keith — Page 82

→ June 29, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/29/19.

I had two ESPN+ pieces this week, my annual look at the top 25 players under 25 (which has an error in it around German Marquez’s contract status, sorry) and a scouting blog post on Grayson Rodriguez, Deivi Garcia, Alec Bohm and more. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

This piece went up a little while ago but I waited to post it until some small editing mistakes were corrected: I listed eight of my favorite noir and neo-noir films for Caavo and my friend Desi Jedeikin.

I’ll be at the MLB Futures Game in Cleveland on July 7th, and I’m staying in the area Monday night to give a talk and sign books at the Hudson Library and Historical Society at 7 pm. I hope to see many of you there.

I’ll send out the next copy of my free email newsletter this weekend, so feel free to sign up for more of my words.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Deadspin had a peculiar story on a man in 19th century England who became a professional pedestrian.
Grub Street has an oral history of Serious Eats, a site that went from a collection of very niche blogs to the go-to destination for dedicated chefs interested in a science-based approach to cooking.
The President of the United States was credibly accused of rape – again – and his response was that his accuser was not his “type.”
Why is it always Alabama? Well, an Alabama woman who was shot has been charged with manslaughter for the death of the fetus she was carrying, while the shooter was not charged at all.
Why is it always Alabama? Well, after a Covington County Sheriff lost a bid for re-election, he went on a spending spree with public funds, with tens of thousands of dollars of equipment or cash now missing – on top of the over $100,000 of military equipment that went missing during his tenure. (And why the fuck does a rural county sheriff need a hundred grand worth of military equipment?) ProPublica found nine incoming sheriffs across Alabama who reported similar experiences with their predecessors looting public funds.
The argument over whether to call the active concentration camps on our southern borders “concentration camps” is a counterproductive distraction from the actual harm being done in the concentration camps.
Four scientists tried to replicate a frequently-cited research result from a paper published in Science in 2008, but failed to achieve the same results. Science refused to publish their new paper, arguing that the “field had moved on,” rather than accepting that, hey, sometimes a single study turns out to be wrong.
An app appeared briefly this week that allowed users to create fake nudes of nearly any woman by using a type of neural-networking algorithm that works similarly to that behind “deepfake” videos.
Above the Law points out that the proposed two-city solution for the Rays is a legal impossibility, based in part on this piece Sheryl Ring wrote for Fangraphs about the Rays’ obligations to St. Petersburg.
“Vaccine skeptic” just means anti-vaccine. So does “pro-safe-vaccine.” Don’t let denialists’ obfuscations confuse you: These people are pushing dangerous misinformation that will worsen the health of the general public.
A four-day workweek would go a long way to reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, more so than popular but low-value solutions like banning plastic straws. (Also, banning plastic straws hurts people with certain disabilities; encouraging people to use them less often is a better idea.)
I had no idea that sand mining was a thing, or that sand, critical to much of the world’s construction industry, was a scarce resource, but in India, it’s a corrupt industry rife with labor abuses, causing massive environmental damage.
Employees at one location of Seattle third-wave coffee purveyors Slate Coffee resigned en masse in response to a “toxic” work environment. The owners of Slate responded to the story on Instagram (included in the link).
Maine Senator Susan Collins (R) now has a challenger in Democrat Sara Gideon, currently speaker of the Maine House. Gideon appears to be explicitly targeting Collins over her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh after the justice was accused of sexual assault.
I didn’t watch the debates among the ninety-four candidates vying to be the Democratic nominee for President in 2020, for the same reason I almost never watch debates: They reward the pithy and superficial, and they treat political discourse as if it were a sporting event. Jeb Lund argues much the same, and says this structure and mindset helped put Trump in the White House in the first place.
Board game news: Dire Wolf has two new titles out – the social deduction game Game of Thrones: Oathbreaker and the expansion Clank! Upper Management Acquisitions Incorporated pack, which comes with four characters from the Penny Arcade universe that you can use in the dungeon crawl board game Clank!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: alabama, coffee, india, links, longreads, science, vaccines

→ June 28, 2019
→ By keith

Century Eastern Wonders.

Emerson Matsuuchi’s Century Spice Road was a modest hit in 2017 that earned a lot of comparisons to Splendor, although it gave players more of an active role in trading the goods they were collecting before they cashed them in for points tokens. It’s the first game of what is now a completed trilogy with this summer’s release of Century A New World, three games that can be played alone or in any combination of two or even all three, each of which shares a core mechanic (you have four goods of increasing value, and will trade them up so you can collect certain combinations for points on objective cards) but approaches it in a unique way. Spice Road is a card game that focuses on hand management; A New World, which I’ll review for Paste next month, is a worker placement game a bit similar to Stone Age. The second game, Century Eastern Wonders, has players moving around a map, with a bit of pick up-and-delivery to it, but the heart of the game is route planning, as the board varies in each game and you will have to figure out the most efficient way(s) to get around the various tiles to get the cubes you need so you can score.

Once again, we have four goods, in the same four colors – yellow is the least valuable, brown the most valuable – and players try to collect sets of them and then go to one of the four port tiles at the corners of the modular board to trade in a specified combination of the goods for a points tile that is worth anywhere from 11 to 20 points. Each player has a boat to move around the board, moving at least one tile per turn. When you land on a tile, you can place a trading post on it, doing so for free if it’s empty and paying one cube for each opponent’s post already on the tile, after which you can use the trading function of that tile as often as you’d like, including more than once on this turn. (In a two-player game, you pay two cubes to build on a tile with your opponent’s post already on it.) All trades on the board are net-positive, so there are no bad tiles, but some are more useful than others, depending on what objectives are present at that time in the game. You can also move to a tile and choose to ‘harvest,’ taking two yellow cubes for free, rather than trading.

Eastern Wonders adds an additional layer on top of this mechanism, as you gain points and bonus abilities as you place trading posts. Your player card has 20 spaces on it that are covered by posts at the start of the game. Each tile has an icon representing one of the four trade goods, and when you build a post on a tile, you take a token from that row on your card. Once you’ve emptied a column on your card, you may take one of the game’s bonus tokens, which can confer valuable abilities – moving one extra space for free each turn, getting a free pink cube when you harvest, storing 13 cubes instead of 10 – or just give you points at game-end. The second post you place from each row is worth a point at game-end, the third and fourth two points, and the fifth post three points.

Moving around the board gets more difficult as the game progresses. If you move to a tile with an opponent’s boat, you have to pay them a cube, so doing this is generally not a great strategy. Building posts on tiles that already have two or more posts on them, or just one in a two-player game, is costly, and you’ll often find yourself less willing to pay that penalty as the game progresses because you’re trying to scrape enough cubes together to fulfill another contract. The game ends as soon as any player finishes their fourth objective, with players just completing that round, so usually you’ll end up with one player getting four objectives and their bonuses and everyone else ending with three; it’s possible to win with only three objectives, especially if they have higher bonuses, but it’s harder, so there’s a bit of a race to the finish. You can improve your chances by figuring out optimal paths around the board that work a bit like engines – a sequence of three or four tiles that quickly let you go from some low-value combination (usually including two yellows from a harvest move) to the higher-value set that fulfills an objective card, or at least gets you some brown and green cubes you can then trade down for whatever you need for objectives on the board at that point.

Of the three games in the trilogy, Eastern Wonders is the most complex (although it’s still on the lighter side) and takes the longest to play, and while I like it quite a bit, I also think it’s my least favorite of the trio. The Eastern Wonders box includes a separate set of rules and a few additional components that let you combine it with Spice Road for a single game called Sand to Sea, although a glance at the rules seemed to rob the games of the elegance that makes them both fun. Eastern Wonders plays two to four, as do the other games in the series, but in our experience can easily run an hour for even a three-person game with fairly quick turns, longer than the other two require, and I would say this is the least appropriate of the three for younger players because of the route-optimization aspect. For adults and older kids, though, I recommend it.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board games, family strategy games

→ June 27, 2019
→ By keith

Klawchat 6/27/19.

My ranking of the top 25 MLB players under age 25 is up for ESPN+ subscribers, as is a scouting post that covers Grayson Rodriguez, Deivi Garcia, and more.

Keith Law: Well known in the streets and the gutters. Klawchat.

Dave C: If the Mets didn’t make that ill advised Cano/Diaz trade would they have a top 5 minor league system after this past draft?
Keith Law: Probably? Have to factor in what other teams have done since as well, but with Kelenic/Dunn both doing so well plus a very strong draft and only one major graduation (Alonso) they’d be in great shape.

Chris: What is Tony Gonsolin going to be long term?
Keith Law: Still TBD. Starter potential.

Scott: How close was Victor Robles to making your top 25 under 25 list?
Keith Law: I didn’t go beyond 25. Sorry.

Dave C: Now that he’s signed where would Allan slot versus the Mets other top pitching prospects- Kay, Peterson, Szapucki and Woods-Richardson?
Keith Law: Behind Kay. I think ahead of the others.

Zach: Are we finally seeing the version of Kevin Newman you’ve long championed?
Keith Law: Mostly. Bear in mind his BABIP is not going to stay at .400+ – same for Bryan Reynolds – but Newman’s high contact rates will help him even as that drifts downward.

Dave C: Can Dominic Smith be an effective Left Fielder? He’s at 0 DRS, -.2 UZR on fangraphs but I don’t know if that’s sustainable.
Keith Law: My guess is no, although I’d like him to prove me wrong on that.

Hollis: Cody Bolton just got promoted to AA. Is he a Top 100 guy in your next round of evaluations?
Keith Law: No.

Moe Mentum: Is the skepticism more about the two-city model in general, or specifically about Montreal’s and/or Tampa’s support system (investors, fans, voters, etc.)? In other words, could other cities pull off a shared team approach?
Keith Law: Two cities that were closer might pull it off, but why would two different cities fund stadiums that would only be used 40-41 times a year? No team is paying to build two; most refuse to even build one.

Scott: How do you grade the year that Carter Kieboom is having? He was over matched in the big leagues although in a very SSS. He has however absolutely RAKED in Fresno. How do you reconcile that and how has it changed your thoughts on him as a prospect either for better or worse?
Keith Law: Raking in AAA doesn’t change my view on any prospect given the juiced ball there.

Dan: Jazz Chisholm seems to be hitting the ball hard, just not all that often. Any reason to be concerned about the hit tool in his exposure to AA pitching?
Keith Law: Nope. I’m still in.

Keith Law Disciple: Should I have any optimism for Logan Warmoth – got promoted to Double A, but not showing much in the way of power and strikes out a ton.
Keith Law: I’m out … every scout I’ve asked who’s seen him has buried him.

Jake: Are you downgrading Royce Lewis because of his swing change? Do you still think he can be a 60 hitter or is there legitimate concern here?
Keith Law: He’s not a future 60 hitter with the current swing/setup, but what prevents him from going back to his old mechanics? I take guys like him and slide them down a little bit to acknowledge the change, but it’s not like I’d drop him out of the top 50 for this. There is no reason he can’t just restore the way he hit last year and become a top 10-15 prospect again.

Andrew: Who would you rather have for the next ten years, Paddock or Gore?
Keith Law: Gore.

Jake: Kowar got the bump to AA and had a nice first start. How long before Lynch follows the former Gators?
Keith Law: He hasn’t pitched in almost four weeks, so it may be a while.

Todd: Whats Deivi Garcia’s ceiling?
Keith Law: Good mid-rotation guy. Lot of risk with that frame, but the stuff is real.

Jose: Do you go to Cape this year?
Keith Law: Although I’d love to, my schedule in July is not cooperating and I may skip it this year for minor league stuff, Under Armour, and non-baseball commitments.

Tim : I watched the college World Series and thought it was great baseball. But I didn’t understand why there was so much bunting. Can you explain it? Aren’t the analytics against bunting at the mlb level the same at the highest college level?
Keith Law: Yes, but college coaches are obsessed with sac bunting as a whole. It’s easier to teach bunting than to teach hitting, I guess.

JC: Hi Keith- I know you haven’t been as high on Torkeleon as others. While he isn’t a good defender, has anything on your opinion changed at all?
Keith Law: That’s simply not true.

cm: Are you aware of any studies that say changing arm slot while pitching can increase arm health? If not, any thought on this idea?
Keith Law: Doesn’t it depend on the before and after?

Nelson: Keith, ever consider putting more uplifting links in your stick to baseball page? Sometimes its 25 downright depressing links
Keith Law: Well, the world is burning, diseases are spreading, and the Supreme Court just told voters democracy is optional. My links aren’t depressing; reality is.

Dd: I would have a really hard time getting excited for Biden, his voting record, Anita Hill, the gaffs.. 100% of my energy would be Anti- Trump. Not sure that Biden turns out young/unreliable voters out either because he isn’t that progressive.
The Dems are probably running at least 10 people who are a better choice.
Do you think we see Biden drop in the polls as people learn about his lousy voting record and voters get to know any of the four female Senators, all whom would be excellent choices?
Keith Law: I really don’t think he’s going to end up the candidate.

Steve: Think Adell gets a call up at some point this season?
Keith Law: No.

Jeff: With the picks Atlanta made from rounds 11-19, how much did that increase their draft haul? Is this a long-term strategy or just a one-time thing?
Keith Law: Very good strategy for this year’s draft class. It turned their draft class from “huh” to “pretty good.”

Jordan: What the heck are the Astros going to do with Kyle Tucker? Springer, Reddick, Alvarez and Brantley are blocking him and he needs to be playing in the big leagues right now.
Keith Law: Feels like trade bait. Doesn’t help that someone in Houston keeps leaking stories that he’s not liked in the clubhouse.

Neema: Hey Keith, love your work on ESPN! What are your thoughts on JP Crawford’s improved play this year? Do you think the breakout we’re seeing so far is legitimate?
Keith Law: Like Newman, his BABIP is unsustainable, but I still think the rest of the skill set is real – he’s always had a good eye and willingness to get to two strikes, and he has all-fields doubles power, but he got very pull-happy in Philly (and in AAA). He’s gotten back to using the whole field again and it’s helping.

Matt: How uncommon is it that Giolito has found success by largely going away from his curve, which it seems like most prospect evaluators (including you I believe) saw as his strongest pitch when he was coming up through the minors. Thanks!
Keith Law: It’s very surprising but if the pitch isn’t working for you you can’t force it. The changeup is plus, and he’s commanding the FB like never before.

Mac: You a Tesla or other EV guy?
Keith Law: Would love one but not at the current cost. I have had a Civic hybrid for six years and love it.

Kevin : In a fair world MLB would help pay for a new Rays stadium in Tampa Bay after using the region to create leverage for other teams for decades, but because life is shit should I just resign to losing my team in 8 years?
Keith Law: Yep, I think they’re toast.

Gary: What do you think is Jeff McNeil’s true talent level?
Keith Law: He’s third in the majors in BABIP, so we can probably bet on a good bit of regression. (Sorry, I didn’t mean to make this the “so-and-so’s BABIP is unsustainable chat.”) That said, as long as he keeps his K% so low he’s going to have plenty of value even without much power. Probably makes him a soft regular whenever the BABIP comes down to earth – although his ‘natural’ BABIP is probably higher than league average, given what we’ve seen in the last 11 months.

Brian: I’m not sure if you saw deadspin’s piece today about foul ball injuries but after reading it, how can MLB defend not extending netting at every park?
Keith Law: I haven’t seen the piece, but come on, are we waiting for a child to die?

Joe: Aside from drastic moves organizationally (like the Astros a couple years ago) is it common for scouts to change teams somewhat frequently? Or would it not be uncommon for one scout to spend an entire career with an organization despite several changes in GM?
Keith Law: Scouts change teams all the time. There’s still too much of a sense in front offices that they’re … not quite disposable, but more easily replaced than they actually are.

Ryan: The Dbacks tried hiring an agent to be their GM and it was a train wreck. Same thing seems to be happening to the Mets
Keith Law: Never hire off the interview. Hire off the CV, and maybe references, but never, ever hire off the interview.

Todd: Did you think Gleyber would have 30HR type potential?
Keith Law: No but the current baseball has skewed any HR projections I had for players. I thought Alonso would be a 35-40 HR guy and he’s on pace for 50.

Jack Meoff: Keith big fan!! Thank you for all you do. Is Catan a top 10 board game for you?
Keith Law: In historical importance and influence, yes. It might be #1. In my personal preferences, no. It’s a fine game, but you can wait too long between turns, and it doesn’t work with two players.

Josh Nelson: Is having just three starting pitchers the new market inefficiency? Asking for White Sox fans.
Keith Law: It’s a bold strategy, Nelson. Let’s see how it works out for you.

Kevin: With the Red Sox bullpen struggles is there any chance someone like Tanner Houck can provide relief help in the 2nd half of the season or is it too soon for him? Keep up the good work!
Keith Law: Would love to see him.

Eric: Was Yordan Alvarez eligible for your 25 under 25 list?
Keith Law: Players who still have ROY eligibility are not eligible for the list.

Ben: Would you guess we see some more deals happen earlier in July this year? 1 win would make a huge difference for a ton of these bubble teams
Keith Law: Yes. That’s my hope as well.

TheLostBoy: Are you a weekly watcher of “Last Week Tonight”?
Keith Law: I was, and I still like the show, but in this environment it’s just more things to get angry about when I am already angry enough about the world we’re creating for the next generation. (Or the generation after that, if we haven’t scorched the planet by then.)

Adam: Mackenzie Gore is dominating A+ and doesnt look like he’s being challenged. Do you see a quick ascent to the majors in the next 12 months or is he still a few years away?
Keith Law: I could see him mid-next year; the Padres don’t wait, and why would you wait on an arm that good already? But I can’t see them pushing him to the majors this year.

J: Do you happen to have like an author page, that has all of your articles for e+?
Keith Law: No, ESPN discontinued those. I asked for a new one but was told they don’t do them. (shrug)

Ben: Starting Adley at a bad level?
Keith Law: Have they announced where he’s starting? I haven’t seen that. Also, I assume that was a typo.

J: Okay, so instead of changing the literal distance a pitcher must pitch the ball, the chance MLB addresses the problem with the ACTUAL ball?
Keith Law: First they’d have to admit they have a problem.

Jason: Drew Waters is raking in AA, but he’s only 20. What’s a realistic ETA for him? And how excited should I be about him, recognizing I’m just scouting a stat line.
Keith Law: He’s raking but also striking out a lot and barely walking, which isn’t a fatal flaw but could indicate some deficiencies in the approach that are getting masked by the high average and power.

Ben: How come the Dbacks didn’t select Matt Allen with any of their picks if he was so good?
Keith Law: Because they didn’t want to commit well over slot to signing him.

Baltimurph: Following up on your scouting report, do you think Grayson Rodriguez is a future MLB starter as is or do you think his mechanics need to be totally rebuilt?
Keith Law: I can’t think of an MLB starter who throws like that. Any examples I could come up with who were close ended up getting hurt.

romorr: Adley was thought of as a fast riser. Him going to GCL/A- should put that to rest, right?
Keith Law: Wrong.
Keith Law: Where he starts isn’t really relevant to the question of how fast he’ll move. He may start in Aberdeen because it’s so close to Baltimore, for example.

Zac: Is Kumar Rocker trending towards a top 5 pick in 2 years?
Keith Law: I said on the podcast this morning that I’d go top 10, but not stronger. There’s a whole class of players we’ve barely seen for the 2021 draft, and putting Rocker in a bucket like that now doesn’t adequately consider the rest of the candidates.

John: Esteban Florial a future all star?
Keith Law: I don’t see it. Pitch recognition is still a problem.

Ben: Have you ever had surgery? Would you be scared?
Keith Law: Twice. Wasn’t scared but can’t say I enjoyed any of it.

Chris: Given how bad the Mets pitching is, I’d consider selling incredibly high on Alonso for 4-5 good young arms and bump Smith to 1B. Am I crazy?
Keith Law: I can’t imagine ownership would allow it, and fans would riot, but trading Alonso now for something – they’re not getting 4-5 good young arms, those deals do not exist – would have merit. I think it’s way more likely they deal Dom.

Rick Saul: What happened to Manuel Margot’s offense?. Has ship sailed on him being a productive MLBer?
Keith Law: Still just 24.
Keith Law: All the ex-prospects who broke out this year should serve as a nice reminder to stop giving up too soon on ex-prospects.

Sally: Hello Keith big fan. Is the Ooni oven great?
Keith Law: I love it. I’ve gotten it up to 900 degrees (actually too hot, the bottom of the crust started to burn), can hold it in the 770-800 range for a while, found it easy to work with. You just have to keep feeding it pellets to keep the temp up; once it drops, it drops fast and takes a while to heat back up.

Ryan: Did you see the article on The Athletic on the Ranger’s failed de-load program? Are there any other teams trying new throwing programs to help prevent arm injuries?
Keith Law: I haven’t seen that either but I have heard a lot of whispers of something they were trying that pitchers/agents suspected was contributing to their rash of injuries. Always hard to tell what’s legit and what’s griping.

cm: On the arm slots, I meant using more than one slot while pitching. For example, like David Cone used to at times.
Keith Law: Ah, thank you, I did not understand. I don’t think so; I would guess that for most pitchers it would increase injury risk because you’re trying to use muscles you don’t normally use to throw.

Adam: WIth so much young talent under the age of 24 succeeding early in MLB, do you see arbitration years being adjusted with new CBA? Seeing players like Judge/Bellinger/ getting under 1Mil per year is insane
Keith Law: I would really like to see that. The union has to change its focus for the next negotiation towards paying young players more, whether via more arb years or earlier free agency.

Mike: Are Casey Mize’s mechanics going to lead to continues arm problems?
Keith Law: No.

Frank: As a D-Backs fan how excited should I be about Tommy Henry? He was dominant in the CWS. While he doesn’t have the velocity everyone is obsessed with now the control and movement looked outstanding.
Keith Law: Back-end starter.

Indians system: Is Mahoning Valley key to Indians’ future? Rocchio, Valera, Hankins, Delgado
Keith Law: Their strongest affiliate for future talent.

Sally: How often do you and Chris Crawford hangout? Love you both on twitter
Keith Law: We’ve only hung out 2-3 times, but we talk online every day. Mostly baseball and movies but other stuff too. Great dude.

Robert: Does the uniqueness of Nick Madrigal’s profile make him more difficult to assess as a prospect?
Keith Law: No.

Uli Jon: My friend is going to Gen Con. Do you have an updated dining guide or just a few places you can recommend?
Keith Law: I eat at the food trucks that line up next to the convention center. There are some great ones – Keplinger’s Fresh Catch is the first place I eat each year.

Feeling A Draft: Based on what you said about this coming year’s draft on the BBTN podcast do you think it would be smart of teams at this year’s trade deadline to try to acquire competitive balance picks?
Keith Law: For sure. But most teams want to retain those, so my guess is only 1-2 get moved.

BigDaddeh: Do you think the Mets success is going to lead to other teams using former agents as GMs?
Keith Law: (spit take)

Paul: Hey Keith – your love for Oreo’s is well-known and righteous. I saw your tweet last night as I happened to be eating an Oreo Blizzard from Dairy Queen, and it got me wondering: any KLaw thoughts on Oreo Blizzards? Also if this question makes the chat, I’d just like to also announce that Oreo McFlurries are trash and don’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Oreo Blizzards, thank you for your time.
Keith Law: I do love oreos mixed into ice cream. When I go to Culvers (rare, but I love it), my go-to is a chocolate concrete with oreos and pecans.

Bob Pollard: Sorry if you’ve addressed this (probably have many times), but where do you stand on “clutch is a myth/no it’s real”?
Keith Law: It’s a myth. I explain at length in Smart Baseball.

BigDaddeh: Is Nick Solak an every day guy one in the majors?
Keith Law: I’d bet the under.

Tom C: Why don’t you think Adell will get called up this year? Setback because of his injury earlier this season? I was thinking maybe it could be like a Trout scenario where they call him up late and prep to be up for good next year.
Keith Law: He’s barely played this year, and they’d be adding him to the 40-man before they needed to do so.

Andrew: Corbin Martin BB/9 at A and AA was 2.5, now this year 4.5 in AAA (was 5.5 w/ HOU). Reason for concern or just growing pains?
Keith Law: Again, the ball in AAA is different than in AA.

Dave: What did you think when you heard that the Mets were having Rosario take reps in CF? I don’t know what the heck happened to his defense at SS but it has been atrocious going on two years now. Do you think he could make a plus defensive CFer?
Keith Law: His regression on defense has to be laid on the coaching staff. I saw him in the minors, so did everyone else. Nobody had him playing like this.

Mat Ji: I’m old enough to remember back when Bauer was going to stop being an internet troll….way back in January of 2019.
Keith Law: He’s gone out of his way to attack at least two women writers I know just since this season began. He can say whatever dumb shit he wants to me, but the story I heard the other day – I don’t know if I can repeat any of this – is beyond trolling. Writers who continue to talk him up are just enabling him.
Keith Law: And, by the way, there are 750+ other players out there. I’m sure there’s at least one more guy who is analytically-minded and focused on self-improvement through modern methods, and would be happy to talk about it on the record.

JP: Is Yamamoto a mid-rotation starter?
Keith Law: No.

alek: what is Alec Bohm’s offensive potential
Keith Law: I think there’s some middle-of-the-order potential there. He’s 90% likely to do it at first base, though, and the Phillies have a pretty good one.

John: What’s Luis Arraez’s ceiling, everyday 2B? More likely outcome utility guy?
Keith Law: More likely utility guy but I wouldn’t rule out everyday.

romorr: Adley to GCL to knock off rust, then to A-. From press conference.
Keith Law: Yeah I don’t see how that would mean he’s not a fast mover … why couldn’t he start next year in AA?

Chris: Would you include C Will Smith in a trade for Felipe Rivero? What else would the Dodgers have to kick in?
Keith Law: I would not but I value relievers lower than the trade market seems to.

Mark: When do you think Luis Urias gets recalled?
Keith Law: I mean, he should have been up a month ago.

Jackson: Do you project Alzolay as a SP? Ceiling?
Keith Law: I think so, as long as he can get LHB out with the FB/CB (or his CH really improves).

Capt. Gore: “if we haven’t scorched the planet by then” he said as he hoped in a plane and flew across the country….again…
Keith Law: Capt. Gore: “Yet you participate in society. Curious! I am very intelligent.”

Jonathan: Thoughts on Jake Cronenworth. Hitting well and heard he was up to 95 from the mound.
Keith Law: Interesting. Up to 96 with a plus CB, small mechanical tweaks last year at the plate that let him drive the ball better. Older guy for a prospect, so I’m skeptical as always of how much is just age vs level, but there are tangible skills there.

Trey Anastasio: Have you ever seen Phish live?
Keith Law: OK someone’s trolling me. I’m seeing them for the first time this weekend and I think you know this.

James: Do top College pitchers get time to rest their arms? Seems like it is year round pitching with fall ball, summer Ball and then the season?
Keith Law: More college arms skip the summer than ever before. As much as I would like more chances to see them, this is the right call for the pitchers.

Craig: Do you think a “deader” ball would reduce the reliance on 3 True Outcomes baseball, mainly because it would quickly become inefficient for average/mediocre players?
Keith Law: Yes. That said, I don’t want a ball that leads to even more strikeouts. I just want a HR rate more in line with historical levels.

Jonathan: Is Shane Bieber the next James Shields, which is a good thing, or is there more there?
Keith Law: No, this is it. And it’s fine. Back end starter type because he’ll always be HR prone.

Kev: What is your % belief that Vargas actually has legit dirt/excuse for why he was being a gigantic asshole bully to the reporter last week?
Keith Law: Zero. And frankly, even if he does have it, just apologize in public and deal with this in private.

Jesse B: Keibert Ruiz has really struggled this year, obviously he’s still really young. Meanwhile, Will Smith is thriving in AAA, and done well in his cup of coffee. Is it safe to say that Will Smith will be the starting catcher for the Dodgers next year?
Keith Law: Yes but that doesn’t dim Ruiz’s potential, as he’s so much younger.

Jeries: Could Nick Madrigal play shortstop? Tim Anderson has been BAD this year
Keith Law: I don’t think so.

Trey Anastasio: My take on the Red Sox future is that they would be wise to lock up Devers & Betts (Xander already signed)… and use Benintendi as a trade chip for a young SP. What you be on board fo that strategy?
Keith Law: Yes but it sounds like Mookie wants to go to free agency, no? Devers I’m sure they could lock up.

Alex: Hey Keith, I haven’t had the chance to write in since the Kumar Rocker 19 K start. I 100% agree that he was left in too long, especially seeing as he hasn’t received his baseball millions yet. Still, in the moment, that was the most fun random baseball game I have watched from beginning to end in ages. It’s kind of similar to knowing that home runs and fly balls above all is a better strategy than small ball and putting the ball in play. I don’t really have a question, except to bemoan that the more we learn, the less exciting baseball can be.
Keith Law: Sure, I don’t disagree. But I will say that this idea that Rocker did something he’ll remember forever is a bit much. Maybe in the moment it felt that way, but “threw a no-hitter in a college playoff super regional” is pretty niche. Great personal achievement but hardly worth pushing a kid’s arm too far.

Jon: Never hire off the interview. Is that for all jobs in your opinion or just baseball? If the former, why have interviews? Thanks.
Mat Ji: “Never hire off the interview. Hire off the CV, and maybe references, but never, ever hire off the interview.” Having sat through multiple pointless interviews with candidates this week, I am not sure I could agree more.
Keith Law: I feel like Mat just answered Jon a bit. Why have interviews? Aren’t they 90% eyewash? They likely often deter decision-makers from hiring the better employee because they hire the person they liked more (perhaps for subconscious reasons, perhaps even biased ones) or the person who was more animated or funnier or energetic.

Ben: This time next year Reilly Greene will be playing at ____ level?
Keith Law: Low A.

fish: christian pache will be an elite defender T/F? pache will be a league-average hitter at best T/F?
Keith Law: He is an elite defender. He will find his way to league average with power.

Sally: Why have you not be as hard on Dodgers Urias for domestic violence as you have on others? Such as Addison Russell
Keith Law: Charges were dropped and MLB declined to suspend him. Russell was suspended, so MLB found sufficient cause, and his ex-wife came forward with a very detailed account of the abuse.

Mike: What do teams do with players and prospects like franklin Perez and Roman Quinn who always seem to be hurt. Do you rush them and hope you can extract value until they are inevitably hurt again or try and move them to a team that thinks they can unlock the potential and cure their injury issues.
Keith Law: If you have the playing time to give them, you try to hold on to them and give them opportunities until you either have a better option or you need the 40-man spot.

romorr: I just figured since the Orioles are so far away from being good, that they would be conservative with him. You know, maybe 3 years down instead of 2. Was thinking he was bound for Delmarva from the start, so just trying to understand.
Keith Law: I would guess he starts next year in Frederick, moves quickly to Bowie, and is in position for a major-league callup by August. They may choose not to do so, as you said, because they’re not good, but in terms of his readiness, I’ll be shocked if he doesn’t blitz his way through the low minors to double-A.

Biff: What do you make of Alex Reyes’ inability to stay healthy?
Keith Law: I’ve always disliked his delivery. Maybe that’s why. Maybe it’s just bad luck.
Keith Law: I mean, maybe he can’t stay healthy because of his delivery, not because I don’t like the delivery. I’m not that powerful.

EG: Gerrymandering okay, says US Supreme Court. The 2016 Electron will haunt us for decades.
Keith Law: Yep. We got what we deserved.

Magoo: Hey Keith, huge board game nerd with a 9 month old here. Obviously still quite early for me, but good suggestions for beginner games, and what age would be good to start?
Keith Law: There are really good games aimed at kids 4+. Before then just play anything at all that they like – it’s the playing with them that matters, not the game.

Jofp gallagher: Do you believe the Lucas Giolito in the future will be more like this year’s Giolito or last year’s Giolito?
From worse to one of the best pitchers is a remarkable achievement so I wonder.
Keith Law: I’m in. Real changes to delivery and stuff.

Jason: Ceiling on Austin Riley?
Keith Law: Got to make more contact first.

Ridley: I’m always excited to see Elizabeth Warren speak. Is that legit, or is it just the novelty of potentially having a President who is willing to do the work to learn a subject and come up with an intelligent policy for it?

P.S. Regarding interviews: Never hire off an interview, but you can absolutely disqualify candidates based on ’em.
Keith Law: She’s my favored candidate right now, as she has real policy proposals with substance behind them, and everything she says seems well-considered. What a concept.
Keith Law: Gotta run – thanks for all your questions, as always. I’ll be back next week for one more pre-Futures Game chat. And come see me at the Hudson Library & Historical Society on July 8th in Hudson, Ohio. Thanks again!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: klawchat

→ June 27, 2019
→ By keith

The Satanic Verses.

If you knew one thing about Salman Rushdie, it’s probably that he spent much of his life under an Islamist death sentence known as a fatwa, issued by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 in response to Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses. The Ayatollah claimed that the book was blasphemous, and he refused to retract the order – which said that any Muslim would be a martyr for killing Rushdie and also issued the threat of death against his editors and publishers – even after Rushdie issued a half-hearted apology. The Iranian government has only backed away from the fatwa in the intervening three decades, never lifting it, and the massive bounty on Rushdie’s head is still in place.

The Ayatollahs would have done far more for their own cause by ignoring the book, because I find it hard to believe enough people would read this dense, highly metaphorical, bloated novel, and understand its implications for devout Muslims, to make one iota of difference in the Islamic world. They Streisanded the whole thing by drawing attention to it, and made the book a global best-seller when it would probably have faded into oblivion had they done nothing. I’m not even sure the book is that good, but I feel confident few readers would have waded far enough into it to care about the parts that so offended the Ayatollah.

The Satanic Verses starts with two men who fall from an airplane that has been blown up over the English channel by a suicide bomber but are saved by an unknown miracle, after which they are transformed into the archangel Gibreel (Gabriel) and into a devil, or perhaps the devil. (The book was published less than three months before Libyan terrorists bombed Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.) The two narratives split and then twist around each other, with Gibreel’s story drifting into dream sequences of magical realism or simply the delusions of a man with schizophrenia, while Chamcha, the man who sprouts horns and a tail like a devil, encounters a more mundane series of nightmares that begin with abuse by immigration authorities.

Gibreel’s dreams include visions of a businessman named Mahound – itself a derogatory name for Mohammed – who becomes a prophet, is fooled by a scribe who deliberately errs in writing down Mahound’s words, and whose wives are mocked by the twelve prostitutes at a brothel in Jahilia, which is a pre-Islamic name for Mecca. They also include the incident to which the book’s title refers, in which Mohammed exhorted Arab followers to keep three of their pagan goddesses, only to later recant the statement and claim he was fooled by Satan into making it. The depiction of the prophet Mohammed as a rube, a con man, or a sexual libertine was sure to anger devout Muslims, although some of this is buried beneath Rushdie’s dense, florid prose, and nearly all of it is written in the unreality of Gibreel’s visions.

Chamcha’s journey is much easier to follow, even with his on-and-off transformation into a hirsute demon, and explores more humanist themes of alienation from country and family. His domineering father tried to control Chamcha through money and familial obligations, an oppressive maneuver that helped encourage the son to flee India for England, where he encountered a new type of social and cultural isolation. The metaphor involved, of the father standing in for one’s country of birth, and the natural desire to reconnect before it’s too late to matter, is easier to grasp, and the narrative of Chamcha’s life is mostly linear and grounded in reality. Except for the horns.

Parsing what’s real in Gibreel’s narrative and what’s imagined or hallucinated is difficult enough, but it’s exacerbated by Rushdie’s prose style, between his prodigious vocabulary and often poetic musings, and his lax attitude towards time. The novel’s great climactic scene includes a march of penitents to Mecca and to the sea, led by a young girl Ayesha who claims she’s communicating with the Archangel, where the faithful follow her into the Red Sea. Whether they survived and transcended or merely drowned is left to the reader – and to the surviving, less faithful neighbors and family members who watched them disappear.

Rushdie also engages in substantial wordplay and masked allusion that went well over my head because I have no background in Islamic history or writings and minimal knowledge of even geography in that part of the world. I didn’t realize until after I’d finished that the Mount Cone of the novel is Jabal an-Nour, which houses the Cave of Hira where Mohammed meditated and, according to Islamic history, received his first revelation. Rushdie renames the mountain and then delivers puns on the name, including Gibreel’s very human objet d’amour, Alleluia (Allie) Cone, who has no interest in the spiritual mountain and instead spends her life trying to climb the most materialistic of peaks, Mount Everest.

One recurring motif I did catch in The Satanic Verses is that of characters falling; in Rushdie’s world, a whole hell of a lot of people either jump or fall, mostly to their deaths, except for the two main characters who inexplicably survive. Gibreel, in fits of either madness or jealousy, kills several people by throwing them from buildings. At least two minor characters die by jumping from heights. Allie’s treks on Everest are marked by reminders of the possibility of falling, and eventually hypoxia causes her to hallucinate as well, although her eventual death comes off the mountain. The falls are always in the physical world, but given the context of the novel and Rushdie’s staunch atheism, it seems likely the falls represent man’s ‘descent’ from naïve superstition into the harsher world of a materialist, unthinking cosmos.

I had mixed feelings on Rushdie’s Booker Prize-winning novel Midnight’s Children, but it was a far more successful and accessible novel than The Satanic Verses. This latter book felt a bit like Joyce’s Ulysses, which Joyce made clear was a book to be dissected and analyzed, not to be read. You could write papers just on side characters or word choices or recurring images across the book, to say nothing of the overarching themes of identity, alienation, or religion. But as a straight read, The Satanic Verses is maddening, and not in the way the Ayatollah meant.

Next up: I finished Kobo Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes this morning.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: banned books, indian literature, literary history, magical realism, religion in literature

→ June 25, 2019
→ By keith

Downforce.

Restoration Games has brought back a half-dozen old board games since the company was founded a few years ago, including one of my childhood favorites, Stop Thief!, which was kind of a precursor to modern games that ask you to download an app to help you play. (The original Stop Thief! came with a battery-operated “phone” that would give you clues in the form of sounds to tell you if you’d found something or even located the thief – and, if he escapes, sounds of him running or breaking glass so you can guess where he went.)

One of their first redesigns was the game now known as Downforce, which has existed under multiple names going back to 1974, when designer Wolfgang Kramer released his first game, an abstract game called Tempo. He repurposed the basic mechanics of that game for a series of car-racing games, including 1996’s Top Race, which seems to be the last iteration of this game until Restoration brought it back in 2017. This new version has slick graphics and very simple to learn game play that still has the same core mechanic where players play cards to move six cars around the track, but where the card you play likely moves some of your opponents’ cars forward too, and you can win the race but still lose the game depending on how every player bets.

Players begin the game with a hand of cards that varies with the number of players – you deal out the entire deck of 42 cards, ditching any remainder if you have 4 or 5 players – and then use those cards to bid for the six cars in the ‘auction’ that ends with all cars assigned to players. When you win a car in the bidding, you get two additional cards: one that lets you move that car 8 spaces (and doesn’t require you to move any other cars), and a card with a special power unique to you for that game, with some more useful than others. (My favorite is the one called Tricky, where you have the option to execute the moves on any card you play from the bottom up, rather than from the top down, so you can choose which is most advantageous and may be able to use the card to create or clear a bottleneck.)

Each player then plays one of their cards on each turn. The cards have from one to six rows, each row showing a number and a car color; the player moves all of those cars the displayed number of spaces, going from top to bottom, if possible. (Cars can be blocked when the track narrows in the three turns; you can and should use that to your advantage.) Some cards have spaces marked ‘wild,’ which you can assign to any car not already shown on the card. Players go around the table playing these cards until all six cars have crossed the finish line or the remaining players with cars on the track have run out of cars.

The track has three yellow lines across it, roughly at the quarter marks, and when the lead car crosses each line, every player bets on which of the six cars will win the race by marking it on their scoresheets (in secret). This can give you an incentive to help a rival player win if you realize your car isn’t likely to do so, and creates a way for a player hopelessly behind in the race to at least have a chance to win the whole game. Your final score is your winnings from your car(s), ranging from $12 million for first place to $2 million for fifth, plus your winnings from the betting (you can get money if the car you bet on at each point finishes in the top three), minus the cost you paid at the auction. A perfect bet, where you bet on the eventual winner in all three betting periods, would get you $18 million, enough to win some games even if you get nothing from your car.

Games take about 30 minutes to an hour, depending on the number of players and how quickly everyone takes their turns. My seven-year-old niece had no problem keeping up with the game after she sat and watched the adults play once, just needing a little guidance on using the cards to her best advantage. (I think it took a little longer for her to grasp the way the cards worked when certain cars would be blocked partway through a move.) And who doesn’t love a race car game … especially one that doesn’t suck?

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board games, classic games, family strategy games, highly recommended

→ June 24, 2019
→ By keith

Lanterns Dice.

The 2015 game Lanterns has been one of my favorite titles to play on my iPad for since the app version came out in 2016, which in turn led me to trade for the physical game as well. It’s a quick-moving game that appears light but has more depth to the long-term strategy than it seems, especially because players all place tiles into the same space and have to plan for the potential for someone else to screw up your little plan.

Renegade Games is about to release Lanterns Dice: Lights in the Sky, a spinoff, roll-and-write game that incorporates similar themes to the original but gets rid of most of the directly competitive elements of the original, asking players to fill out spaces on their individual sheets to match set patterns and create contiguous areas for more scoring. That lack of interaction on the table itself makes this a very different experience than that of playing Lanterns, which makes this more of a competitive solo game – what you do almost barely affects anyone else’s game or score. That said, it’s still a solid roll-and-write game because of the variability in game setup and because of some new quirks on the sheets that can let you chain together certain moves.

Lanterns Dice comes with four six-sided dice, each side showing a distinct color, and gives each player a sheet with a 9×6 grid of “pools,” each of which contains two triangles of different colors. When it’s your turn to roll the dice, you roll them into the tray and shake it until the four dice sit in the center, and then you orient it so one die faces you. You get to fill in one triangle of that color on your sheet; every other player has a die facing them at the same time, and they fill in triangles of those colors. On your roll, you also get a free fill from a color specific to that round, shown on the right of your scoresheet.

The primary goal in Lanterns Dice is to fill in complete pools (both triangles) to match any of the four patterns that you’ve chosen for scoring in that particular game. The box comes with eight patterns, two of which cover three squares, four of which cover four squares, and two of which cover five squares; you pick which four to use, using one small, two medium, and one large. The point value for each pattern declines the more it’s used over the course of the game, so being the first to score a pattern has a modest baked-in bonus of an extra point or two. You will also score at game-end for the second-largest contiguous block of completed pools on your sheet, so you need to create two disconnected chains and try to keep them close in size to maximize these points. There’s a third way to score by surrounding pools with boat symbols on them, filling in the four orthogonally adjacent pools but leaving the boat’s pool untouched.

The interesting aspect of Lanterns Dice comes from two other symbols that appear on certain pools on your sheet. When you complete a pool with a square platform, you get to fill in one triangle on any adjacent pool. When you fill in either triangle on a pool with a circle on it, you get one “gift,” tracked at the bottom of the scoresheet, and you can redeem those for valuable prizes. You can spend one gift to reroll your four dice one time. Each game also has three bonus moves you can buy with one to three gifts, such as letting you fill in a second triangle of the same color you rolled, or letting you fill in one or both triangles on a separate pool somewhere on your sheet. These can be very powerful if you plan them out a little, because you can set yourself up to get a chain of free moves, especially later in the game.

Games take about a half an hour, and setup is really very quick – you just have to sort and choose the fireworks tiles showing the patterns you can match and score in that game. It’s a nice filler game, but I think it loses the facet of the original Lanterns that I liked most: the interaction among players on the main board, where you’re competing to place tiles in the most valuable places, and your placement can interfere with someone else’s plans. The dice game also isn’t as visually appealing as the base version, if that’s your thing. It’s a solid addition if you love the original or enjoy roll-and-writes, but I don’t think it’s going to be a regular play around my house.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board games, dice games, family games

→ June 22, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/21/19.

No new ESPN+ content this week, although that will change next week after I get to a few more minor league games. I did hold a Klawchat on Friday.

On the board game front, I had two pieces up at Paste this week. One is a straight review of Corinth, a new roll-and-write game from Days of Wonder that is sort of Yspahan: the Dice Game, but with a new theme and much altered rules. The other recaps the day and a half I spent at the Origins Game Fair, running through all the new games I saw or played.

On July 8th, the night after the Futures Game, I’ll be at the Hudson Library and Historical Society in Hudson, Ohio, talking baseball, taking questions, and signing copies of my book Smart Baseball.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The Atlantic‘s William Langewiesche examines the unsolved disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, and the uncomfortable but almost certain conclusion of who was responsible. EDIT: A rejoinder from the Daily Beast.
E. Jean Carroll says Donald Trump raped her in 1996. The party of family values will ignore her.
Conditions at the contractors’ offices where Facebook moderators work are dismal. I have become almost totally convinced that user-generated content sites can’t police themselves. People will say and post the worst things, but the sites have little incentive to remove anything that isn’t outright illegal, and the sheer volume of bad content (and reports) makes policing it infeasible.
A mapping error gave Under Armour billionaire Kevin Plank a huge tax break, with a boost from Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (R).
Noted left-wing publication (checks notes) Scientific American ran an editorial demanding that transphobes stop using phony science to defend their deviant beliefs. Sex and gender aren’t binary, scientists have known this for at least a half-century, and yet we still have troglodytes trying to uphold the two-bathroom paradigm.
A couple of Harvard alums have started a firm dedicated to growing high-quality shiitake mushrooms, viewing them as a sustainable, more healthful alternative to meat. I guess it’s unsurprising, but I never considered how the growth medium would affect the flavor and nutrition of mushrooms, just as soil quality affects that of vegetables.
Islanders goalie Robin Lehner won the Bill Masterson Trophy for his public discussion of his bipolar disorder and substance abuse.
Writing for Forbes, Bruce Y. Lee asks why actress Jessica Biel, who has no medical background, is fighting a pro-vaccination law that will crack down on doctors who give out bogus medical exemptions to existing vaccination mandates.
You know, like California Dr. Bob Sears, who is accused of giving out bogus medical exemptions while already on probation for giving out bogus medical exemptions. He should lose his medical license, permanently. He should probably be in jail.
New York millionaires Bernand and Lisa Selz are funding the anti-vaccine movement, donating over $3 million to groups that fight vaccination laws and spread misinformation about vaccines. I hope other outfits that have taken donations from the Selzes, like the Brooklyn Museum and the Frick Collection, turn them away.
An adult with autism, writing only as Max, explains how the anti-vaccine movement offends him and others with autism spectrum disorders.
The anti-vaccine movement is also fueled by Russian operations on social media, according to former DHS official and current Kennedy School lecturer Juliette Kayyem, speaking in this Q&A on the current measles outbreak and anti-vaccine sentiment.
An LA police officer, while off duty, used his service weapon to shoot a developmentally disabled, non-verbal man who pushed him in a local Costco, killing the man and hitting both the man’s parents, with the mother still in a coma.
The University of Michigan’s baseball team is headed to the CWS finals; Tony Paul wrote about Wolverine player Joe Donovan and his late brother, Charlie, who was also a Michigan recruit but died before reaching Ann Arbor.
Martin Feldstein, one-time chair of the President’s Council of Economics Advisers – Reagan fired him for opposing the supply-side strategy of deficit spending – and my Economics 10 professor at you-know-where died last week at age 79. There’s really no party or even subgroup of either party pushing for the policies he espoused.
Tens of thousands of Indian villages are facing water shortages, with no end in sight. Climate change and overpopulation are leading us down a death spiral when it comes to the global supply of clean water.
I’ve included songs from YONAKA on multiple playlists the last two years, including three songs on my top 100s of 2017/2018; NME profiled the band and their debut album’s focus on toxic masculinity and mental health topics.
This is an older post but I found it this week while googling something unrelated: a former member of the extremist Christian sect that also counts the Duggars as members writes of growing up “Quiverfull” and escaping the cult.
Speaking of cults, the folks proselytizing about the evils of wheat – not celiacs, mind you, but people who avoid wheat by choice – will often claim modern wheat varieties are worse for the environment, but a new study debunks that myth, showing that modern wheat requires less everything, including fertilizers, water, and fungicides.
In Alaba … no, wait, this time it’s Indiana, where the school district did the right thing but one teacher couldn’t handle it. An Indiana teacher resigned rather than accept a school policy to refer to trans students by their desired names and pronouns, but now he’s suing for his job back, backed by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a hate group that wants to criminalize homosexuality and transgenderism.
The New York Times took a break from profiling Trump supporters to … actually, to profile more Trump supporters, but this time it’s to shine a light on racist whites in Minnesota, angry at Somali refugees for being black, Muslim, and nearby.
Ryan Thomore writes for Cubs Insider about how Pride Days at the ballpark matter to LGBTQ+ fans.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: alternative, baseball, food science, harvard, lgbt rights, links, longreads, minnesota, racism, stick to baseball, vaccines, water crisis

→ June 21, 2019
→ By keith

Klawchat 6/21/19.

I have two new posts up at Paste this week: a wrapup of the new games I saw last week at the Origins Gaming Fair, and a review of the new roll-and-write game Corinth from Days of Wonder.

Keith Law: So if you’re tired of the same old story … it’s Klawchat.

addoeh: I watching Tanner Anderson’s wind-up and I didn’t realize your alma mater teaches the “Ministry of Silly Walks” delivery.
Keith Law: Hey, us Harvard guys are just a bunch of plucky underdogs. No one gave us any advantages. We’re all self-made like that.

Nick: What’s the best fried chicken you’ve had?
Keith Law: The Crack Shack in San Diego, probably because they use the best chicken.

Robert: How would CJ Abrams compare to Royce Lewis as amateurs? They seem quite similar.
Keith Law: I don’t see them as similar at all other than their speed. Lewis had more impact with the bat. Abrams is a better shortstop right now than Lewis at the same age.

Mike: I keep reading good reports on Kelenic this year. Is he looking more and more like a top 20 prospect?
Keith Law: No question.

Mike in Seattle: Hi Keith – love your work and was wondering if you planned on doing an mid-season updated prospect ranking this year?
Keith Law: Yes, I do this every year on the Thursday of All-Star Week. This year that will be July 11th.

Alex: As a Braves fan, I hate thinking that the Braves “did the right thing” in refusing to hand out multiyear free agent deals and waiting to sign Keuchel to a one-year deal two months into the season — this boring bean-counter baseball is appalling labor economics and it sucks to watch. But it’s not poor strategy.We all know the MLBPA has a tough row to hoe in the next CBA. Is there anything that journalists and writers can do in writing about free agents to
Keith Law: It’s not poor strategy if you get the player, right? What if you could have had Keuchel on Opening Day and got 30 starts from him … but instead, you didn’t sign him, and you miss the playoffs by a game?

Alex: We know the next CBA is going to be tough for players, as owners have (somehow) decided upon collective stinginess as a strategy. Are there any best practices for journalists and writers, when writing about free agents and free agency, to make the guaranteed dollar amount less of a focus than the actual human player?
Keith Law: Sorry, this looks like the second part of your question. A good start would be for writers to stop acting as if players who earn eight figures aren’t deserving – this money exists in the sport because MLB teams are highly profitable. If the players aren’t paid, the excess goes to owners.

Tom B: Phillies moving Alec Bohm at the right speed? What do you see as his ceiling?
Keith Law: No. Starting him in low-A was a colossal waste of everyone’s time. He was the third pick in the draft out of college. If he wasn’t ready for high-A on Opening Day this year at age 22, he was the wrong pick.

M: Adbert Alzolay had a really nice debut last night. Can he stick around with the big league team this year?
Keith Law: Yes. The bigger question is whether his improved FB command and better CB are enough to let him get lefties out three times through an order. If not, he’s still a valuable bullpen piece. But if they can, he can start now.

Kyle KS: Does the juiced ball benefit pitch speed and spin rate? If it has reduced drag while in the air when it’s hit, does it do the same for pitchers or is the distance and time from the mound to the catcher too short to have effect?
Keith Law: The altered baseball changes everything – spin rate, drag, carry – although I don’t think it affects pitch speed. Better question for a physicist.

Ben: Is this the Max Kepler you were expecting?
Keith Law: Yes but I was a year early, again.

Ben: Odds we see Bo Bichette this year?
Keith Law: Very good if healthy.

Steve: I believe in a past chat you said WRC+ is not a great way to evaluate minor league players but I cannot recall why. If that’s your sentiment, could you elaborate?
Keith Law: It only measures production, but we don’t necessarily care about production with prospects – how you get to the production is just as important, and sometimes we’re happy with prospects who don’t produce a ton but aren’t overmatched, such as teenagers in full season leagues. Chase Vallot is my go-to example: He posted a 136 wRC+ in high-A two years ago, and wasn’t old for the level, but he really couldn’t hit. He saw enough bad pitching, since it was A-ball, that he could beat up on that enough for a good wRC+ despite getting blown away by even average major league stuff. Last I checked he was back in low-A and still not hitting.

Felix: Do you happen to know when we will see Eric Pardinho toe the rubber this year?
Keith Law: I haven’t asked anyone but I assume now that short-season has begun we’ll see him.

Kevin: Given how the Mets have played this year, and how Diaz has been relatively average this year plus Cano is hurt. And Kelenic has been great this year. Was that the dumbest trade in the past 2 years?
Keith Law: This trade is going to haunt them for a long time. Dunn has also been excellent for Seattle in AA.

Dave: Do you like the Bulls taking White at 7? Seems like a good fit & you might miss some of the injury risk that comes with Garland.
Keith Law: Jon Garland?

Bill: Keith, no question. Just wanted to thank you for the book recommendation on The Master and Margarita (via your top-100 novels list). Such a terrific read. There are so many wonderful layers to that book – I couldn’t put it down. Keep up the great work!
Keith Law: You’re welcome. I’ve read well over a thousand novels now and that is still my favorite. It’s one of the only books I have ever read twice, and it holds up.

Janey: Do you feel stress over the border situation and how the US now are the bad guys? 40+ people in rooms meant for 8, kids taking care of kids, separated families. Any advice on what can be done before we get the chance to vote people out?
Keith Law: I’m afraid that I’m getting desensitized because there is so much bad news (if you care about human rights, or just feel empathy at all). If you live in a red district, though, you should be all over your elected reps to voice your displeasure – and if you live in a blue one, as I do, make sure your reps know where you stand.

Matt: Aside from a couple starts Alex Faedo has been impressive in AA this year. Jason Beck said scouts had him sitting 94-95 in his last start. If his velo is back to that is he a legit prospect?
Keith Law: He’s not sitting 94-95. I’ve spoken to multiple scouts who’ve seen him and nobody reported that.
Keith Law: He’s probably a reliever but could be a back-end starter.

Jon: Are you surprised Nolan Gorman isn’t skipping straight to AA like the cardinals usually do with offensive prospects? How do you think he will fare in such a pitcher friendly league?
Keith Law: He’s only 19, that would make no sense to jump him to AA.

Mike in Sweden: Why did everyone think that 1B was Bellinger’s “natural” position?
Keith Law: It was his primary position in HS and he’s at least a 70 defender there.

Jerry: What is Seth Beer’s ceiling?
Keith Law: Everyday DH. Might have some platoon split issues to work on.

Seth: The Yankees have now had 6 separate shoulder injuries this season (Betances, Severino, Stanton, Andujar, Loaisiga, Montgomery). I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but doesn’t that feel like more than a coincidence? Could this be a strength and conditioning issue?
Keith Law: Bit of a coincidence, I think; Loaisiga has been injury-prone since before he signed, and Severino’s delivery was always a red flag. Plus Stanton seems like he should be in a different category from the five pitchers.

BalbonisImpactedColon: Is Clint Frazier in the Yankees org at the end of the year?
Keith Law: I don’t think so.

Adam: I saw a recent report that said Allard was sitting 91-93 and the bite on the curve was back (didnt know it left). Have you heard anything along those lines?
Keith Law: Nope. I don’t believe that velocity either.

CRAIG BIGGIO: YOU WERE WRONG ABOUT MY BOY WERENT YOU? ADMIT IT
Keith Law: YOUR BOY IS HITTING .203 and striking out nearly 30% of the time.

Rando : Chisholm had potential to make a huge leap on your rankings does he now have a chance to fall out of the top 100?
Keith Law: What? Why would he fall out of the top 100? He’s still one of the best prospects in baseball.

Joe: Thoughts on the EE trade? I didn’t see a write-up.
Keith Law: No writeup. No thoughts, really.

Jake: Gallen or Alzolay a better pitching prospect? Both seem to be having better years this year
Keith Law: Alzolay.

Peet: Is Preller just a bad negotiator? Gave Weathers full slot last year and broke the bank with Hudson Head. Or is Head actually worth that much?
Keith Law: I wouldn’t pay that much for Head. (Phrasing, boom!) Don’t know why giving Weathers slot was bad, though. That was his range in the draft.

Jonathan: Heard an interesting Hidden Brain recently talking about the Placebo Effect. If there are studies showing results without real medical intervention, is this a good road to go down? Is it ethical, and maybe most importantly, is it real?
Keith Law: The placebo effect is real. Charging people for it, however, is probably unethical.

PJ: I am all for the safety of expanded netting, and know you are too. But I think the change needs to happen in tandem with changing the location of the cameras for baseball telecasts. Too many teams let wires and poles and netting get in the way of the tv viewing. There’s sometimes a catch by the RF or LF is hidden behind a load-supporting wire.
Keith Law: Sure but isn’t that an easy fix?

JR: Thoughts on Anthony Kay and his development? Does he make it to MLB this year? Is he ready?
Keith Law: I think he’s ready. Could see him recalled if they trade one or more starters next month.

Sam: Have you heard anything on Royce Lewis? Numbers don’t look so great…thanks for the chat!
Keith Law: I’ve mentioned his swing & setup changes already … way too many moving parts. Not sure who taught him that but I imagine the Twins aren’t pleased.

Ryan: Tatis Jr. has been on fire since coming back off the IL. What’s his ceiling at his peak. Perennial MVP candidate?
Keith Law: Yes, absolutely.

Quinn the Eskimo: In your opinion, is College Baseball at all levels too “white”? Too much talk about “fundamentals” and “playing the game the right way”, etc…
Keith Law: It’s very white on the field, too, probably a function of disparate opportunities at youth levels and the lack of full scholarships. Baseball’s an expensive sport to play.

Bobby: Still think Dom Smith > Alonso?
Keith Law: Yes.

Matt: What in the world happened with Mike Vasil?
Keith Law: He made a bad choice.

Brett : What methods of cooking is spatchcocking a chicken especially good for?
Keith Law: High-heat roasting. Apparently good for grilling but I’ve never tried it.

Matt: If Verlander pitches another 6 years and ages well he could finish top 10 all time in SP WAR and top 6 post WWII. If he ages really well or pitches longer he could finish in the Maddux, RJ and Ryan category. He is one of the best pitchers of all time and I don’t think he gets enough credit. Do you agree?
Keith Law: I think he gets credit. He’s a clear HoFer.

Josh: Is there still room for Amed Rosario to become an above average regular? Hes only 23, but he is also a Met. You understand my confusion.
Keith Law: I’m still in.

Jim: Keith, Thanks as always for the chats. Have you heard anything on the status of the Nats’ Mason Denaburg? He didn’t pitch after being drafted because of (IIRC) biceps tendinitis. He’s listed on the Auburn NY-Penn roster, but others have said that’s unconfirmed. It would be … weird … if their 2019 #1 pick started pitching before their 2018 #1.
Keith Law: I thought he was also fighting some injury this spring. I could be wrong.

JR: Your daughter still appreciate animated movies? Will you be seeing Toy Story 4 this weekend?
Keith Law: Yes, but not seeing it first weekend. Let the crowds die down a bit.

Dave: What aspect of baseball do you think is under-covered right now?
Keith Law: Minor league salaries.

TJ: Re Matt Boyd: Frazier and Florial or Dom Smith and Gimenez too much to ask? Too little? About right?
Keith Law: Why would the Mets trade for him? The Yankees offer seems reasonable, but then again I’m not a big believer in Florial’s chance to learn to recognize pitches.

Kretin: Think the Mets sign Allan?
Keith Law: Yes.
Keith Law: They did not draft him on a whim. They clearly believed they had the money he wanted. If he doesn’t sign it’s likely some non-financial issue. But I believe he’ll sign.

Matt: When does a team blow up the entire draft system by spending much more than the limit and getting a great draft haul of “unsignable players.” Losing the picks in the future hurts, but couldn’t they just do the same thing every year? Not having a first round pick hurts less if you spend the same way every year.
Keith Law: You’d essentially punt the next draft or two by doing this. It might be a valid strategy but the risk + backlash would be substantial.

Tock: To what range do you see Deivi rising in the mid-season rankings?
Keith Law: He’ll be in the top 50 but not rising a ton … it’s not like he’s substantially different than what I said he was in January. He’ll move up due to graduations/injuries ahead of him.

Brian: I know you’ve been bearish on Dakota Hudson, but do you think his last couple months (significantly improved results from an abundance of ground balls, although a blah K/BB ratio) portend a secure role in the Cards rotation? Or is he more of a reliever long term?
Keith Law: Still think he’s a reliever.

Mark: Has Trent Grisham turned himself back into a prospect again? Still walks a lot and doesn’t strike out but now he actually has power. Still only 22 too.
Keith Law: Yes, absolutely. Maybe a regular, definitely a big leaguer.

Concerned Citizen: I’m scared to death by Trump’s brinksmanship, this time with Iran. Please reassure me in any way you see fit.
Keith Law: I have no way to reassure you on this, sorry.

Jeff D.: Which Dodger catching prospect has the best career: Smith, Ruiz, Cartaya?
Keith Law: Ruiz, Smith, Cartaya, in that order, but all three are prospects.

Salty: Keith – I bailed on Archer a few seasons ago, but started DVR’ing this season. I know you bailed awhile back…did you ever get back in, and if so, how’s the season been?
Keith Law: I am through season 8. Still enjoyed it.

Liam: Cristian Pache has been great offensively in AA – more walks than all of last year, same homers, etc.

In your top 100, you mentioned he’s a 20-25 homer guy that never posts high OBPs, with the new MLB ball is something like .300/.355 with 30 homers realistic?
Keith Law: I’d bet the under on that. He’s also probably an 80 defender in center, though, so he’d still be a star.

Aubrey: Between Yordan Alvaraez’ performance in AAA & so far in MLB, have you seen/heard anything about him that makes you rethink his initial ranking as a prospect this season?
Keith Law: Nope. Too many fans seem to think that omitting a player from my top 100 means I think he’s terrible. That was never the case.

Joules: I don’t love Pache’s HR spray chart. You think he’ll be able to get into any oppo power?
Keith Law: Yes.

scrapper: Why is MacKenzie Gore still in high A ball? He’s dominated there all season.
Keith Law: I truly doubt he’s there much longer.

Mike: My company is having a pie baking contest at the company BBQ. What kind of pie should I go with?
Keith Law: Whatever fruit is in season at the time.

Mike: Do you think Hiura stays at 2B long term or when will he move off 2B? I don’t know how he’s looked in the minor leagues at 2B but he looked bad in his brief stint in the Show
Keith Law: He’s not great there, but I think he can be adequate at 2b and hit enough where they don’t care.

Doug: I know it was one start. But why did the Padres go with Maregvicious over Allen at the start of the year?
Keith Law: I wonder if Allen’s disaster start the last Sunday of spring training swayed them.

Jake: Jarren Duran has cooled in AA though the approach is still solid. Do you think he has the bat to be a regular?
Keith Law: Yes.

Adam: Has Riley shown you anything you didnt expect to date?
Keith Law: No.

Rob: How good is Alejandro Kirk’s bat? Can he stick behind the plate to be a regular or is he more of a utility player?
Keith Law: He’s a prospect, potential regular back there. I’m definitely a fan of fat catchers.

Brian: On the Minor league salaries issue, my coworkers son was drafted in the 3rd round last year with a $500K signing bonus. What people don’t understand when they hear that is that is essentially all they will get unless they make it to the big leagues. He also left college a year early with no degree. He lives with his parents in the off-season, paid for his own personal trainer, and had to buy a lot of his own equipment (bats, gloves, etc.). It is border-line criminal how much these guys are exploited chasing a dream.
Keith Law: Yep, except it’s explicitly legal thanks to the Republican Party giving MLB a huge boondoggle in the 2017 tax bill.

JWR: Will you be making further comment about the Twitter flare up with Bauer? I know some of the details but I’m still not sure about the origin/history of events.
Keith Law: What comment have I made? Bauer decided it was appropriate to mock me for being 5’6″. I don’t think there’s anything further to say on it.

Ed: Is Zach Plesac a back of the rotation arm, or can he be more?
Keith Law: That’s what I think he is.

Paul: Mets starters haven’t been great but considering the team trots out the WORST defense in baseball – how much blame does a pitching coach deserve?
Keith Law: Can’t fire the owner or his son, so…

Miguel: When will Andres Muñoz be pitching in high leverage relief for the Padres?
Keith Law: I think sooner rather than later – they’re aware how fleeting an arm like this could be.

JV: How good is the culinary scene in Las Vegas? Also, could you live there, or would it be too much?
Keith Law: I couldn’t, not given the weather and the likely effects of climate change on the water supply.

David Tennant: What did you think of “Blink”? Is there a review of it?
Keith Law: The Doctor Who episode? Best I’ve seen through three seasons.

Randy: Re: draft punting….but that rule was designed to further help small market teams and keep fewer from tanking. It hasn’t really affected the game that way. Still have multiple teams and most of the NL east being non-competitive. Should draft rules be adjusted again in next deal?
Keith Law: Every time MLB has tried to change the draft rules to help small-market teams it hasn’t worked. I have no faith in further adjustments doing so.

eric: we have a passion fruit vine that is set to produce hundreds, if not more, passion fruit. what should we do with them?
Keith Law: It’s supposed to make a great jelly.

Michael: If MLB goes back to a more fair baseball and the numbers plummet, will there be a negative fan reaction?
Keith Law: Probably. But I fear long-term loss of fan interest with how few balls are put into play right now.

Jim: Juniper and Ivy (in San Diego) is truly wonderful. I live three miles away and finally went. Thanks for ranking it so high or I might not have gone.
Keith Law: You’re welcome. Can’t wait to get back there in December.

romorr: I heard Sedlocks fastball is better now, and while it’s just A+, is he popping back up on anyones radar?
Keith Law: You may have heard this because I wrote about it a month ago.
Keith Law: Probably a reliever, but that’s better than his prognosis six months ago.

Jason: Latest thoughts on Nate Pearson? Rotation in his future or dynamic arm out of the bullpen?
Keith Law: Have to think rotation until he shows otherwise.

Mark: What’s the deal with Corbin Burnes? He looked like he should’ve been a breakout candidate this year (I guess Woodruff took all his good juju?) Is it better for him to work out his struggles in the pen in MLB or should he be starting in AAA?
Keith Law: Poor results in the short term especially on HR haven’t changed his long-term outlook.

Jake: I remember a couple of years ago you mentioned that Mario Feliciano’s bat was real. He’s making you look good in that regard. Can he catch, and is that bat good enough to play elsewhere?
Keith Law: He can catch.

TK: Did you ever watch/review Good Omens? I didn’t read the book but just finished watching it with my wife and found it hilarious and very entertaining.
Keith Law: Watched one episode so far and enjoyed it.

baldguy510: What’s the latest on Wander Franco? When do you see him in the majors and is it definitely as a SS?
Keith Law: #1 prospect in baseball. Shortstop.

Dustin: Does Heliot Ramos have Top 20 potential heading into 2020?
Keith Law: I don’t think so.
Keith Law: Again, doesn’t make him a bad player. Just means there are plenty of guys ahead of him.

Craig: A family friend has a son who is a sophomore pitcher and has some acclaim (already committed to pitch for a SEC school, national rankings, etc.). At what point do MLB teams start seriously scouting HS players?
Keith Law: Summer before their senior year it really picks up.

Jim: What do you think of the proposed Tampa-Montreal “split season” floated? Jeff Passan had a pretty good recap. I think there are a lot of questions (contractual, logistic, tax, territorial, etc.), but it brings back thoughts of the Pittsburgh-Washington Homestead Grays (as well as the unfortunate 2004 Montreal-San Juan bit).
Keith Law: One of the worst fucking ideas i’ve heard in a long, long, long time.

eric: this is an actual question, and one, for the first time in my 35 years that i have fully considered it: are you ashamed being an american?
Keith Law: I am today. Our country, like any country, has a history of good and bad traits, of positive and negative impacts on the world. The last two years, however, have been overwhelmingly negative to the point that we are dragging the world backwards.

Dustin: Is there any reason to temper Twins fan’s excitement for Alex Kiriloff? Do you see him getting called up in September?
Keith Law: No reason. Don’t think they add him to the 40-man just yet.

Mark: What should the punishment be for someone who chooses not to vaccinate their kids? Disallow them from every holding a job or participating in society? Taxing them at 90 percent like you so hilariously (ha..ha) suggested?
Keith Law: The punishment should be that they can’t access public education. You want to send your kids to school? Fine. Get them vaccinated. Australia also disallows denier parents from getting certain social benefits. I’m good with that too. No idea what your strawman arguments are supposed to bring to the table.

Ronn: Just wanted to say thank you for always resisting. Me and my wife’s son love your work.
Keith Law: Our government is running concentration camps and arguing that we don’t need to provide the imprisoned children with soap or toothpaste. How can anyone stay silent and still sleep at night?

addoeh: This may be weird way to say this, but it seem the most efficient way of playing baseball (three true outcomes) isn’t the most profitable way (more fans) for the business side. The baseball side would have to change first, but with the long term local/national tv deals, will they change before it is too late?
Keith Law: I think that’s an accurate statement. Changing the ball has contributed. I’d like to see what the game looks like with the pre-2015 baseball … and then maybe we consider other structural changes. (I’ve also suggested raising the bottom of the strike zone, which drifted downward for years before creeping back up a little in ~2017.)

Liam: The Pirates seem to be done with Gregory Polanco (10 ABs in last 9 days) – Do you still have faith in him figuring it out?

I recall when he was a prospect, he had real star potential
Keith Law: I do. Maybe it happens somewhere else.

Snowy: How excited should I be for Ronny Mauricio?
Keith Law: Very. Might be the Mets’ #1 prospect, if not right now, very soon.

Vaccinations: Since that silly question was just asked, I have one that hopefully isn’t as silly. I know you’ve touched on it before, but is my vaccinated child totally safe from these wackados that don’t vaccinate, and what is the important of the heard immunity?
Keith Law: No, unfortunately it doesn’t. No vaccination is 100% effective – just like no medical treatment is – and some vaccines, like pertussis, are only about 70% effective on their own and depend on herd immunity to give you total protection. So people who don’t vaccinate hurt everyone in their communities.

Nate: Do you have a link to the tweet whee bauer threatened Whitney McIntosh personally? I looked and couldn’t find it. Did he delete it?
Keith Law: He deleted it. 12up had it in a post. He threatened her job, not her person.

Devon: Klaw, love your work. Have you ever written a column identifying prospects that are outliers in your rankings compared to other reputably rankings in the industry. I would love to know what players you are comparatively high or low on. Thanks!
Keith Law: I haven’t, and wouldn’t, because I don’t want to give the impression that I’m somehow criticizing the work that experts like Mayo, Callis, and Longenhagen do for their respective sites. We can disagree for valid reasons and still respect the opinions of others who do the same kind of work and put in the right effort.

Chris: Is hanigers trade value done for the year since he won’t be healthy till the all Star break?
Keith Law: If he’s back on the 12th, after the ASB, he’ll have plenty of time to retore his full trade value. Teams know what he is; they just have to see he’s healthy.

Chris: How hypocritical is it for the umpires’ union to be tweeting about Machado and his suspension because it fits a public-opinion narrative that it’s trying to create while at the same time having its members refuse to be held accountable publicly for in-game actions?
Keith Law: It’s beyond hypocritical; it’s embarrassing. I don’t know if MLB did anything beyond the statement they issued criticizing the tweet, but I hope behind the scenes they made clear that the umpires should not be speaking that way about players. It’s hard to imagine Machado getting fair treatment from umpires the rest of the season.

Aiden: I FINALLY got a copy of Wingspan (without paying $100 on eBay). Do you have a favorite number of people to play it with?
Keith Law: Three is a bit smoother than four.

Joe: Did the Yankees make the right decision picking Gleyber over Eloy in 2016 (not that there is a wrong decision given how little they gave up)?
Keith Law: I had Gleyber over Eloy at the time and would still say so.

Joe: Keith, I was the one who asked you if it was time to worry about Matt Manning about a year ago after another one of his then-patented 6 BB outings. Anyway he went on to walk like 10 guys total the rest of the year. No question, just here to turn myself in.
Keith Law: Nah, he really changed in the second half last year. The Tigers really did great work giving him a proper delivery he could repeat, and one that gave him extension over his front side that made use of his 6’6″ frame. That’s the reason he threw more strikes and his CB got better.

Craig: With London banning sharp tip knives now, along with the numerous studies showing more (legal) guns = less crime, are you ready to walk back your calls for more gun control?
Keith Law: No, troll, because there are numerous studies showing more legal guns equals more gun deaths. Take this shit to 4chan.

Tom: Are tool grades similar to bell curve standard deviations? How much better is a 55 tool than a 50 hit tool?
Keith Law: They might be so in theory, but they are not in practice.

Mark: If you were Preller would you have rather spent 3 million in Hudson Head or a similar amount on Maurice Hampton?
Keith Law: Hampton for me. But it sounds like he just didn’t want to play, and after Kyler Murray, could you blame anyone for backing off a player who shows some preference for football?

Adam: Is it time to worry about Kyle Wright, Bryse Wilson, and Kolby Allard for Atlanta fans?
Keith Law: No on the first two. Allard just is what he is.

John: Just curious if you ever listen to the Joe Rogan podcast or have any opinion of him one way or the other? Thanks
Keith Law: I haven’t.

Ray: What fish do you like to grill, and what is a favorite preparation?
Keith Law: I don’t typically grill fish because it is so hard to keep it from sticking to the grates (and methods I’ve seen to prep the grates are so much work). I’d rather sear salmon and finish it in the oven, or just pan-sear trout.

John: I read someone compare Jack Leiter to Mike Leake with slightly better stuff. Would you agree with that assessment?
Keith Law: Better CB than Leake. Leake was more of a kitchen-sink guy in college who could really sink the two-seamer.

Jimmy: Brennen Davis of the Cubs, SSS or potential breakout?
Keith Law: Both of these things can be true at the same time. It’s a tiny sample, but he’s also a great athlete and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he blew up this summer.

Marco: I imagine if I met you in person you would be extremely similar to Captain Raymond Holt off of Brooklyn Nine-Nine if you’ve ever seen it.
Keith Law: I love that show, but he’s deadpan and rarely laughs or smiles. I’m the opposite, at least in the company of people I know.

eric: it seems that basically every gop representative and senator is brainwashed. like, they literally were asking about hilary’s emails in yesterday’s hearing about the russian interference in the elections. are they all bad-faith actors or evil or …
Keith Law: And our only recourse is to vote other people in, whether it’s Democrats, or the few Republicans who have shown independent thinking and may still represent the views of center-right voters.

Anchen: Do you think teams will continue to move toward 13 pitchers on the 25 man roster? Or even more? Or does it make sense to go back to 12 at all?
Keith Law: I think the 13-man pitching staff is here to stay. I hate it, but the solution is probably another bench spot.
Keith Law: Sorry, another roster spot to accommodate another bench spot – so I’m saying a 26-man roster with a cap on 13 pitchers.

Brian: Regarding Rocker getting abused a few weeks ago, do teams factor in the past history of college managers when ranking pitchers?
Keith Law: They factor the use of specific pitchers more than the history of coaches. I do know that teams steered away from pitchers from coaches/schools with severe histories of abusing pitchers, like Graham at Rice.

Chris: Regarding grilling fish, America’s Test Kitchen recommends mixing honey (for browning) with mayo (to prevent sticking), neither of which you can taste.
Keith Law: You wouldn’t taste honey? That seems unlikely.

John: What does it say about MLB teams that players have to buy equipment like Rapsodo etc. on their own in the offseason to try and get better? Why wouldn’t they provide them with all available resources to make their org. better? Or am I missing something?
Keith Law: Some do, I think. is that really universal?

John: What is meant by a “prep” player? Is it used interchangeably with high school?
Keith Law: Yes.

Aubrey: I wasn’t saying you thought Alvarez was terrible, I just wondered if your opinion of him was higher than it was before the season. If so, I know sample size is small, so maybe scouting wise you saw something you liked more.
Keith Law: Nope, same guy, all bat, not a great long-term projection to the body, huge power.
Keith Law: I can’t tell who’s just asking about a player versus who’s saying nyah nyah nyah.

Kevin: Could Tatis be Mike Trout good?
Keith Law: As much as I’d enjoy that, I’m not saying any player is going to be Mike Trout good. That’s a level of good beyond any good I’ve seen in my lifetime.
Keith Law: That’s all for this week – thanks as always for your questions. I should be back for another chat next Thursday or Friday depending on game schedules. Also, I have a talk & book signing on July 8th at the Hudson Library & Historical Society just outside Cleveland. I hope to see some of you there!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: klawchat

→ June 18, 2019
→ By keith

Magpie Murders.

Anthony Horowitz created one of my favorite television series of all time, the magnificent British mystery show Foyle’s War, which stands well on its own but also comes across as a loving homage to the golden age of mysteries, with its gentleman detective D.C.S. Foyle and solutions drawn as much from psychology as from unearthing clues. He’s also been tabbed by the estates of Arthur Conan Doyle and Ian Fleming to write novels using those authors’ signature characters, including the Sherlock Holmes novel Moriarty, which I found a quick read but unfaithful in style to the Conan Doyle novels and too reliant on a huge twist for its resolution. He’s also written three standalone novels of original characters, of which Magpie Murders is one, and it’s every bit as brisk and compelling … but this time, the twists work incredibly well, and the reader is rewarded with two different mysteries to solve.

Magpie Murders presents us with a Poirot-like detective, the Holocaust survivor Atticus Pünd, who has both the little Belgian’s dispassionate approach to solving murders and endearing arrogance, drawn against his first instincts into a pair of murders in a small English town full of eccentric but well-defined characters. Pünd is also dying of an inoperable brain tumor, and this is almost certain to be his last case, but this seems to motivate him further to solve it rather than dwell on his imminent death. The murders are linked more by place than by method or motive, adding to the complexity, and as is typical of mysteries of the era Horowitz evokes, everyone had a reason to want the latter victim dead.

The novel runs over 400 pages, which is quite long for the genre (in my experience, only Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey novels reached that length), but that’s because there’s a second mystery wrapped up in the first one, and I won’t spoil it here. The first narrative breaks right before Pünd appears ready to reveal the solution, and you’re plunged into a totally different story, written in a more modern tone and involving a new set of characters, one where it isn’t even clear that a murder has taken place. (I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say, yes, there was a murder, because otherwise why would Horowitz even engage in this bit of metafiction?) The gambit here is that the end of the Pünd novel is missing, and the new narrator has to find the absent chapters to solve the mystery, which leads to a discovery of a murder and a conclusion that is more conventional for mysteries set in the last few decades. The marvel here is that Horowitz has nested two distinct, connected stories told in two entirely different voices, each mirroring a particular style of mystery novels – one from the golden era, one more contemporary – without ever ripping the reader out of the spell of the entire enterprise.

The twin payoffs here – I guessed the identity of the murderer in the inner story, but not in the Pünd one – help justify the book’s length, and Horowitz, who has eschewed the idea that this is an homage to Agatha Christie (even though her real-life grandson, Mathew Pritchard, appears as a character in the inner story), does capture the essence of the grande dame’s prose and structure. Unlike Moriarty, where the gimmick relied on fooling the reader from the beginning, the twist here is unforced and gives the reader a fair chance to follow what’s happening. As a Poirot fan (over Miss Marple), I was particularly pleased to follow Pünd, who is very much a Poirot surrogate in the novel, although he lacks the flourishes of the fastidious man’s mustache or ze little grey cells. Perhaps Horowitz is better when creating his own characters, even those which clearly draw from the icons of the genre, than when trying to work with the icons themselves.

Next up: Still reading Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: british literature, contemporary novels, detective novels, highly recommended, mysteries

→ June 17, 2019
→ By keith

Fates and Furies.

Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies was nominated for a National Book Award in 2015, losing to Adam Johnson’s short story collection Fortune Smiles, and was widely praised as her best work to date. This intricate, profound novel about a marriage as the intersection of two lives presents that intersection from two distinct and often contradictory perspectives, a story that is beautifully told and that gripped me more the further I read.

The first part of the book, titled “Fates” – ten points if you can guess the title of the second part – introduces us to Lancelot, nicknamed Lotto, born in the eye of a hurricane and in some ways a very lucky child. He’s wealthy beyond measure before he’s finished his first cry, and as time passes it will become clear that he’s blessed with good lucks and great talent as a writer, but even someone born lucky doesn’t get a life free of worry, sorry, or even some bad fortune too.

After years of diffident debauchery, with a handful of broken hearts among the many women who sought his company and only got sex, Lotto sees Mathilde walk into a party right near the end of his college years, walks towards her and immediately asks her to marry him. A few weeks later they do indeed wed, and then live as starving artists – his vengeful mother, more fury than fate to be sure, cuts him off when she learns of the marriage – while he tries to find work as an actor and she works in advertising and then in an art gallery to keep them afloat. A real stroke of luck reveals his talent as a writer, and he becomes an acclaimed playwright for going on two decades until the fairy tale and part one both end.

Furies tells the same story from Mathilde’s side, and the trees we could not make out while standing in the forest are clear and sharp when viewed from above. Mathilde’s childhood isn’t what Lotto believed, and much of what he thought was fate was anything but. She’s a stronger character than the subservient wife we see in Fates, and angrier at a life that did not give her any fortune other than perhaps some physical beauty. Mathilde had to scratch and claw for nearly everything she got in life before Lotto, and then had to work twice as hard as he ever did to keep them going during his lean years as an actor, and then plays far more of a role in his writing career than the first part lets on. The first part is the veneer, and the second the solid wood beneath. It is stronger, but it’s not as pretty. Once the revelations start spilling, they come fast, and they frequently upend your impression of one or both main characters.

The parallel structure of the two parts mirrors the dichotomy of the title, but also presents the “two sides to every story” bromide in a new light by giving primacy to Mathilde’s side. The Greek Fates were three goddesses who determined the length of a mortal’s life, but did not concern themselves with what went on during that life. Lotto’s story feels like one mapped out by the Fates – very little of his life appears to be directed by outside forces, and while there’s luck from the circumstances of his birth, reading part one gives you the sense that he is the prime mover in his own universe, right up until the thread spun by the Fates is cut.

That’s not true, of course, but Groff saves the explanation until Furies, when it becomes clear that Mathilde’s machinations were responsible for much of what happened to Lotto, right down to their not-coincidental first meeting, from college onward. So much of her life is driven by vengeance, whether directly aimed at someone else or in the vein of “living well is the best revenge,” which is a major part of the mythology of the Greek Furies. (Wikipedia describes them as underworld deities of vengeance.) Once widowed, she’s determined to become the protagonist of her own life for the first time, yet becomes even more driven by the desire for revenge, especially when she realizes that one longtime acquaintance went out of his way to try to sabotage her marriage to Lotto.

The plot itself is intricate and almost immediately compelling, with so much realistic detail that it’s hard to believe one person conceived both of these characters’ lives. Groff’s character development, even with several of the side characters like Lotto’s family and childhood friends, is superb, both in interest and credibility. Lotto being a playwright is a bit more of the writers writing about writers problem, and I found it hard to buy into the idea of him becoming so financially successful or even moderately famous in that line of work, but if you get past that, much of what follows is plausible, and his vocation allows Groff to work in endless literary references (only a few of which I caught).

Groff ends the novel with a revelation that explains much of what went before, and even casts doubt on some parts of the story, but in a way that also opens up a whole series of questions that you might have felt were answered by the two parts. It’s a gimmick, but she executes it well, and if anything it seemed to underscore some of the questions posed over the course of Furies around the choices Mathilde made in trying to create a far better life for herself than the one lowercase-f fate has offered her. It’s a brilliant, incisive, deeply philosophical work that moves like popular fiction but still has me thinking a few weeks after I finished.

Next up: Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. Acintya bheda bheda fatwa.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: american literature, contemporary novels, highly recommended, mythology

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