keith — Page 88

→ March 9, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 3/9/19.

No new ESPN+ content this week, but that will change now that I’m in Florida to see a little spring training and at least two potential first-rounders while I’m here. I did hold a Klawchat on Thursday and a Periscope video chat on Friday.

I sent out the latest edition of my free email newsletter on Friday, this time discussing a hypothesis I have on how some teams handle low-ceiling teenaged prospects; you can sign up here and maybe I’ll send you something too.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: I have four pieces in this week’s roundup from the New Yorker, including two longreads. I subscribe to their site – I signed up right after I cancelled my New York Times subscription – and, if you have the disposable income, I recommend it. The first is Jane Mayer’s incredible, horrifying piece on the transformation of Fox News into a Trump propaganda network, the closest thing we’ve ever had to state TV in this country.
The second longread profiles kaiseki chef Niki Nakayama, a pioneer here in a niche cuisine dominated by men.
Ben Lindbergh and Rob Arthur received a large file of thousands of scouting reports from the Cincinnati Reds from 1991 to 2003 and wrote up some of what they found from global analysis and looking at specific players in a three-part series. I’m quoted several times in the first piece, but I will mention again that I’m a little uncomfortable with this information, which is outdated but would still be classified as trade secrets, getting out to the public.
The Verge looks at popular Twitter user & activist Dr. Eugene Gu, who has been accused of sexual assault and of misrepresenting portions of his resume.
There’s been a lot of very bad writing in the last week over Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and her comments on Israel and AIPAC. I thought this Politico piece contrasting Omar’s place on the policy continuum with that of fellow Rep. Dean Phillips, who represents a district that borders on Omar’s, was one of the few good pieces. Omar ended up in the news again for her candid comments on President Obama’s tenure, including his decision to continue the drone strike program started by his predecessor, and for her comments that questioned whether some people have “allegiance” to Israel, the latter being taken completely out of context and used as more evidence of anti-Semitism. It’s not, as you can see from this transcript of her remarks. AIPAC is a powerful lobbying group, and AIPAC is not Israel is not Judaism.
A Florida massage parlor owner has been selling access to President Trump at Mar-a-Lago. I’m not sure how this isn’t a bigger story.
The framing here isn’t great but this New Yorker piece on the risk that we become so overwhelmed by climate change’s dangers that we give up is still worth a read. I haven’t run into this sentiment anywhere online or in the real world, at least not yet.
The New Yorker‘s Masha Green looks at why measles is “a quintessential political issue” of 2019, drawing parallels to Michael Cohen’s testimony while excoriating our public-health system.
Dorit Reiss writes in the San Francisco Chronicle that non-vaccinating parents should be liable for damages when their kids start outbreaks. This would put a stop to some vaccine refusals – plenty of wealthy or high-income parents are vaccine deniers, too – but even marginal increases in vaccination rates will boost herd immunity.
For example, many of you already saw the story of an Oregon boy, aged 6, who nearly died of tetanus and racked up about $1 million in hospital bills. One, the parents should lose custody; they subjected their son to an entirely preventable, prolonged period of physical suffering. (It’s described in detail in the article. Imagine putting your kid through that.) Two, those costs, which don’t include the opportunity costs of that helicopter or the associated doctors being unable to take care of other patients, are the result of the parents’ active decision not to vaccinate. They should be liable for all of it.
A Chicago man who wasn’t vaccinated as a kid, then caught measles at age 30 and nearly died from it says parents have “no excuse” for deciding not to vaccinate.
UK Health Minister Simon Harris has warned social media companies over anti-vaccine ads ($).
The Sackler family’s role in fueling the opioid epidemic to further enrich themselves represents a significant policy failure, according to the Washington Post‘s Charles Lane.
It looks like Big Tobacco and now its partners in the vaping world may have helped push FDA head Scott Gottlieb out of his job. He was a rarity in this Administration, an official who took a tough stance on regulating harmful products in the name of the public interest.
The era of easy recycling is over as China is no longer interested in our recyclables. Add this to your Green New Deal proposals: we need more reduction and reuse, and easier access to composting. I have had a working compost pile for five years now, and it makes a noticeable difference in reducing my trash, but even that isn’t enough to take all of my compostable plant-based items, and I can’t compost meat or dairy scraps or even most paper materials in there because it’s not big enough. (I have composted a few cotton shirts, though.)
Writer/producer Amy Berg posted a Twitter thread explaining the Writers Guild of America’s conflict-of-interest complaint that the major talent agencies representing them, which could lead to some pretty drastic action as soon as the end of this month. (Full disclosure: I am represented by WME.)
Steven Spielberg wants to ruin the Oscars out of spite. Well, the Oscars aren’t so hot anyway, but he wants to make them worse by ensuring that Netflix titles and, as a secondary consequence, other indie films have a harder time qualifying for the awards. Spielberg went on to yell at several clouds that he said looked too much like the amazon logo.
Drew Magary – back from the brink – goes goes General Sherman on Barstool Sports in the wake of the latter’s aggressive legal tactics to try to get away with copyright infringement.
Jane Coaston explains right-wing grifter Jacob Wohl, recently banned from Twitter for admitting he’s made and continues to make fake accounts to try to influence elections and/or get gullible conservatives to send him money.
Parker Molloy shows how conservative outlets and commentators use “Mister Gotcha”-like claims of hypocrisy against Democratic politicians or candidates to derail actual debate over policies.
An Alabama court ruled that an aborted fetus’s biological father had some say in whether the pregnancy was terminated while ruling the fetus had legal standing to sue, a huge step backwards for women’s rights and for secularism.
This video clip from INSIDER explains why white savior movies are bad for Hollywood and for viewers.
A new, deluxe edition of the Martin Wallace classic Age of Steam is now up on Kickstarter. The new version includes brand-new artwork and a better color scheme.
A roll-and-write version of the great tile-laying game Lanterns called Lanterns: Dice in the Sky is available for pre-order, with May delivery expected.
Game designer Rich Gain, who worked as an operations manager at Japanime Games until just a few months ago, lost his fiancée and infant son in a car accident last week; there’s a GoFundMe running on his behalf in the wake of the tragedy.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baseball, board games, japanese cuisine, links, oscars, social media, the swamp, vaccines

→ March 8, 2019
→ By keith

T. rex and the Crater of Doom.

I read and greatly enjoyed Steve Brusatte’s The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs back in the fall, and made a note to pick up a book to which he referred many times, Walter Alvarez’s delightfully titled T. rex and the Crater of Dooooooooom (I may have added a few o’s there). Alvarez, an earth sciences professor at Cal Berkeley, developed the hypothesis that a massive impact of a non-terrestrial object wiped out the dinosaurs and ended the Cretaceous period in what is now known as the K-Pg or K-T extinction event. Along with his father, Luis, and numerous other scientists from multiple disciplines, Alvarez worked on the hypothesis and led the search for evidence, eventually finding enough evidence that the hypothesis is considered the correct explanation for the mass extinction. In this quick 150-page book, Alvarez retells the story of the development of the hypothesis and the global hunt for proof as well as the scientific fights over this specific hypothesis and the challenge it posed to the previous orthodoxy of uniformitarianism – the idea that changes to the earth were gradual and not caused by catastrophes like an asteroid or comet impact.

The scientific consensus on the K-T extinction event is well-established now, and Alvarez begins the book with a description of what likely happened the day that a giant rock, around 10 km in diameter, slammed into the northwest portion of what is now the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico, creating the Chicxulub crater on land and beneath the Gulf of Mexico. The impact took place 66 million years ago, so in the interim it had been largely covered by additional layers of sediment and rock on land, and thus its discovery was delayed until someone was actually looking for it in the first place. The Chicxulub impact was catastrophic on a scale unimaginable to us today; a rock that was wider than the height of Mount Everest slammed into the earth, releasing a billion times more energy than that created by the atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This impact was so powerful it vaporized gypsum in the earth, created tektite glass nodules, led to seismic waves in the rock itself, and would have killed anything living within several hundred miles of the impact site through heat or fire. The impact also kicked up enough dust, including the iridium that would settle in a consistent layer around the planet, to lead to a year or more of a de facto winter where sunlight was blocked enough to halt photosynthesis and devastate the global biosphere.

The hypothesis itself was controversial because of that previous orthodoxy that all changes to the earth occurred gradually, which dated back to Charles Lyell in the early 1800s and influenced the work of Charles Darwin. Alvarez’s heresy, that a single, massive, external catastrophe permanently altered the shape of the earth’s surface and the course of life on the planet – wiping out the dinosaurs and creating a massive ecological void that would be filled by large mammals, including us – encountered immediate pushback, some of which persists today even though the evidence in favor of the impact hypothesis is substantial. Alvarez walks through the history of the development of his hypothesis, including why it was never taken seriously before, and the scientific battle that followed it up through the 1990 discoveries that led to the conclusion that the impact that caused the Chicxulub crater was the same one that killed the dinosaurs.

Alvarez’s writing is on the dryer side, unsurprising given his background as scientist, but the story itself carries the book through – this was an earth-shattering (pun very intended) discovery, and it shook the foundations of an entire field of science. It’s a worthy read on its own but also a great reminder of the power of entrenched thinking, and how many earth scientists and geologists continue even to this day to fight against the preponderance of evidence that Alvarez’s hypothesis is correct. (We know the crater exists, so we know something very large hit the earth there, but there are arguments that, for example, the impact didn’t cause the global iridium layer, even though nearly all iridium in the earth’s crust came from extra-terrestrial sources.) He also makes sure to credit many, many other scientists who helped along the way, emphasizing that the search for evidence to support or contradict the hypothesis was a multi-disciplinary effort that spanned the globe and took over a decade, which is a kind gesture but did tend to slow the story down for me. It’s a short enough book that this was never really a problem, although I think Brusatte does a better job of explaining the Alvarez hypothesis for the lay audience than Alvarez himself does here in more academic fashion.

Next up: Still reading Iraj Pezeshkzad’s very funny novel My Uncle Napoleon.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: dinosaurs, history of science, non-fiction, science

→ March 7, 2019
→ By keith

Klawchat 3/7/19.

Keith Law: Today it’s just a place where we meet. Klawchat.

The Fonz: Kimbrel ends up in Atlanta?
Keith Law: I tweeted over the weekend that I heard he was farther down the road towards a deal with Washington. That’s the last info I have (and I haven’t sought more … that just came to me). BTW, let’s chill with the Kimbrel as future-Hall-of-Famer talk. His agent misread the market, and now the player is paying the price for that. Overstating the player’s ability or career doesn’t help.

addoeh: What anti-vaxxers don’t realize is that snake oil sales is a very lucrative business. “Dr’s” Sears and Mercola, Alex Jones, the guy who owns N*****l N**s, and the rest have made a ton of money peddling essential oils, elephant extract elixirs, and other crap they sell.
Keith Law: Yep. It’s a weird, unholy alliance between these mountebanks, parents who need someone to blame for their children’s neuroatypicality, and religious cult members. They can all believe what they want, but if you want to send your kids to school, you need to get them vaccinated.

PhillyJake: Neil Huntington has made the contention that, had he signed a high price free agent, the salary differential could cause a jealousy in the clubhouse, with one player being paid a huge percentage of overall salary. Any thoughts on this type of thinking?
Keith Law: I understand his point, but don’t quite agree. One, if the team wins, every player stands a chance to make more money. Two, the other solution to that is to … sign two players at high prices?

CH: If the Mets have a rough start, an absolute fire sale of their pitching would make sense, right? Get as many good young players for Thor and deGrom as possible?
Keith Law: Yes, especially with that very, very tough division, but I don’t foresee them doing so.

Sam: I’ve been reading the Ringer’s series on the Reds’ scouting reports, and it got me thinking about how scouting has changed over the years. What do you think are the biggest changes you’ve seen in your scouting process or the league’s process as a whole?
Keith Law: Many things – I spoke to Ben about some that may appear in part 3 (that’s not up yet, I think). Scouting reports themselves have changed. Scouts are expected to be more literate in analytical basics, to be better able to provide information R&D can use, to look more at things that we think matter and less at things that we don’t. BTW, one subject I have not seen anywhere was whether the leaking of those reports violated trade secret laws or anything the leaker signed.

JaKob : Hey Keith, how do you see the Brewers 5th spot shaking out between Woodruff, Burnes and Peralta?
Keith Law: I would be very surprised if Woodruff and Burnes don’t both get 20+ starts this year.

JP: Keith – Thanks for the chats and the insider system reviews were great, by the way. I know spring training stats mean diddly, but have you had any looks at anyone or heard reports of anything that jumps out at you?
Keith Law: I haven’t headed to spring training yet – I’ll go Saturday for the first trip. I tend to ignore info from the first week or two, since the stats mean nothing and people react more to how players look (like, best shape of his life stuff) than how they play.

Ron: Hi Keith-Thanks for all your work on prospects and all your baseball write-ups. You and Buster are the only reason I subscribe to Insider. Would it make sense for Minnesota to offer a 1 or 2 year deal to Keuchel if he would take it, or just let that horse leave the barn?
Keith Law: Yes, unless there’s something so drastic in his medicals that they’re uncomfortable even at two years.
Keith Law: The Twins are good. They’re certainly at a point where investing further in the 2019 team is likely to have a positive ROI.

Dean G.: Klaw! My man! Whats good fam? Do you think Chris Paddack makes the Padres rotation early in the year?
Keith Law: Yes.

JaKob : Does Duplantier make the rotation this year for the Dbacks? It appears some injuries would have to happen for that to occur.. What about someone like Jose Suarez for the Angels? Do either of those guys help the big league team if there is no starters role in 2019?
Keith Law: Both probably don’t see the rotation until the second half if at all.

Long Dong Silver: What are your thoughts on Carlos Martinez… this dude is so frustrating… seems like he has the pure talent to be great, but neither the mental durability or “want to” to become an upper echelon pitcher. Would appreciate your thoughts, thanks Keith!
Keith Law: Nice reference in your username. Amazing how a man facing credible accusations of sexual harassment has been allowed to shape US judicial policy for almost 30 years now. I don’t think Martinez lacks “mental durability” or “want to.” He’s a smaller guy who throws hard and gets hurt.

Rodney: No question today, just want to say I’ve enjoyed following you on instagram! I think it’s a good format for you!
Keith Law: thanks! trying different things there since IG is poorly suited to baseball content.

The Dude: My film turned 21 yesterday. Ever seen it?
Keith Law: Did you just ask if I’ve seen The Big Lebowski? Obviously you’re not a golfer.

Moe Mentum: Whose presumed Phillies roster spot did the Bryce Harper signing most likely affect – Altherr, Quinn, or Williams?
Keith Law: Has to be Williams, who went from probable starter to bench guy/trade bait.

Jarrod: Hello Mr. Law, is Ryan Pressly one of the more under rated RPs in the game?
Keith Law: Don’t know how to answer that. Underrated how/by whom? He’s good, a good example of how very progressive teams like Houston target players they think they can improve through R&D-based coaching, but they also gave up two decent prospects to get him.

Nick: What have you heard about Eastlake’s Keoni Cavaco?
Keith Law: Nothing. I only cover top draft prospects at that level.

Bighen: Not that it’s some huge battle but should Mets actually be rooting for Dom Smith to come away with 1B job this spring? Better D, maybe better overall approach at the plate, obviously less power
Keith Law: Yes and also there’s risk he loses any trade value if he has to go back to AAA, whereas Alonso could return to AAA for a couple of months without anyone really batting an eye (pun intended).

Dana: Any book recommendations off the top of your head for somebody who likes Tolstoy, Proust, Stendhal, Dostoyevsky, Balzac and Hugo?
Keith Law: My go-to rec for literary fiction is always Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. Bleak House, Middlemarch, The Return of the Native, The Good Soldier all come to mind. But also branch out into some stuff from outside the western canon – how about Ngugi wa’Thiongo’s Wizard of the Crow, GGM’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (not a favorite of mine, but still a book of great literary merit), or Saramago’s Blindness?

JR: Do you ever go into reading “slumps”? I used to read pretty consistently and have fallen out of the habit of doing so. If you do, how do you work through it?
Keith Law: I do, and I try to read something I know I’ll love – a Nero Wolfe novel, or an Agatha Christie book, or something similarly light and fun.

Mark: Keith, will you be in AZ the weekend of the 15th-16th?
Keith Law: Nope, I’ll be home between trips.

Moe Mentum: Please rank by likelihood of eventual Cooperstown enshrinement: Beltre, Cano, Donaldson, Pedroia, Tulowitzki, Utley
Keith Law: Beltre is a no-doubter. Cano will probably get there. Utley will be on the bubble. The others are not.

Ryan: 13 years seems like a long time for a player that has only played more than 150 games twice. He is always hurt and is a horrible defender. I would imagine by year 5 of this contract the Phillies will be dreading this decision. Thoughts?
Keith Law: Not always hurt, and not a horrible defender until last year, which Mike Petriello showed was probably not predictive.

Daniel L: Is it service time manipulation to keep Tatis Jr down in AAA?
Keith Law: No. He has less than a full season of games above low-A.

JR: Dustin Peterson hitting very well in tigers camp. chances he makes breaks camp with the big club?
Keith Law: Great guy for them to give a shot.

Jake: I love your baseball analysis, but on a different note, can you tell me why you liked Roma so much? I thought it was unique, but really slow and just ok, certainly not best picture worthy.
Keith Law: Great story, amazing cinematography and sound. The only other BP nominee that was close in my opinion was The Favourite. Of course, White Savior won. I wonder if some voters skipped Roma because it’s not in English.

Daniel L: Paddack’s curve seems better so far this spring no?
Keith Law: No.
Keith Law: Wishful thinking.

eric: Keith,

Just how far under the radar is Dylan Carlson? Big bodied kid, switch hitter and will be one of the youngest players in his league this year.

I’m guessing he will see a jump in power leaving the FSL.

Is it far fetched to see him ascend into the top 100 by midseason?
Keith Law: He’s not under the radar at all.

Cole: Do you trust David Fletcher as the everyday 2B for the Angels, or should they have tried to find someone in free agency?
Keith Law: No, utility guy.

Yu: Do you think Yu gets back to being Yu or is he 2018 Yu? What says you?
Keith Law: Think he’ll get back to his usual self now that he’s healthy.

Roger: Which wild pitcher has the best chance of having a career as a starter between Luis Medina, Jorge Guzman and Alec Hansen?
Keith Law: Medina. Most likely none of them, but Medina is at least healthy and his delivery works.

Roger: It seems that you are the high man on Oscar Mercado. Does he take one of the starting OF spots out of camp?
Keith Law: It wouldn’t be a bad move for them, but I don’t try to handicap who’ll win Opening Day jobs.

Dan: Have you listed to The Black Keys new single?
Keith Law: No, not really a big fan. All their stuff sounds the same to me.

Roger: What do you think attributed to Alex Faedo’s velo dip last year? Is it something that could return to normal this year?
Keith Law: He never really threw that hard in college. It was a bad first-round pick.

Billy: The importance of vaccinations clearly shouldn’t even be an debate. So should we be concerned about the immunization records of illegal aliens? How do we ensure they are (or become) properly immunized?
Keith Law: By making it much, much easier for people to immigrate here legally. They’re coming whether we like it or not, so let’s formalize the process, so that everyone entering the country can, say, show proof of immunization (or just get immunized on the spot), or allow us to conduct background checks for any history of violent crimes.

Zac: You are firmly against giving Luke Heimlich any publicity, but Jeff Passan recently reported accounts think he could be an MLB pitcher, have you guys talked about not giving him any publicity?
Keith Law: Jeff works with me, not for me.

Alex Anthopoulos: I was wise to stand pat with trades because not enough teams are willing to trade now, but likely will by mid season. Fair?
Keith Law: Eh. I don’t think i agree with the premise. That said, Atlanta didn’t have any obvious weak spots either.

Mike: In your Cubs writeup you wrote that Brennan Davis needs to improve his pitch recognition but a 14% BB rate as a raw 2 sport guy shows some polish
Keith Law: Walk rate – especially in complex ball – is not any indicator of pitch recognition.

Mac: I get Bobby Witt’s age somewhat matters now but projecting him out will it matter when he’s 23? 25? 30? Seems to be a lot of overthinking at the top of the draft.
Keith Law: It affects his long-term projection. You’re glossing over the empirical evidence we have that HS position player projections are affected by age on draft day. Also, there are real swing and miss concerns with him.

Beep: Andrew Vaughn. Defensively, any chance he could play the OF? 3B? If relegated to 1B, what kind of defensive potential does he have there?
Keith Law: 1B only. Anything else is wishful thinking.

Alan: Too early for draft intel? Anything on the White Sox at #3?
Keith Law: Way too early. Try me in about six weeks.

JC: Kimbrel would have a team by now if his agent wasn’t trying to convince teams his 2018 & 2016 didn’t exist & price accordingly
Keith Law: Agreed. Also, the last time we saw the guy pitch he couldn’t throw a strike, and his manager used a starter to close out the last game.

Dan: Serious, maybe ignorant question. As a white male who is raising two young boys, what can I do as a father to make sure my children grow up in a completely tolerant, non-privileged way?
Keith Law: You can’t. That’s an unattainable goal. You can raise them to be kind to others, and you can avoid raising them to think ill of those who are different, and as they get older you can point out to them that not all the kids had the same advantages they’ve had. But you can’t make perfect children; nobody can.

Osiris : Do you see DJ Peters playing any kind of significant role for the Dodgers in 2019?
Keith Law: No. I’m not sure he will ever play a significant role for them.

rufreshterp: Is it AT ALL POSSIBLE that you’ve confused Luis Garcia for Yasel Antuna, which would then help explain why you seem to have absolutely no regard for Luis Garcia?
Keith Law: Fuck off.
Keith Law: Really, if you came here to my site to insult me, then leave.

Mark: Do fans really care about the length of games?
Keith Law: I don’t think so; I think that they care about dead time during games – but perhaps that’s because *I* care about dead time during games.

Poke: Any chance Adley could slip to the White Sox at #3?
Keith Law: Any chance, sure. Would I bet on it? No. Seems like he is the safest bet for 1 right now, assuming he doesn’t get hurt (he is a catcher, after all). If the Orioles decided to take Vaughn for his otherworldly hitting performance, l would then guess Adley goes 2.

Jerry: Do you think there are still people who legitimately believe in lower taxes, less regulation, “freedom” of religion, etc? I used to give the benefit of the doubt to my conservative/Republican acquaintances. After living in NE Texas throughout the Obama and Trump years (I lived in Houston before) I am convinced that it was all a cover for people to legitimize their bigotry and racism. I can’t believe how naïve I was all of these years.
Keith Law: I do. There is a real, longstanding school within economics that argues, with some evidence, that lower taxes and less regulation lead to greater economic growth (probably) and thus to greater prosperity for all (that’s becoming less true, if it ever was). I also think that idea works better for countries trying to rapidly industrialize, like Estonia after independence, than a country like ours that is already developed and now trying to support a large and aging population.

Zihuatanejo: With Kershaw looking tenuous, should the Dodgers consider signing Keuchel? Any chance they do?
Keith Law: I was thinking Gio for them.

Zihuatanejo: I see anti-vax, climate change denial, flat-earthers, and similar nonsense as symptoms of a larger problem — the mindset of “I probably know more about this subject than the professionals who study it for a living.” When and how do you think this arose? Was it created by Internet culture, or did the Internet merely enable these people?
Keith Law: The Internet allowed those people to find other deniers and thus cement their views. Denialism goes back centuries. They’re just louder now.

JR: What was your thoughts on the Leaving Neverland doc?
Keith Law: I posted that here yesterday – it’s the post before this one.

Mark: I find that people tend to gravitate to the sort of pizza they grew up with. If i remember the pizza of your youth was Little Vincent’s which seems to be a far cry from the pizza you favor today. Was there a particular pizza that reshaped your taste buds ?
Keith Law: That was near where I grew up but not the specific pizzeria we frequented most often. I first had real Neapolitan pizza on my first trip to Europe during college and it was love at first bite.

Craig R.: Does the young man you tweeted about yesterday for the 2020 draft, Zac Veen have a chance to go 1st overall next year?
Keith Law: Way too soon for that. Impressive prospect, though. He’s at Spruce Creek – I believe I said Spring Creek in the tweet and that was a mistake.

I7LITE: The Rangers are years away from contention and just gave a bunch of guaranteed money to a closer with one good season. Shouldn’t they be dealing guys like Leclerc, Gallo, Mazara, and anyone else with more than a year of service time, rather than extending them?
Keith Law: That assumes the market will give them fair value for such players. Two corner bats, one of whom still hasn’t performed up to expectations, the other is Rob Deer reincarnated, and a reliever with one good year under his belt are not exactly highly valuable assets right now.

Joe: Do you think the Braves scouting approach will change much going from Bridges to Brown?
Keith Law: I do not. I do think Anthopoulos will have a hand in draft strategy, albeit not in specific picks.

Bob from Accounting: Your take on “tampering” as it was so overtly executed by Bryce the other day? Seems to be an outdated concept that exists solely for the sake of posterity, but I can see where the team holding the target of the tamper would get bent out of shape.
Keith Law: Didn’t see any issue with Harper saying he’d like to play with the best player in baseball who happens to be from the area where Harper plays now.

Don: I’m worried about Kyle Tucker. I expected him to rake in spring training but he’s been pretty mediocre. Are you still high on him?
Keith Law: He’s 5 for 19.

Doug: Enjoyed chatting with you and do highly recommend the Smithsonian Documentary on The Green Book. What is Griffin Canning’s ceiling for the Halos?
Keith Law: If you ignore the health questions he had out of UCLA, #2-3 starter.

Joe: Thoughts on the Hicks extension? Not a lot of money, but seems like Hicks is hurt quite a bit (including now).
Keith Law: Yes but even missing a little time a year he’s extremely valuable, and a full year of him is going to be worth much more than he’s paid.

WhiteSoxAndy: Do the White Sox still have a bright future after this epic failure of an offseason or am I doomed to watch crap for quite some time?
Keith Law: Was it a failure? I don’t see that. I’m sure you wish they’d landed one of the two big fish, but both players signed large, lucrative deals, and I wouldn’t want the White Sox to start trading prospects yet since the major league team isn’t contending yet and their system is still shallow.

Cartoons Plural : Allen Webster fulfilling the hype that he once had or SSS?
Keith Law: Can we make NSS a thing? No Sample Size?

Frank: I’m going to new orleans for the first time this summer, so you have any recommendations for good BBQ places? Thanks.
Keith Law: I don’t think I’ve ever had Q in New Orleans. I’ve had the local dish called barbecue shrimp, which isn’t smoked or even grilled, but is shrimp baked/braised in butter. (It’s good.) I haven’t been in years but usually when I’m there I eat gumbo and fried shellfish.

Ty: I need some hope as a Tigers fan… Do you view Mize as a future ace or more of a 2/3? Does he realistically get called up to Detroit this year?
Keith Law: Future ace.

Mike: Angels pitchers have openly criticized Scioscia’s hindrance of progressive pitch coaching. Should we expect measurable performance increases, or is this just excitement about a new boss?
Keith Law: No, I think they’ll be better overall. I criticize Ausmus when he errs – okay, he does that a lot – but my understanding is that the Angels hired him to implement this new information/style of development.
Keith Law: Also, he’s so handsome.

Jerry: Will there be a work stoppage in ’21? Do the players have any chance of prevailing? Why do “fans” take the owners side in these disputes?
Keith Law: My bet now is yes.

Aaron (Houston): Klaw, follow up to twitter question about duck recipe. I baught a whole duck and am looking for your recommendation on roasting a whole duck.
Keith Law: Yes, I remember that – I actually don’t cook it whole. I break it down into two legs and two breasts. You can braise the legs and then just sear the breasts; Ruhlman’s Twenty has recipes for both. I have a sous vide machine and use that for the breasts, then just finish with a quick sear, so they stay medium-rare.

MikeM: Thoughts on Severino’s rotator cuff tendonitis? Does it portend future issues or is this just a one time thing?
Keith Law: We don’t have enough information to say.

Adam: When in spring training is the lack of velocity a concern? Saw Kenley was down to 89 mph the other day. Fulmer was at 91. both said they will be good by the end of March..
Keith Law: If someone’s velocity is still off in the final week, I get concerned. If I see someone live and his effort is higher but the velocity is lower, that might be a concern too.

Nick: Fastest rising “pop up guy” you’ve seen in your scouting tenure?
Keith Law: Benintendi.

VG Jr: Am I a top 5 hitter when I step on the field after service time manipulation?
Keith Law: No, I’d take the under on that.

Nick: Best 2 prospects you’ve seen on one team (h.s or college)? Feel like Trevor Bauer and Gerrit Cole have to be up there
Keith Law: Tough to top that – 1st pick and 3rd. At one point, Harvard-Westlake HS had seniors Luc Giolito and Max Fried and sophomore 3b/rhp Jack Flaherty.

Thomas: Best shows you’ve watched on Netflix?
Keith Law: Haven’t watched many shows at all but Russian Doll was +++.

Todd: Gleyer and Andujar regress at all this season?
Keith Law: I’m not expecting that, especially not from Gleyber.

Nino from The Money Team: Giolito seems to sitting back up in the mid-90s but is still all over the place – are the Sox still undoing a lot of the damage the Nats inflicted upon him or is this what he is and will be?
Keith Law: MLB says he’s thrown 75% of his pitches for strikes this spring. Also, it’s March 7th.

Nick: What country could you see being the next hot bed for international talent that isn’t high on the radar now?
Keith Law: Brazil. South Africa. Uganda has had some very good little league teams the last few years; I heard from a scout who went there with MLB that there were players there who could go to junior college here, which is utterly astounding when you consider its baseball isolation and lack of history with the sport.
Keith Law: Of course India and China are easy guesses … with 1 billion people each there must be some kid there who can run 3.97 down the line or throw 95 mph, just without any baseball skills.

Danny: Not a judgment comment- actual earnest question from a Yankees fan- do you think Cano will get in with the PED suspension?
Keith Law: Yes, by that point so many of the older voters will have stopped voting, lost their badges, or passed away that PED suspensions will be seen as a minor ding but not a disqualification.

Mike: what is the defensive outlook for Tyler O’Neill, looking like he will get serious playing time this year
Keith Law: Below average defender.

Pat D: Hi, Keith. No question, just a comment. We had to put down our dog yesterday. Pretty shitty day, obviously. But I was at least able to take some entertainment and get a few laughs from seeing you excoriate those idiots on Twitter last night. Please don’t ever change and don’t ever stick to baseball. Thanks!
Keith Law: Oh man, I’m sorry to hear that. Very painful to lose a beloved pet.

Nick: How many teams are still heavily working in Venezuela? Seems like employees could really be at risk with current events.
Keith Law: Maybe 6 to 8?

Thomas: Not a Harper hater by any stretch – the guy has talent and he plays hard. I just can’t believe a guy who’s been worth 1.5 WAR or less in 3 of his 7 seasons just got a $330M contract.
Keith Law: Except Fangraphs has him worth quite a bit more, so your premise doesn’t hold.

Ben: Thoughts on the moving-back-the-mound experiment?
Keith Law: Oh hell no, Karen.

JC: Klaw, thanks for another chat. I am as frustrated as anyone about the rule for bringing up players, but is there any reason the players union would make this a top priority? The union has only seemed to care about the stars and not the rank and file. Is there a way to connect this issue to the interests of current players so they would fight for it. Kris Bryant seems to be the only one preaching about it.
Keith Law: Bryant talking about it will help – the union’s motivation is that such players would get to free agency (or even arbitration) faster and, because they’re likely to be premium players, push the upper bounds even further when they get there. Harper and Machado got to the majors at 19, and both just hit the top end of the all-time salary scale as free agents. That’s good for the union as a whole.

Rick: Oops – hit enter by accident before. Anyhow, maybe I’m in the minority and I couldn’t appreciate the “art” of it all, but I thought Roma was horrid to the point where I couldn’t even finish watching it. Not that I was a fan of Green Book but those calling it the worst BP winner in recent memory apparently didn’t see last year’s winner which may be the worst movie ever made. I’d rather suffer through another Avengers movie with my 7 year old than watch that garbage.
Keith Law: The Shape of Water was the worst movie ever made? Wow. I didn’t have it at 1 – that was The Florida Project, which didn’t get a nomination – but I thought it was good, beautifully shot, with a dumb antagonist, and a great lead performance by Hawkins.

Eric: My 3 yr old son loves cooking with me and my wife. When did you get your daughter involved in cooking with you, how did you keep her interested and what tasks are best as they are this young?
Keith Law: At 3 she was just sort of standing nearby, making kneading dough or something simple like that. Now when she wants to help she can man the stove – she’ll do anything but cut or chop, really.

Danny: Do you listen to the Arctic Monkeys and if so, what albums would you recommend?
Keith Law: Yes. Whatever You Say I Am … and AM are my favorites.

Adam: What have you seen in Braxton Davidson? Anything stand out that he needs to change? Power and recognition seem to be positives.
Keith Law: Recognition is a negative. Also seen velocity eat him up in the zone.

Jared: Do you think Jimmy Nelson can get back to his 2017 form?
Keith Law: I do not have any inside info on him at all, but I would generally bet against guys who have shoulder surgery regaining their old form. A few will, the majority will not.

Mike: I have been trying to make the point to some friends on the right that we are already have socialism in our country in that we are not pure capitalist by definition. Programs like unemployment insurance, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. are by definition socialist policies. In a pure capitalist society it’s every man for himself. Why doesn’t the left stand up to the nonsense political messaging the right is clearly setting up for the 2020 campaign?
Keith Law: We are not pure capitalist – no country is – and nobody in the popular sphere is proposing pure socialism. People are proposing a stronger social safety net, which does not require any government ownership of industry. But if you say “socialism” 30% of the country will use the flag as a loincloth and vote for you.

Steve L.: Why can’t both parties admit that what Omar has stated is anti-Semitic yet there is an underlying point that is worth discussing? Or is this just grandstanding to each parties base?
Keith Law: What she stated was not anti-Semitic; what she stated was anti-Netanyahu, and perhaps anti-Israel, but Israel the nation-state is not Judaism the faith.

Dylan: Guy I know told me with a 100 percent straight face that he doesn’t get the flu shot because it gives him the flu. Instead, the vaccinate himself against the flu, he eats expired leftover meats, which helps his immune system. I kind of just backed away slowly to avoid whatever super germs he was carrying. I know people are scared of the big science words that are in vaccines but this was a new level of bonkers.
Keith Law: Yeah, he’s not very bright.

Mac: Will you be seeing Priester this spring? If so, he’s only going 1-2 innings until May. (EDIT: This is inaccurate.)
Keith Law: He’s on the list of guys I’d like to see, but I was unlikely to see him until late April or early May because it’s cold.

Tom: Would you put Jake Lamb or Christian Walker at first this year?
Keith Law: Lamb. Never thought of Walker as anything more than a bench piece.

Stats: wRC+ or OPS+?
Keith Law: wRC+ is better, in my opinion.

Daniel: Can we not call people illegal aliens? I mean many of these people are asylum seekers fleeing violence that is in a large part due to US Foreign Policy.
Keith Law: The term is meant to demean them by ‘othering’ these immigrants – they’re not humans, they’re aliens! Just like in that Genesis video. (Don’t watch it. Really.)

Chris: Hi Keith, what can we expect from Jack Flaherty this year? He struck out a ton of guys last year and has looked good this spring (though that can mean nothing) but can we expect him to really take a step forward on his peripheral stats?
Keith Law: I may have missed a step here – is there an expectation he’ll take a step forward? I think last year was great, kind of what I thought he’d be a year or two down the road, so I’m not projecting improvement.

Jon: Keith, thoughts on Cabello please? I’m reading a 55 hit tool with 50 PWR and 60 SPD, but not sure I’m sold on that. Thank you.
Keith Law: Happy to try to answer questions like this but if the surname is common I need a first name.

Tony: Klaw, no question but just wanted to say that in 2018 I cancelled all my subs in an effort to see what I really needed. Here we are in March 2019 and the only one I’ve gone back to is ESPN+ to read your work. So tell your boss you’re more valuable than Netflix or Amazon Prime to at least one person. Thank you!
Keith Law: Wait till you see my one-man rendition of In Search of Lost Time.
Keith Law: (Two Proust references in one Klawchat!)

Matt: RE: Jerry’s question about small government, free market conservatives – we still exist, we just are no longer republicans. Socially we have long agreed with the democrats. Now, everything we disagreed with the democrats doing economically the republicans are championing.
Keith Law: Very fair. I voted Republican for a while because of such issues, and because I didn’t care enough about social policies. I care more about those now – as I should have all along – and as you said, the GOP no longer stands for small government, lower taxes, or transparency, and they stand for reducing regulations without regard to societal costs and benefits.

SEC Guy: so trading picks is (mostly) not allowed, but could Baltimore accept cash considerations (or even a player) from KC to pass on a guy? Say for example KC offers Baltimore Yefri Del Rosario to pass on Adley (setting aside whether this is a good deal). Could Baltimore send the trade to the commissioner’s office as “for future considerations” and effectively trade one draft spot like that?
Keith Law: Illegal. Good way to get smacked like Atlanta did.

Jonathan: Chances on Jarrett Parker cracking the Angels’ roster? Career 112 wRC+ (in 382 PAs) and his approach this spring has been great (7 BBs and opp-approach with power).
Keith Law: Gotta flag you twice for bad use of wRC+. His career figure is badly skewed by a tiny sample in 2015 where he hit 6 homers in 52 PA; since then his wRC+ is under 100, in most of his career sample. And his limited major league time has also been skewed by platooning – he’s a LHB who’s faced LHP only about 20% of his PA. On top of that, who cares what he’s done in ten spring training games?

Cartoons Plural : Aaron Boone said that he’s not going to start the season with 2 1B bc he’ll have a 3 man bench, why haven’t they already cut bait with Ellsbury and Bird?
Keith Law: Ellsbury isn’t his call – that’s the GM’s. Bird they may just cut at the end of spring training if Voit is the 1b and they can’t find a trade target for Bird (some bad team without a DH should take a shot at him).

Tom: Assuming the D-backs get reasonably good value out of their many early draft picks this year, where could their org ranking end up in 2020? Top 5?
Keith Law: Top 5 is fair.

PhillyJake: Whole Duck: Spatchecock, indirect heat, pan with water underneath the duck to catch fat. Any standard sauce will work.
Keith Law: Interesting. I would assume this would overcook the breasts.

Adam: Any thoughts on the final season of Thrones?
Keith Law: Yes, glad it’s ending so I don’t have to hear about it any more. I hated the first book and never watched the show.

Ytics: I live among Reds fans, and I’ve never seen a group of people so hyped for the possibility of an 80-82 season. A colleague told me “if (8 or 9 separate things) break right, we could be .500 this year!” Makes me wish they’d traded Senzel and Trammell for Kluber. It’d be the baseball equivalent of blowing your savings on a coked-up weekend in Vegas.
Keith Law: Was it worth trading two valuable prospects to LA in pursuit of that goal? I don’t think so.

Cartoons Plural : Jasson Dominguez has gotten Wander Franco-level hype, have you any thoughts on the future Yankees prospect?
Keith Law: If he’s getting that kind of hype it’s not warranted. But I haven’t heard that either.

Mike: do you watch the NCAA basketball tournament (March Madness) and do you fill out a bracket?
Keith Law: No and no.

Matthew: He’s stagnated recently, but do you see a future everyday regular in Lucas Erceg?
Keith Law: Has the ability, but needs to make real adjustments to his approach. Discussed that in the Brewers org report.

Jeff: Are you planning on seeing Luis Robert next week? As a White Sox fan, I hope you’re not!
Keith Law: I’m going to try to see him when I get to Arizona and I expect he will be out with a pulled sphincter or something.

Brian: Can you explain why which position a player plays can impact their bat? I’ve read/heard numerous times that if a player moves to a different position it can impact his bat? I don’t quite understand why that would be the case. I love baseball but never played so I was curious why. Thanks!
Keith Law: Some positions require more work in-game and can lead to wear and tear; asking a player to play a new position, or one he plays poorly, can require more work pregame/between games so that he might be slightly more worn down when hitting.

Grant: Keith, have you ever thought about posting your reading activity on Goodreads? I’d be interested to see what you’re reading. I’m always looking to expand my TBR list.
Keith Law: I mention 90% of the books I read in my posts here – I end every book review with a note on what I’m reading next. I’m not giving my content to Goodreads for them to monetize.

Ryan: I have ESPN+ and The Athletic now. If I want to share something from there with a friend that doesn’t have it, is it okay for me to copy and paste? Also when a writer copies your write up of a prospect and shares it in their own article, is that legal even if they fully credit you?
Keith Law: Copying and pasting something of mine online, such as in a forum or on reddit, is both not okay and a copyright violation. Quoting me in part while discussing a player, or even just discussing my list/column, is fine, and as long as you link to me I appreciate it. I’m not worried about what people copy/paste into emails. Thank you for asking, though – I appreciate that you’ve thought about this.

P.J.: Rio Ruiz is getting good reviews in Orioles camp. He made one of your top 100 lists a few years back. Any chance he’s a late bloomer and an average player at 3B this season for the Birds?
Keith Law: I really doubt it. Hasn’t performed in the high minors at all. When he shines, though, he really shows you all he can.

WAR: Does this mean fWAR is better than rWAR? Is it just a preference, or are you just saying cherry-picking is bad? I believe the big difference between the two for position players is defense, but I’ve never been able to pick up on the industry’s preference.
Keith Law: Regarding Harper, that’s not what I was saying. I meant that when the two differ that much, you can’t cherrypick the worse of the two and wave it around like it’s definitive or even directionally correct.

Spencer: Related to some research I’ve been doing: if you have three players with identical 8 hit tools, how many HR’s should you expect in a full season if their respective power tools are a 2, 5, and 8?
Keith Law: This is too abstract to answer.

J: What is the one ridiculously overplayed classic rock song you NEVER tire of?
Keith Law: The truth is I’ve tired of just about all of them, but Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” has held up pretty well.

Phillies Prospects: Hi Keith – I am the one who asked you last week about people reposting your work. I am happy to make a comment in support, wanted to make sure this is the type of thing that would bother you.
Keith Law: Thank you, I just emailed the site in question.

Tucci Mane: Socialism involves the redistribution of the means of production to the workers, eliminating the non-working owners or investors. The social welfare state is public schools, social security, providing health insurance, etc. We should stop conflating the two things.
Keith Law: Exactly. We don’t teach this at all in school, though. HS economics classes don’t get into economic systems.

Thomas: Shouldn’t a best picture winner be something that can be broadly enjoyed like Black Panther?
Keith Law: No. Many great works of art can’t be “broadly enjoyed.”

Nick: Where have you had the best pasta in the US? Monteverde?
Keith Law: That would be the first name that came to mind. Also Rolf & Daughters, Republique, Barbuzzo, Osteria, and my kitchen.

Ben: I’ve not had the flu since I was a teen (30+ years). I’ve never had a flu shot. I minimize my exposure to others, and wash my hands multiple times a day. Thoughts?
Keith Law: Yeah, you’re lucky, and selfish too. Herd immunity requires more people to get immunized. And if you’re nearing 50, you are at greater risk of serious medical complications if you do get the flu.

Eric: I am Jewish, and have been super pro-Israel most of my life. Only until recently have I realized that defending Israel at all costs was super wrong and I was brainwashed into doing it. Criticizing Israel and AIPAC is definitely NOT antisemetic. Bibi has been absolutely awful, and doing absolutely horrific things to people of different faiths living in Israel. What Rep. Omar said was extremely on-point and not antisemetic. It was, in fact, important for her to point out. We need to stop equating defense of Israel as the only way you aren’t antisemetic. /rant
Keith Law: Thank you. Also, getting Bibi out – he’s in some serious hot water now over corruption charges – would make a huge difference in 1) how much we should support Israel the nation-state and 2) the chances of peace in the region.

Nick: Have you read The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen? I have really enjoyed it so far.
Keith Law: I didn’t care for it that much, mostly because I found the characters so unpleasant.

Chris: No question, but did you happen to hear the Jo Adell interview on “Angels recap podcast”? I was so impressed with his maturity and work ethic as a 19 year old. If he can improve his contact, I expect big things.
Keith Law: I didn’t, but that lines up with everything I’ve heard about him since he was signed.

MikeM: Bird has options left. Why would they cut him. He has no trade value. Stash him at AAA and see if he hits.
Keith Law: Sorry, that’s on me. I should have been more precise – I was thinking “cut” in a nonspecific way. But I do think that Bird has to be a DH, and the Yankees may be better served trading him now rather than burying him in AAA.

Bill: People cite Crash as the worst Oscar winner of recent memory (a well deserved nod) but I find Million Dollar Baby equally hideous…full of one-dimensional characters, manipulative scenes and hackneyed dialogue. Lifetime has done better work…do you have a recent winner that grates on you.
Keith Law: Other than Green Book, which is terrible, I’d say The Artist, which is a trifle and very self-serving (look how important movies are!). The best movie I saw in that cycle was A Separation, which won Best Foreign Language Film, and among BP nominees, Hugo and Midnight in Paris (yeah, I know) were clearly better than The Artist.

Elton: Is Mejia going to become a star in San Diego? Do you think he’s ready this year?
Keith Law: I think he’s ready, and if he stays at C he’s a star.

Chris: I think the guy above may have been asking about Antonio Cabello. Also, they will option Bird to AAA, no reason to cut him entirely, right? It’s not like he’s being blocked by Goldschmidt should things finally click.
Keith Law: That was my first guess – Cabello was my #9 prospect in the Yankees system, and I even had one exec suggest him as a top 100 guy, so yeah, he’s for real.

Andy: With Wieters entering the itinerant stage of his career, if he a disappointment? If you’re the Orioles, are you satisfied with the pick and the value he’s produced? The PECOTA projection skewed expectations, but is 8 years of a starting catcher good value?
Keith Law: Yeah, he’s a bust for a 5th overall pick.

james: how can I get your lists in canada. called espn and they said they can’t do nothing.
Keith Law: did you say signing back up through the VPN didn’t work? Even if you choose digital delivery of the magazine?

Elton: I will be embarking on Charterstone soon with my board gaming friends. Have you played any other legacy board games?
Keith Law: Only that and Pandemic Legacy. Charterstone is wonderful.

Jake: Who is more likely to make an impact in 2020: Vidal Brujan or Gavin Lux?
Keith Law: Lux is closer.

Ryan: How does J.J. Bleday compare to junior year Bryan Reynolds at Vanderbilt?
Keith Law: Bleday more polished, Reynolds more toolsy.

Ben: Do you think Charlotte, Nashville, or Raleigh would be the most viable MLB city?
Keith Law: Nashville of those three. Austin if we’re looking at any city.

PhillyJake: Adding my own $0.02 to the AIPAC discussion – Actually, scratch that. Read Thomas Friedman’s piece in yesterday’s NY Times. I can’t say it any better than he did. PS. Why did Jim Jordan get a pass for his racist reference to Steyer, replacing the S with a $ ? Yeah, I know it’s whataboutism. But there seems to be a double standard.
Keith Law: Of course there’s a double standard. Until the GOP suffers a resounding loss some November, it won’t change.

Dr. Lizardo: Keith, first of all, thanks for the chats and thanks for your postings on vaccinations. Opinion on Jesse Winker, does he make a few all-star teams before he is done?
Keith Law: I feel like he’s the kind of player who deserves to make some All-Star teams and never makes one because high-OBP middling-power LF types don’t make AS teams. But I’m a fan.
Keith Law: Good example of a guy I totally misread in HS. Saw him awful vs a bad prep LHP. Obviously not a tools guy so I didn’t have that as a fallback. Guy gets into pro ball and shows the plate discipline of an advanced 23-year-old. I reversed course right away but that’s still a mistake.

PhillyJake: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/06/opinion/israel-ilhan-omar.html
Keith Law: That link is Thomas Friedman, trying to make the case against Ilhan Omar, but in the process making the case for Ilhan Omar.

Jake: Your ESPN work is pretty firmly behind a paywall, which actually makes a subscription worth something. What about these sites where you get “10 Free Articles”? Do they not realize that either private browsing or clearing your cache is an easy way around this?
Keith Law: So many people won’t bother with workarounds that they likely find it’s effective enough.
Keith Law: OK, gotta move along … went overtime this week since chats the next few weeks may be intermittent as I travel for spring training. Thank you all as always for reading and for all of your questions – so many good ones, baseball and other, that I couldn’t get to this time. I’ll try to do another chat next Thursday as long as my flight is on time.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: klawchat

→ March 6, 2019
→ By keith

Leaving Neverland.

Leaving Neverland, the new, four-hour documentary airing exclusively on HBO, is a difficult watch. Two men who say that Michael Jackson sexually molested them repeatedly over a period of many years repeat those claims on camera in unsparing detail, which in and of itself would be a painful and infuriating scene to see and hear, but that’s only a small part of what makes this film both powerful and very uncomfortable. It’s far more than a new indictment of Jackson, whose status as a serial sexual abuser is beyond doubt (and beyond remedy) at this point, but serves more as a portrait of the spiraling, exponential damage wrought on their victims and their families years after the abuse has stopped.

Wade Robson and James Safechuck both say in Leaving Neverland that Jackson began abusing them when they were very young – Robson from age 7, Safechuck around the same age – and that it continued for many years, accompanied by all of the behavior we now associate with serial abusers: grooming, co-opting, and above all threatening. Robson says many times that Jackson convinced him that they would both go to jail if they were caught. Both Robson’s and Safechuck’s mothers appear in the documentary as well, as both were there when Jackson met the boys and fell under the singer’s spell, becoming unwitting accomplices to the abuse, agreeing to let their sons spend many nights sleeping at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch and accepting their sons’ answers at the time that no abuse was taking place.

While the documentary tells the history of the abuse and the public accusations of Jackson while the singer was still alive, including the 1993 accusation by Jordy Chandler, settled out of court for $23 million, and the 2003-04 accusations by Gavin Arvizo, which led to a criminal trial and an acquittal on all charges, it’s far more about the victims here than the pedophile at its center. (That said, there are some shocking moments from historical footage, including one of Jackson’s lawyers standing before the media in 2003, threatening to ruin the lives of anyone who might come forward to accuse Jackson of further crimes.) Robson was born in Brisbane, and won a dance contest that allowed him to meet Jackson, who thoroughly bamboozled Robson’s mother to the point that she left Australia and her husband, taking Wade and his sister Chantal to California in the belief that Jackson would help develop her son’s career as a dancer. Safechuck, who was the boy in the dressing room in that famous Pepsi commercial with Jackson (if you’re old enough, you almost certainly remember it), is an only child, but Jackson’s ‘interest’ in him led his mother to similarly turn their lives upside down to try to further James’ career, driving a wedge between her and his father that persists today. (His father doesn’t appear in the film.)

There’s too much commentary out there already about the mothers’ culpability in allowing the abuse to begin and continue, as well as a comment from one of the jurors in the 2003 trial that Gavin’s parents were idiots for letting the boy sleep with Jackson, but Leaving Neverland documents how well-meaning, loving parents can be hoodwinked by a sociopathic, determined pedophile who has the means to assuage any doubts or, unfortunately, buy them away. He showered the families with gifts, flew them places first-class, gave the boys unforgettable experiences on stage, while also presenting himself to the families as a lonely, misunderstood adult whose childhood was stolen from him by the pressures of global stardom. The way that the victims and their families describe the early stages of Jackson’s grooming of the boys, you can see how someone in the moment might have felt sorry for the singer, whose childhood was obviously difficult and who said he was beaten by his father, but it also becomes clear that Jackson used his past as a wedge he could drive between his victims and their parents – and that he did so with the help of enabling assistants who probably should have long ago been called to account for their actions.

Part one of the documentary delivers a lot of prologue, explaining how the two boys met Jackson and ended up victims, but part two is where the point of the story lies, as we hear, in their own words and those of family members, about the permanent damage wreaked upon them all by Jackson’s abuse. Both men speak of mental health issues, never saying PTSD but clearly suffering from it, and are still coping with their effects, while their relationships with family members are all fractured, some likely beyond any repair. Both mothers are themselves wracked with guilt that will never fade, because the damage cannot be undone, to their sons and to their families, and to other victims who might have been spared had anyone picked up on the signs of abuse and put a stop to Jackson’s ‘sleepovers’ sooner.

Both men describe the molestation in specific terms, which is a potential trigger for some viewers and worth bearing in mind before you watch Leaving Neverland. I was not personally triggered by that, but the part of the documentary – and the online response – I’ve found profoundly unsettling is the support for the abusive pedophile at the heart of the story. We see scenes of supporters outside the courthouse with signs proclaiming Jackson’s innocence (really, how could you know?), including some dingbat releasing white doves when the not guilty charges come through. We see videos of people attacking Robson online from when he went public with his abuse story, contradicting testimony he’d given in the 2003 trial that Jackson had never molested him. And if you’ve been on Twitter at all the last few nights and clicked on the #LeavingNeverland hashtag or searched for names involved in the documentary, you’ve seen all manner of support for the singer, saying he was innocent and attacking the victims and their families. You have to be deeply deluded to think that all four of the accusers we know about have lied about everything, even though these two men tell stories that are highly specific and show a pattern of behavior, to still think Jackson is the real victim here.

Director Dan Reed largely stays out of the way of the story here – aside from some drone shots of LA that don’t add much except some running time – but there is also a clear subtext to Leaving Neverland about the allure of celebrity, and how Jackson used it to seduce the families of both boys, and then to seduce the boys themselves. Both mothers, interviewed very extensively on camera, speak of Jackson’s interest in their sons’ careers and in their families as immensely flattering, and the combination of power and money led them to choose to upend their personal lives and helped blind them to what, in hindsight, should have been blindingly obvious.

Robson’s sister and Safechuck both say that they’re not asking people to forget Jackson’s artistry, but to remember the whole person – that this incredibly talented human was also a pedophile and sexual predator. I don’t see how we can continue to separate the art from the artist in this case, not now that I’ve seen the movie. You can’t simply “cancel” a musician of his importance and influence; we can stop playing Jackson’s music, and certainly Capital One should stop playing its commercial with “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” now, but Jackson has directly and indirectly influenced multiple generations of pop musicians since “I Want You Back” was their first hit in 1969. There is no erasure here, only a time for an overdue reckoning with his legacy as a talented person who did unspeakable things and ruined many lives. Leaving Neverland won’t convince people who don’t want to hear it, but it is a devastating portrait of grooming, sexual abuse, and the cascading ramifications that come years after it ends.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2019 in tv, documentaries, highly recommended, ptsd, tv

→ March 5, 2019
→ By keith

Asymmetry.

Lisa Halliday’s Asymmetry is one of the best, most immersive, cleverest new novels I’ve read in the past year, at least since Lincoln in the Bardo and possibly back to In the Light of What We Know. Built around a single, interconnected narrative in three highly asymmetrical parts, it takes a fictionalized account of Halliday’s affair with the much older writer Philip Roth and spins it into a dazzling, textured story that gives her stand-in character an agency not typically seen in these stories and uses the relationship as the platform to show the development of her writing voice.

The first part, the longest of the three, is called “Folly” and tells the story of how Alice, an editor at a New York publishing house, met the Pulitzer-winning author Ezra, and began an affair that is itself asymmetrical. He’s older, successful, world-weary, and confident in his writing voice; she’s younger, new to the publishing world, naive in some ways (but not totally or hopelessly so), and a would-be writer who has yet to develop her own voice or even find confidence that she’s a worthy enough talent to be published. Their relationship is sweet and grounded in reality, with descriptions of the mundane far more than the tawdry, like Alice picking up very specific foods Ezra loves or medicines he needs, and dialogue that reveals layers of their relationship even through the minutiae of the topics. It doesn’t hurt that Ezra loves the Red Sox and makes Alice into a fan, which then becomes a running theme through the book as the seasons pass and the Sox win their first World Series in 86 years during their affair. What could be weird or even inappropriate never seems such because Alice never loses her autonomy or sense of self within the relationship, even standing up for herself a few times, and often the balance in the relationship shifts in the other direction, as her youth and greater ease in the world giver her an advantage over the less physically able and less flexible Ezra.

The second part, “Madness,” details the Kafkaesque trial of Amar, a dual citizen of the United States and Iraq who gets caught in the purgatory of the UK’s equivalent of homeland security as he tries to make a stopover in London on his way to see his brother in Iraq by way of Istanbul. Amar is powerless in this situation, despite possessing two passports, a valid air ticket, and specific reasons for the stopover and the trip; the power rests entirely in the hands of his tormentors, who demur and delay until they finally decide they’re not going to allow him to leave the airport to legally enter England to visit his friend Alastair. The connection between these two stories is only made clear in the third part, although in hindsight you can see how Halliday presaged it; and even then it’s merely in passing, but that link also gives the first part a new level of significance beyond retelling a May-November romance story that we’ve heard before.

The third part is an interview with Ezra on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs program that functions as an extended epilogue and really ties the room together, although I don’t think it stands that well on its own except as an amusing trifle. It provides a coda for the first part, and an explanation for the relevance of the second part, while also giving us more of Ezra Booker, who is himself a wonderful character – an old man with a young spirit, a speaker who’s light on his feet, and, by this time, Alice’s ex-lover but someone who’s obviously tracked her career with pride.

The novel is also a treasure of literary allusions, both to other works – I doubt Alice’s name is any sort of a coincidence, as so much of the dialogue between her and Ezra is reminiscent of what Lewis Carroll’s protagonist may have found through her looking glass – and to real-world literary events, including Roth/Booker’s desire for a Nobel Prize that never came. Ezra gives Alice books to read on all sorts of subjects, the way an older writer might mentor a younger one, but also buys her expensive (albeit practical) gifts, further exacerbating the asymmetry of their relationship. Nothing is balanced in Halliday’s telling, nor is it any more balanced in reality.

The ultimate question Halliday seems to ask in Asymmetry is whether any of us can truly see the world through the eyes of another person. Ezra has done so through his books, or so Alice believes, but his characters – and Roth’s alter ego Zuckerman – share his perspective on the world, whereas Alice wants to write the character of someone who could not differ from her in a more fundamental way. So much of what we see is merely the way our brains interpret the motions of particles or radio waves, and thus each of us sees a different picture as we move through the same world. Halliday takes that aspect of physics (is the title a wink to supersymmetry?) and asks whether any of us can truly understand the views and experiences of another, even when we seem to walk the same path. It’s a gorgeous debut that can’t answer that question but will linger on your palate long after you finish.

Next up: Iraj Pezeshkzad’s novel My Uncle Napoleon.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2018 novels, american literature, contemporary novels, great prose, novels

→ March 4, 2019
→ By keith

Music update, February 2019.

February is short enough as it is, and I delivered my last music update a bit late due to the prospect rankings, so I held off on this one until we got one more spate of new releases on March 1st, so the post would at least get to an hour’s worth of new music (without counting the ten-minute track near the end, because that’s cheating). As always, you can access the Spotify playlist here if you can’t see the widget below.

The Amazons – Mother. The Amazons’ self-titled debut album hit the British top ten in 2017; I thought “Black Magic” was outstanding, powered by a huge, muscular guitar riff, but the rest of the album was tepid by comparison and didn’t carry that sound forward. This new single is also driven by a rich, heavy guitar riff.

Foals – On the Luna. Foals put out two singles from their upcoming album, Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 1, in the last month; this one is tremendous, peak Foals, heavy and dark and still catchy and danceable, like the lead single “Exits,” although the third single “Sunday” is gloomier and slower, so not quite my cup of tea.

Ten Fé – Here Again. More melodic, ’70s-influenced, slightly soft rock from the London-based quintet, who’ll drop their second album, Future Perfect, Present Tense, this Friday.

Sundara Karma – Little Smart Houses. That little record-skip stop in the verses is … an acquired taste? Affected? The chorus is great, though, a great harbinger for the English art-rockers’ second album, Ulfilas’ Alphabet, which just came out on Friday.

Metric – Risk. I love Emily Haines’ voice, but Metric’s music as a whole has been a mixed bag for me, and some of their strongest melodies have paired with their weakest lyrics – and it seems like Haines’ voice is more natural when the vocals are more like another instrument as opposed to a way to tell a story or recite a poem to music. Perhaps that’s just me, but I’ll put “Risk” in the yes column.

Little Simz – Offence. Little Simz, a British rapper of Nigerian descent, just released her third album, GREY Area, her first new music since she toured with Gorillaz after their Humans album came out. “Offence” was the lead single and first appeared back in September, with “Boss” (not quite as good) and “Selfish” (good, but with some problematic lyrics) following as singles before the album dropped.

Hatchie – Without a Blush. Hatchie has barely missed since she started putting out singles late in 2017, and she just announced her debut album, Keepsake, will come out on June 21st. I keep seeing references to her as “dream pop” and to her speaking of Mazzy Star, the Cocteau Twins, and My Bloody Valentine as major influences, but she crafts stronger melodies than any of those three and I still hear reminders everywhere in her music of the earliest stuff from the Cranberries.

The Mowgli’s – Talk About It. This is the fourth song by this six-piece American alternative act that I’ve included on a monthly playlist, and definitely the best since the first single I heard by the group, 2013’s “San Francisco” – similarly upbeat and catchy and cute without being cloying.

Sunflower Bean – Fear City. I think I’ve now included all four songs from Sunflower Bean’s new EP King of the Dudes, since they’re all great. They’ve become one of my favorite bands going between this and last year’s album Twentytwo in Blue.

Man of Moon – Skin. Scottish duo who appear to have listened to every New Order song ever recorded have put out a song that sounds a lot like vintage New Order.

Reignwolf – Black and Red. I felt like Reignwolf was a ‘buzz’ band a few years ago, but had never panned out; they were indeed hyped by the music press around 2013-14, and are just now getting around to releasing an actual album, Hear Me Out, which came out on March 1st, six years after their first single appeared. Fronted by Canadian guitarist Jordan Cook, Reignwolf does blues-heavy rock, with dramatic tonal shifts throughout this slithering lead single.

Ex Hex – Rainbow Shiner. Ex Hex, led by former Helium founder Mary Timony, released their debut album Rips in 2014 but then largely vanished until they put out a few singles last fall and this winter, all ahead of their upcoming second album It’s Real, due out March 22nd.

Tim Bowness and Pete Hammill – It’s the World. That’s Pete Hammill of Van der Graaf Generator, a band formed six years before I was born, joining Bowness, an English experimental musician who has been part of the rather obscure, long-running duo No-Man. (They had a top 40 dance track in the U.S. in 1994, “Taking It Like a Man,” of which I have zero memory.) I’m mostly drawn to that doom-metal guitar riff that seems stylistically out of place but that perfectly fits the song’s atmosphere.

Wheel – Tyrant. Yes, the song is ten minutes long; the Finnish progressive quartet’s debut album, Moving Backwards, just dropped, and has seven songs running a total of 48 minutes, with three tracks clocking in at nine-plus.

Saint Vitus – 12 Years in the Tomb. Saint Vitus is one of the most influential bands in both American metal and within the doom metal subgenre, forming in 1979 and taking their name from a Black Sabbath song, but they were never terribly popular and haven’t released anything new since 2012, so this song’s appearance was a surprise. Even more surprising is the return of original lead singer Scott Reagers, whose last appearance on wax with Saint Vitus came in 1995.

Alexisonfire – Familiar Drugs. Presented more out of newsworthiness than any endorsement of the song, which I think is just fair. This is the Canadian post-hardcore/extreme metal band’s first release of any new material since 2010.

Children of Bodom – Platitudes and Barren Words. These Finnish melodic death metal stalwarts release their latest album, Hexed, this upcoming Friday, and continue to show they can still dance on the edge of mainstream rock without falling into the abyss (as with In Flames, whose latest album has a bunch of great riffs and embarrassing vocals and choruses).

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2019 in music, alternative, doom metal, melodic death metal, metal, Music, rap

→ March 3, 2019
→ By keith

The River.

The River, the most recent release from the imprint Days of Wonder, tries to be Stone Age Lite, but only succeeds about halfway, as it strips down game time and makes building things a bit easier, while also recomplicating things with a strange and not very successful new scoring mechanism that adds little to nothing to game play.

Stone Age is both one of my favorite games ever, and one of the best examples of a straight worker-placement game: You get a finite number of meeples and you put one or more of them on the board in each turn to either gather resources (wood, brick, stone, gold, or food) or spend them to get stuff (build buildings for big points or buying cards for points and/or more goodies). Stone Age starts each player with five meeples, and you can run that up to ten by sending two meeples to what is colloquially known as “the love shack” on a specific turn to, um, make another meeple. Games can run 90 minutes or more, but you’re constantly in motion, and there are a lot of constraints that force players to compete for the same spaces and rewards on the board.

The River’s intent is clear: Streamline (pun intended) the Stone Age concept for a half-hour game. There are three main resources, wood, brick, and stone, plus a wild-card resource of food (little turkey meeples, a nice touch). You gather resources to build building cards worth two to nine points, and early buildings gain bonus tokens starting at six points and gradually decreasing to zero. The number of resources you get when you visit a resource space is equal to number of symbols showing that resource on the twelve spaces on your personal river board, and you also have a number of warehouse symbols that limits what you can store.

Within each round, you can also take up to two new tiles to place on your river, in order. Tiles show resource and/or warehouse symbols, or they confer one-time or game-end bonuses. So you can expand your storage and set yourself up for bigger resource hauls with the right tiles, making your meeple usage more efficient. You start with four meeples, and placing your fourth tile (out of twelve) unlocks your fifth meeple. After that, however, you can lose meeples, staring with your fifth tile, as your workers choose to settle down on the new terrain you’ve developed, so rounds can get shorter as players keep placing tiles.

The game ends when a player has placed twelve tiles, filling their river board, or built five buildings, filling all five bonus token spaces (even if one or more tokens are worth zero points). The game-end scoring adds an additional wrinkle: Tiles come in five different terrain types, and if you’ve managed to get the same terrain in two or all three of the tile spaces in one column, you get additional points – six if you got all three to match, two if you got two of the three. There are a few ways to switch tiles around once you’ve already placed them … but my God, this feels like a totally extraneous, tacked-on scoring method. It has no tie to game play, and it has no tie to the theme. With winning scores in the 30s for us, a player could mostly skip the building cards, get a little luck with river tiles, and rack up enough points to win just by color-matching.

The two-player game uses a smaller main board that restricts meeple placement further, and the game ends if either player builds four buildings (reduced from five). That latter threshold might be too low; my daughter, who didn’t care for this game, decided she was going to try to end it as quickly as she could, and raced through to build four building cards, two of which were worth two points each, the lowest value. It turned out to be a smart plan, because she ended the game before I could build my third building, since I was trying to get some higher point cards. It’s also possible that my daughter is just smarter than I am.

I don’t think The River makes the cut in my house to stay in our rotation; it’s too familiar – really, yet another game where we’re gathering wood, brick, and stone? really? – and offers nothing new in the mechanics or theme. It is, however, a simplified version of Stone Age and similar games, and probably far more friendly to play with younger kids – especially if you just dispense with the game-end tile-matching bonus. That eliminates one spot on the board, and you’d take out some tiles that give you a free tile swap power, but then the game would be like a starter version of Stone Age … except that such a game already exists, My First Stone Age, with a listed playing time of 15 minutes. I haven’t played the latter, but I keep coming back to how The River just feels like a blurry copy of Stone Age, and that feels very unsatisfying to me as a critic or just a player.

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

→ March 2, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 3/2/19.

For ESPN+ subscribers this week, I wrote three pieces, breaking down the Bryce Harper deal, ranking the top 30 prospects for this year’s draft, and offering scouting notes on players I saw in Texas, including Bobby Witt, Jr. I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

On the gaming front, I reviewed the Kennerspiel des Jahres-winning game The Quacks of Quedlinburg for Paste, and also reviewed the digital port of the game Evolution for Ars Technica.

I went on the Mighty 1090 in San Diego with Darren Smith to talk Manny Machado, Olive Garden, and the Oscars, and on TSN 1050 in Toronto to talk about Ross Atkins’ strange comments on Vlad Jr.. I also spoke to True Blue LA about Dodgers prospects, and joined the Sox Machine podcast to talk White Sox prospects.

I’m due for the next edition of my free email newsletter, so sign up now while the gettin’s good.

High Street on Market’s Sandwich Battles begin this Monday, with tickets available for $25. They’re my #1 restaurant in Philly, in large part because their breads are otherworldly.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: GQ has a length profile of the prolific and highly disturbed art thief Stéphane Breitwieser, who stole artworks valued at over $1 billion but never sold anything.
21st Century Fox was hit with a $179 million penalty by an arbitrator over a wide scheme to defraud the actors and producers of Bones of residuals from streaming on Hulu. Fox lied about the profits they were receiving from Hulu, of which Fox owns 30%, and at one point a Fox executive signed both sides of a deal between the two companies.
MLB.com’s Mike Petriello, who was a huge help to me when I was working on Smart Baseball, has a superb primer up on the Rapsodo and Edgetronic devices that are revolutionizing player development, especially in the area of ‘pitch design,’ where coaches and pitchers can work together to change or develop pitches by using real-time data that show how changes in grips or release points affect a pitch’s velocity and spin. Driveline Baseball, mentioned in Mike’s piece, has a blog post up on gaze research, or tracking how hitters see the ball. Technology has allowed teams and players to measure things that were either estimated by scouts/coaches in the past or that were simply brushed off as unmeasurable.
Little Falls, Minnesota, has found success in fighting opioid addiction by treating it as a disease, rather than as a crime or a personal failing. It’s an approach that has worked in other countries – Portugal is a paragon in this area – but goes against the Puritanical strain in American culture that sees addicts as degenerates.
What if climate change leads to enough cloud loss to further accelerate the warming of the planet? The odds of this are higher than we previously realized.
Why is California’s Attorney General refusing to release a list of cops convicted of crimes? Xavier Becerra, running for re-election this year, has even rejected public records requests from his own agency, which has led to lawsuits and would appear to violate open-records laws.
Marcela García writes in the Boston Globe how the should-have-won-Best Picture film Roma has exposed the deep racism within Mexican society.
A popular talking point among Republicans right now is that doctors are “killing babies” right after they’re born. The President said it in his State of the Union address, and it’s been repeated ad nauseam over the last month. Dr. Jen Gunter, an OBGYN who herself gave birth to a son so premature he could not survive, points out what a dangerous lie this line is.
Anti-vaxxer Forest Maready, who likes to depict people with autism as “tragedies,” has a new book coming out that resurfaces the debunked myth that vaccines cause autism. Amazon and Apple are planning to sell it, but I signed this petition asking them to pull the title from their stores. Meanwhile, an inquiry from Rep. Adam Schiff led amazon to pull six anti-vaccination “documentaries” from prime video.
Anti-vaxxer groups on Facebook are harassing pro-vaccine doctors by trashing their Yelp and Google ratings as well as flooding those doctors’ Facebook posts with comments. Facebook has done little to nothing to combat the problem. The Atlantic points out that the Facebook anti-vax community is quite small, just loud, and banning them would be easy for the platform.
WIRED argues that amazon’s anti-vaxxer problem is worse than Facebook’s.
A Nova Scotia chiropractor lost her license for spreading anti-vaccine information and making other unfounded claims. We should strive for the same kinds of laws around chiropractors, naturopaths, and even the rare medical doctor who embraces this sort of bullshit.
CNN also weighed in on tech outlets failing to police the anti-vaxx bullshit on their platforms.
The Washington Post looks at how anti-vaxxers are responding to the overdue public backlash against their efforts, as well as bills in various state legislatures to end religious and/or philosophical exemptions to mandatory vaccination requirements.
Scientific American presents public policies we can use to fight anti-vaxxer lunacy.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch‘s Kevin McDermott asks why so many Americans are rejecting science in the face of incontrovertible evidence.
Italian researchers used CRISPR to create a genetically modified version of a malaria-carrying mosquito; if released, it should lead to collapses of that specific species and thus reduce malaria transmissions.
Paste‘s Jacob Weindling noticed that CNN stacked its phony ‘town hall’ for Bernie Sanders with political operatives/lobbyists posing as regular folks.
LA Times movie critic Justin Chang wrote that Green Book is the worst Best Picture winner since Crash, calling the vapid white-savior film “an embarrassment,” “insultingly glib and hucksterish,” “a self-satisfied crock,” and a “palatable brand of godawful.”
Late Night with Seth Meyers rather perfectly sent up the film with their ‘trailer’ for White Savior.
And apparently Green Book producer sent critic Jenni Miller a condescending, tone-deaf email where he doesn’t even know the main character’s real name.
In a bit of things coming full circle, Pig Destroyer’s John Jarvis has formed a new baseball-themed grindcore band, Kolten Wong City, a name that alludes to Kowloon Walled City, whose bassist, Ian Miller, is part of baseball-themed grindcore band Puig Destroyer, whose name alludes to … well, you get it now.
Why are progressive artists still working with Morrissey despite his embrace of far-right causes and outright racist statements?
Talk Talk’s singer and main songwriter Mark Hollis died this week at age 64. His last release was a solo album in 1998, after which he retired from music to spend time with his family.
Splinter writer Samer Kalaf released an email exchange he had with conservative NY Times writer Bret Stephens, without Stephens’ permission, but I think Kalaf comes off far worse here than he realizes.
Roland’s Market, a collaboration between Chris Bianco and the couple behind Tacos Chiwas, closed without warning last month. The location will be converted into a larger outpost of Bianco’s Pane Bianco.
The former editor of the Rocky Mountain News writes of his fear that local journalism will continue to fade and die as newspapers are plundered by hedge-fund owners.
Charlotte Riley describes the game Patriarchy Chicken in a column subtitled “why I refuse to move out of the way for men.”
The FTC is finally cracking down on scammers who buy fake reviews on amazon, going after the seller of a bogus weight-loss ‘supplement.’
In board game news, Disney’s Villainous: Wicked to the Core hits Target tomorrow; it’s exclusive there for a month and will later roll out to other outlets. I’ve played it, and it’s as good as the original, but with rules that are much clearer for first-time players, enough that you might do better to start with this before going back to the first game. (This is a standalone expansion that you can combine with the original.)
Renegade Game Studios has Hex Roller, a new roll-and-write game that I haven’t seen yet, up for preorder.
Days of Wonder announced a few weeks ago that their next title will be Corinth, an update/retheme of the game Yspahan that alters some core rules and eliminates the caravan (which was a dominant strategy in Yspahan).

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2018 movies, addiction, anti-science, art, baseball, board games, california, climate change, frauds, links, movies, oscars, pseudoscience, social media, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ March 1, 2019
→ By keith

Texas eats, 2019 edition.

Both places I hit in Houston were on Eater’s list of the 38 ‘most essential’ restaurants in the U.S. this year, which tends to be a pretty reliable list for good if occasionally overpriced restaurants. Xochi, a high-end Mexican place downtown, did not disappoint at all: I had just two dishes but it will stick with me for a very, very long time. For dinner I had the crispy duck (pato crujiente) with tomatillo avocado sauce, black beans, and chicharrones. It’s the second-best duck dish I’ve ever eaten, behind only the duck carnitas at NYC’s Cosme, and my only quibble is that there was so much duck and not quite enough of the sauces to go with it. It comes with fresh corn tortillas, and the duck really doesn’t need any additional flavor – it would be fine with just a little lime juice – but the slow cooking process did just start to rob the meat of a little moisture. But the star here was the dessert; Xochi’s dessert menu has a dessert side and a chocolate side, and you’re a damn fool if you think I even looked at the side without chocolate on it. I got the Piedras y Oro, rocks and gold, described as “chocolate tart with crocant of mixed nuts, praline and chocolate “river rocks,” gold from the Isthmus,” which doesn’t quite do it justice. The chocolate tart’s center was warm and has very little flour in it, just enough to hold it together, with a hard, dense cookie-like crust, topped with those frozen pebbles of chocolate, as well as the praline, various candied nuts, and a dark chocolate sauce. It was chocolate indulgence right into your veins. I’m not sure I have ever had a more satisfying sense of oneness with chocolate.

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OH. MY. GOD. @xochihou

A post shared by Keith Law (@mrkeithlaw) on Feb 21, 2019 at 7:03pm PST

Himalaya, which serves Indian and Pakistani dishes and has a few flourishes that combine those cuisines with Mexican twists (like a ‘quesadilla’ on paratha bread) also made the list, and I would say I had a mixed experience, partly because I ended up ordering the wrong thing, partly because I don’t know south Asian cuisine all that well. I liked much of what I ate, but it was enough food for more than two of me, and some of what arrived on the lunch special, which the waiter seemed very eager for me to order (probably assuming the white guy wouldn’t know most of the items on the menu, which would not be too far off the mark for me), included meats I no longer eat. The platter came with samples of three curries/similar dishes, one with chickpeas (I think aloo chana masala, with potatoes), one with chicken, and one with lamb, which I don’t eat; as well as a large naan that was leaner than any naad I’ve had before, more than a serving of rice, and a triangle of the same flatbread folded over meat and vegetables. I think it was good, but I also know what I don’t know – I rarely eat Indian or Pakistani food – and probably should have ordered something a la carte.

I tried Siphon Coffee before I headed to lunch, and the preparation of the namesake coffee is quite a show – there’s fire, and it looks like a chemistry experiment – with the resulting cup certainly balanced and smooth without losing any of the nuances of the bean. I just can’t see spending $9 for a cup of coffee other than to do it once to try it.

Moving on to Austin: Better Half Coffee & Cocktails is an all-day café in a cool space that serves coffee from Portland’s heart roasters and has traditional and unusual breakfast items, including the thing I could not possibly pass up, waffled hash browns with coffee-cream gravy and poached eggs. It was decadent, although despite being on the heavy side, it wasn’t greasy, more heavy just because all of those items are calorie-dense, and those hashbrowns were spectacularly crunchy. They were using a single-origin heart coffee even for espressos, which I especially appreciate because it shows someone took some care in selecting the coffee (some single origins are great for pour-overs and awful as espressos).

The Backspace was on that old Food and Wine list of the best pizzerias in the U.S. that I’ve been working my way through over the last five years (I’ve been to 31 of the original 48 places, although at least three have closed), and because I hit it on the early side I was there for their happy hour pricing, where their starters are half off. The roasted beets were great, the roasted cauliflower was bland. The margherita pizza used very high-quality mozzarella, although the dough was ordinary, and overall I’d say it’s on the high side of average (grade 50).

Micklethwait Craft Meats showed up on Daniel Vaughn’s invaluable guide to the ten best BBQ joints in Texas, coming in at #8, with the venerable Franklin up at #2. Since I don’t eat beef, Texas BBQ is largely lost on me, but Micklethwait’s pork ribs were excellent, sweet/salty with a strong smoke flavor and bright pink ring. Both the potato salad, which has mayo but tastes more of mustard, and the tart cole slaw were also excellent. If you do eat cow, they’re known for brisket and beef ribs too.

I also had dinner with my cousin at Cane Rosso, an outpost of the Dallas restaurant, and went with a non-traditional pizza, the “farmer’s only dot com” pie with arugula, mushrooms, and zucchini, topped with pesto but without tomato sauce. The dough here is really the standout, although everything on top was also bright and fresh (it was weird to get good zucchini in mid-February).

My Dallas eats were a bit limited by where I needed to go and the sheer sprawl of the Metroplex. I tried Ascension Coffee but found their pour-over really lacking in flavor or body; I probably should have known when I saw they talked up the ‘blueberry’ note in their Ethiopian Ardi, a note that is often considered a defect in Ethiopian beans. (If you’ve had it, you’d know why – it isn’t a pleasant blueberry flavor and it dominates the cup.) Ascension seems so focused on food that the coffee takes a back seat, which is a shame because it’s possible to do both.

The one other meal of note I had was at the Spiral Diner in Fort Worth, not far from TCU. There are three locations of the all-vegan restaurant, which looks like a ’50s diner gone hipster, and the menu comprises mostly familiar comfort-food dishes that have been veganized. I am not vegan, but like hitting good vegan/vegetarian restaurants on the road to try to keep my diet diverse; that said, Spiral’s menu was too focused on recreating certain non-vegetarian or vegan foods, without the ingenuity of places like Modern Love or Vedge/V Street. I ended up getting a Beyond Burger, which I’ve had before and do find pretty satisfying as a meat alternative (better than any veggie burger I’ve ever tried), and the vegan chipotle mayo that came with it was as good as the real thing. It was just kind of unremarkable, salvaged somewhat by the blueberry pie that also allowed me to taunt Mike Schur on Twitter.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: austin, breakfast, chocolate, coffee, dallas, dessert, houston, mexican cuisine, pizza, vegan

→ February 28, 2019
→ By keith

Klawchat 2/28/19.

My review of the digital version of the board game Evolution is up at Ars Technica, and my review of the Kennerspiel des Jahres-winning game The Quacks of Quedlinburg is up at Paste.

Keith Law: Nature is a language – can’t you read? Klawchat.
Keith Law: (There’s your Obscure Music Quote.)

Arnold: Jays GM Ross Atkins says Vlad Jr. is not ready for the majors. He’s just trying to justify keeping him from being a Super 2 arbitration player right? He can’t be that stupid?
Keith Law: He’s not stupid, but he is too voluble. The less said, the better. Now, he’s denigrated his own player and insulted the intelligence of the fan base, to no benefit. They’re holding Vlad down to delay free agency (not Super 2 – I can’t imagine he’s in AAA *that* long), but can’t say so, so just say as little as possible.

TjF: If you were determined to get a deal done with Bryce and you felt like you had to do shorter term at high value (read: the Dodgers), would you be willing to give a 2 year opt out? Put another way – is it worth losing the pick to pay Bryce 40mm for 2 years?
Keith Law: Interesting idea, although I’d probably want to push the opt out at least one year further out, because he’s had some injury history, and I’d rather roll the dice on 2 healthy years in 3 than 2 in 2.

TjF: Is it me or does Vlad Jr look like he packed on a few extra this winter? I’m not judging, just seems like DH is going to happen sooner rather than later
Keith Law: I thought he looked as heavy as he did in the AFL, which would also point to a DH future.

Kid Koala: Your game reviews and thoughts on physical games are one of the reasons I love coming here. Just wondering if you’ve ever played Fortnite and what you think of it. Also about to be a parent and wonder about how to introduce screen games to a child. Any advice?
Keith Law: Glad you enjoy those reviews – I have not played Fortnite.

Jackson (Oakland, CA): Keith, the Cardinals advised Dakota Hudson that he should stretch out as a starter. Can you share what you believe he’ll need to work on to be effective in that role? Or would be be best suited for the bullpen, moving forward?
Keith Law: Between arm issues and lack of a good second pitch beyond the cutter, he seems better suited to the bullpen.

Oscar Madisbum: Judging from what you’e seen over the years, is it better for a team to use all your IFA money to sign one presumed 50+ player like Jasson Dominguez (supposedly going to the Yankees) or to spread the money around given how young these guys are? Thanks
Keith Law: I’d spread the money around. I haven’t seen Dominguez, but I’ve heard he’s the best player in the class but carries substantial risk factors.

Chris (Willow Spring, NC): Hi Keith – First of all, I love your minor league content, trade analysis, etc. it is the primary reason for my ESPN Insider subscription. Of the top Braves pitching prospects on the cusp of the majors, would any be best suited to a bullpen role?
Keith Law: I think any could go to the pen to develop/limit innings, but I’m not sure any would be better suited to relief than starting among the top tier. Maybe Soroka if he just can’t stay healthy in the rotation but it’s too soon for that.
Keith Law: FYI, this chat is brought to you by Trader Joe’s 73% Belgian Dark Chocolate Non-Pareils, by which I mean I bought them and am eating them while I chat.

Gavin: Regarding a nation minimum wage….do politicians really think a uniform national rate is practical? Do they not realize that it costs a lot more to live in San Francisco than it does in Rapid City? Shouldn’t this issue be one that is decided on a local level, where governments can determine a rate that meshes with the local cost of living? If the federal government is going to establish one national rate to get people in major cities to a living wage for menial work, I am moving to a small midwestern town to cook burgers at McD’s for $40 an hour.
Keith Law: Sure they realize that. Has anyone proposed a national minimum wage of $40/hour? That feels like a straw man. And nothing would stop San Francisco from mandating a higher minimum wage than the federal one. If you want to encourage people to work, it would seem that a higher wage would provide a strong incentive, no?

Tristan: Is Chris Paddack the Padres’ best starter at the end of 2019? Or do you think Lucchesi can get to another level with two pitches?
Keith Law: Paddack as the best starter in their rotation by 9/30? Sure, I’ll buy that. Don’t think Lucchesi has another level.

Nate in Seattle: Klaw, wondering your take on Marwin’s infield defense, which UZR doesn’t like. If he played 2b for a full season, would it rate as average or above average?
Keith Law: I’ll guess average but with the strong caveat that I can’t remember the last time I really watched him play 2b.
Keith Law: Or anywhere but the outfield, really.

Tristan: So it looks like Scott Kingery will start the season without a set position again. Do you think the Phils are messing with his potential by moving him around so much?
Keith Law: Yes, not a fan of doing that to young players.

TjF: Don’t want to discriminate guys based on size and handedness, but is someone really going to burn a top 5 draft pick on a 6 foot R/R first baseman?
Keith Law: Vaughn? His performance last year – against weak Pac 12 pitching – was remarkable, enough that I’m consistently hearing he’s a top 5 pick right now.

E-Rod: He might never be a 200 IP guy, but could Eduardo Rodriguez still develop into a #1 or #2 in your view? Still a lot of positives in the profile, he’s still young, and his arm’s never been hurt (even though the lower body has). Feels like he’s sometimes the forgotten man in that BoSox rotation…
Keith Law: Always been a fan. Must stay healthy, still hoping he’ll find a good enough slider to give him that missing element.

Aaron C.: People *very seriously* replying to you that the NFL uses “N/8” for ease of comparative measurement (re: Kyler Murray) makes me sad for, like, humanity.
Keith Law: If you can’t compare 3/8 and 1/2 in your head, how do you manage to get out of the house without garroting yourself on your own shoelaces?

Aaron C.: When you scout Arizona in the spring, do you (a) hit up all 15(?) camps; (b) only scout pre-determined list of players; (c) select the team/players based on good restaurant proximity?
Keith Law: Target players. Plenty of time to get from an afternoon game to a good restaurant.
Keith Law: BTW, Roland’s Market in Phoenix closed, rather suddenly, last week. Just some news for folks headed out there who might have wanted to visit based on my recommendations. It’s going to become a larger, second location of Pane Bianco.

Matt: If someone like Ben Shapiro or Candace Owens ever engaged you on a retweet or a comment you made regarding one of their posts or ‘thoughts’, would you engage them? With that in mind… has that ever happened to you?
Keith Law: It hasn’t, but the main reason I might demur would be the volume of replies I’d get from their adherents. I do use Twitter to communicate with all of you – well, some of you – and that might make it unusable.

Moe Mentum: Rank the following six retired 2nd basemen (primarily) in terms of their worthiness for Cooperstown: Bobby Grich, Jeff Kent, Willie Randolph, Chase Utley, Lou Whitaker, Frank White.
Keith Law: Whitaker, Grich, Utley, Randolph, Kent, White.

Moe Mentum: College tuition payments are an investment rather than an expense, right? But how should we measure the return on our investment? It’s not just starting salary upon graduation, but how else should (can?) we quantify the benefits, especially compared to other schools?
Keith Law: Are they an investment? I’m not sure the tuition for four years at a private university has a good enough ROI to quality. The tuition for the same degree at a public university might be the investment; the marginal cost of a typical private university would be an expense.

David: What is your opinion on the Francona’s son vs Kapler issue?
Keith Law: That is a personal matter and I don’t see how or why I would get involved.

Jesse B: How good of hitter was Michael Lorenzen coming out of college?
Keith Law: Not good at all.

John: Thoughts on Miles Mikolas extension?
Keith Law: Could be great if 2018 was real. Surprising commitment based on one year of performance, although his underlying numbers were all pretty positive.

Robert: Adley feels like a pretty solid #1 talent. Better than recent years but perhaps not generational. How do you think he stacks up talent wise to recent 1s?
Keith Law: I’ll see him in a few weeks, but I feel like he’s below the last couple of 1-1 picks.

Aaron C.: Previously, you’ve stated you’re “in” on Matt Chapman and “out” on Franklin Barreto from a growth/development standpoint. Standing pat on Matt Olson? Is this kind of…all there is? (Which is fine…I guess.)
Keith Law: He’s fine. Would be surprised if there’s more bat there, and I think his glove isn’t quite as good as his reputation.

Robert: Do you have any hope Quantril will see his stuff return? What if he ditched the breaker and became similar to Paddack if less command. Could he start?
Keith Law: Needs more stuff, period. Nothing like Paddack, unfortunately.

Jeremiah: Hey Keith…love your work. Where do you think the Padres start Tatis jr this year…double aa or triple aaa? Thx
Keith Law: Triple-A. Already has more than 4 months at AA.

JT: *Last year* was the delay in Vladdy’s service time. This year is cruel and unusual.
Keith Law: Agreed. He should have been up in May or at worst June. I said on the BBTN podcast today that if MLB had an incentive for noncontending teams to win now – such as better draft position, more international money, or increased revenue sharing – he would have been up.

DaveAlden53: In looking at prospect listings from various sources, there seems to be more variation between than in past years. I’m not going to ask why you’re higher or lower on particular players. (I’m married so don’t need any more snark.) But will instead ask whether you think increased data (launch angle, exit velo, spin rate), new focus on mechanical changes (DriveLine, etc.), and evolving analytical tools (DRC+, etc.) is causing a divergence of opinions.
Keith Law: Maybe? I use what the teams use, to the extent that I’m able. Never heard a team mention DRC+, for example, but spin rate, exit velo, extension come up quite often.

Robert: How far behind is Luis Campusano from a guy like Melendez?
Keith Law: I think I’d have Campusano ahead of Melendez. Did I rank them the other way somewhere?

Josh: Do you think the A’s will offer Kyler Murray an MLB contract over and above what he would get in the NFL Draft, like Rosenthal suggested? Seems like all of Murray’s actions have provided great leverage, but at the end of the day the money talks. If you offered him $35mm over 7 years, he’d bank that before theoretically hitting arbitration (4 option years and 3 pre-arb provided the CBA remains largely the same).
Keith Law: If I’m the A’s I just walk away. He’s not interested in baseball. Don’t throw good money after bad.

Jen Carroll: Keith – have you followed the rather precipitous fall of Mike Isabella’s empire? The Post did a pretty lurid look at his gross behavior that should be of no surprise to anyone who watched him on Top Chef (“no offense, but a girl shouldn’t beat me!”, even if she’s freakin’ Eric Ripert’s Chef de Cuisine, you tool?). But even with all that, I’m a little shocked at how quickly it all came tumbling down.
Keith Law: He just came to mind the other day when I saw a photo of some other past TC contestants – he’s completely vanished. Well-earned, though. So much toxic behavior in restaurant kitchens, likely more revelations to come.

Ken : when you worked for the BJays – did you and did you enjoy living in Toronto?
Keith Law: I never lived there, but spent a lot of time there and loved the city. Had moving cross-border been easier I would happily have moved.

Gabe: To be a major league regular, what type of line do you think Bobby Dalbec will need to produce? Will a 220/330/450 line get it done?
Keith Law: Don’t think that he gets there. That’s a very rosy OBP scenario.

TK: Another good reason you left Arizona: lawmakers last week advanced not one, not two but THREE bills that would make it easier to get vaccine exemptions and would require doctors to provide information on “potential harms” of vaccines … Ugh.
Keith Law: The population isn’t that insane, but the legislature is.

An angry Mets fan: Given that the two biggest contracts given out this offseason (Arenado and Machado) came from franchises that wouldn’t be considered financial juggernauts, can we start replacing “Team X can’t afford this player” with “Team X doesn’t want to afford this player”?
Keith Law: We should. Too many writers carrying water for owners, though.

Alex: Deranged Braves fan with a question that isn’t about the Braves. In my view, would it make strategic sense for the players union to negotiate with owners about the share of revenue that goes to players?
Keith Law: Yes, I feel like this is inevitable. I think it’s worked in the NBA, no? At least for sustained labor peace and a positive relationship between players and the league?

barbeach: Klaw: Thanks so much for the chat. Luke Voit or Greg Bird? Could Voit be for real?
Keith Law: I’d go with an outside option for 1b.

addoeh: I was pleasantly surprised to see Quinn Priester in your initial top 30 draft prospects ranking. How big of a disadvantage does he have given his season starts much later than prospects in warmer climates?
Keith Law: He’ll do fine – Kelenic went 6th, from the same general area, and with pitchers it’s even easier because you can do a relatively complete evaluation off one start, seeing stuff, size, mechanics, command, athleticism in one shot.

quack quack: Duck legs. Where do you get them? I can get whole duck, but I have to special order leg quarters and pay an arm and (ha ha) a leg for them, $14/lb. It’s cheaper to buy whole duck and cut it up, so why not just braise the breast quarters too as long as you’re at it?
Keith Law: Whole Foods has them intermittently or can order them. They freeze well, too.

Todd Boss: Harper Harper Harper! How relieved are you going to be when he finally signs and we can move on from a narrative perspective?
Keith Law: I’ve certainly had enough of this as a general story and of Philly writers/radio people taking cheap shots at Harper for (checks notes) letting his agent handle negotiations.

Sam: If the first regular season game is on March 20th, does that mark the start of the year for everyone, or just those teams? Asking so I know when Guerrero and Jimenez will magically stop needing minor league seasoning.
Keith Law: Just those teams.

Randall Stephens: How worried should I be about Kershaw? Can his FB get back to 93-94?
Keith Law: I think he can succeed averaging 90 mph, but I’m more concerned that his arm is sore. Seems like he’s never come up with a complaint about arm soreness.

Nick: Do you think Harper will take less to go to the West Coast? And how bad would it be if the Phillies were outbid?
Keith Law: No, I think he’ll take the most lucrative offer, period.

Beetlejuice: Hello Keith. Draft class looks pretty rough on the college pitching side – any guys you think have late life to jump into the top 5?
Keith Law: Right now, no.

Stanley: He just turned 18 a few months ago. Does Luis Garcia (PHI) have enough projection to get to 50 power?
Keith Law: Probably.

Mike: You’ve probably answered this at one point, but have you seen Ex Machina? Finally watched it for first time last night and it’s the best sci-fi film I’ve seen in awhile.
Keith Law: Yep, review is somewhere on this site. “I’m gonna tear up the fuckin’ dance floor” is one of the best lines/scenes of the decade.

Dave: In your organizational write-up, you noted that Detroit hadn’t gotten production from its international signings– is that because of poor scouting, not putting enough resources into either scouting or signing players, bad luck… or something else?
Keith Law: I don’t know what their investment in the region has been, but they haven’t produced players. They’ve had few big-dollar signings, though.

James: Will you have a chance to get out to San Diego to see Spencer Jones and/or Derek Diamond?
Keith Law: Right now, neither is good enough for me to make the trip.

Kevin : Are many players still older than their listed ages (cough:Pujols:cough) or is that becoming a thing of the past?
Keith Law: I still hear of those from time to time. Mostly players from Cuba now, rather than players from the DR, which was most common pre-9/11 and has since become almost nonexistent.

Mason: Who do you think is starting in center field for the Reds on opening day?
Keith Law: Why not Senzel? Who’s the better option?

Jay: Any remarks on Paddack’s ST outing, particularly on fastball location or new curveball shape he’s been working on?
Keith Law: Absolutely not. One brief ST outing when players are still getting into game shape tells us little to nothing.

CJ: Are you reporting to spring training in the best shape of your career?
Keith Law: Definitely not.

Jonny: Mount Rushmore of favorite movies ever?
Keith Law: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Amelie. North by Northwest. Double Indemnity. Ugh, so many I have to leave out – Charade, To Catch a Thief, WALL-E … didn’t mention any musicals … The Maltese Falcon, Strangers on a Train, The Apartment … I could go on for a while.

Jim: Do teams place any personnel decisions on spring training performance or are those decisions already made in advance?
Keith Law: I think it still happens more than it should. ST should be for making sure everyone is healthy and ready to go, but less for new evaluations unless there is a tangible, physical explanation.

Matt: I was reading your foreign language learning strategy and in regards to the flashcards, would you still use the physical cards or do you know of a good online program or app that you would use now?
Keith Law: I’ve tried some apps and none has really worked for me.

Jay: Tatis callup on May 1 sound about right to you? Or more seasoning
Keith Law: He’s played less than a full season of games above low-A. I don’t know how ready he is right now – he might be so good it doesn’t matter, but I am not banging the drum for him as I am for Vlad Jr. or Eloy.

Mark: Should the Nats offer Rendon the same contract extension that Arenado just got? I’d be more heartbroken if he left than Harper honestly.
Keith Law: Yes.

Mike: Klaw, thanks for your great work. I’m looking for restaurant recommendations for Charlotte. My wife loves chain restaurants, so I want her to try something that perhaps you can recommend.
Keith Law: I have spent very little time there, so I’m sorry but I don’t have any.

AES: I can’t read the rankings because ESPN+ isn’t available to dirty foreigners. So I’m asking, it seems the hosiery trade worked out perfect for the Crimson, as Sale has been great, flags fly forever, but how much hav e koepech/moncada dropped?
Keith Law: If you sign up through a VPN and choose digital delivery, you should be able to subscribe. Moncada is no longer eligible, and Kopech only dropped because he got hurt.

Jack: In your opinion, is this offseason a disaster for the Phillies if they dont get Harper?
Keith Law: No, but it’ll be a bad winter.

John: Plan on ever going to Morgantown, WV to see Manoah or any other guys?
Keith Law: More likely I’ll get him on the road. That’s not easy to get to from here.

Mike: Did you have a chance to watch Kikuchi pitch? If so, any takeaways?
Keith Law: I’ll try to see him live, not on tv.

Beetlejuice: With the service time manipulation in the news – can you point to any players that weren’t ready in one facet and might have benefited significantly from another 2-3 months to refine that one skill (so they wouldn’t have to learn on the job in the majors)? Wouldn’t you say that is a legitimate reason to hold off on promoting a high level prospect? (especially if the player is young/hasn’t had many reps in the minors)
Keith Law: Jose Guillen comes to mind. Jumped to the majors at 19, never progressed much after that.

Greg: Hey, Keith. What do you think is the biggest reason that a large percentage of US citizens don’t seem to care/realize that the president is implicated in many, many crimes? Crimes that would be the hugest scandal in the world for any previous president. Is it a lack of knowledge? Tribalism run amok? Or the gradual normalization and slow trickle of all the crimes just makes everybody shrug. Rick Santorum actually defended Trump’s constant lying about Russia by saying it wasn’t surprising because Trump lies about everything.
Keith Law: Tribalism run amok is a good way to phrase it. Many people do not care about issues beyond those of their religion, such as trying to ban abortion, or protecting their own race.

Teddy Ballgame: Best pizza around Scottsdale, go. I’m there for two days in early March.
Keith Law: Bianco, Pomo, cibo, Craft 64. Apparently I need to try Myke’s pizza truck, too.

Sean: Where do you stand on intangible traits? Some are clearly just voo doo (like clutchiness), while some might be real but just impossible to quantify and therefore shouldn’t be included in contract negotiations? Can you give examples of some of the latter?
Keith Law: If they exist enough for us to identify them, they’re probably not intangible. Work ethic would be one. “Desire” gets a little wonky. Good in the clubhouse is mostly bullshit.

Jon: Nolan Arenado was hardly a league average player with a .772 OPS away from Coors last season. Obviously a different story in Denver. That being said, what are your thoughts on the contract? Too rich for my blood at zero fault to arenado. Go get your money!
Keith Law: Great for the player. It’s not fair to just look at a Rockies player’s road splits, though – if you put Arenado at sea level he wouldn’t post that road stat line. But I don’t think I’d want him at that salary level into his 30s.

Dan: Hi Keith, do you think Miles Mikolas and Shane Bieber can repeat their success from last year? St Louis obviously believes in Mikolas.
Keith Law: Bieber had a 4.55 ERA and will probably be more homer-prone going forward.

Evan: Ke’Bryan Hayes a 25 HR guy if the MLB ball doesn’t change?
Keith Law: I’ll buy that.

Joel: Are you buying Moniak’s second half? Are the tools still there to be a first division regular?
Keith Law: I’m not buying that.

Deke: What do you think of Joe Sheehan’s argument that the pace of play stuff is almost entirely borne of writers wanting to go home sooner, and the industry’s rising revenues prove that there’s not really a problem?
Keith Law: Partial agreement, partial disagreement. I do think there is a pace of play issue, but it’s 90% about commercials, not this other crap (although I’d like to see someone nail hitters’ feet in the batter’s box). Rising revenues do show that the sport is healthy, but revenues have risen faster than fan interest (such as the total # of people interested in the sport).

Brett: Do you feel like a lot of the hype or mystique that usually begins a new season has been lessened or tainted by greedy ownership and the labor strife? In my small group of Baseball friends, I can’t remember a time they were less excited for a new season.
Keith Law: Yes.

Cartoons Plural : Wander Franco starts 2019 in Bowling Green. Where do you expect him to finish the year at?
Keith Law: Port Charlotte.

Kevin : Was you (still are) a fan on early 90’s grunge/alternative?
Keith Law: Yep.

War biscuit : What order do you prefer these college SS: Holland, Stott, Shewmake and Davidson
Keith Law: I just ranked them all on Tuesday.

The Decider: Are you doing a breakout players for 2019 column?
Keith Law: Yes.

Kevin : Seems like Democrats should talk about farm bailouts being actual socialism as opposed to healthcare?
Keith Law: The right’s messaging on “socialism” has been far too effective, because most Americans don’t know what socialism means – really, I’d guess 60-70% could not correctly define the term – and thus saying “we’re not socialists!” isn’t very useful. The left needs better messaging on this: these are policies that will do X, Y, and Z *for you*.

Nathan: I LOVE my Anova but I feel like it’s steak after steak after steak with maybe a chicken thrown in once in a while. Any good ways to mix it up or just use it for what it’s good at? Also, do you vacuum seal bags, use ziplocks, etc.?
Keith Law: Vacuum seal. I don’t eat steak so I use mine for chicken thighs, duck legs, occasionally pork chops, even some vegetables that require a long cooking time like beets.

addoeh: For young pitchers where you see their long term future is as a reliever, when should the team move him to reliever? Is it when he is major league ready? At what point should they stop thinking that there could be a small chance to be a starter?
Keith Law: I think performance will usually tell you.
Keith Law: Or health. If a guy starts breaking down you’d rather move him sooner rather than later.

John: What did you eat at Xochi? Sorry if you’ve posted that somewhere and I missed it.
Keith Law: The crispy duck and some divine chocolate thing (river and rocks, something like that). To die for.

Mark: You’ve probably tackled this before but once more for idiots in the back like me… Why shouldn’t teams behave exactly like the Blue Jays are with Vlad? It just seems like good business given the parameters that exist right now. Baseball writers will wring their hands but I don’t think the teams give a damn about that. I suppose you run the risk of pissing the player off, but 7 years is a long time and feelings can (and probably do) change in that period of time. I agree that the current system is idiotic, but I cant really fault teams for doing what they think is the best business decision, and in most cases, locking in a top young player for an extra year seems like a sound business decision given the squishiness of the downsides.
Keith Law: My main baseball problem with this is the idea that you can accurately predict 1) what the player will be like 7 years from now 2) what your team will be like 7 years from now and 3) what the rules will be like 7 years from now.
Keith Law: Plus, what if the Jays had called Vlad up in June, and he’d hit like Mike Trout for three-plus months? Maybe they like their projections for 2019 more and decide to add to the team rather than subtracting? Maybe more fans show up, or buy season tickets, so there’s more cash in the till going forward? The blanket assumption that holding the player down will be, unequivocally, a positive for the team does not hold water for me.

Paul: I feel like that guy disproved his own point. If he moved because of a similar wage in a low COLA area, then cities would be forced to pay a living wage to keep their residents. Thurs showing a benefit of a Federally mandated minimum wage.
Keith Law: Fair point. We tried to pass one in Delaware a year ago, to $11, and it failed by something like two votes, so I’m planning to work to unseat my Senator, who voted against it.

Scott: Are you getting the new Castles of Burgundy app?
Keith Law: Is it out yet? I will when it’s available.

Craig R.: Keith, early MLB Draft question. Any specific HS player that might have the most helium or chance to jump up come June?
Keith Law: I just ranked a top 30 the other day; if I like a player the way you’re described, he’s ranked that way on the list.

Mike: Loved your oscar podcast, and hoping there is a regular Klaw podcast sometime in the future. Do you have any podcasts (besides G & L) that you listen to regularly?
Keith Law: thanks! I listen to Hidden Brain, Crimetown, Hugh Acheson Stirs the Pot (been *really* enjoying that lately), BBC’s The Inquiry.

Zach: Isn’t it “radical” that AOC was the most rational speaker at the hearing yesterday? Pun intended!
Keith Law: The young women reps were way more prepared and presented better than the majority of the men. Amazing what a little diversity will do for any group.

Robby: As a prospect enthusiast, who is the top Midwest draft prospect that I should go out and see when the snow melts?
Keith Law: I think Misner was the top midwest guy on my list the other day, unless you count Texas as Midwest (I do not).

Jeff: If you had to pick one guy from the Dbacks that has the highest star potential in the minors, who is it? Thomas? Chisolm?
Keith Law: Chisholm now, only real competition for that is Robinson.

Tim: Will Moncada be a horror show at 3B?
Keith Law: I saw him play it in the AFL and I thought he was adequate. Not average, but decent enough to think he might stay there.

Joe: Everyone makes fun of the “best shape of his life” reports every spring…but Cubs Twitter made a good point when David Bote came into camp in great shape. As a lower draft pick who was never a top prospect, this is probably his first offseason where he has been able to concentrate on baseball instead of saving up money for the season. Not paying minor leaguers is so counterproductive.
Keith Law: I like your point although I don’t know that this makes Bote’s projections any different.

Joshue: It’s unfair to think Hudson Potts has to move off 3B now, right? Is he the most obvious trade candidate for SD?
Keith Law: I wrote in my Machado reaction piece that he was trade bait.
Keith Law: I don’t see him profiling as a regular at another position, so dealing him is the best use of his value.

Nick: A thought I had on the whole question of service time manipulation and the depressed FA market…what if MLB decided that teams who didn’t win at least x games for y consecutive seasons, with a combination of low payroll commitment, saw a dip in their share of the league revenue. Like, a team wins fewer than 75 games for 3 years a never cracks the top 22 in league payroll during that times sees their share of the revenue drop from 1/30 to 1/45 or 1/60? Would this provide enough incentive for teams to sing more middle class FAs who will help them be competitive?
Keith Law: Yes – I’d like to see revenue sharing tied to wins. I’ve come around on changing some of these fundamental assumptions about the game, because teams have stopped distributing as much revenue to the players, and that’s untenable both as a practical matter and, to me, as a philosophical issue.

Joel: Which Luis Garcia would you rather have?
Keith Law: The one who made my top 100, of course.

Brian: To address the earlier question on a $40 minimum wage…wouldn’t people deciding to move from San Fran to more rural areas be an overall positive outcome for the country?
Keith Law: Debatable. We may not be at the ideal equilibrium, but getting more people into cities, using public transport & ditching cars, would have positive externalities.
Keith Law: Hey, it looks like Harper might have signed with the Phillies after all. That’s a lot of full diapers over nothing.

Tim: Will we see Madrigal in the show this year?
Keith Law: I would be very surprised.
Keith Law: They didn’t call up Eloy when he was ready last year. Madrigal would be barely a year out of college.

Jesus: Are you even willing to accept that there are plenty arguments that The Green Book was a very good movie? Or do you simply decide anyone who enjoyed it is wrong because you say so?
Keith Law: That would be the loaded question fallacy, “Jesus.” Kindly take the door on your left.

JD: Pretty sure you’ve answered this before, but what board games would you introduce to a ~6-year-old?
Keith Law: That’s one I’m happy to answer regularly – Ticket to Ride First Journey is perfect. I’m told the kids’ versions of Catan and Carcassonne are also fun. You can play One Night Ultimate Werewolf with kids that young too. My niece is 6 and really likes Jaipur now, which is great if a bit surprising because of the foresight required to play it. (She’s bright, though.) I think the base Dominion game could work if you’re selective about the cards you choose for the table.

Edgar: Have you seen Josh Jung? My goodness that is a smooth swing.
Keith Law: Only video. He’ll be a tough get but I will try.

David: Hi Keith. My fellow Cards fans keep suggesting Flaherty is on the same level as Buehler. I disagree – but is it close?
Keith Law: No, not really close, but Flaherty is really damn good (and, cough, I regularly ranked him on my top 100 too).

Guest: Despite the horror show that was most of the main category winners, I actually thought the Oscars were better w no host. Either give me the SNL troika as hosts for everything or go hostless, I say.
Keith Law: Agreed. I thought the show itself was mostly very entertaining, and some of the presenters were great (McCarthy/Henry, Mulaney/Awkwafina). Grierson and Leitch commented on their podcast that if Roma had won Best Picture, everyone would be talking about how great the telecast was.

justin: Are you still a believer in Arcia?
Keith Law: Yep. Still young, very very talented.

Paul: Hey Keith – sounds like UGA has a couple stud pitchers for the 2020 draft. Excited to get back to Athens??
Keith Law: Hancock maybe, Wilcox for ’21. I think I’ll end up there this year to see a road team and get a look at Schunk.

Jay: ESPN subscription renewal coming soon. Are you able to share any insights on your ongoing status at ESPN (ie. beyond 2019)?
Keith Law: I have no updates – my contract runs through December, and that’s all.

Ira: Why aren’t more players taught multiple positions when being developed in the minors? It would give teams more flexibility and the player would have added value.
Keith Law: I feel like most teams do this already, no? I hear it constantly when making calls for the rankings.

Cartoons Plural : Tyler Glasnow’s pause in his delivery, good or bad thing?
Keith Law: Neither. What may be good for one pitcher may be bad for another.

Brian: I really thought nothing would beat Don Jr as the real life GOB Bluth and then came Matthew Calamari
Keith Law: I so wanted to make a Gene Parmesan joke but Lana Berry beat me to it.

EL: Canadian baseball fan who must know: Who’s the better Naylor? The better Pompey?
Keith Law: The younger, and the younger.

Bill: Can Keon Broxton hit enough to be an everyday CFer?
Keith Law: IMO no. Did it once, for most of a year, that’s it.

JR: Do you bother watching Spring Training games on mlb.tv? I’m guessing only if you know a top prospect is going to be playing?
Keith Law: Because I often can’t see the angles I want I find the experience rather frustrating. And it’s spring training, where the games are (Allen Iverson voice) PRAC-tice.

Andy: I am trying to get into earlier Opeth. They are interesting musically, but I really can’t figure out how to like the harsh singing. While I can understand the music needs the harsh singing, it completely takes me out of the music. How do you compensate for music that’s good, other than cookie monster growling?
Keith Law: I hear you (pun intended). I can tune that out with some artists, like Opeth, less with others, like Obituary, who have long done very interesting stuff on the border of thrash and death metal but whose singer sounds like he’s flossing with a chainsaw.

Zihuatanejo: In a recent spring training game, in all but 3 PAs for the entire game the Dodger hitters swung at the first pitch they saw. Do you think that was: 1) a random thing that happened; 2) a directive from the dugout; or 3) an inside joke between the players?
Keith Law: I’d guess 2, then 3, but not 1.

Robert: Did you drop in to any new restaurants in austin last week?
Keith Law: Better Half, Micklethwait, Backspace, Cane Rosso (been to the Dallas one).

JD: Doesn’t keeping somebody down for service time reasons violate the CBA? I thought that was why management always pretends it’s for other reasons, and you occasionally get grievances. So it’s not just “the best business decision,” it’s against the rules
Keith Law: It does. But you can’t prove it if they don’t admit it.

PULLEY: Regarding Vlad Jr and the BS service time manipulation… why doesnt a player like him or kris Bryant in 2015, when it’s obvious they are being held down for manipulation purposes only come out and say something like “if I am sent down I will not negotiate any extension in the future and will fully explore free agency no matter what.”
Keith Law: Idle threat.

Zach: Minimum Wage – Federal steps in because if not Texas and Mississippi would be paying $2.50 an hour.
Keith Law: You think they’d pay that much?

Dave: I was reading Fangraphs Top Prospects list (I know you think highly of them and work with them at times) and in their writeup of Andres Gimenez (on which they had him ranked much higher than you) they mention that ppl may have gotten a different impression on him based on when they saw him. They said he looked pretty blah in the AFL but very possibily couldve been due to fatigue from a long season. I know that you saw him in person at the AFL and came away relatively “meh” on his hitting. Did you factor in the potential fatigue aspect at that point or do you feel that that may be overblown.
Keith Law: I do factor that in, but 1) that’s not the only time I saw him and 2) I ask a *lot* of people before doing those rankings.

Brian: Dylan Cozens has impressed people in Phillies camp. Does a guy like that with massive tools and massive holes always have a chance to break out, or once he hits a certain age/stage of development do the holes become very unlikely to be closed enough to take advantage of the tools?
Keith Law: One massive tool, the power, that’s it. Not a good player, just a guy with raw power.

Tyler: Today Liberty Media showed Braves’ revenue surged to $442M for 2018. Their 2019 payroll is currently lower than last year after winning the NL East. What is wrong with this picture?
Keith Law: Well, an hour ago, you might have argued they were still favorites or close to it to win the division. Now…

Jeremy: No question, thanks for the chats. Also, another newer pizza place in Phoenix that is fantastic is BASE pizza on Lincoln.
Keith Law: Adds to the list. Taking suggestions, of course.

Phillies Prospects: How frustrating is it when people repost your work that was behind the ESPN paywall? Where Siani or Newell close to the top 30?
Keith Law: Not just frustrating – it’s illegal. If you see it, say something, to me or to the site’s operators. Neither was close but I will certainly see both as they play within an hour of me. Also the HS pitcher near Philly whose name escapes me right now.

War biscuit : I believe Wilcox is a draft eligible sophomore so he may be eligible for 2020
Keith Law: Didn’t realize that, so much the better if he is.

Nat: What’s your opinion of Harper getting $330 mil over 13 with no opt-outs according to Passan?
Keith Law: Love it.
Keith Law: Phillies are the preseason favorites for the division now. Granted, that doesn’t mean much when the games start, but still, good deal.

Cartoons Plural : Saw Detroit ranked as a Top 10 farm, mainly because of apparently lots of MLB ready talent? Is it quantity or quality?
Keith Law: They’re not a top 10 farm.

Pierre: Phillis pitching sucks after Nola.
Keith Law: Good taek.
Keith Law: OK, that’s all for this week. Might do a Periscope tomorrow now that we have more news to discuss, but I’ll wrap this one up here. Thank you as always for reading, and for all of your questions. I’ll write something up on Harper this afternoon. Enjoy your weekends.

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