Uncategorized — Page 145

→ January 28, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 1/28/17.

My ranking of the top 100 prospects went up this week, and my org rankings went up last week, so ESPN set up a landing page that links to all my prospect content. When the individual team top tens and reports go up next week, you’ll be able to reach them from this page as well.

ESPN split my top 100 ranking into five posts this year, twenty prospects per page, so here they are from the top to the bottom:

I held a Klawchat Friday after the whole list was up.

And I even got another boardgame review up, this one of the new edition of the 2000 game Citadels, which is actually designed for 4 to 8 players, with rules variants included for 2 or 3. It’s definitely best with four or more, though.

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon, or from other sites via the Harper-Collins page for the book. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

And now, the links…

Aziz Ansari takes Trump to task for his anti-Muslim rhetoric in this NY Times editorial.
The House of Representatives quietly changed a rule that will make it easier for the federal government to sell off national park lands, or to transfer them to the states and let the states sell them.
The Environmental Protection Agency froze its grant programs and slapped a gag order on employees. This is happening all over the executive branch, apparently, such as the adminstration’s “control-alt-delete” strategy on climate change policy. These orders led to a series of “rogue” Twitter accounts that ostensibly will allow employees of those agencies to still leak information to the public – if those accounts are what they say they are. TIME‘s Jeffrey Kluger says Trump will lose his war on science, but doesn’t quite point out that we may all be losers before science eventually wins.
Do you live in Iowa? If so, your state’s GOP is pushing a bill to expand non-medical exemptions to vaccinations for schoolchildren. This is dangerous and utterly baseless. Call your state representatives and senators Monday and tell them to stop this madness.
Do you live in Kansas? That state’s GOP has introduced a bill defining a person’s “sex” by their chromosomes, and of course, they’re pitching it as a “student privacy and protection act,” despite zero instances of any actual violation of the privacy or safety of cis students. It’s flagrantly anti-trans, but, as with all these bills, ignores people who are not born male or female, collectively called intersex. It’s a hate bill, and even worse, it’s government-sponsored religion. Call your state representatives and senators Monday and tell them to stop this madness.
Do you live in South Dakota? Well your state GOP is actively subverting your right to vote on laws, reversing a voter-passed ethics reform package and now trying to double the number of signatures required to place something on the ballot in the first place. Do they run the state for themselves, or do they run it for the people? Call your state representatives and senators Monday and tell them to stop this madness.
Do you live in Pennsylvania? Well your state GOP gerrymandered the hell out of your state, with one district around Philly ranked among the ten “most rigged” districts in the country. This is a tougher change, because fixing it would require an amendment to the state constitution, but still, call your state reps and senators Monday and ask how to fix this so that neither party gets to do this in 2020.
Net neutrality, a fundamental principle of the open internet, is about to die after Ajit Pai became head of the FCC. It’s probably too late to stop this one – Trump’s election made this a fait accompli – I still say call your Representative and Senators on Monday to say you support net neutrality and want the Open Internet Order to remain in effect.
Sean Spicer, Trump’s Press Secretary, has killed the traditional way the media reports on a President.
Two great pieces from Esquire‘s Charles Pierce: on last week’s Women’s March and on Trump’s rabid bullshitting in his interview with ABC News. The latter piece also points out the major, major problem that Trump’s brand of absurdity covers up: A fringe, conservative, and often evangelical wing of the Republican Party is now dismantling social and environmental programs that have been in place for decades. Do most Trump voters know what rights and benefits they’re about to lose?
Dan Savage has revived his 2006 site and fundraising campaign ITMFA, which stands for something you can figure out by clicking. I never believed W was worthy of impeachment, for the record. He turned out to be an unsuccessful President, but that’s wholly different from what we’re facing now.
A neo-Nazi who’d been walking around the University of Florida campus wearing a swastika armband drew protests and was later “jumped” by two men who ripped the armband off him. You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t feel too sorry for the guy.
The Guardian looks at the incredible shrinking printed circuit board, which they call the vanishing computer. Intel, AMD, and their ilk are now printing transistors so small and so close together that they’re reaching the physical limits of what’s possible. We can’t make transistors any smaller because we’re at the atomic level here, and that means our devices, which have been increasing in speed and power for four decades, are hitting a wall.
One of the very, very few positives that might come out of a Republican Administration and Congress is a renewed emphasis on nuclear power, which environmentalists have opposed even though it doesn’t contribute to climate change. NuScale Power has applied to build the country’s first small, “modular” reactor, and within that article there’s a mention of a company trying to bring back the molten salt reactor design, which runs on ‘spent’ nuclear fuel from light-water reactors.
A law professor in Alabama fought a traffic ticket and turned it into a constitutional rights question. It’s funny, but also disturbing, given how much the city’s mayor clings to the cameras even after orders to stop using them, in part because a private company is profiting from their usage.
The woman who accused, under oath, Emmett Till of grabbing her fabricated her testimony. She’s now 82, and maybe feels some guilt, but will get away with ensuring that the murderers of a 14-year-old black boy got off scot-free.
Are we entering a post-statistics democracy, where populist distrust of traditional statistics is undermining our society, and traditional methods of gathering statistics may tell us less about our populations than they did in the past?
This piece is from 2013 but was relevant to some Twitter idiocy I encountered this week: we don’t need vitamin supplements, although the supplements industry would like us to think otherwise.
In December, a woman of Indian descent was stopped and questioned by police for “walking while brown,” in her words. One officer questioned if she was here illegally.
In Finland, people drink a milder, possibly more healthful coffee that’s mixed with dried mushrooms. I like coffee too much to try this, and also the article put this song in my head.
Hey girl, Ryan Gosling doesn’t understand how he became a meme.
This Onion article hit a little to close to home: Explanation Of Board Game Rules Peppered With Reassurances That It Will Be Fun. But why pick on Ticket to Ride in the photo, when that game’s rules are easy? Have the authors ever seen the rules for Caverna or Android: Netrunner?

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: boardgames, coffee, environment, hate bills, links, nutrition, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ January 27, 2017
→ By keith

Klawchat, 1/27/17.

The whole top 100 is now up; you can see the top 20 prospects here or go to this landing page with links to all parts of the prospect rankings package.

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon, or from other sites via the Harper-Collins page for the book. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

Klaw: It’s the highest in commodity grade, and you can get it today. Klawchat.

jay_B: Brendan Rodgers writeup mentions he struck out “just” 98 times in 110 games. Is that actually a good number or am I just misunderstanding that whole section?
Klaw: That’s actually a good number for a guy his age. Look at strikeout totals across the minors – they’re really high now, just as they are in the majors.

Carl Spackler: How close were guys like Clifton, De La Cruz, Almora and Candelario to your top 100? Would those guys all be in your 100-150ish range?
Klaw: None was terribly close, although I bet de la Cruz would have made it had he been healthy all season (or just lacked those concerns going forward).

Oden: Hi Keith– I was a little surprised that David Paulino wasn’t in your top 100. Future reliever for you, or something else keeping him out? Thanks!
Klaw: Future reliever. Like 90/10 odds. Delivery is out of control for me, can’t see starter command or ability to repeat it 100 times a game.

Phillip: Do you have a list of “next ten” that didn’t make the top 100? Or at least the guys who you remember having just missed the cut?
Klaw: That list of ten goes up tomorrow.

Mike: I did not see Reynaldo Lopez on your list. Is this because you think he is 100% a reliever or was he not eligible?
Klaw: Another one I think is absolutely a reliever. Can’t start with that delivery.

Danny: Are you shocked how bad this first week of know nothing politics went?
Klaw: Shocked, no. Dismayed, yes.

Alivio: Keith, looks like you let your ego get the best of you once again with that Yoan ranking. Seems he’s a shoe in as a top 5 prospect. Why so low on him?
Klaw: Yes, it’s all my ego, not a rational examination of each player’s strengths and weaknesses, which I then spelled out at length for everyone to see. It’s just me.

Aaron C.: As the father of a 12-year-old ball player, I was encouraged to see so many prospects of African-American descent in your top 100. In your view, is this indicative of any burgeoning reconciliation between black youth and baseball? Is the RBI program bearing fruit? Or, is it just small sample size snapshot? Thanks!
Klaw: Probably just an upturn in the cycle. I’ll feel better about it if and when we get more African-American players in the majors in regular roles that have often been closed off to them, like starting pitchers or catchers.

J.P.: Curious not to see Luke Weaver anywhere. Thoughts?
Klaw: Not even close. Two-pitch guy who lacks plane on the fastball.

Allan: Mike Soroka must have been close to being included on your top 100, right? What other Braves prospects warranted consideration?
Klaw: He’s the top Atlanta prospect who missed, but I’m not sure I’d say he was close either. Low slot guy with slight frame. Scouts were very mixed on him staying a starter; one scout I talked to who saw Rome’s whole rotation put Weigel over Soroka.

Ben: Chances of Bellinger moving to the OF permanently?
Klaw: What I’ve heard is that you’re trading a 7 glove at 1b for a 5 glove in the outfield. I don’t think the Dodgers would do that.

Mike Sixel: Would you have traded Dozier straight up for De Leon, from the Twins’ side? thanks!
Klaw: No. I don’t think that’s enough value given what Dozier has been the last two years.

Adam: Fernando Tatis Jr is someone a lot of people are including on Padres Top 10 lists, but to consider him a Top 50 prospect in all of baseball is pleasantly surprising. Is this ranking based on what he’s done, or what you expect him to do in 2017?
Klaw: It’s based in this case entirely on scouts’ feedback about him specifically and the list as a whole. I have yet to see him play.

Tom: You have mentioned teams trying to avoid sending prospects to extreme environments (Colorado Springs, Lancaster, High Desert, etc.) or ballparks (Savannah) that might adversely impact their development. What factors do teams consider when seeking player development contracts with minor league affiliates? Is there a reason some teams get stuck with affiliates that don’t really make sense for player development, geographic, or business reasons (thinking the Brewers in Colorado Springs or the Mets in Las Vegas)? I understand there are only a limited number of markets and minor league teams, but why aren’t teams more aggressive in seeking agreements with affiliates, or owning them outright (like the Braves)?
Klaw: Proximity to MLB club, quality of facilities, hitting environment, attendance are all factors. More clubs are buying affiliates to avoid the biennial shuffle.

Stevie: Hey Keith, thanks for all the great work. If you had to pick a Mets prospect to jump into the Top 100 next yr between Andres Gimenez, Wuilmer Becerra, Tomas Nido, Luis Carpio and Dez Lindsay…….who would you choose? Do you think any of them (or even more than one of them make that jump? Thanks again.
Klaw: I pick a sleeper for each team, which is exactly what you describe, in the org reports that will run next week. The 10 East teams run Monday, Central Tuesday, West Wednesday.

Johnny: No Tyler O’Neill, Keith? That’s just baffling to me, especially given his breakout year away from the CAL. Please explain!
Klaw: Breakout year? Interesting, given the mediocre contact rate. He’s also a bat-first guy who’s physically maxed out already and won’t provide value on defense. Now, to be clear, omitting a guy from the top 100 is not saying he sucks. I’m saying he’s not one of the top 100 prospects in baseball. There are more than 100 prospects in the minors right now, and always.

Danny: How close was Bradley zimmer to making the 100 cut? Thought he might eke in there after his strong afl. Thx!
Klaw: But he didn’t have a strong AFL. Lefties destroyed him there – 14 K in 30 PA.

Johnny: I assume Calhoun missed because of his defensive (lack of) prowess, but which position would suit him best?
Klaw: Batters’ box.

Jake: Did Anthony Banda get any consideration in such a desolate system such as AZ’s? (Cue “High Noon”)
Klaw: No – I wouldn’t force a guy on the list just because he’s the best guy in a bad system.

Grant: Come on, where is Tyler O’Neill? This is a GLARING omission!
Klaw: Oh, well, if it’s GLARING, I’d better get on that.

addoeh: Without giving anything away, I was surprised by your Tebow ranking. Thoughts?
Klaw: He’s ranked #666.

Ethan: Keith, I am curious your thoughts on Hunter Renfroe. With him not being in your Top 100, are you most concerned with strikeouts? Thanks for your work!
Klaw: Not just strikeouts but lack of offspeed recognition period.

Lenny: I was surprised not to see Gavin Cecchini crack the top 100. You’ve said in the past that he’s likely to stay at SS and while I know you don’t think his offensive profile is as good as the top shortstops, he had an expected year in AAA. What happened that caused you to drop him?
Klaw: He’s no longer likely to stay at shortstop. His throwing problems from 2015 got worse.

Travis: What fan base usually asks the most questions on a weekly bases?
Klaw: Right now it’s Atlanta, although there’s been a strange uptick in White Sox questions lately.

KLaw is out of his mind: A guy with makeup issues (and hasn’t pitched above High-A) is the top SP prospect over two SPs who can throw nearly as hard, have better secondary stuff – and both have seen the bigs. Well, I’m convinced. (sarcasm detector in the red)
Klaw: You lost me right there at “makeup issues.” You almost certainly know nothing about Kopech’s makeup except the secondhand stuff you’ve read. I would bet good money I know more about the subject, and obviously I’m comfortable ranking him where I did even knowing that information. And hey, feel free to omit the delivery questions I had on Reyes, since they don’t support your whining.

Craig: As a Brewers fan, I am really happy to see so many players in your top 100 at various positions (2 SPs, 2B, 3B, 2 OF) to go with Orlando Arcia. But is there anyone in the Brewers system who profiles as a future starter with good power (40 HR potential). For a team long known for sluggers, it seems odd that there isn’t a big power guy already in the minors.
Klaw: Brinson has 30 HR power, least. 40 HR power is pretty rare.

G: I know you’ve reviewed the board game “Tak” for Paste, but I was wondering if you’ve given any consideration to reading the Kingkiller Chronicle books. I’m halfway through the 2nd book at the moment, and really enjoying it, even though it falls into a lot of the traps of the fantasy genre.
Klaw: Nah, too long.

Luke: Hi Keith, love your work! The aspects of Boston/Cambridge that you miss the most/least are…?
Klaw: The cultural opportunities Boston offered.

Parrot: Assuming Zack Collins can’t stay behind the plate, how much of a gap exists between him and Matt Thaiss?
Klaw: Large. He’s got way more power. And I think he’s a better hitter than I credited him for being before the draft.

Fan of Tyler: Surprised to see Tyler O’Neill miss the list. What don’t you like about him?
Klaw: Wrong question. It’s not “like.” This is what I believe the player to be, or to lack.

Nolan LeMond: Touki Toussaint fell outside your Top 100, not terribly surprising. Do you see his future more as a wipe-out reliever than a starter at this point?
Klaw: I’d still develop him as a starter, but he has to repeat the delivery better to stay there. The reps of starting will help him even if he ends up in the bullpen.

Adam: What are your thoughts on relief pitchers in the Hall of Fame? The top four relievers per JAWS are Eck, Mariano, Hoyt Wilhelm and Goose. I would be inclined to draw the line right there. I am not in favor of Trevor Hoffman for the HOF, and I thought Bruce Sutter was a very bad selection a few years back. However, I am willing to give Rollie Fingers a pass on account of the mustache.
Klaw: I feel pretty much the same way, although Eck was a dubious choice too, sort of compounding the error of the MVP award he got.

Crumb: Any thoughts on the Dodgers Julian Leon? Or is he too far away to really project?
Klaw: He hasn’t hit in two years and can’t catch.

Van: You rated Nick Senzel extremely highly. Assuming he is still prospect eligible at this time next year, do you think there’s any chance that Taylor Trammell could be ranked higher than Senzel?
Klaw: Not really. But I think Trammell is a candidate to make a big jump this year.

Nick: One of my favorite things about the prospect list is seeing the balance between ceiling and proximity to the majors. Ever give any thought to extending it to still-young major leaguers? I.E. I would love to see how the added certainty of Addison Russell compares to the upside of Ahmed Rosario.
Klaw: No, because this is already more work than I can handle.

Jeff: Reading the reports for Yadier Alvarez & Kopech…they seem fairly similar yet one is in the mid 40s and the other in the top 10. Can you elaborate on why such a difference between these two specific players? Thanks as always for the work…this package is the whole reason I pay for insider.
Klaw: Big command difference between the two even right now. Alvarez could barely throw a strike a year ago. I don’t know if he ever gets past 40 command. Kopech I think will.

Paul: How far has Brady Aiken’s stock fallen for you?
Klaw: He was pitching with a 45 fastball last summer, so until he gets all his velocity back, he’s not a top 100 candidate.

Jeff: A lot of mentions of “too big to stay at SS”, even going back to Seager and Correa. Obviously a lot of guys will move off the position for various reasons, but at what point might we have to adjust the thinking in terms of size based on how athletes in all sports are getting bigger, faster, stronger than in prior generations?
Klaw: Correa’s defensive numbers are not good, so I think size still matters for shortstops. Perhaps Seager is an exception, although based on one year I don’t think I’d give up on the old maxim.

Denis: You once thought very highly of Jorge Soler; are you still a believer?
Klaw: Yes. Just gotta stay healthy.

Joshkvt: PEDs and assault of an elderly employee aside, it would be fair for a HOF voter to reject Manny for tanking an at-bat in an important game because he was pouting, right?
Klaw: Or for simply giving up on defense. There are fair reasons to omit him in favor of ten other candidates.

Henry: Keith, what are your thoughts on the Forsythe/De Leon trade?
Klaw: Liked it a little more for Tampa Bay. De Leon needs some tweaking but I think he’s a surefire back-end starter now.

Democ..libertari…idk: Everyone’s fine with a big government as long as their party is in charge. But once the opposition takes control they freak out because they know/realize how much power the President & company has. Sure, big governments in the right hands can do some good things, but it also makes it easier for what’s happening right now to happen. Am I wrong?
Klaw: That sounds reasonable to me. Although I feel like the Republican party pushed for smaller government for so long (something I could buy into, although as always the devil’s in the details) that it’s weird to see them now advocating lots of big government expenditures.

Nick: Have an opinion on Jose Albertos? Crazy young and small sample sized, but what’s the upside look like?
Klaw: Four innings is about as small a sample as you can get, but he’s in my Cubs top ten, so check that out on Tuesday. It’s legit stuff. Albertos’, I mean, not my Cubs top ten. Well, both, really. OK, next question.

Nick: Apparently the Cubs had the choice to send Jimenez or Torres to New York for Chapman. Think they blew it, or is it too early (and excessive knitpicking)? I’m aware of their rankings in your top 100.
Klaw: No. Either guy was going to be a big price to pay, and obviously I feel like both guys are going to end up stars. No matter who they gave up, you’d feel a little mixed right now about losing that kind of prospect even with the World Series win.

The Kid: Have you ever released a teams top 10 within the top 100 before? Braves almost snuck in there (I assume they will with the honorable mentions)
Klaw: No. I believe they did set the record with 9 guys on this year’s list, though. I don’t recall any team ever getting to 9 before.

Shaun: Jorge Mateo vs. Gleyber Torres: Who is the Yankees future SS, and does the other move to CF?
Klaw: Torres. Mateo has to show he can make good enough contact to play at any position right now. That’s two years of weak contact, and while he’s way faster than Torres, Torres has better hands and actions at short.

Randy: If Willie Calhoun could play average defense at 2nd would he have made your top 100?
Klaw: And if my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle.

Jack C.: The big issue on Twitter today is the debate on whether or not people should write for free. For example, Daren Rovell and Matthew Berry argue that you should write for free for companies to make connections, gain exposure, etc. Everyone has to start somewhere and that is how they did it. On the other hand, people are arguing that you should never write for free and that you are being taken advantage of when it comes to your hard work. I guess this relates to many things – but in relation to working in baseball (bb ops department) or writing about baseball, what is your stance on this issue? I worked in a non-baseball ops internship role in baseball for minimum wage and have been writing about baseball for a few years now with zero pay.
Klaw: I never work for free. Even now, when I can afford it, I wouldn’t write for anyone else for free. Now it’s part principle, part ensuring both parties have some skin in the game. I also truly wish – not that it’s happening in the next four years – that the federal government would call free internships what they are, an illegal circumvention of minimum wage laws.

Chris Garosi: Not really a question, but a suggestion for a book tour should one come to fruition. If you come to DC, Politics & Prose would be a great choice and then an “after party” at Comet Ping Pong which is just around the corner.
Klaw: Hell, I’d go visit CPP just to show my support for them after what the tin-foil hat Nazi crowd has done this year.

Joe: Is is too early to say the Phillies made a mistake taking Moniak first overall since Rutherford is ranked higher and cost about half as much? I could understand not taking Groome if they didn’t want a pitcher, but Rutherford plays the same position.
Klaw: It’s too early and I didn’t rank them THAT far apart.

RiverCity: This seems intuitive, but do team with major local prospects actually see them more than teams further afield? Like the Reds and Jordon Adell in Louisville or players from the University of Louisville for instance?
Klaw: I think that’s much true of someone like Josh Hader, who was a local kid for the Orioles but was not on the national radar, than someone like Adell, whom even I’ve seen 2-3 times already and I don’t live anywhere near there.

Dennis: Christian Arroyo fell from #65 all the way out of the top 100. I had been hoping he would take over 3rd base for the big league club at some point this season. What do you see happening with him long term?
Klaw: First of all, there is no “fell.” I said in the methodology piece that I do this list from scratch each year, so where a player ranked before has zero impact on where he ranked this year. This isn’t the Billboard Hot 100 and I am not Casey Kasem. As for Arroyo, he got exposed a bit by better pitching in double-A, and I don’t think he has the power for third base in the long run (or the arm?).

Richard: I’m assuming there is not much separating the top 4 shortstops for you but who among them do you think has the highest ceiling and who has the highest floor? Lowest ceiling and floor?
Klaw: I’m the most sure about Swanson, and I think Rosario has the best chance to be a superstar from that quartet.

Jason: Has a team executive ever bribed you to put one of their prospects on the top 100 or higher on the list than they deserved to be?
Klaw: No. But everyone pushes their guys – that’s normal.

Dennis: What would it take to get you out to Hawaii this year for a book signing?
Klaw: Not much convincing.

David: I get that Bobby Bradley has some holes in his game. But how much value do you put on the age vs. level metric? Led high-A in homers at 20? Seems like a good profile to have. Devers is another example, where a lot of his talent is still hypothetical.
Klaw: Age vs level is useful, but hardly definitive. Bradley is a below avg 1B with huge swing and miss.

Patrick: Keith, you got it from here. Question on reading to/with your daughter–do you do different voices for different characters in the books? Or just read them more or less straight?
Klaw: Different voices. The Harry Potter series was a real challenge.

Ty: How high could Acuna have ranked with a full season of his production?
Klaw: Not that much higher unless he’d moved up a level and performed against better pitching.

ssimo02: Klaw, I was going to print this question out and send to you in a box… Anyway, what’s your take on writing for free (for a profit-making enterprise) as an advancement strategy? Were you paid from Day 1 at BP? Thanks as always.
Klaw: I owned a piece of BP. That’s a different story.

Dave: I know you’re not an economist, but any thoughts on this idea? What if the government forgave all student loan debt? I know I’d have a lot more money to spend every month, but I’m not sure if this would have much of an impact on the economy overall.
Klaw: I’ve thought about that too. I think it’s a huge economic stimulus, albeit one that doesn’t directly help the lowest economic classes. But what’s the process – the government then pays the banks that hold all this debt? The feds don’t actually own the loans.

JP: the readers at River Ave Blues (great Yankees blog), think the reason you dropped Moncada is simply because he’s no longer a Red Sox #Meow
Klaw: That is a great blog, and that is a really fucking stupid thing for them to say.

Tracy: For all the books you read year in and year out, do you keep any sort of catalog that keeps track of what you read?
Klaw: I have a spreadsheet with everything i’ve read (and dates) for the last nine years.

Dave: Trump holds the nuclear codes. I think that’s what scares me most of all right now.
Klaw: Yes but his teeny tiny fingers won’t be able to push the button. (I have tiny hands too, so I would know.)

Rob: In regards to your tweet about not being interested in seeing “a Mel Gibson movie.” Is this solely because of his actions that landed him in so much trouble? If so, are there other artists — Polanski, Kazan, Michael Jackson — whose actions put up similar red flags? In this era, where it’s impossible to separate artist from the art they produce, what does this say about how we can suspend our disbelief and appreciate a work of art?
Klaw: I won’t see a Woody Allen movie or a Roman Polanski movie either.

Joseph: I understand your ranking of Yoan Moncada; but for those that see at 70 FV prospect ranked elsewhere, how do you explain the massive drop? Is his swing and miss issues that pronounced? Does he not still project to be a 70 FV to you?
Klaw: I simply don’t see a 70 Future Value as a likely enough outcome.

PHM: Better bat now and in the future: Bregman or Benintendi? Thanks!
Klaw: Bat alone, Bregman.

Mike: Is Juan soto any good?
Klaw: Yes, quite.

Peet: What does it mean to get on top of a fastball? Thanks
Klaw: Think about pitchers’ release points; the higher it is, the more your hand is on top of the ball at release and can drive the pitch down (with “angle”) towards the bottom fo the zone. A lower slot merely makes that more difficult, but not impossible.

Tyler S: Glad to see Tapia get some respect with a Top 60 rating. Who was the top Rockies prospect that missed your list? Any consideration for German Marquez or Ryan Castellani? Marquez advanced quickly to the majors with three consecutive seasons of a consistent ERA around 3.30 and many think Castellani is poised for a break out
Klaw: They have someone on the just missed list tomorrow.

Thomas: Is there a group of people who love telling other people what they’re allowed to do/feel more so than straight white men?
Klaw: You’re not allowed to feel that way, Thomas.

JP: was it a coincidence that Guerrero Jr and Tatis Jr were ranked back-to-back?
Klaw: Yes. I didn’t realize I did that.

Matt: Is this your least favorite chat of the year? How much hate can one person endure?
Klaw: Nah, there’s always a mid- to late-April chat or two where the “YOU WERE WRONG” people show up armed with 13 games of data. Some of the questions now are great, and a few are the whole “I read something on some blog and you don’t agree so you’re wrong!” thing.

JP: Jorge Mateo dropped significantly, how much was due to performance vs suspension?
Klaw: I’ll just add that the suspension had zero impact on where I ranked him this year. It was over something trivial.

Mikey: Any opinions on Bo Bichette’s potential upside?
Klaw: I’m a big fan of the bat, and he could be a top 100 guy next year if he settles at a position (2b for me) and hits like I expect him to.

JP: Is Javier Guerra a glove-only type SS prospect at this point?
Klaw: There’s more potential there than you’d think from the stat line.

Adam: Thoughts on Alex Jackson going back behind the plate again? How did he project there before he moved to the OF?
Klaw: He needs to be there to restore his chance of having value, and I thought in HS that he could catch. He has the arm and his body is right. That’s a position that requires hard work, though, and I think that’s his challenge now.

Tom: 2016 was certainly a disappointing year for the Phillies’ prospects but do you still think the future is bright soon for the system to produce some big league value other than Crawford? What kind of potential does ths system have tget back in the Top 10 with just bounce back/breakout years from some guys even with the graduation of Crawford?
Klaw: Yes. It’s not a bad system by any means and I think it will end up producing a lot of big leaguers, but a lot of their main guys seemed to lose something off the right tails of their distributions of potential outcomes.

Donald J: Zips has Mazara having a 1 win season. As he ascended through the minors, I saw you state a few times that he “could” be a superstar. Is that still his ceiling? How far away is he from achieving that?
Klaw: I would bet the over on that.

Nils: Hi Keith, thanks for the top 100 list. From what you have seen and heard of Moncada, does he have the potential to become more than average defensively at 2B?
Klaw: No. I liked him better at 3B, where the explosiveness plays up and his trouble getting down on balls is less of an issue.

Kevin: Do you know if they’re putting up an index of all 100 prospects like in years past? It’s a quick resource for finding GUYS instead of hunting through the different sections.
Klaw: I am going to ask about that.

Joseph: How close or far off this list is Tom Murphy? He looked solid in September, and seems to have a solid bat, is his defense what holds him back?
Klaw: Defense and dead-pull approach. Was not a consideration.

Philip: how do you usually make your eggs?
Klaw: Love a poached egg or a soft-scrambled one.

Aaron (Houston): Klaw, I think it’s amazing the amount of content (baseball, cooking, board games, music, politics, etc.) you supply, plus reading so much and providing good family time. How do you do it? Also, what kind of power potential can we see from Rafael Devers. Will the defense ever come around, or is he destined for 1st base? Thanks!!!
Klaw: I think there’s 30 HR power in there given time. He got big this winter, so I wonder if he’s just going to grow off third base – his defense there right now is actually pretty good, but man he is huge.

Matt: Just to dive a little further into Reynaldo Lopez, if you don’t mind. Two years ago, when he had very little experience and, presumably, the same delivery, he ranked 75th on your list. Two years later, after a breakout season in which he dominated the minors as a starter and looked at least passable in the Majors (8.59 K/9), why has he only fallen in your eyes?
Klaw: He hasn’t “fallen,” and that’s your entire problem here. He doesn’t have the delivery to start, ergo, he’s not on the list. He even had a big split between starting and relief work in the majors (small samples for both, though).

Philip: Do you think Mason Thompson could be a top 100 guy in a year
Klaw: I do. He’s pretty exciting. Showed up post-draft with a changeup no one, including the Padres, seemed to know he had. (He threw one inning his whole senior year due to TJ.)

Fred: Were you hesitant to put Gsellman in your top 50 given his improvements seem to have only been a few at the end of the season? I thought your scouting report of him sounded very safe.
Klaw: I think he is very safe, so that’s good. But no one thinks he has the kind of upside he’d need to be top 50.

Garrett: Didn’t expect to see him on the list given the questions on his contact, but do you think Travis Demeritte coudl eventually profile at 3B for ATL? I know you aren’t to high on Riley and I am just trying to get a glimpse of a potential future.
Klaw: Demeritte’s a 2B and might be a 70 defender there. He’s got range and quick actions there that i never saw from him at short.

Denis: Do you ever get tired of explaining to Trump supporters that a tariff on Mexican goods would simply raise the cost on American consumers and in turn, Americans would be the one’s paying for the wall? I think most people (Trump supporters) think we lose jobs to Mexico and China when the #1 job killer is technology and automation.
Klaw: Given the abysmal state of economics education in this country, I’m not surprised by any of the reaction. It’s also worth pointing out that once upon a time, the GOP was the party of lower taxes and free trade (and that was a period when I would regularly vote Republican). I miss those days. I felt like I had an actual choice.

Eduardo: As a phd student in history, I’m curious about your approach to writing. Do you sit down and type it all? Handwrite first? Handwrite notes and then type? Staring at a blank screen is panic inducing so I hand write everything first. Of course, this also handicaps my output in terms of volume. Just curious!
Klaw: I never hand write. I sit down, I type, I get up to take a leak, I type some more.

Miller: You’re obviously 1,000 times more plugged in than we are (no sarcasm, honestly), so is it fair to say you’re more down on Tyler O’Neill than other analysts are, or like most fans of teams/players, have we M’s fans been overvaluing him?
Klaw: I think if you’re just looking at his age and the stat line, you’d like him more than if you saw him and went through a process like I do to get more info on him. Part of the benefit of being young for one’s league is that the player is expected to mature physically but is already showing the approach or other skills that will make future successes even stronger. If the player’s already maxed out physically at 21 – seriously, O’Neill is jacked up like a bodybuilder – then you lose out on the projection.

Jason: Can Kyle Zimmer bounce back and be a top-100 prospect again?
Klaw: That poor guy has to stay healthy. The latest was surgery to repair thoracic outlet syndrome. Check back in March.

Dobis: What are your thoughts on Cornelius Randolph in Philly?
Klaw: Can hit, questionable in left, not sure if it’ll be more than average power. Had some injury troubles last year that probably obscured his skills.

Dobis: What do you think of the upside for Nolan Jones in Cleveland? Was he really a first round talent?
Klaw: I think he was a first-round talent, but he was a little overmatched in the AZL.

Jim: Keith, regarding the De Leon-Forsythe trade, I’ve read some claims that you dissed De Leon’s MLB stint, focusing on his low swing-and-miss rate (over 300 pitches). Given your long-held stance on SSS, I find their charge curious. Are you being trolled?
Klaw: Two things. One, the original capsule on De Leon was messed up (on my end, not my editors). It had his number of swings and misses on changeups (9) as if that were his total number (32, I believe – all from baseballsavant). Two, no, that wasn’t the basis for his ranking, but something that I felt supported the point that his high K rate from triple-A and double-A might not carry over to the majors. He has no breaking ball, and his fastball is just average and a little true. He’s aggressive, he throws strikes, he’s an awesome kid, and the changeup is a solid 55 for me. I like him, but if you just look at the minor league stats you might see an ace, and he’s not that.

G: Was pleasantly surprised by your Josh Bell ranking. Do you think with the weight he’s lost this offseason he could play a passable right field were a McCutchen trade to happen?
Klaw: I would just leave the guy at first and let him work on the position. I never thought he had the arm for RF – I figured he’d end up in left.

Jake the Snake: Was Jake Bauers left off the list because he can’t hit a homerun out of coors field? If he add power this year could he make the mid season top 100 or is that like saying if my aunt had balls, she would be my uncle?
Klaw: I just don’t see big upside for a guy with no projection and, as you said, limited power. We don’t see many 1b with good OBPs but fringy power, so it’s hard to look at him and say he’s more than a regular, but he might be an exception there.

Ben: Are you going to take a trip down to Vanderbilt soon? A couple friends of mine are big fans and would love to buy you a beer if you’re seeing Kendall and Wright.
Klaw: I fully intend to come to Vanderbilt this year to see those guys and be in Nashville because Nashville is awesome. Just don’t pass any hate bills before I get there.

Daniel: Hi Keith, Great work as always. I appreciate all the work. How close was Luis Urias to the top 100? I understand the lack of power, but Ive read some scouting reports where they mention some pop in that little frame .
Klaw: Not close. Not even the first or second Padre off the list.

Jake: I know you’ve questioned Austin Rileys bat speed in the past, but did his second half numbers change your mind at all on him?
Klaw: Not in the least.

John: Can’t Brandon Nimmo get some back of the list love? 159WRC+. How many guys are doing that?
Klaw: Doesn’t hit lefties, has to play a corner, and that stat you cited is an extreme outlier from his partial season in Las Vegas.

Tom(2): How frustrating does it get each year when the following scenario happens repeatedly: You: Research player by talking to scouts, execs, and actually SEEING the player in person, give detailed explanation of player ranking. Fan: Scans another writer’s list, sees player ranked high, satisfies own confirmation bias, claims you know nothing because player isn’t ranked high enough.
Klaw: Well, it’s part of the job, I guess – plus the rise in the cult of the amateur, where anyone who can buy a video camera thinks he’s a scout. (I’m not a scout, BTW, but I talk to a lot of them.)

Dobis: Does Donnie Dewees have potential to ever make the top 100?
Klaw: Not in my opinion.

Alex: As has also been pointed out on twitter, hiring only those who have worked unpaid internships basically guarantees you will only hire affluent people who can afford to work for free.
Klaw: And I’d bet your talent pool would be rather homogenous at that point.

Matt: I’m curious to get your take on Nats’ OF prospect Juan Soto, who is getting a lot of buzz around these parts. Is he a guy who could jump way up the list with an impressive full season debut this year?
Klaw: He’s #2 in the Nats’ top ten.

Eric: You’re consistently the “high” prospect guy on Dom Smith. What do you think his career looks like? Peak seasons? Thanks for the chats as always!
Klaw: High averages and OBPs, 20+ homers, good defense, and too many GIDP.

Adam: Does Christian Arroyo profile best as a second baseman?
Klaw: I’d like him a lot more over there.

Lark11: Awful news about Matt Imhoff. Do you have any anecdotes or final thoughts on what he might have become on the mound?
Klaw: He was a bit of a longshot because he was such a soft tosser, but that is as bad a break as you can imagine. For folks who don’t remember, he was doing some routine stretch-band work when the metal piece to which he’d attached his band came off the wall and damaged his eye so much doctors had to remove it. I really hope he just has a good quality of life going forward. That’s beyond baseball.

Tom(2): Glad the Angels finally got someone in the Top 100 again, but realistically, how far away from the ML roster is Jones? 2-3 years?
Klaw: More like 3-4 years.

Joe: Any opinions on Dante Bichette Jr’s potential upside?
Klaw: The Yankees guy? Org player. No upside. If you meant Bo with Toronto, I discussed him earlier in the chat.

BD: Have you ever rated a 17 year old as high as you have Maitan at 59?
Klaw: Yes. Sano was around #50 at one point, and I had Villalona way too high on a list one year before we knew (or I knew) he would swing at everything and was going to kill somebody.

Kay: Would (have?) you ever do a list based on position? The Top 100 is always crowded with SS-CF types (reasonably so) but it would be neat to see where prospects stacked up against their positional compatriots
Klaw: We do this every year after all the lists run. I don’t know exactly when that’s running this year, but it’ll be soon.

Tom: Sorry my question about the philosophy behind Watchmen and how it relates to humanity wasn’t good enough to deserve an answer.
Klaw: It was way too long, and I have over 500 unanswered questions in the queue (although 100 are Eric submitting that Dom Smith question – please don’t do that again, Eric).

Alex: Do you agree that the problem with Trump is not so much his policies but rather the man delivering the message? Another person trying to implement the same policies would not have the same amount of resistance as he does.
Klaw: Oh, some of his policies would get resistance, like ACA repeal or making federal park land essentially worth zero dollars.

Kevin: Is Adam Walker just AAA filler at this point? I see that he was a top 20 prospect for the O’s on MLB.com’s final 2016 update
Klaw: He can’t hit and has no position. I don’t see ranking him anywhere.

Dave: Could Marcos Molina stay healthy/have value if shifted to the bullpen?
Klaw: I think that’s where he ends up, but why not start him this year and see how it goes? Lets the Mets manage his innings more easily anyway.

KS: No Verdugo or O’neill??
Klaw: Verdugo is on the list.

Philip: Did Greg Allen get some consideration or no? Seems like he could have a Inciarte type career
Klaw: No. Nice player, maybe a good fourth OF, has to bump up at least a grade on defense to be what you’re describing.

Keith: What kind upside does Joe Rizzo have? Any chance he surges up the rankings with a big year?
Klaw: I don’t see the upside there for this. Short, squat guy with hit tool but no projection and unclear position.

Pat D: Just to be fair to RAB, it’s the commenters, a lot of whom I can tell you from first-hand experience are blithering idiots, making those Moncada comments, not Mike or any of the actual people working at the site.
Klaw: I know that – the folks who run RAB are good people and have been very, very supportive of my work for a long time.

Bob: The Braves had 9 prospects in your list this year. Impressive. Have you had years when a team placed no one in the top 100?
Klaw: The Royals and Dbacks had none this year. The Angels missed last year. The Brewers missed in either 2013 or 2014.

Jack C.: Is it worth spending 50K+ on an MBA nowadays? I just graduated with my undergrad and managed to score a pretty decent paying job. I still hope to break into baseball ops one day. Thoughts?
Klaw: No. In most fields, the MBA doesn’t pay off. If you have a promotion or raised promised to you if you get an MBA, or are in one of the few fields that truly values the MBA, that’s different. For baseball, though, no.

Ridley Kemp: My wife just got hired at a board game bar. Do we live in marvelous times or what?
Klaw: That’s a good job. I might do that for free.

MikeM: Does your projection of Mateo change if the Yankees move him to CF? His speed has the potential to make him a plus defender there.
Klaw: His speed gave him the potential for plus defense at shortstop but it’s not happening.

Mark: Your Moncada ranking is interesting as I figured he would be a shoe in for the #1 spot just based off of all the hype I’ve read about him and him being Minor League Player of the Year. Granted ranking him 17 isn’t anything to sneeze at but from the write up it sounds like you’re very concerned with his swing and miss. Obviously there have been former #1 prospects that were busts (like Delmon Young) how would you rank Moncada’s bust potential?
Klaw: Minor League Player of the Year doesn’t affect my opinion of a player – it’s just a vote. I think the swing itself leads to swing and miss and a major hole that he’s going to struggle to close.

Jack C.: If Lucas Erceg puts on another 10-15 pounds of muscle, could he be a legitimate 30 HR guy? Obviously, some other things have to break his way, but I like his upside.
Klaw: The swing isn’t built for that.

J.J.: Keith, you’re put in charge of Top Chef next season and can do whatever you want. What would you do? What city would you film out of?
Klaw: Nashville deserves it.

Joseph: What do you think about Brandon Marsh? I know he didn’t play, and was injured, but reports going into the draft sounded very encouraging
Klaw: Yep, that’s about right – encouraging, but we need to see him face pro pitching. The injury was a stress fracture in his lower back that isn’t supposed to cause any long-term problems.

HugoZ: Say, isn’t citing a “Nobel Prize winning” economist to support your point just an appeal to authority?
Klaw: No, because I didn’t cite his prize as the reason his argument was valid. His argument was valid because it matched mine!

Jeff: What are your thoughts on Conor Jones, Cards rookie? Any consideration for this list or 100-150 ranking?
Klaw: No consideration. Needs to get the Virginia out of his delivery.

Nelson: Thinking of Mike Soroka’s justified exclusion from you too 100 would a young Tom Glavine make it at a similar stage in his career? If so, why?
Klaw: Glavine probably wouldn’t make it, because I’ve never projected a pitcher to get a strike zone six inches wider than everyone else’s.

Klaw: That’s all for this week – thank you as always for the questions and for reading all that content this week. Just missed column runs tomorrow, org reports next week, and other stuff, with another chat likely next Friday. Have a good weekend, everyone.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: klawchat

→ January 26, 2017
→ By keith

La La Land.

My top 100 prospects ranking is rolling out this week, with prospects #40 to #21 in today’s post. Over at Paste, I reviewed the new edition of Citadels, a classic game from 2000 that plays 2-8, and comfortably plays five-plus – I’d say it’s best with at least four.

Imagine if Once were set in L.A., opened with a classic musical-film song and dance number, and starred two ridiculously beautiful people wearing nice clothes and singing happier songs?

Once didn’t get the love it deserved from the Oscars, although it later became a cult hit and a Tony Award-winning musical. La La Land is a lot more ambitious and bigger-budget than Once was, and it’s going to win a lot more Academy Awards, but at their hearts are quite similar stories about love affairs that just can’t last, set to music.

Of course, that’s a bit glib – La La Land is more than just that. It’s part homage to the bygone era of the big Hollywood musical. It’s a feast for the eyes, with vivid colors in the background and on Emma Stone. It’s a little bit parody, and then it folds a little back in on itself and plays along with its own gag. It’s also a really good time, which makes it a rarity among the Best Picture nominees this year. La La Land is an outright pleasure to watch, even with the half-and-half ending, and with so many movies draped in grief, regret, sorrow, and isolation this year, it stands out even more.

Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling play Mia and Seb, two beautiful people struggling in their careers in LA – she an aspiring actress working in a coffee shop, he a jazz pianist playing Christmas music in a nightclub and then, in a sight gag that Stone turns into something much more, in a bad ’80s cover band. They meet more than once and don’t hit it off right away, but eventually the movie keeps pushing them together until there’s a spark, along with a song about how there’s no spark between them. Eventually, he gets a medium break, playing in a jazz-pop band led by his old frenemy Keith (played by John Legend), which forms the first wedge between the star-crossed lovers, although they manage to careen back and forth until the movie’s epilogue, five years later, where we see that, even in the movies, sometimes you just can’t have everything after all.

This is a musical, but not an old-time musical. If you just saw the opening scene, a huge ensemble dance number set in a traffic jam on a highway on-ramp, you’d expect something like the classics, where people just spontaneously start dancing while singing their dialogue. Instead, this is a regular movie with a handful of songs, and it isn’t until the end, when Emma Stone sings for her Oscar with “The Audition Song” (earning the movie one of its two Best Song nominations) near the very end, that we get another flashback to the halcyon days of Hollywood. Did critics who’ve said of La La Land that “they don’t make movies like this any more!” realize that Hollywood never made movies like this in the past?

Stone really owns this film in just about every way. Her character is better-developed, more three-dimensional, and shows real growth over the film. When Mia and Seb have their first quarrel as lovers, Mia holds her own in the argument, and Stone manages to portray inner turmoil on a face that’s outwardly composed until Seb finally insults her enough for her to leave. That’s Stone’s greatest achievement in the movie – her character is often put in situations where she’s turning from one emotion to another in a flash, and she can do this without making you aware that this is just someone acting.

The movie also uses her as a blank canvas of sorts, running her through an array of dresses in solid, vibrant colors that seemed to underscore the fact that, hey, we’re in California, where everything is sunny and bright and colorful all the time. It doesn’t hurt that she can get away with wearing all of those colors, or that her eyes seemed to be green in one scene and blue in another, but it ensures that your eyes are on her in nearly every scene.

Gosling, meanwhile, can turn on the charm when his character permits, but Seb is prone to this sort of insular, sulking behavior that I thought was as offputting as his strange amalgam of New York and Philly accents. And neither of these two is winning any awards for dancing, although, as always, we must give more credit to the woman for dancing backward and in heels.

Some of the L.A. jokes were a little too on the nose – the Prius gag, the gluten-free line – and the movie is funnier when it draws humor from situations rather than punchlines. When Seb is trying to explain jazz to Mia, and she answers with, “What about Kenny G?” it’s his reaction that drives the entire scene. He is totally beyond exasperated, like he wants to claw the skin off his face, yet is so passionate about the subject and obviously smitten with her that he tries to talk her down off the smooth-jazz ledge. It’s probably my favorite Gosling scene in the movie, especially since Seb’s ego returns to the center of his character towards the end of the film.

The movie ends with a dream sequence that shows an alternate reality five years on, what might have happened if things went … well, the other way, and I think here director and writer Damien Chazelle did two things: paid homage to classic musicals in more explicit fashion, and reminded the Academy just one more time to vote for him. I caught direct allusions to An American in Paris and Royal Wedding, and Funny Face, but I’m no expert on the genre and assume I missed many more. In that sense, it was the most engrossing part of the movie – you’re looking at the flip side of the movie’s internal reality, and also watching the two of them move through a rolling reference to Hollywood history.

I’ve seen four of the Best Picture nominees and hope to see as many as eight – I have zero interest in a Mel Gibson movie, and even less in that particular one – although I might only get Lion after the awards ceremony. Of the four I’ve seen, I think La La Land would get my vote. It just does more, and does more well, than Moonlight or Manchester by the Sea, both great movies but less ambitious than this one. I think any would be a worthy winner, but I rank things, and I currently have La La Land at #1.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2016 best actress nominees, 2016 best picture nominees, 2016 movies, highly recommended, movies, musicals, oscar winners, potential oscar nominees

→ January 22, 2017
→ By keith

Top Chef, S14E08.

Just another quick reminder that my farm system rankings are now up for Insiders; you can see the top ten here and from there see the other two-thirds of the list. The top 100 starts tomorrow with prospects 100-81.

What does it say that when I see an episode of Top Chef is an hour and 15 minutes, I’m disappointed?

* Was last week’s elimination all really that dramatic? Jamie’s dish sucked. And it wasn’t good the week before. He’d never won an elimination challenge. There wasn’t much evidence at all that he belonged in the upper half of chefs on the show. Yes, he did a noble thing, but it’s not like a front-runner walked away.

* It’s Restaurant Wars. The guest judges are the guys who run front and back of the house at Eleven Madison Park in NYC’s Flatiron District. They charge $295/person for their tasting menu, which is more than I have ever spent on any meal. They have a cookbook out, but I haven’t seen it.

* “Immunity is off the table. Just as well with people throwing it away.” Padma getting a little snarky with the intro here.

* They’re splitting the two teams into different days, working in the same space, which I suppose evens out the playing field a little bit on the stuff I care about least (décor, ambience, etc.).

* Katsuji and Shirley pull the ‘leader’ knives and get to draft their two teams. Katsuji picks Sheldon, and Shirley picks Brooke. Katsuji takes Casey, and Shirley takes Sylva. I think Katsuji absolutely botched this – Shirley ended up with maybe the two best chefs remaining, certainly the odds-on favorite in Brooke. Katsuji takes Tesar, which leaves Shirley with Emily. Katsuji says he doesn’t care for Tesar’s personality, but “he’s 100 times better than Emily (as a cook), that’s for sure.” I agree … but ouch. Shirley’s team will cook on the first night, and Katsuji’s on the second. Given the end result, there’s a lot of irony in this entire sequence.

* Tesar tells the team, “I like a woman in the front of the house, I’m not being sexist.” Yes, you are being sexist. That’s definitely sexist. Casey takes the role, though, because she’s comfortable with it (and probably has the best personality on the team, too). Tesar somehow talks his way into being exec chef, and then talks the team into doing a “low country” menu even though I don’t think that is any of their strengths. They’re calling it Southern Belle, which Katsuji says is the most famous strip club in South Carolina. (I guess he’s right – it is at least a famous strip club, according to my Internet.)

* Shirley’s team is going seafood-driven, which seems like something they can execute better than the other team can execute low country.

* Sylva’s would-be restaurant Maison 208 was burned down by an arsonist in September 2015. If I’m reading the court stuff correctly, the suspect, Stephen Pettiway, goes to trial on Monday.

* Now my least favorite part of Restaurant Wars – the décor stuff. I’m here for the food. I rarely if ever remember what a restaurant looked or ‘felt’ like. I remember the food.

* Emily wants to do chorizo in a squid-ink pasta dish, but Shirley and Sylva more or less command her not to do it. She’s also doing miso butterscotch and a buttermilk cake.

* I wonder if Top Chef talks to Whole Foods before each season starts and has them order huge quantities of things like fish, shellfish, pork, etc.

* Brooke says Shirley is “a little bossy but in a good way” and has the “loudest voice in the room.” You do need to be a little bossy here, though. You don’t have a lot of time and you have too much to do – much of which involves coordinating on shared dishes, or in the case of the front-of-house person, trusting the completion of your dish to someone else.

* Tesar seemed to want jumbo lump crab at the stores, but strikes out at two places, and now is using pasteurized crab meat even though he says it has an inferior texture. That feels like foreshadowing.

* Casey is making a strawberry dish – she says they’re really good this season, so what time of year is this? Their season here is June, and further south it’d be the spring. Also, she’s slicing the tops straight off; I usually use a paring knife to hull them so I don’t lose any of the red ‘meat’ of the berry near the top. I don’t think my way is really slower.

* Katsuji says at his first job he was illegal so his boss paid him less than minimum wage. There’s a lot to unpack there, and I’m going to let it pass me by.

* I hate when people call it panna coat-a. It’s cotta. Like cot, the thing you sleep on. Think about having a lotta cotta. Also, it’s not that good. Italian cuisine has so many better desserts.

* Ah yes, Kristen was eliminated in Brooke’s season of Restaurant Wars, one of the absolute worst things i’ve ever seen on this show because it felt so utterly orchestrated.

* Just once I want the front of house person to greet Padma with, “I’m sorry, I don’t have a reservation under that name.”

* Latitude (Shirley’s team) goes first. The 11MP front of house guy doesn’t love the benches. Who. Cares.

* Brooke made cured king salmon with pickled kohlrabi, marcona almonds, and “tiger” milk (come on, no one asked if she milked a tiger?). Emily’s first dish was squid ink tagliatelle with bread crumbs and shrimp butter. They love Brooke’s. Emily’s pasta isn’t great; the texture is off, her butter sauce is heavy, and there’s not a lot of shrimp flavor in it.

* Shirley made a snapper with bone broth, chile de arbol, and wild mushrooms. Sylva’s dish is pan-roasted halibut with fennel dust, tomato chutney, and mushroom rice. Tom says it would have been better if Shirley had seared and then braised the snapper. Sylva’s gets raves.

* It can’t be a coincidence that the two most attractive women on this show – maybe the two most attractive contestants in Top Chef’s history? – are in the front of house. I get that actual restaurants do this, probably because it’s effective (and sexist, but I doubt most businesses care about that), but was that actually both teams’ intent here?

* Emily’s dessert was a poppy seed buttermilk cake with miso butterscotch, pistachios, and blackberries. Shirley made a plum wine panna cotta with cherries, cashews, tarragon, and freeze-dried lychees. Emily’s was pretty good all across. Shirley’s panna cotta is terrible. It sounds like she used too much gelatin, which would make it overly firm. Customers are making terrible faces as they eat it.

* Meanwhile, the other team’s kitchen is turning into a disaster across the board, with chefs dropping food on the floor. Tesar’s already bickering with Katsuji, the start of a long run here of Tesar causing problems on his team and blaming everyone else for them.

* The judges love all the crap I don’t care about, like décor, menus, etc. Shut up and eat.

* Tesar boasts that he conceived an “amazing organizational system of tickets and expediting,” but “there are servers who just can’t get anything right.” Then he should have trained them. He seems to not know what’s happening on the tickets, really. It’s all the servers’ fault in his mind, and he’s talking down to them too. Meanwhile, judges have to wait a while before first course.

* Tesar’s first dish is this weird pimento crab dip with a sesame seed cracker, while Katsuji’s first (of three!) is a sweet potato tamale with charred chili onion relish. They only sent 3 of each dish to the table, and the plates are small. The judges hate Tesar’s and dislike Katsuji’s.

* If you hear the host(ess) say “sorry about the wait” you pretty much know which team is losing.

* Anyone else catch Padma say “Easy on the tongue” to whoever was serving her that dish?

* Katsuji’s fried green tomato and almond gravy over beef tongue was apparently very good. Sheldon’s acorn squash stew with sorghum cod and eggplant had no acidity, no texture, and weird flowers sprinkled on top.

* Casey is trying to put out the virtual fires backstage and thus not seating people. In most seasons, I think that would put her on the chopping block, right?

* Katsuji’s blackberry cobbler with Patron whipped cream is a mess – the dough isn’t cooked, and why is there tequila in the whipped cream? Casey’s one dish is a strawberry-lemon sorbet, buttermilk curd, crumbled meringue, and roasted strawberries. Padma really loves it, Tom likes it, so maybe Casey’s safe. Tom says the whole meal read not-southern to him.

* Judges’ Table: Red team (Shirley) wins, obviously. The judges are praising pretty much all of the dishes, even the ones they didn’t really like, although they seem to skip over Emily’s pasta and Padma gets in one dig at the panna cotta. The individual winner is Brooke, who had the best dish of anyone on either team, and ran the front of house well.

* And then we get the disaster team, which devolves as quickly as any losing team situation I can remember. Tom says they couldn’t recover when the system broke down, but the food was a problem too. Tom mocks the crab dip, saying he saw the recipe “back in 1970” and that it tasted like tinned fish. When asked why he only did one dish, Sheldon blames the “tension and anarchy” in the kitchen. Tesar lawyers up with a narrow admission, saying “I take responsibility for those missteps in the expediting.” They ask Katsuji why he chose not to lead. Those two knuckleheads are flat-out arguing with each other in front of the judges and Padma has to tell them “all right!” to make it stop. I think Tesar is more full of it than Katsuji here – and Katsuji actually delivered one good dish, while Tesar brought the worst dish on other team.

* In the stew room, Tesar just unloads on Katsuji for all sorts of unrelated stuff. That’s bush league.

* Padma argues to exempt Casey and everyone agrees. She says the crab dish was the worst item on either team. Katsuji did one great dish and one poor one. He ends up eliminated, essentially penalized for choosing not to take the lead role. He’s actually quite gracious to Tesar after he’s eliminated. I really think Tesar deserved it – he led poorly, and he made the worst dish of anybody.

* On the whole, though, this was a pretty good episode – more focus on the food than usual, no gimmicks, and the usual one great team and one fiasco. We saw too much of the losing team’s kitchen conflict, and I would have liked to have seen more about how the winning team’s fish dishes were made.

* Rankings: Brooke, Sylva, Sheldon, Shirley, Casey, Tesar, Emily.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: top chef, tv

→ January 21, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 1/21/17.

My annual prospect ranking package started to appear on ESPN.com this week for Insiders, with the farm system rankings coming in three separate parts: teams ranked 1 to 10, teams ranked 11 to 20, and teams ranked (sad trombone) 21 to 30. I held a Klawchat here on Friday, after all three parts were posted.

The top 100 itself will roll out over five days this upcoming week, 100 to 81 on Monday and 20 to 1 on Friday. I will probably chat Friday afternoon again so that you have the whole list available to you before I take your questions.

Over at Paste I reviewed the really adorable boardgame Kodama: The Tree Spirits, a great family game with a new mechanic that almost feels a little artistic.

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon, or from other sites via the Harper-Collins page for the book. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter, where, I kid you not, someone actually told me “you should stick to baseball” in response to the last edition, because apparently I can’t talk about whatever I want to talk about in my own fucking newsletter

Gah. The links:

Man Boasts Of Sexual Assault, Later Inaugurated 45th President Of United States. Not The Onion.
Journalists covering President Trump are in for a hellish experience, one where he’ll abuse and attack reporters whose coverage he dislikes, and where he’ll simply lie his way past serious questions. Best of luck. We’re all counting on you, so no pressure.
The New York Times interviewed numerous women who voted for Donald Trump. The answers are all different, yet all horrifying – the rationalization, the economic ignorance, the invocations of the paradox of tolerance, and so on. Yet the message is fairly clear – the Democratic Party did not do a good job convincing enough voters that Trump’s policies were harmful. Either they didn’t have the right messaging, or they didn’t reach enough people, or both. But we can’t blame voters – even when they say dumb things – for not voting the way we wanted them to.
I’m writing this as the global Women’s Marches are ongoing, and enjoyed seeing that even a small group of visitors to Antarctica are participating.
A reader of mine wrote this humorous op ed on why Trump’s vaccine-denialist pandering angers even nice doctors.
Longread: The Atlantic looks at Iceland has curbed substance abuse among teenagers. Quick summary – it’s complicated, and it involves parents stepping up their efforts.
A long-running lawsuit against Cargill and Nestle over turning a blind eye to child slave labor on African chocolate plantations may finally get its day in court, and if this does nothing more than scare large chocolate manufacturers into ensuring their suppliers don’t use slaves, that would be a positive outcome.
Actress and activist Ashley Judd gave a TED talk in October about online misogyny, and within it argued video game developers must wipe misogyny from their games and that all tech companies must fight sexism in the workplace. (The entire TED talk is embedded in both articles.)
Everyone seemed to mock Betsy DeVos’ answer to the question about guns in schools during her confirmation hearing, but did that cause the reporting to miss just how crazy and/or unprepared she was?
Speaking of Ms. DeVos, in this 2014 piece Jeb “Mobute” Lund looked at the 15 worst owners in sports, including the DeVos family, who own the Orlando Magic.
A reader sent along this link on how research into turmeric’s medicinal properties was a waste of time, because the molecules within it (curcumin) that show anti-inflammatory properties on their own don’t do so within the body.
Shake Shack has pledged to source all its chicken according to higher animal welfare standards … by 2024. I understand these things take time, so overnight promises are worthles, but seven years for a company that doesn’t even sell that much chicken? Within the piece, however, it says all the eggs they use are now from chickens raised cage-free, so at least they have a history of meeting such goals.
I wrote my thoughts on season 4 of Sherlock earlier in the week, but EW interviewed showrunner Stephen Moffatt about the season and the finale as well, and he offered some truly cringeworthy comments on the Molly sequence in that last episode.
The national soccer team from Timor-Leste was kicked out of the Asian Cup for using Brazilian players with fake documents.
I love a good strategy boardgame, but this five-hour, £175 game now on Kickstarter is beyond my tolerance for the genre.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: boardgames, chocolate, food science, links, rape culture, sherlock, soccer, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ January 20, 2017
→ By keith

Klawchat, 1/20/17.

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon, or from other sites via the Harper-Collins page for the book. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

Klaw: The situation may not be rectified. Klawchat.

Gene Mullett: Will you be doing any book signings? Is there any way to get a signed copy of your tome via mail?
Klaw: I will do some book signings, but as of right now nothing specific is planned, and it’s more up to Harper Collins than me. I will figure out some way to sign books if I’m not doing many appearances for that.

Ryan: Thoughts on the Bautista deal?
Klaw: I’ve said there’s no such thing as a bad one year deal. That’s pretty much how I feel here. The Jays get to roll the dice on having Bautista get healthy and produce more than he did last year; if he does 2015 again, it’s a steal.

Ryan: Would you rather Bautista at 1 year, $18m, or Trumbo at 3 years, $37m?
Klaw: Bautista, easily.

Adam: Is Seth Beer the early favorite for the first pick in the 2018 Draft?
Klaw: I don’t think so. I think he’s just the name you know.

Kramer: I have asked you about Carson Kelly before and you said you think he is an everyday catcher. Why do you think the upside is? I know he was originally drafted for the bat and has taken to Catcher well defensively. Is there more to the bat that could come out as it develops.
Klaw: Yes, I think there is – and I think we’ve even seen a little more of that this past year. There’s an old baseball maxim about catchers developing later offensively because of the physical and mental toll of the position. I don’t know how true that is, or how you’d really measure that given the various ways catchers become catchers, but we’ve seen a lot of examples of late-blooming hitters behind the plate, like Lucroy and Mesoraco, enough that I try to keep an open mind on guys like Kelly.

Greg: Hey Keith, I didn’t see a write up from you on the Gohara trade. What are your thoughts on him? Did you like the move for Atlanta?
Klaw: He was going to be #2 on my Seattle list, and is on the top 100. No-brainer for Atlanta, even with the very high risk Gohara brings. Huge LHP with ++ fastball and the chance for a plus breaking ball.

Anonymous: Of all your farm system rankings, name a couple of systems that have the best group of reliever prospects.
Klaw: Twins come to mind immediately. Chargois, Reed, Melotakis, Burdi if healthy, etc.

Frank: You have been less positive about Aaron Sanchez than some in the past. How has last season (and reports from this winter) changed your perspective on his career, if at all?
Klaw: Not true. I ranked Sanchez as a top 20 prospect in baseball one year.

Ryan C.: Could the Phillies trade cesar to the dodgers for buehler and another prospects? Now that they signed saunders they could move Kendrick to 2nd and play one of their younger outfielders in left.
Klaw: There is no way you’re getting Buehler for Cesar Hernandez. That’s wishful thinking to the extreme.

guren: Hi Keith. Would you be in favor of removing undeserving players from the Hall of Fame in order to reset the baseline for induction?
Klaw: Not really. I’d just prefer to see us remedy past mistakes by declining to repeat them.

addoeh: Is Omar Vizquel going to be today’s Jack Morris for HOF voting? Those that use phrases like “eye test” will vote him in. Those that use advanced stats won’t.
Klaw: Yes, it’s already starting. The objective data are clear that he’s not deserving. The illusion of memory – or the simple desire for something false to be true – can’t trump that. And oh, by the way, Vizquel got exactly one MVP vote, 8th on someone’s ballot in 1999, in his entire career. So the guy was never considered by any voter as a top ten player in his league except that one time, but he’s a Hall of Famer? These are essentially the same voters, and they’re just changing their minds on a whim, because he was a nice guy or some shit like that.

ron: what are your thoughts on the phrase “not my president?”
Klaw: He’s the President of the country where I live, of which I am a proud citizen. Therefore, he is ‘my’ President, even though I do not support him, his actions, or his proposed policies. I don’t get to pretend there’s some shadow government in exile and that that’s my president instead.

Nick: If Swanson had two more PAs during last season and was ineligible, is the Atlanta system still #1?
Klaw: I get a bunch of these questions every year, and the answer is always the same. One prospect just doesn’t make that kind of difference. This week’s trade of Dan Straily wasn’t factored into the org rankings because it happened too late, but I wouldn’t move any teams for it either.

Hobbes: Any chance Hunter Greene is a SS instead of a pitcher?
Klaw: Definitely a chance, but he does have to answer real questions about his hit tool. There’s power, but I don’t know if he will actually hit.

Colored Marbles: How do you assses Quintana’s value vs Sale’s value in the market? Quintana has an additional year of control. Should Quintana net more in return than Sale?
Klaw: Sale’s the slightly better pitcher, Quintana has the extra year of control, so I think it’s fair to say you expect as much for Q as for Sale. I don’t see a case for saying more or less.

JC: Keith…do you see StL as a potential top 5/top 10 farm next year if some of their low minors players have a good 2017?
Klaw: That’s true of almost every team in the 11-20 range. Plus we’ll have another draft, another July 2 period, another trade deadline…

Phillip: It seems pretty set in stone that Alex Jackson is moving back to catcher for the Braves, what does this do for his value, and where do you anticipate he will be assigned this spring?
Klaw: Helps his value right off the bat, but the bat is the question, isn’t it? He hasn’t hit enough to be an everyday catcher yet.

Denis: If you are the Dodgers, do you hold onto Bellinger at all costs knowing he’s A-Gon’s replacement next year or do you flip him in a trade for Dozier?
Klaw: Hold him. No way I deal him for Dozier. Or anyone, practically speaking.

Pete: Keith, I think a lot of Phillies fans are mad about being outside the top 10. Can you explain why you don’t see this as a top 10 system?
Klaw: Because there are ten better? Saying your team should be in the top 5 or 10 is meaningless unless you can make a specific case that they’re better than, say, Cincinnati or Milwaukee. And really, the Phillies’ system as a whole did not have a good 2016. Crawford struggled. Appel got hurt. Quinn got hurt, which he does a lot. Kilome struggled way more than he should have. Williams regressed badly. They had a nice draft, but not a great one; Moniak wasn’t #1 on my board then and he’s below a few other 2016 draftees on the top 100. Now, I’m just listing negatives here – there are many, many positives – but that gives you some sense of why they might not be as high as you, thinking only of their system and not others, expected.

Nick: When calling my (LA) senators’ offices about the cabinet appointees, where do I even start? I feel like I wouldn’t know where to begin and would end up rambling unintelligibly.
Klaw: Keep it short (and polite – God only knows what kind of vile calls they’re getting). Are you planning to vote to confirm Person X? If so, I wish you’d reconsider; if not, thank you. And that’s it. You’re probably talking to some poor staffer who’s getting deluged with calls on both sides. Imagine being him/her, and how you’d like the callers to treat you, and do THAT.

Craig: Neftali Feliz — a good buy low/sell high option for closer for Milwaukee?
Klaw: Hasn’t had a healthy, effective season for 2011. I would not bet on him working out. Maybe a ten percent chance. Not saying it’s a bad signing, but it’s more like throwing a dart with the lights dimmed.

Kay: With Gsellman looking like a legit starter, with a better build to handle innings (presumably) and Wheeler limited in his innings, does it make sense to use Wheeler as a high leverage reliever? His stuff looks like it would play there, less stress on the arm, and makes the bullpen much stronger. Plus I’m very high on evil DeGrom
Klaw: Yep, makes sense to me. I’m all in on Gsellman. Definite starter, right now.

Tim: What are your thoughts on the Dan Straily trade?
Klaw: Love it for the Reds. Top 100 guy in Castillo, decent RHR in Brice, lottery ticket in White (probably doesn’t work out, but a guy worth having in the system to try to develop). Makes no sense for the Marlins.

Frank: You have been consistently down on Rowdy Tellez. By all reports, he has worked very hard (and effectively) on his defence. I remember you having issues more with the bat (not sure what) than the fielding, but is he a viable short term solution to an injury problem this year, or is that something you would not even try?
Klaw: Nope, guy can’t play first at all, and he’s a mediocre hitter with brute strength power. Asked a lot of scouts about him this year; outside of the Jays themselves, I can’t find anyone who buys him as a regular.

Berman86: Have we achieved peak Belanger of SS’s w/ all of the recently promoted talent & all of the shiny SS prospects flooding the minors?
Klaw: It’s pretty incredible – I remember the Jeter, A-Rod, Nomar, Tejada years and how people talked of that as a historical moment, but the current belanger of shortstops in the big leagues is even better, and similarly young.

Michael: Love your rankings-thanks for the hard work in doing them! I’m curious about one component which is often just spoken of in general terms but seems ignored…ability of an organization to develop the players to max potential. Does that factor into your projections of the players likelihood to reach their ceilings? Or even the utility in them having a good system?
Klaw: I can’t do that, because any player could be traded at any time. (Look at Kopech, Moncada, and Giolito, all top 25 guys, all traded last month.) The rankings are always team-agnostic.

Pam: Which Atlanta pitching prospect are you most confident in reaching his ceiling?
Klaw: Wiegel, because I think he’s pretty close to it, and his ceiling is lower than some of the others’.

Biscuit: Hey Keith do you think Alfaro breaks camp with the Phils? If not, when do you think he comes up and what sort of impact does he make?
Klaw: Definitely not. Think he goes to AAA and works on receiving, game calling, and taking a pitch every week or so.

Biscuit: What are your thoughts on safe injection sites for drug users? Seems to be a lot of evidence that this approach works better to rehabilitate (and just generally make streets safer) than to just try to incarcerate everyone.
Klaw: Support, strongly. European countries that have decriminalized drug use have had much better results and lower cost than we have with the War on Drugs. And I say that despite having never tried any illegal drugs (not even weed), and having lost an uncle to suicide after years of addiction.

Gerry, scranton: What’s your opinion on Saunders to Philly? Good, bad, or ehhh?
Klaw: Ehhh, eh? Eh.

Big Hen: In the Mets write up you mentioned 2 potential stars in their system — I assume Rosario is 1, but is the other Dom Smith ?? surprised to hear potential star upside with him and not very solid regular.
Klaw: It’s been very weird how even Mets fans have tended to believe the worst on Smith, even though he was the 11th pick in his draft, highly rated as an amateur, and has been young for everywhere he’s played. Dude can hit.

Nick from Somerville: Cameron Planck? what’s his upside? Seems like a lot of cash for a 11th rounder
Klaw: They’re expecting a pretty constant output from him, hoping he’ll add some length to their rotation, and that he doesn’t end up a max effort guy.

John: Which of the current crop of young superstar shortstops (Correa, Lindor, Bogaerts, Seager…) is the first to move to a different position? Which of them stick at SS throughout?
Klaw: Lindor and Bogaerts are 100% shortstops to me. Correa is most likely to move of the four, given his size and defensive metrics that say he’s been below average. Seager is already defying the odds; he’s the biggest SS in MLB history, but he’s playing well there and I doubt they move him until he either plays worse or they have a better option in the system (which I don’t think they do anyway).

Daniel: Keith, Thank you for this chat. It’s pretty remarkable the workload that you are willing to embrace. When you compile these system rankings, what is your impression of talent acquisition vs. player development? Are the best systems finding the best prospects or making the most of what they find? Thank you.
Klaw: You’re welcome. Two different competencies for organizations, and there are absolutely teams that excel in one and fail in the other. Under Doug Melvin, the Brewers acquired a lot of talent in two separate waves, but they couldn’t develop a pitcher to save their lives, and in fact ruined some pretty good prospects along the way. The White Sox had trouble getting and keeping talent in their system for some time, but their development guys worked wonders with castoffs like Quintana. Different staffs with different people, and if the two departments (really more like three, with amateur separate from international) don’t communicate, you’re probably going to have trouble.

Junior: Will your book be available at Barnes & Noble? I like going into book stores to make purchases.
Klaw: Yes, and lots of independent book stores too. I have a soft spot for buying books in person too.

Trent Steele: How long will it take before an MLB team has a female GM? Do you think it is mostly sexism that is keeping women out of these jobs?
Klaw: No, I think it’s the lack of women in the pipeline. If there’s sexism, which there might be, it’s all the way at the start of the process. But I suspect there’s some self-selection going on – women see few women rising in the orgs, so they don’t apply for entry-level jobs because they believe the opportunities aren’t there.

Joe: What is your opinion on Jorge Posada not reaching 5%? He seemed like a borderline at best candidate to me, but I was really surprised he’s one and done. Do you think the logjam of PED players hurt him or am I off on my impression of his candidacy?
Klaw: I would not have voted for him, so I can’t say “well, he should still be on the ballot,” but I agree with the sentiment that one and done makes him seem like less of a player than he was.

Seymour: You mentioned in your rankings that you would bet on Gleyber and Kapielien being the next Jeter and Pettitte – are you really that high on both?
Klaw: Yes, in the sense that Gleyber could be the cornerstone shortstop for a decade, and Kaprelian has ace stuff and size if he stays healthy. They haven’t had prospects like this in some time.

Jesse: Not advocating or panning either but I find it strange that Tim Raines made the hall of fame and Kenny Lofton fell off the ballot unceremoniously. Am I off base?
Klaw: Nope, Lofton was a borderline candidate who got no support whatsoever. The electorate as a whole does a poor job. They get the obvious ones right, but it takes a few years in some cases. They really struggle with a lot of guys who are comfortably above the historical standards but don’t “feel” like HoFers. And then they support clearly unqualified guys like Hoffman or, soon enough, Vizquel. But remember, I’m the bad guy here for trying to hold people accountable for their votes.

RB: Would white Sox jump in rankings from 10 to top 5 after a Quintana trade say for a Glasnow meadows package or martes tucker package
Klaw: Nope. See earlier answer. These rankings aren’t just about a guy or two. Atlanta’s system might run 30 deep in players who project to some sort of real major-league value. EDIT: My answer here was too quick. Yes, a Quintana trade commensurate with the Sale trade would move them up a few spots. I don’t think it would take them to top 5, but my answer here implied they wouldn’t move at all and that’s not accurate, nor is it consistent with how they moved up from the Sale and Eaton trades.

Todd from sydney: Just a thanks for all your content. You’re my favourite sports writer and really help me bridge the gap for someone that has never played. So no question, just thanks.
Klaw: You’re welcome. And if that’s Sydney, Australia, can I hang out with you for the next four to eight years?

John: Day to day, what method do you most frequently use to prepare your coffee?
Klaw: I alternate. Pour-over one day, espresso the next. If I had to choose just one, espresso. But sometimes I get single-origin beans while traveling or from friends with roasters, and those often are too potent for espresso.

Seymour: What kind of year do you expect from Gary Sanchez? Is he going to be a franchise player, or have we seen the best of him?
Klaw: If those are the choices, I’d go 70% franchise player, 30% seen the best.

J: Why would a person who is fabulously wealthy want a job/position where they have to make actual decisions when they have no grasp or passion for the job/position they are seeking?
Klaw: Fame, ego, more money. Never underestimate the desire of rich people to get richer.

Morris: I was on the basketball team at a major D1 college, and we absolutely had hazing rituals. They were great. At every airport, the freshmen (scholarship and walk-on) had to pull the entire team’s luggage off the carousel while the rest of us relaxed. I have no idea what purpose sexual assault, public humiliation, etc. plays in any of this.
Klaw: That stuff does not bother me at all. I know some people would say any hazing amounts to bullying, but if it’s not violent, doesn’t involve public humiliation, and the coaches are playing the responsible adults (making sure the trivial doesn’t become more than that), I think they can have positive effects.

Jake: Anything positive at all from the new admin? It seems like a worse dumpster fire than we could have imagined.
Klaw: I would agree. All these anti-science people overseeing departments where science matters? The Holy See is more friendly to modern science right now than our federal government.

Seymour: Pick one of these for their entire career – Gary Sanchez or Andrew Benintendi.
Klaw: That’s Benintendi. I think he’s the better prospect/player anyway, but catchers wear down faster, are more prone to injury, and play 20-25 fewer games per year.

Tom: I’ve noticed whenever you tweet anything about Trump, a standard response is “you lost, get over it.” This response amazes me. It’s like his followers think the election itself was the Super Bowl and we’re all just sitting around waiting for baseball season to start so we can move on to something new. Like his “presidenting” is not going to affect them too.
Klaw: Or like it’s a rooting interest. I care about our country – about me and my family, about all the people I know across the country, about my readers, about people who are economically or socially marginalized or at risk. I truly believe this administration will pursue policies that will hurt many of those people, far too many, without helping enough. This isn’t rah-rah stuff. And if you want to disagree with me on policy questions, by all means, let’s talk about them. But “get over it” tells me you don’t want to have that conversation. You think you won something.

JWP: Do any of the top 3 pitchers (Blair, Bradley, Shipley) that came through the AZ system have any real upside anymore?
Klaw: Yes, although it bugs me that all three lost velocity at AAA/majors. What the heck was happening in Arizona to cause that?

John: You do not seem to be a big fan of Trumbo. Who do you think was the best fit for him, what should that team have paid for him and was the deal with Baltimore good or bad?
Klaw: I’m not a big fan of his OBPs. He may be a nice guy. I just like hitters who get on base and/or play a position. I didn’t like the Baltimore deal – he’s being paid to be a fringy regular, but if he’s back to a .300 OBP he’s closer to replacement-level.

Chris: KLaw…Quick! Say something nice about Trevor Hoffman! In all seriousness, as a huge Padres fan, I get an respect your thoughts on why he’s not a Hall of Famer. Sorry, some of my fellow San Diego fans didn’t keep it civil. It’s been a tough week for us. Love and respect the job you do.
Klaw: Thanks. Very disappointing how offering an opinion based entirely on objective information – Hoffman threw only 1089 innings, didn’t reach 30 WAR, etc. – brought about such vitriol. Such is Twitter. Imagine what the trolls would have said if I were a woman of color.

Joe: Anyone from the 2016 Draft Class Round 2 or later that you would say has leaped up in rankings?
Klaw: Alec Hansen. Could have been a top 10 pick if he’d pitched in the spring the way he pitched after he signed.

Mike: Looking to learn how to make tomato sauce….Ruhlman’s recipe a good place to start, or do you have any other recommendations?
Klaw: Yes, that’s a good place to start. I rarely eat it, and so I rarely make it, but I do believe in keeping it very simple. Onion, garlic, basil, maybe thyme. No sugar, ever. A splash of red or even white wine, because there are some aromatic compounds in tomatoes that are alcohol-soluble but not water-soluble. And no cheese in the sauce.

Chris K: What do you think of Matt Snyder’s take that Yadier Molina is a no doubt Hall of Famer?
Klaw: I haven’t read it, so I can’t comment. I don’t think he’s going to have a good statistical case. It’ll involve a lot of what-ifs and assumptions about the stuff we can’t or couldn’t measure. That said, peak Molina was way better than peak Vizquel.

Todd: If Andruw Jones’ career had ended after 2007, would he already be in the HOF? Or did the late career phase of him as a decent but fat guy knock him out of contention, despite the extra counting stats?
Klaw: I don’t think so, unless he’d had a tragic end like Puckett getting glaucoma. (I always thought there was a sympathy vote going on there. Puckett was not a HoFer at any point. Nice guy, who turned out to be a creep, whose career ended too early.)

Jason Reynolds: Should the Reds be worried they have a lot of solid talent on the way but no projected stars?
Klaw: That’s a fair question. You might only peg Senzel as a projected star, although Trammell bears watching because every report I got this summer said he had a more advanced approach than most kids that age, especially the stereotypical Georgia ath-a-lete. I don’t think any of the pitchers is a 1, unless Stephenson gets his head out and starts pitching like a power guy again.

Patrick: “And oh, by the way, Vizquel got exactly one MVP vote, 8th on someone’s ballot in 1999, in his entire career. So the guy was never considered by any voter as a top ten player in his league except that one time, but he’s a Hall of Famer?” I don’t think Omar Vizquel is a Hall of Famer, but someone could say nearly the exact same thing about Lou Whitaker, who is incredibly deserving. He received MVP votes in just one year (although he received more support that year than Vizquel. But still, Whitaker’s MVP finishes consist of one 8th place finish). You’re right about Vizquel of course, but that’s not really a great argument.
Klaw: In Whitaker’s case, the voters were consistent, though. Here, we have specific people claiming Vizquel is clearly a Hall of Famer who never said Vizquel was a top ten player in the league. That is the most blatant sort of revisionism and it nauseates me.

Ted: Does Daniel Gossett profile as a 4/5 starter?
Klaw: I think he could be more.

Garrett: Is Peter Alonso ever a factor for the Mets at the MLB level?
Klaw: I think so, unless he’s blocked by Smith. Alonso can hit.

Larry: Any chance Addison Russell makes it into the conversation with the other young stud SS, or is he a notch below?
Klaw: I’ve always been a fan, but as of this moment, he’s not with the quartet someone mentioned earlier.

CB: Ballpark figure, how many years did Dave Stewart set the Diamondbacks back in his two years on the job?
Klaw: It’ll take three years for Hazen & Co. to undo the damage.

Vladimir G: Will I get voted in next year?
Klaw: I believe so. You, Hoffman, and Chipper get in next January. That’s my prediction, not my ballot, of course.

Klentak: what are the differences between a guy like Gallo vs. Cozens? both have ridiculously high K%s & immense power potential but Cozens seems more athletic. Am I missing something?
Klaw: Gallo is way more athletic. That’s not even close. Gallo might be able to play third, although not in Texas. Cozens is bad in RF.

addoeh: Know your schedule for going to spring training, specifically AZ?
Klaw: I don’t, other than general plans. I may attend two of the three WBC games at Dodger Stadium, which breaks the month right in half.

Boe: Last 3 energy secretaries: a nuclear physicist, a Nobel prize winning physicist and…….Rick Perry. WTF?
Klaw: I mean, Joe Perry was at least as qualified.

Dusty: Do you think Fernando Romero of the Twins has a good chance of becoming a frontline pitching prospect this year?
Klaw: Might already be one.

Francis: Do you think Christian Arroyo’s step backward was due to an injury, trying to make adjustments to his mechanics/approach, being overwhelmed by the competition, or a some or all of the above?
Klaw: Call it a step sideways, maybe? Disappointing year, for sure, but he’s still pretty young.

Joe: You said three first rounders for the Yankees are among their top six prospects. When did you come around so much on Cito Culver?
Klaw: I remember getting yelled at by Yankee fans for disliking the Culver and Bichette picks – neither was on my predraft top 100s in their respective years – but that seems to have stopped now. And they’ve been on an absolute roll in the draft, too.

Barry: You don’t think Thome will make it next year on his first try?
Klaw: No. Hasn’t every big power guy failed to get in on his first year recently? Griffey got in, but he was also a good centerfielder throughout his 20s. Thome is Hall-worthy, but he was all bat.

Brad: What did you think of the Smyly trade? I’ve been very concerned about the moves made by the Rays since Silverman took over.
Klaw: I don’t know what the market was for Smyly given his injuries the last few years, but I thought the return was just OK. Smith is an extra OF for me. Yarbrough might be a fifth starter but I think he’s a tick below that – low 3/4 guy, average stuff, really pitches & competes. It might be that the Rays’ international guys loved Vargas, who’s still a baby but projects to plus power.

Keith Law Disciple: From the 2015 Draft, who has the best chance for a rebound (Whitley, Clark, etc.)?
Klaw: Clark was hurt much of 2016. I’d bet on him. Whitley was totally overmatched, though. His year was the most concerning of that whole class. Tate, Bickford, Stewart, Plummer all had awful first years. Russell couldn’t find the plate and was trying to paint at 86-87. Martin surprised me with how little he hit. I’d add Tyler Stephenson to Clark – Stephenson had a concussion and then hurt his wrist. He might have given the John Oliver “fuck you” to 2016 even more than everyone else did.

Klaw: And that’s all for this week’s chat – I have more capsules to write – but I will do this again next Friday, once the entire top 100 is posted, so that we can discuss the whole list at once. Thank you as always for reading!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: klawchat

→ January 19, 2017
→ By keith

Sherlock, season four.

New pieces elsewhere: Two-thirds of my annual farm systems rankings are up now, the middle tier 20-11 and the bottom tier, 30-21, both Insider-only, with the top ten to come on Friday. My latest boardgame review for Paste covers Kodama: The Tree Spirits, which is both clever and – I mean this in a good way – adorable.

I miss the version of Sherlock who used his head and solved crimes. It’s a shame that we didn’t get that guy much, if at all, in season four of the BBC series, because even when these three episodes were entertaining, which they frequently were, they felt like I was watching not just a different show but a different main character entirely.

I’ll still argue that a bad season of Sherlock would beat an average season of most other shows; it’s written on a higher plane than almost anything else I’ve seen, making big assumptions about the audience’s ability to follow both dialogue and plot, and if that means the writers, Mark Gattis and Stephen Moffat, go astray at times, it’s a risk I’ll gladly take as a viewer.

And in the second episode of season four – which comes out on DVD/Blu-Ray on the 24th – it all worked pretty well. Toby Jones plays Donald Trump – okay, they called him Culverton Smith – as a billionaire entrepreneur, philanthropist, and celebrity whom Holmes believes is a secret serial killer, concocting an incredibly elaborate scheme to catch him that’s worthy of the detective character’s rich history. It was over the top at a few points, but the resolution was vintage, including the way it tied in minor bits of earlier dialogue and action (e.g., the nurse who thought Holmes wrote the blog) and flipped in a bit of dark humor (about people stopping at three), which manages to infuse some life into the ending we know we have to get – viz., that Holmes isn’t going to die.

That same problem, however, is part of what wrecked the bombastic season (and possibly series) finale of season four, where we meet Holmes’ missing sister Eurus, who has been kept in a secret, secure, offshore prison for years, maybe decades, and discover that she is the distillation of the rational part of Sherlock’s personality. There’s so much absurdity in this episode that I could never suspend my disbelief sufficiently to get sucked into the plot, from her preternatural ability to ‘reprogram’ others to practical questions of how she got on and off the island so frequently to the drone scene early in the episode, which is incongruent with everything Eurus does afterwards. (One fun Easter egg in the episode, though – the island fortress is named Sherrinford, which was one of Arthur Conan Doyle’s potential names for Sherlock and later showed up in his notes as a name for a possible third Holmes brother.) It may all have been worth it to see Andrew Scott get off that helicopter in a flashback scene, playing Moriarty to the absolute hilt, but the solution to the ongoing problem Eurus presents to Holmes over the course of the entire episode was such a muddled mess I’m not even sure of the payoff.

If I take the long view, I think I can see where Gatiss and Moffatt were going with the arc over the three episodes, even if I didn’t fully agree with the decisions or plot details they chose. They needed to write Mary out of the series somehow, as she dies offscreen in the original stories, and her presence was a complication of the Holmes-Watson relationship at the heart of Conan Doyle’s work and this series. (And while the character here was quite well-written, her superspy background was so much stuff and nonsense.) The Eurus episode accomplished two other ends for Sherlock’s character: It reset the balance between him and Mycroft, whose superiority to his brother has now been undermined, while also giving Sherlock himself insight into his own severe rationalism as a defense mechanism to childhood trauma. The result, should the series continue, would at least allow them to write Sherlock with some more emotional complexity – no longer the “high-functioning sociopath” of the first and second series, but an evolved character who has been affected by the death and suffering around him, including one death he believes he caused, and who has come to recognize his dependence on the small number of people who have at least tried to be his friends.

That’s not strictly loyal to the original character, and in some sense – you can’t cure sociopathy, if that’s what Holmes really had – perhaps not realistic, but it is almost certainly essential to continuing to tell these stories. Another character derived from Sherlock Holmes, Dr. House, descended into caricature over the last four seasons of his namesake series because the writers refused to have him evolve in any fashion (arguing, not without justification, that it would be unrealistic). This Holmes’ connections to the surrounding characters, including the surprisingly badass Mrs. Hudson, would have to break had he failed to develop emotionally, and seeing him treat his ‘friends’ with cruel indifference would have become unpleasant, if not outright unwatchable.

However, if the show does continue, can we put the gunplay and action sequences away now? Not only does it look silly – Holmes and Watson jumping out of the Baker Street window was the worst effects sequence in the series – but it’s wholly out of character, even if we are only considering the character Gatiss and Moffatt have created here. Where did Holmes learn to fight or shoot? His whole history is one of using his brain to avoid such things, to set traps for the culprits to out themselves as such, and that is the pleasure not just of the original stories but of all of the great novels and stories around classic detectives – Holmes, Poirot, Marple, Wimsey, Wolfe, and so on. I want a season five, but I want it to revolve around Holmes and Watson, with more of Lestrade and Molly (there’s a hell of a cliffhanger there) and Mrs. Hudson around. The interplay among those characters was part of the charm of the first two seasons, along with Holmes devising plots and connecting dots we couldn’t see till the end of each episode. I’d be quite happy with a return to that sort of story, but with the characters now changed by everything that’s happened to them from the death of Moriarty through the end of series four.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: adaptations, british television, highly recommended, mysteries, sherlock, tv

→ January 17, 2017
→ By keith

Last Train to Zona Verde.

Paul Theroux is a famous travel writer – meaning a writer who travels, and writes about what he discovers, not a writer who tells you to visit this city and eat at these restaurants – whose work never really crossed my awareness until last year, when a stranger I chatted with at an LA-area Starbucks recommended I check out his books, and I found right then that his 2013 book Last Train to Zona Verde: My Ultimate African Safari was on sale for the Kindle. It’s not an easy read, and a huge change of pace from any other “western writer goes to non-white country” book or essay I’ve ever read, but the last third or so on the book, where Theroux goes to one of the most closed-off countries in the world, Angola, is edifying and unforgettable.

Theroux writes of Angola, “a country that is so hard to enter makes me curious to discover what is on the other side of the fence,” a sentiment I can certainly understand, but what he finds after a difficult border crossing from Namibia is as dysfunctional a state as you could imagine this side of Somalia, and perhaps worse. Whereas Somalia and Libya are simply failed states, outlines on the map that lack functioning central governments, Angola is an extreme kleptocracy. Despite $130 billion in annual GDP ($6500 per capita) and rapid growth due to oil revenues, there’s widespread poverty and malnutrition, lack of education or basic services, and minimal infrastructure. Seventy percent of Angolans live on $2 a day or less, and one in six children die before the age of five, the worst such rate in the world. But due to corruption – it’s ranked the fifth-most corrupt in the world, according to that link – the massive oil revenues don’t flow to the people; the President’s daughter is worth over $3 billion, and last year became head of the state-owned energy firm after the company’s board was sacked. Her father has been in power for 38 years, looting a country with oil reserves to match Mexico, and while it’s not a police state, it’s a repressive country where the fortunate few live in a world apart from the 25 million poor residents.

Theroux actually starts his journey in Cape Town, South Africa, and works his way up the west coast of Africa, stopping in Angola for practical reasons (crossing the Congo River would have required a long trip inland) and emotional (his conclusion that seeing more countries would not illuminate anything beyond what he learned in Angola). Each of the three countries he does visit provides its own education, or a sort of lesson, but at least the first two have some glimmers of hope. South Africa’s cities have grown to absorb some of the impoverished shantytowns that surround them, as services expand towards the slums and provide at least some level of mobility – not what we expect here, by any means, but at least a possibility out of extreme poverty, yet one always held back by the increasing numbers of squatters arriving to expand the slums that surround all South African cities.

Namibia is often considered one of the few African success stories, as it has followed a century of oppression (first by Germans, then by the Afrikaner government of South Africa) with 25 years of a stable, multi-party democracy. It’s sparsely populated, with a significant mining industry, but an increasing reliance on European tourists who come to visit certain beaches or indulge in safari and wildlife tourism of a sort Theroux experiences and disdains. He detours inland to speak at a small conference at an isolated town in northeastern Namibia, seeing how the colonial governments and now the Namibian federal government have both ignored the Ju/’hoansi people of the interior, and then crosses into Botswana’s Okavango Delta region to visit a luxury resort and elephant preserve, eating five-star meals and riding an elephant along with the tourists paying thousands of dollars a day to be there.

In the Namibian section of the book, Theroux comes off as a bit of a crosspatch, because while he’s identifying clear socioeconomic problems, Namibia is far from a hopeless case. There’s misused foreign aid here, as in all of Africa – he cites some of the research showing that foreign aid to developing countries often does little or no good for those populations – and certainly poverty beyond what we see here, but there is a functioning government and some economic activity that could provide the foundation for growth. There are not enough jobs, and there’s not enough education, but the raw materials are here.

Angola, however, is an absolute basket case, and this is where Theroux seems to lose his faith in Africa. The government’s elites are looting the country in as venal a way possible – most of the country’s oil actually comes from the exclave of Cabinda, which is the small section of Angola located on the north side of the Congo delta and thus separated from the rest of the country by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (ex-Zaire), itself a failed state looted by a series of dictators (including my friend Mobute Sese Seko) and essentially ungoverned in the way Angola is. The former Portuguese colony is flush with cash, but roads are unpaved, schools lack books, public servants might be paid once a year, and the people are starving. It is a country completely without hope, and Theroux talks to one local who believes it’s simmering towards a revolution – a population of desperate young people with nothing to lose, aware of the money made by the tiny elites and the handful of foreign nationals, including a growing number of Chinese expats. Angola was wrecked by a war for independence and then a quarter-century civil war that has still left the land full of mines, and could quickly devolve into Somalia-like anarchy if Theroux’s friend is correct. (That friend, however, was one of three men Theroux spent time with on his trip who died soon afterwards – one was killed by an elephant at the preserve, one was murdered in his home, and one died of a heart attack. The moral of this story is that if Paul Theroux visits your country and wants to hang out, don’t.)

It’s a depressing end to the story and, in Theroux’s case, to his lifetime of travel to and time spent in Africa. You can hear him washing his hands of the continent, not as a lost cause per se, but as a problem the West helped create but can’t solve. No one is stepping in to fix Angola now, because Angola is a stable country that sells oil. China is investing in the country, but sending its own undesirables (including criminals) to work there, not employing locals, and thus props up the kleptocracy the way we do in the Middle East. It’s a warning of sorts – this could be the African powder keg – but Theroux brings no hope that anyone, the Angolans or the West, is about to fix anything.

Next up: My favorite food writer, Michael Ruhlman, published a book of three novellas called In Short Measures a little over a year ago, and I’ve had it on my Kindle since February but never read it until now.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: africa, african history, foreign policy, non-fiction, travel writing

→ January 14, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 1/14/17.

I’ve been writing Top 100 stuff (and making related phone calls) all week, so the only content I wrote that didn’t appear here on the dish was my review of the boardgame DOOM, an adaptation of the 1990s first-person shooter video game and an update of an earlier attempt to make a boardgame of it.

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon, or from other sites via the Harper-Collins page for the book. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

And now, the links…

The Guardian says turning Sherlock into James Bond is unacceptable, and I largely agree – this season’s first two episodes had too much action and gunplay and not enough Sherlockian deduction.
Also, if you’ve seen the Sherlock season opener, the showrunners spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the surprise ending and their vision for the series.
The Internet of Things leaves us all vulnerable to hackers in ways we don’t expect, like controlling cars remotely via malware or over wireless networks.
Let’s talk vaccines. The Director of the Cleveland Clinic’s Wellness Center wrote a garbage, anti-vaccine editorial on Cleveland.com that brought up the discreted vaccine-autism link. Why is anyone surprised, given the Cleveland Clinic’s embrace of other forms of woo like naturopathy?
Donald Trump met with noted vaccine-denier RFK Jr., who is batshit insane on this topic, and conservative writer Ben Shapiro gave us eleven reasons why Trump is wrong to buy into this crap.
Seth Mnookin looks at how RFK Jr. “distorted” vaccine science, although I’d call it flat-out lying.
What can the vaccine-denial movement teach us about improving the public’s science literacy? Unfortunately, one of the author’s conclusions is that denialists manipulate parents with appeals to emotion like making it a “freedom of choice” issue, whereas scientists tend to avoid such irrational efforts.
What’s behind the 2016 spike in mumps cases? One response might be to get a third dose of the MMR vaccine, as the mumps component may gradually lose effectiveness over 10-15 years.
The Ringer looked at noted vaccine-denialist and all-around quack Dr. Joseph Mercola, who makes over $10 million a year from his so-called “alternative health” sites.
Mercola’s site has “4,400 articles on the benefits of turmeric.” Too bad research on the benefits of turmeric (specifically curcumin) keeps coming up empty.
This notice to parents from an Alabama pediatrics office is absolute pro-vaccine gold.
WIRED has an oral history of the making of the ESPN documentary O.J.: Made in America, which seems likely to get least get a nomination for Best Documentary Feature at this year’s Oscars.
Shiva Ayyadurai, who claims he invented e-mail and files nuisance lawsuits against sites that dispute this, is now suing Techdirt for the same thing, a lawsuit that could put the site out of business. He’s backed by billionaire Trump supporter Peter Thiel, who also backed Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker. Ars Technica has a little more detail on the suit, and on why Ayyadurai is wrong. Lots of folks responded to my tweet about this by saying, in essence, that Gawker got what it deserved, but 1) that’s irrelevant to this case and 2) Gawker only posted the Hogan video after a federal court ruled it was newsworthy, making the results of Hogan’s lawsuit hard to explain.
Derrick Goold wrote about a novel type of elbow surgery that may bring Seth Maness back to the big leagues in about half the time it would have taken after Tommy John (ligament transplant) surgery. Maness’s tear was in the right location, near an attachment point, and the ligament was otherwise in good enough shape that he qualified for the new procedure.
Rye bread – I mean real rye bread, the dark, nutty stuff, made with whole-grain rye or even rye berries, is making a comeback. It’s a lower-gluten relative of wheat, so breads made primarily or wholly with rye flour tend to be denser than wheat breads, but I think rye has a more interesting, complex taste than commercial whole wheat flours.
I figure most of you have seen this, but just in case, GQ had a great longread on the diaries of a HS football player who killed himself after suffering from concussion-related CTE. He left detailed instructions for his parents to spread the story of what football did to his brain. It’s a wrenching read, and I wish someone would wallpaper Roger Goodell’s office with it.
Have you seen those cheesy infomercials for MyPillow? Well, the owner may have broken the law with his neverending “buy one get one free” promotion, which also cost the company its BBB rating. It’s kind of a story of the owner’s arrogance, figuring that if something works for his business it must be OK.
Princeton Professor Cornel West reflects on what he calls the sad legacy of President Obama. It’s worth reading, but the essence is that the practical results of Obama’s policies were not progressive enough for his supporters on the left.
There’s real hope for the first time in the forty years since the island’s division that Cyprus could be reunited via a tripartite peace deal, although Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan later dismissed the possibility of a full Turkish troop withdrawal from the divided island. (Given the history of both the Turkish and Greek governments in Cyprus, I kind of don’t blame him.)
Climate change is causing China’s largest desert to expand at an alarming rate, displacing people and turning thousands of acres uninhabitable.
With climate-change denial the official policy of the President-Elect and the party that controls both houses of congress, a new group is trying to recruit scientists to run for office so that we get some rational thinking in our government.
A North Korean boy who was abandoned by his parents and lived on the streets of Pyongyang shared his story with the BBC, including his eventual escape to South Korea.
Russia’s parliament moved to decriminalize domestic violence this week.
And now, to the outhouse … The Trump-Russia connection became more sordid and problematic this week, as the BBC’s award-winning Paul Wood explains in a measured piece that doesn’t quite go as far as BuzzFeed did in revealing the documents.
Charles Pierce explains how no one knows what comes next. He compares Trump to Captain Ahab, but I think he’s more Captain Queeg.
Trump’s plan to name his son-in-law Jared Kushner to a key advisory post is his first attempt to ignore the law, specifically a 1967 law that prohibits this sort of nepotism. My fear isn’t that he’ll do it, but that no one will challenge it.
Betsy DeVos, a creationist nutjob who gave a lot of money to the GOP and coincidentally has been nominated to be our next Secretary of Education, conveniently “forgot” a $125,000 donation she made to support an anti-union ballot measure in Michigan.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: bread, climate change, links, sherlock, vaccines

→ January 13, 2017
→ By keith

Top Chef, S14E07.

Just when you thought Top Chef Some-Stars couldn’t go any farther off the rails, we get this week’s episode, which ranged from the ridiculous to the inane. But it was the top trending topic on Twitter when I went to bed last night, so there’s that!

* The stew room scene from after last week’s elimination shows Katsuji being uncharacteristically gracious, saying of Amanda, “I don’t think she realized how good she was.” Whether he’s always been like this and we’re seeing more of it, or he’s just mellowing out, I don’t know, but we’ll see it again later this episode.

* Quickfire: The guest judge is Michael Cimarusti, chef/owner of Providence restaurant in LA, who is actually hiding a whole family of squirrels in his beard. This is a horoscope challengem and a few chefs admit to reading their horoscopes. They’re morons. Astrology is absolute bullshit. Throw it in the same dumpster as homeopathy, vaccine denial, and creationism. It’s just utter fucking nonsense. Why the fuck is anyone on this show talking about astrology like it’s real? What’s next, a phrenology challenge? The chefs can only use water they find with divining rods?

* The chefs are asked to take “inspiration” from their zodiac signs and use ingredients and tools grouped beneath that element (earth, fire, water, air) on the table. This idea of working to your personality’s strengths and weaknesses is fine, but the date of your birth has nothing to do with that. Oh, and it’s a sudden-death quickfire, based on complete twaddle.

* Whatever Emily’s element is, her section has a pressure cooker and an iSi canister, and she says she doesn’t know how to use them. How do you get to this point without knowing how to use either? An iSi canister isn’t even complicated, and it’s the fastest way to whip cream or create certain foams. And we’ve already been over the pressure cooker thing. This isn’t like asking someone to use an immersion circulator for the first time.

* Ugh. Let’s just get to the food: Neck-Tat made a lamb chop with fire roasted pepper salad and lemon yogurt … Sylva made fire-roasted poblano couscous, lamb, cherry smoke, and sage butter … Tesar made a snapper and branzino tartare with coconut milk and chili; it looks delicious but the only thing more cliched on Top Chef than raw fish is truffles … Brooke made an oyster with cucumber pepper broth, roasted poblanos, and ancho chili salsa … Emily made a pan-roasted chicken with spaetzle and herb salad … Katsuji made a charred onion with cauliflower puree plus roasted habanero and shishito peppers … Shirley made a crispy fried cauliflower with brown butter and soy … Sheldon made a kinilaw (Filipino ceviche) with shrimp, coconut milk, orange and lime juice, and radish … Jim made a charred bison with watermelon dashi and charred chiles … Casey made a deboned chicken wing stuffed with ‘nduja sausage (a spicy cured sausage from Calabri) and “pickled egg cream” sauce with the flavors of a deviled egg.

* The most original dish was Katsuji’s. Sheldon’s was “very thoughtful,” and keeping the coconut on ice made the seafood taste so much fresher. Neck-Tat’s had a good balance of heat from the spice and cool from the yogurt. The winner is Neck-Tat again, his second straight Quickfire win and second elimination challenge with immunity.

* Bottom three: Jim’s dish didn’t represent his element, fire. Sylva’s was underseasoned and the chiles didn’t come through. Emily’s risk in making spaetzle worked out, but the wing’s skin was neither crispy nor well-seasoned.

* Sudden-death QF: They’re making a dish based on the “earth” ingredients (which none of them had) and they all have to agree on the same dish to make. Sylva and Emily insist on a steak tartare over Jim’s suggestion of steak and potatoes. Jim says he’s incredibly familiar with the dish but rarely serves it at the Governor’s Mansion.

* Emily using is the mandolin with no glove or guard. Having sent myself to urgent care once by doing the same … you know, investing in some $10 cut-resistant gloves is a great idea.

* Sylva is making beet juice to brighten the color in the beef. He’s cooking it “tataki-style,” so the exterior is seared for ten seconds, but the interior should still be raw.

* Jim paired his tartare with arugula with egg yolk purees, EVOO, lemon, and chive, thickening the egg yolks with agar agar … Sylva’s tataki had beet juice, raw mushrooms, and brussels sprouts, and didn’t look like any kind of beef dish … Emily’s had fish sauce, egg yolk, rice wine vinegar, radish and beet salad, and potato and beet chips; Padma thinks the chips are seasoned “forcefully.”

* Jim is eliminated, with the judges saying it was too “simplistic” and perhaps not inventive enough. That’s brutal; he’d outperformed Emily by leaps and bounds so far during the season, and I thought he (like Silvia) had a real shot to get to the final group.

* So there’s some blah blah Blackbeard story going on, around the elimination challenge, but Casey then retells it in a much more interesting way in the confessional. If nothing else she’s a pretty entertaining personality.

* They’re split into three teams of three. One is Tesar, Emily, and Neck-Tat who has immunity, so you can probably guess right now they’ll be the team on the bottom.

* Neck Tat is a recovering heroin addict. This might have been an interesting little side story, but instead we need to watch the chefs run around downtown Charleston in a tropical storm. (Really? They couldn’t have postponed the challenge by a day?)

* They’re getting directions from some doofus in a bad pirate costume. Brooke says, “I feel like I’m at my eight-year-old’s birthday party.” OK, now imagine being in an audience watching someone else’s eight-year-old’s birthday party. Also, Brooke feels as I do about raisins (they’re just dead grapes, so throw them in the trash).

* Katsuji may complain a bit, but when he says the place is “heuricane (sic) infested” I’m with him 100%. I would want no part of running around a deserted town in those conditions.

* How about Tesar throwing Philip from last season under the bus – out of nowhere – for “just making stuff up” while he was on the show? I was no Philip fan, in any way, but that was totally out of left field.

* Sylva is prepping his eggs sous vide, at 145 F. I need to try this; Serious Eats has a guide to sous-vide egg cookery.

* I’m skipping the boring part, where the chefs were on a scavenger hunt for ingredients, because I kind of tuned out until they were back in the kitchen. Or, to be more accurate, I completely tuned out and made myself some popcorn.

* Neck-Tat is grilling chicken satay and says “someone turned the grill off” … how does this happen? Are people just running around turning appliances off at random? Now he’s cooking it in a toaster oven, which will go horribly.

* If this is a pirate-themed party, someone should have worn a puffy shirt.

* The food: Sylva made an asparagus soup with a 63 C degree egg and a tarragon and macadamia nut pesto .. Sheldon made a filet mignon with a charred pinapple nuoc cham and candied macadamias … Shirley made mussels with roasted red peppers, farro, and bacon. Tom likes Sylva’s but seems lukewarm on it. Padma likes Sheldon’s dish, while Tom says it was a little too sweet. Shirley’s they love.

* Casey made a salt-brined scallop with preserved lemon puree, toasted Brazil nuts, and radishes … Brooke serves fried cauliflower with lemon aioli and a mustard seed/raisin/Brazil nut relish … Katsuji made a very thick caluflower soup with spicy sausage and some other stuff. Katsuji’s dish is too thick to be called soup, but the judges all agree it’s delicious. Brooke’s is way too acidic. Casey’s scallop had a weird texture; Tom says they clearly weren’t fresh and she should have cooked them.

* Emily made a lobster and fennel chowder with crisp chicken skin, makrut lime leaves, and orange zest. (She uses the common name for the fruit, kaffir lime, but kaffir is a racial slur and I really wish Top Chef would just stop using it, even if it means asking chefs to restate something.) … Tesar made lobster with truffle butter and gnocchi made from canned peas … Neck-Tat made chicken satay with pickled fennel and orange salad. Emily’s flavors were so muddy and the dish so rich and heavy that Padma calls it “mud chowder.” Tesar’s is fine. Neck-Tat’s satay is terrible; I think Tom called it “new-age cafeteria” food. Graham says it’s the combination of predictable and bad that really sinks it – but Neck-Tat had immunity.

* Judges’ table: Yellow team on top. Shirley’s didn’t look like much, but it overdelivered. Sheldon’s was boosted by the charred pineapple introducing a smoky element. Sylva’s soup may have been a little too hearty? Shirley wins.

* They bring the other two teams up to air them out, although the team with Emily, Tesar, and Neck-Tat is actually the losing team. Brooke concedes she overdid the acidity because she wanted to mute the raisins. Casey’s dish looked better than it tasted and the judges all agree the scallops were fishy. Casey insists they were fine to cook – I assume it’s rather insulting to be accused of serving fish that wasn’t fresh. Michael says scallops aren’t considered fresh “unless you can still see them moving.” That’s a little more freshness than I can stand.

* As the judges tear up the red team’s dishes, Emily ambushes Tesar, saying Tesar wanted to throw crappy ingredients at Neck-Tat because of the latter’s immunity, and then blaming Tesar for having her waste so much time breaking down lobster. Although I have no particular love for Tesar or how he treats people, this is a bit much – Emily’s dish was bad and she can’t just blame the team for that.

* Jamie – I’ll call him that, since things are getting serious now – offers up his immunity to be judged with his team. I don’t think that’s ever happened before, and I think Tom was taken aback by it. It’s a boss move and Katsuji offers his respect.

* Tom and Michael think Jamie’s satay was the worst dish; Padma and Graham think Emily’s chowder was. If the immunity stands, Emily’s clearly going home, and who could argue given her season to date?

* Padma asks Jamie once again if he’s willing to cede his immunity, and he is, so he’s eliminated. He lost because he showed some integrity, saying, “Gotta live with yourself at the end of the day.” Emily’s in tears, and makes a halfhearted statement about not wanting him to be eliminated, but that’s how it ends.

* Two more rookies were eliminated this week, so only two remain, Sylva and Emily, and she should have been gone weeks ago. With Restaurant Wars next week, she could easily sneak through again if someone goes home for being team lead or front of house.

* Rankings: Brooke, Sheldon, Sylva, Shirley, Katsuji, Tesar, Casey, Emily. There’s a lot of mediocrity in four through seven – not that they’re bad chefs, but none of those four is doing anything so exciting that I feel strongly about wanting them to get to the finals or semis. The first three have at least shown flashes of upside.

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