing this year and potentially starting their pro careers at 22+ without a single appearance.

Mike: Trump loves to accuse others of doing what he does. The “Obamagate” b.s. accuses Obama of weaponizing the intelligence and law enforcement communities which is what Trump is doing now. How does our national media not hammer him on this?
Keith Law: Gotta present both sides. Or something.

Mike: For those who long for a “sense of normalcy,” get used to the fact that the “normally” you crave isn’t likely to be seen for a long time, if ever.
Keith Law: That might be the most salient point of all: Much of the previous “normal” is gone. And, by the way, once this pandemic is suppressed, there will, at some point, be another one – and that next one could always be deadlier.

Robbie: Not to mention 4 more years of judicial appointments, which alone should have every democrat racing to vote out Trump
Keith Law: That’s the biggest threat to individual rights that I see.

CR: The problem with the people who want to reopen because “real people are hurting” is that they fail to realize the compromise isn’t between people who want to maintain the health and safety of as many people as possible and people who want to reopen to save the economy. The real compromise should be the government stepping up and sending everyone UBI for the duration of necessary stay-at-home period and doing the same for small businesses, enabling everyone to hit a universal pause button until this passes.
Keith Law: That’s New Zealand’s strategy, right? It seems to have worked, although they’re an island nation so their borders are naturally a bit closed.

Jack: I think people don’t realize that a vote for a candidate doesn’t have to mean “I whole-heartedly support everything this person stands for and unequivocally believe they will be the greatest leader in history!” A vote simply means “I have the power to control a very small share of the decision, and I choose to direct it toward this candidate at this time”
Keith Law: Exactly. It is a pragmatic decision.

TomBruno23: No real question right now, simply want to say it’s good to see you doing a Thursday chat. Almost like things are normal for a bit.
Keith Law: Just doing my civic duty.

Factz: Ross Perot got 19% of the vote in 1992
Keith Law: Yes. He was the last candidate to get over 5% of the vote.

Mike: Hope you are staying safe. I saw on a Twitter Luke Little from San Jacinto was up to 105 on some pitches. How is a lefty throwing that hard not a 1st round pick?
Keith Law: Because it’s not real. He’s not throwing in games off a mound.
Keith Law: I’m not sure anyone can actually throw that hard.

TomBruno23: I’m a teacher at a K-8 school in St. Louis City and there are already plans for alternative education plans and settings for the fall. No one has any idea how it will work.
Keith Law: I’ve heard from a friend in Pennsylvania that that’s in the planning stages there too. You have to be ready for any scenario, right?

Chris: How far is Casey martin going to slip? Mariners at 43 seem like a solid floor for him
Keith Law: Not a first rounder. Beyond that, I couldn’t give you a decent answer right now.

Brian: Are we all collectively dumb for arguing over whether or not Yadier Molina is a Hall of Famer? I’ve seen people arguing he’s not by comparing his numbers to Jason Kendall.
Keith Law: I would not vote for him, but the arguments are pretty tired to me. It’s not dissimilar to Vizquel: The stats pretty clearly say “no,” but supporters point to invisible factors to argue for “yes.” That’s like a religious divide – we’re not coming to some middle ground there.

JP: how many __aidens will get drafted this year (Aiden, Brayden, Caiden, Jayden, Rayden, Xaiden)?
Keith Law: This made me laugh.

JP: if seatbelts were just now invented in 2020, could they get 55% of the US population to approve of their use becoming law?
Keith Law: My memory could be off but I vaguely remember blowback when those laws were first passed, and I think there was some strong opposition to the 55 mph nationwide speed limit (which saved a lot of lives, but has since been gradually rolled back).

alex: Would you try Torkelson as a LF?  Martin as a SS?  Or would you stick them at 1b (3b in Martin’s case) and let them rake?
Keith Law: I would try him in LF; don’t think Martin is a shortstop, unless maybe his arm issue was a fluke, and even then I’d probably just leave him at third.

Joeseppi: Please thank TomBruno23 for teaching our kids.
Keith Law: Thank you to all the teachers out there; the ones I’ve seen on Zoom calls and group emails are clearly working as hard as ever, often while taking care of their own young kids at home too.

Karen: The invisible factors on Yadi are like Jim Rice’s fear factor, right?

(Saw this in Twitter recently, took me a half hour of Google searches to figure out why ‘The’ was misspelled intentionally, but holy wow funny).
Keith Law: TEH FEAR … gosh, that’s a trip down online memory lane.

TomBruno23: Can you explain what “Rt” is in regards to COVID-19?
Keith Law: The real-time infection rate. Rt of 1 means every infected person infects one other person. So Rt >1 means the disease is growing, Rt < 0 means it’s going down and will eventually slow/stop. Of course, Rt numbers change too – if you reopen too fast, an Rt below 1 can jump back above.

Mike: Keith, really enjoy the chat. Any idea what Mets are thinking? Due to most top guys in low minors, would they lean towards college kid?
Keith Law: I think more likely college guy, chance for HS bat, highly doubt they’d do a HS arm in the first.

Nate: Is it time to give up on Anthony Alford as a prospect? For a guy who’s always needed as many abs as possible, this situation certainly hasn’t helped but he’s definitely been slipping down lists for a while now.
Keith Law: I feel like his ship sailed, although I hate saying “never” on someone with that much physical ability.

Joeseppi: The refusal by some to vote for Biden is hard for me to understand. I get not liking Biden and I also understand not wanting to put your name on his election. But this isn’t a normal scenario. Am I being obtuse by carrying a ‘Job 1 is get Trump out’ approach to this cycle? It’s really all I care about right now. Hyper-focused on that through November.
Keith Law: Job 1A is then taking the Senate. No small task even before you consider voter suppression efforts in many states with Senate races this year.

JJ: Still don’t get why people think Elizabeth Warren is a viable candidate for VP.  The Democrats have to get the Senate back.  If she resigns from the Senate, her replacement would be appointed by Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker, a Republican.  He’s not appointing the nearest Kennedy.  Ergo, her selection as the VP candidate is a non-starter.  Political Science 101.
Keith Law: Any such appointment would only last until a special election, which under Massachusetts law must be held within 160 days of the vacancy.

NYCTim: You said earlier that Biden wasn’t among your Top 10 when the Democrats started. Who were your Top 3 back then?
Keith Law: I was a Warren supporter and I really still am. She has just about everything I could want in a President, and I aligned as well with her policy proposals as with any other candidate. But she didn’t have the one thing voters seemed to want most: She’s not a man.
Keith Law: That’s all for this week. Thanks for popping back in after my long absence; I don’t know when I’ll do the next chat but I will do more between now and the draft, and I’m working on plans with The Athletic for something special on draft night as well. Also, thanks to all of you who’ve bought and read The Inside Game and offered such kind feedback on the book. I’m thrilled that so many of you enjoyed the book. Maybe some day I’ll write another one. Just not right now. Stay safe, everyone.

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→ May 9, 2020
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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.
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→ May 7, 2020
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The Parable of the Sower.

I’ve read a lot of science fiction authors, including at least one book by every winner of the Hugo for Best Novel, but had never read anything by Octavia Butler until I read The Parable of the Sower last month. Butler, the most prominent woman of color in sci-fi and a direct inspiration for the highly decorated author N.K. Jemisin, was the first science fiction writer to win a MacArthur “genius” grant, and published 14 novels in her career before her untimely death at age 58 in 2006.

One thing often absent from science fiction novels and short stories, especially those written in the first few decades of the genre, are realistic women characters, something that inspired Butler to start writing her own stories. The Parable of the Sower is narrated by a young woman of color named Lauren who is a “sharer,” born with a condition called hyperempathy syndrome, so when she sees anyone else suffering physical pain she’s hit with the same pain even though she didn’t suffer the injury.

Set in the United States in the 2020s in a post-capitalist collapse that seems like it might have inspired the Purge movies, The Parable of the Sower follows Lauren from her poor but protected compound in southern California on her flight north while she develops her belief system, which she calls “Earthseed.” Her father is a pastor, which is a rare source of guaranteed income in this dystopian economy, but she finds herself unable to believe in his traditional Christian religion, or even in its conception of God, instead writing down verses and descriptions of humans as Earthseed, driving towards a heaven in the stars where man colonizes new planets now that he’s destroyed this one.

The Parable of the Sower is grim and unflinching, especially in its depiction of women as an oppressed underclass in this still-patriarchal facsimile of a society. If you leave the protection of the compound where Lauren and her family live, you put your life at risk; if you do so as a woman, especially alone, you are extremely likely to be sexually assaulted, and Lauren sees multiple women who appear to have been victims of brutal rapes whenever she heads outside of the commune’s walls. In a world where so many people have too little to eat, and very little to lose, and the police are worse than useless, theft is almost expected, and everyone is armed to protect themselves and their property. Butler also adds the wrinkle of a new drug, nicknamed ‘pyro,’ that causes addicts to light fires so they can be mesmerized by watching the flames. This isn’t our world today, but Butler’s prescient writing about the impacts of increased income inequality and food insecurity on top of a country already armed to its teeth feels a lot more possible right now than it would have when she wrote it in 1993 – even before you layer on a global pandemic and the rise of an entire political movement ready to discard tens of thousands of citizens just to goose the stock market.

The Earthseed belief system, which revolves around the idea that God is change and holds that man’s destiny is to colonize the stars, gets some treatment within this book, but the specific tenets are less important than Lauren’s development of the system, and how she uses it to try to build a fledgling community around herself while in flight to northern California. The core idea of Earthseed that God is malleable, and humanity can shape God, conflicts on some level with its idea that God shapes the universe, which I assume Butler would continue to address in the sequel (The Parable of the Talents); even within this book, Lauren is challenged by the people in her ragtag band of followers, who range from ardent skeptics to curious adherents, to explain this and other paradoxes – or even explain why anyone should believe at all in the face of such widespread misery and existential dread.

I read Rivers Solomon’s An Unkindness of Ghosts about a year and a half ago, and was constantly reminded of that book, which also has a young female protagonist struggling against multiple levels of oppression in a dystopian environment, while reading Parable; searching now, I see multiple references to Solomon and their novel as a ‘successor’ to Butler’s work. The connections are undeniable, but it also seems like a reminder that voices like theirs and Jemisin’s remain uncommon in the worlds of science fiction and fantasy writing, and thus these themes of sexism, racism, inequality, and othering are also underrepresented, even as they become so much more prevalent in mainstream literature (e.g., with Colson Whitehead winning two of the last four Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction with novels about race and racism). Butler also wrote with a gritty, unflinching realism that existed in that era but was, at least, outside the more genteel strains of sci-fi that won awards and garnered more attention, a style that probably put her twenty years ahead of her time. It’s a particular shame that she died so young when, if she were alive today, she’d have seen her influence spread so far, and have seen the world of science fiction expand to include voices and styles like hers become not just accepted, but lauded.

Next up: Still reading 24: Life Stories and Lessons from the Say Hey Kid, by Willie Mays and John Shea. John will be on my podcast next week to talk about the book.

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→ May 6, 2020
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Music update, April 2020.

A shorter-than-normal playlist this month as I think the pandemic has played havoc with release schedules and has obviously kept many artists out of the studio, but there are still some strong singles in advance of albums already planned for releases this summer and fall. As always, you can access the playlist directly if you can’t see the widget below.

Iceage – Lockdown Blues. Yep, he’s saying “Covid 19 lockdown blues/the only way out is through.” There have been some regrettable songs written and released during the pandemic; this one is actually good.

Space Above, So Below – Golden. Space Above is former The Naked & Famous keyboardist Aaron Short’s new project, with So Below (singer Maddie North) contributing vocals on many of their songs so far, including this darkly ethereal track.

Khruangbin – Time (You and I). This new single from the Texas-based funk/jazz trio features extensive vocals from Laura Lee Ochoa, a departure from their primarily instrumental work to date, and is the lead single from their third album Mordechai, due out next month.

Village of the Sun – TED. VotS is a new collaboration between Binker and Moses – as in Moses Boyd, whose Dark Matter is my favorite album of the year so far – and Simon Ratcliffe of Basement Jaxx. This track takes its name and inspiration from a song called “Dreamship” by the Ted Moses Quintet, which I only know from googling.

Talk Show – Petrolhead. I’ve enjoyed Talk Show’s snarling mix of classic post-punk sounds, more contemporary rock rhythms, and just a hint of the energy of dance music without heavy electronic elements.

The Wants – Clearly a Crisis. The Wants are pure post-punk, influenced by Gang of Four and other icons of the earliest new wave bands, and it comes through most successfully on this track and “Motor” from their debut album Container.

bdrmm – Happy. A five-piece shoegaze band from Hull, bdrmm released their debut EP If Not, When? in October, and have returned now with this subdued, swirling track that has some early Lush to it with a more upbeat tempo.

Everything Everything – In Birdsong (Edit). Lead singer Jonathan Higgs has described this song’s lyrics as an attempt to capture what it might have been like to be the world’s first self-aware human, although I find it more interesting for the highly textured keyboard layers below Higgs’ falsetto, crescendoing into a sort of wall of sound that seems almost tactile by the end of the song.

Jake Bugg – Saviours of the City. Bugg seems to have come back around to the Dylanesque sounds of his Mercury Prize-nominated self-titled debut album, eight years later, with this second single ahead of his fourth album, which is due out later this year.

The Naked and Famous – Blinding Lights. TNAF’s cover of the Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights,” from his new album After Hours, beats the original for me – not least because of Alisa Xayalith’s voice.

Asylums – A Perfect Life in a Perfect World. The Southend rock quartet have produced a song that sounds like it could have been recorded and released in 1994, and I mean that as a high compliment.

Ministry – Alert Level (Quarantine). I’m not as big a Ministry fan as you might guess from my age and musical tastes, as I find a lot of Al Jourgensen’s work with the band after their shift from new wave to industrial designed more to shock than to entertain. “Alert Level (Quarantine)” is still harsh and abrasive, but also has one of the best guitar riffs of any song in Ministry’s catalog.

Pure Reason Revolution – Ghosts & Typhoons. I don’t know how to categorize PRR’s music, with its peculiar mixture of progressive rock, electronic, and extreme metal elements, often in songs that run six to ten minutes in length, but their new album Eupnea, their first LP in a decade, has really grown on me this year thanks to songs like this and “Silent Genesis.”

Katatonia – The Winter of Our Passion. These Swedish prog-metallers started out as a death metal act but have shifted to clean vocals and doom sounds that sometimes incorporate metal aspects, but often don’t – if you heard this without knowing who the artist was, I doubt you’d call it metal. It’s one of the most accessible things they’ve done but retains the sophistication of their most recent albums.

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→ May 5, 2020
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All Our Names.

Dinaw Mengestu is an Ethiopian-American author of three novels, most recently the 2014 book All Our Names, as well as an essayist and literature professor at Bard College. I’d never heard of him prior to seeing that novel of his show up on sale for the Kindle, and bought it on a whim based on the description and what I could find in a quick search about Mengestu himself. It’s a smart, incisive, and very fast-reading novel of alienation and identity that spans two continents and asks us to examine who we really are.

The novel alternates narratives between those titled Isaac and those titled Helen, but both are connected by a man who came from an unnamed central African country to a midwestern U.S. city as a refugee. In the Isaac sections, two young, poor men, one of whom will eventually flee for America, get caught up in a budding revolution that’s stirring around a university campus where the men hang around but can’t afford to be students. In the chapters titled ‘Helen,’ Isaac, the refugee, and the woman who picks him up at the airport begin a complicated love affair – and, since the novel is set in the 1960s or early 1970s, good ol’ American racism is one of those complications, so Isaac ends up facing threats on both ends of his trip.

Mengestu succeeds here by making both stories equally compelling despite their substantive and dramatic differences. The half of the book set in Africa is fraught with danger as the two boys are swept up by events surrounding them, and eventually join forces with one revolutionary group, so that they’re frequently endangering themselves or merely endangered by their mere existence as young men in a newly independent, barely functioning state. The half set in the United States, by contrast, has very little physical danger; the risk is of an interracial romance in an era and place that did not accept such couples, and of Isaac’s distance from Helen because of the unknowns in his past.

How he ties those two together is enough of a spoiler that I won’t go into it, but it’s clever, and revealed early enough in the novel that you have time to adjust to this new knowledge and reassess what’s come before while still working through the remainders of both stories. It could seem like a gimmick, and it didn’t quite help that I encountered the same gimmick two months earlier in a novel from 2019, but Mengestu makes it work because the eventual revelation makes everything that came before it fit. (I had a suspicion of what was coming a few chapters ahead, so it’s not that big of a spoiler.)

There are just three characters in the book, the two named and the other young man in Africa, with Helen probably the weakest of the three. The two men seem to stand in for the two paths available to young men in such environments, with revolution brewing around them – the true believer, ready to stir up trouble and even take up arms; or the reluctant rebel, seeing no other path out of poverty but hardly believing in the cause of the rebels any more than he believes in the government. Helen comes across more as observer than participant, and it’s never really clear – despite her narration – why she went to bed with Isaac, or how they fell in love. Once there, what follows is far more convincing, but the lead up to that requires some buy-in.

If you accept the twist that ties the two narratives together, All Our Names works as a portrait of a man adrift in two countries, fleeing his homeland, where he couldn’t feel safe, for a new life as a refugee in a country that will always view him as an outsider. It left me hoping Mengestu will return to fiction at some point, as he hasn’t published anything in the six years since this book came out.

Next up: I’m several books behind but right now I’m reading 24: Life Stories and Lessons from the Say Hey Kid, Willie Mays’ and John Shea’s collaboration that’s part autobiography, part biography of the New York/San Francisco Giants great, due out on May 12th.

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→ May 2, 2020
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Stick to baseball, 5/2/20.

I was busy this week promoting The Inside Game, my new book, now available from bookshop.org and other fine retail outlets. As of Thursday, Midtown Scholar in Harrisburg had signed copies for sale. I’m especially thrilled to see how positive the reviews have been, from a starred review in Publishers Weekly to this glowing writeup in the Maine Edge. Library Journal also “highly recommended” the book, although the review is only for subscribers.

WIRED has an excerpt from The Inside Game on its site, a portion of the chapter on anchoring bias that discusses a major reason why the automated strike zone would be an improvement over human umps.

I appeared on several great podcasts this week, including:

On my own podcast this week, I had board game designer & Blue Jays fan Daryl Andrews (Sagrada, Bosk), talking about his latest games, designing & playing during self-isolation, and his Toronto fandom. You can subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Stitcher.

I was interviewed by my friend Tim Grierson for MEL Magazine, talking about my new book and life in self-isolation.

Also, my first book, Smart Baseball, is now available in Korean. If you’re in South Korea, you can pick it up here on Kyobo.

I reviewed the game Half Truth, a fun party/trivia game designed by Ken Jennings and Richard Garfield, for Paste this week, and reviewed the digital adaptation of the great dice-drafting game Sagrada for Ars Technica.

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: Can we just give Ed Yong a Pulitzer Prize for his essay in the Atlantic called “Why the Coronavirus is So Confusing?” It is clear, coherent, comprehensive, and serious without being alarmist. It makes clear the role disinformation is playing in the pandemic, lays appropriate blame for the U.S.’s poor and late response, and discusses the structural problems that made a pandemic of some sort inevitable. It’s the best piece I’ve read this year.
  • CNN has the story of the man who spent 46 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, the longest such wrongful sentence in U.S. history.
  • Gabrielle Hamilton, chef-owner of Prune and author of Blood, Bones, and Butter, wrote a poignant, self-searching editorial in the New York Times asking if her restaurant really is “essential” and whether she’ll have the energy or the funds to reopen.
  • Writing for SB Nation, Shakeia Taylor looks at the curious life of Effa Manley, Negro Leagues owner and Baseball Hall of Famer, and, according to multiple sources, a white woman who passed herself off as black when it was convenient to do so.
  • Why does Belgium have such a high COVID-19 fatality rate? One major reason is that they’re being more honest in reporting such deaths.
  • It’s “doubtful” that COVID-19 was accidentally released from a Wuhan lab, but that won’t stop conspiracy-mongers and xenophobes from spreading a probable lie.
  • Those two Bakersfield ER docs you might have seen on Youtube calling for states to reopen their economies? They’re quacks, pushing a bogus epidemiology, which I presume is for attention.
  • Progressive women politicians are being offered “a poisoned chalice” when it comes to Joe Biden, who faces a serious allegation from Tara Reade that he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s. Meanwhile, Biden, obviously taking this very seriously, appointed notorious partier Chris Dodd, himself involved in sexual assault allegations (with Ted Kennedy) in the 1980s, to serve on his VP selection committee.
  • Tennessee restaurants re-opened as the state saw its biggest one-day jump in COVID-19 cases. The states that were the slowest to shut down or refused to do so will compete with the states that rushed to re-open for the worst spikes in COVID-19 cases, and I expect they’ll ask the federal government to bail out their incompetence, too.
  • Iowa is one of those states that never closed, but governor Kim Reynolds (R) is already loosening restrictions, even though COVID-19 cases there are surging.
  • Cosplayers stormed the Michigan Capitol this week, armed with small-penis symbols, and some called for the Governor’s murder, to which state Republicans have said … nothing.
  • The shutdown is changing how people buy books, and has given a huge boost to the startup bookshop.org, which I have begun using for all affiliate links to books on this site.
  • Tim Grierson also interviewed the director of A Secret Love, a wonderful new Netflix documentary about two women, one a former AAGPL star, who were a couple for nearly 70 years but hid their relationship even from close family until the very end.
  • Why did billionaire Monty Bennett get $96 million in Payroll Protection Program loans that his company, Ashford Inc., does not appear to plan to pay employees? It’s a bit of a shell game, as Ashford merely “advises” two hotel companies Bennett owns.
  • Why did my undergraduate alma mater maintain such close ties with Jeffrey Epstein even after his conviction for sex crimes against a minor?
  • Betsy Levy Paluck writes in the Washington Post about how she gave birth by herself during this pandemic, but she never felt alone.
  • No board game news this week, but I know of two interesting Kickstarters coming on Tuesday and will tweet about them when they launch.
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→ April 30, 2020
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Gingerbread House.

Phil Walker-Harding is probably my favorite game designer right now, one of the only names that would get me to buy a game just because I saw it on the box. Silver & Gold was my #2 game of 2019, and Imhotep the Duel was #6. Gizmos made my top ten for 2018. Cacao remains a favorite, and I think his Sushi Go! Party is one of the best games for 5+ players. Imhotep itself was nominated for the Spiel des Jahres. I’ve never played a PWH game I didn’t like, and still have one unplayed game of his (the first Adventure game).

Gingerbread House came out in 2018-19, and I think it’s slipped a bit through the cracks because he’s released several better games in the last two years that overshadowed it. I suspect the goofy theme and art might lead people to think it’s a simpler game than it is, although Broom Service had very similar art and that’s definitely more complex than this game is.

Gingerbread House is like a kicked-up Kingdomino, or a better reimagining of Kingdomino than Queendomino is, asking you to place two-square tiles on your 3×3 house card to gain tokens based on what you cover up. You’ll then collect those tokens and use them to buy points cards, while also gaining up to three bonus cards for each level you complete. There are specific twists to the rules beyond that, but that’s the framework of the game – you place one tile on each turn, collect two things (or maybe three), and then buy a card if you can.

There are four colors of tokens in Gingerbread House, and the cards you buy, which represent humans and monsters you’re trying to ‘trap’ by enticing them to your house, can require as many as eight tokens and can require tokens of just one color or up to all four. You’ll cover two spaces on each turn and take tokens matching those spaces, although if you cover two spaces showing the same symbol, you get a third one as a bonus. There are other spaces that give you an extra stairway (see below), or let you swap one token for another one, or let you reserve a card to try to pay for it later.

If you’re mathematically inclined, you probably caught on to the fact that you can’t cover a 3×3 grid with two-square tiles. You start the game with one ‘stairway’ file, which is a square ring that allows you to see what’s beneath it. You can place that for free at any time, but you must cover it with a regular tile on the same turn. You also get a one-square wild tile whenever you pay for a card, and must place it immediately, taking whatever token or symbol you’ve covered; if you later cover the wild tile, you can take any color token or treat it as if it were any of the other three symbols.

When you complete a level of your house, you get to take a bonus card that’s worth points at the end of the game. In the basic game, you just take the highest-points card still on the table. In the advanced game, however, you choose one of the bonus cards, which are dealt out at random at the start of each game, and can thus tailor your strategy afterwards to maximize the points you get from the cards you obtain. Individual character cards are worth 4 to 10 points, but bonus cards can be worth as much as 12 points, so if you play your cards correctly (pun intended), you can gain the equivalent of another character card or more from each bonus card. There are some bonus cards that only give you two points, but instead reward you with tokens based on what’s visible on your board at the time you take them.

That interplay between bonus cards and character cards is what makes Gingerbread House more than just a basic family game. You could certainly ditch the bonus cards and play with younger kids, but the bonus cards are what make this fun for adults. What Gingerbread House lacks is any real interaction between players. Unless two of you are gunning for the same card, and maybe one of you uses the ‘cage’ symbol to reserve it, you’re mostly working on your own. That’s fine – Gizmos is like that, Silver & Gold is like that, Bärenpark is definitely like that – and the game is fun enough for a couple of plays, but I don’t know that this has the same huge replay value as his better games.

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→ April 28, 2020
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The Double.

Nobel Prize-winning author José Saramago’s novel The Double seldom appears on the list of his most notable works, even though it was adapted into a movie by Dennis Villeneuve (retitled Enemy) starring Jake Gyllenhaal in the two title roles – two, because the story revolves around a man who discovers that there’s another man, an obscure actor who has minor roles in various films, who is a carbon copy of himself. The two men are completely indistinguishable, not identical twins, but identical in every way, down to scars and blemishes, leading the first character into an existential crisis, one where he tracks down his double and causes a spiral of problems for both of them and for the people closest to them.

Tertuliano, whose name roughly translates as “chatty” (or something more pejorative), is the first man, a history teacher whose colleague suggests that he rent a particular movie without explaining up front what the significance of the film might be. It turns out that a minor character actor in the film is a dead ringer for Tertuliano, a similarity that affects the teacher far more than you might expect at first. He tries to find the actor’s name, renting any movie he can find from the same production company, and eventually uses a subterfuge to contact the actor. Even their voices are identical – the actor’s wife thinks it’s her husband on the phone, not Tertuliano, playing a prank on her – and when the two men meet, there’s an immediate, mutual disdain as you might see when two cats meet each other for the first time and each decides that it’s his territory and the other is an intruder. As with cats, this leads to a sort of pissing contest where each man tries to demonstrate some sort of dominance over the other, as if to say that he’s the real person and the other the facsimile, with consequences that are both shocking and foreseeable, with a clever little twist in the novel’s very last paragraph.

Saramago expresses the existential crisis that Tertuliano undergoes rather well throughout the book, keeping the character’s anxiety and dread visible but at a slow boil, so his actions and gestures aren’t overly dramatic or forced. Once you accept the premise that he’s undone by this thought that he has a clone in the world, and loses some sense of himself in the process, everything that follows makes sense. It’s his clone who seems harder to buy, especially when he bullies Tertuliano into accepting something extraordinary, an action that ultimately leads to the novel’s climax and resolution – although the payoff does mostly justify the torturous path that got us there.

The bigger question around The Double is how well Saramago communicates the reasons for the existential crisis – that is, why Tertuliano goes off the rails just because he saw his duplicate in a movie. It might be unnerving to see someone who looks just like you in a film, but would you stalk that person and try to meet up with them? Would you let this unravel your entire life? Probably not, unless your life was already a bit threadbare, but Saramago doesn’t give us any real reason to believe that Tertuliano was already in that kind of state – he’s not a happy man or very fulfilled by work or his relationship with his girlfriend, yet he doesn’t come across as a man on the verge before he sets off on his quixotic effort to find his double.

You’re also not going to get any explanation of how the clones came about, either, so don’t go into The Double expecting one: the resolution is about the characters, not the mystery of their existence. I was hoping for some kind of answer, but Saramago never actually implies that he’s going to provide one, and the book heads in a different direction from the start; it’s hard to see a way where he could have given that explanation and still taken the story where it goes. It doesn’t live up to Blindness, one of his best-known and best-regarded novels, which pulls off the trick of a compelling (if often gross) story that conveys a stronger philosophical message, but is at least thought-provoking with a plot that works right up through its resolution.

Next up: I’m a few write-ups behind but am currently reading Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower.

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→ April 25, 2020
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Stick to baseball, 4/25/20.

The Inside Game is out!  You can buy the physical book on Bookshop.org to support independent bookstores or get the Kindle version on amazon. (Some of my biggest fans have already left one-star reviews!) Audible named it one of their top picks in History/Nonfiction for the spring of 2020 too.

To promote the book, I did a live ‘virtual’ bookstore event with help from Nats reliever and voracious reader Sean Doolittle, which you can watch if you registered and bought the book through Politics and Prose. I also appeared on several podcasts:

There are also some very positive reviews for The Inside Game out already on Throneberry Fields, Farther Off the Wall, and Porchlight Books. It also made a Wall Street Journal roundup of three recommended baseball books for the spring and was recommended by Inside Hook.

I did a Q&A at the Athletic on Thursday, and part two of my diptych on scouting, covering pitcher grades, with Eno Sarris is also up for subscribers. The Athletic ran an excerpt from The Inside Game on base-rate neglect and why teams draft too many high school pitchers in the first round.

My own podcast this week featured Dr. Paul Sax of Harvard Medical School & Brigham and Women’s Hospital, talking about COVID-19 and baseball fandom. You can listen to it on The Athletic, Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher.

I did send out a new edition of my newsletter last week, and I’ll be back on it more often now, I think; you can sign up for free here.

And now, the links…

  • Those of us in the United States are living in a failed state.
  • This editorial on Eater London explains how restaurants have to adapt to survive what could be another year and a half of “corona time,” with two important takeaways for us: Doing what you can to support restaurants still operating during the shutdown is critical to their survival, and we are not going to see fans in ballparks any time soon.
  • Scientists are tired of explaining that COVID-19 was not made in a Chinese lab.
  • Are you having stranger dreams during the pandemic than you usually would? National Geographic looks at reasons why that is happening to so many of us.
  • Governors talking about reopening their states – or actually doing it, in the case of Georgia – are being way too cavalier, as the pandemic is not under control yet, according to this New York Times editorial by Professor Aaron E. Carroll of the Indiana University School of Medicine.
  • Nationalist groups are using COVID-19 to push their agendas to reduce civil liberties, consolidate power, and spread hate and distrust of marginalized populations.
  • Why did Nikola Motor, whose CEO just bought a $32 million ranch, get a $4 million payout from the COVID-19 small business fund?
  • Those Facebook groups pushing anti-lockdown protests are largely just astroturfing by the Dorr brothers, a family of conservative pro-gun activists whom Republican lawmakers have called “scam artists.”
  • Are COVID-19 mortality rates higher than they need to be because so many developed nations’ citizens are fundamentally unhealthy?
  • The New York Times looked athow children’s shows are responding to kids’ needs during the shutdown, such as Sesame Street’s episode with a virtual playdate for Elmo and various real and Muppet friends. (I especially enjoyed Cookie Monster’s appearance.)
  • A few German citizens are protesting lockdown measures under the guise of liberty or some nonsense.
  • Rep. Donna Shalala (D-FL) failed to disclose stock sales in 2019 while she was serving in Congress, violating federal law.
  • Board game news: Renegade is now taking pre-orders for Viscounts of the West Kingdom, the third game in the West Kingdom trilogy, for delivery at Gen Con (if the convention takes place).
  • I don’t know much about the upcoming game Sea of Legends other than that it’s narrative-based and looks like it has a great theme.
  • Boardgamegeek’s annual Golden Geek Awards balloting has now opened. I do wonder if Wingspan will suffer any backlash to its crossover success in the voting. I’d vote for it for Game of the Year, Innovative Game, Strategy Game, and Family Game of the Year; Watergate for two-player game of the year; and either Res Arcana or Point Salad for Card Game; plus Evolution for best app.
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