→ December 30, 2016
→ By

Fences.

Most of the buzz around Fences has been around the individual performances of Viola Davis, seen as the heavy favorite to win the Best Actress Oscar, and Denzel Washington, who play Rose and Troy Maxson, the center of this film set in 1950s Pittsburgh. That’s both the movie’s strength and its weakness: This is an ensemble of great acting performances around a script that’s very talky, the way a play on a stage needs to be but a filmed version does not. (The film is based on the Tony- and Pulitzer-winning play by August Wilson, who died in 2005.)

Troy is a 53-year-old trash collector in Pittsburgh who portrays himself as a devoted husband and father, a strong provider, and a bon vivant, only for the complexity of his character and contradictions of his (offscreen) actions to become clear as the movie progresses. Troy played in the Negro Leagues – this movie has a lot of baseball talk in it, and the playwright behind it, August Wilson, obviously knew his baseball – but was denied his chance due to his race or perhaps his age, although he remembers it one way and his wife the other. Troy’s self-built narrative takes one hit after another as we meet his sons, learn the story of his war-wounded and addled brother Gabe (a tremendous turn by Mykelti Williamson), and discover the secret he’s been hiding from Rose that turns the entire story upside down, giving Davis control of the second half of the film to deliver her very Oscar-worthy performance.

Davis dominates her time as the wronged wife, but Washington’s work, especially in the first half of the film where he’s the storytelling, bullshitting center of every scene, seems a little too on the nose. I haven’t seen the play, so I lack that means of comparison, but either the script or Washington’s interpretation of it – especially the way he voices his lines from his jowls – seems to border on caricature, in a way that particularly emphasizes Troy’s race.

Yet Fences is not inherently a movie about race or racism – there isn’t a white person to be found except the nameless driver of Troy and his best friend Bono’s garbage truck – and only a portion of Troy’s misfortune is due to his blackness. His downfall is not the color of his skin, but his willingness to rationalize all of his mistakes, from mere errors in judgment to total lapses in responsibility, because they felt right in his heart. He’s kept his sons at arm’s length for different reasons, but in both cases it has produced damaged relationships. He has a good, eighteen-year marriage to a devoted wife, Rose, who has chosen a life of subjugation to her domineering husband and his expansive personality, but he throws it all away because, in his mind, of his need to escape the stress of being the sole provider for the family. That’s a role on the stage that would require a huge persona to fill up the theater, but Washington seems to bring the bluster along with the bravado in a way that overwhelms the rest of the family throughout the first half of the film.

Fences is much stronger as a document about women, and perhaps their role in the newly upwardly-mobile black communities of the 1950s, where the door had just begun to open on financial opportunities for black men, at least in the north and west of the U.S. Rose reveals, in one of several speeches that could form her Oscar nomination reel, that she suppressed her own goals in life because she found that accommodating Troy left no “room” for her, only to find that Troy has betrayed her in the most treasonous way possible. This is The Remains of the Day for the working class, and a story in which one of the two characters looking back on a life of lost chances gets a second act to try to regain what they gave up.

As for the fence of the title, Troy and his son Cory (played meekly by Jovan Adepo, later upstaged by a six-year-old girl) are supposed to be building one around their property at Rose’s request, and the fence serves as a clumsy metaphor for Rose’s attempts to keep her family close to her and Troy’s goal to keep the Angel of Death out. It never worked for me, both because it was too overt a symbol and because we don’t see enough of Rose’s strength in the first half of the film to reinforce the metaphor.

Fences is a better film than I may have implied here – it’s flawed, but in small ways, factors that keep it from being as strong as Moonlight or Manchester by the Sea. It’s also a pure joy to watch Davis, Williamson – playing a character who is childlike as a result of a serious head injury he suffered in World War II, without veering off into clownlike caricature – and Stephen Henderson (as Bono) just do their thing, delivering precise, full-bodied performances in a movie that is largely a showcase for them. Even Washington, for all his scene-chewing, is a magnetic presence on the screen; I think I have more complaint with his direction, such as some needless close-ups of characters in anxious or pensive moments, than his acting, although he’ll probably get nominations for both. He infuses the character with rakish charm in the opening scene, and then allows the character’s actions and justifications to chip away at our admiration until, by the time of the Big Reveal, there’s little left but a shell that Troy himself can’t put back together, no matter what he tells Rose or himself to defend it.

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→ December 28, 2016
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Stranger in a Strange Land.

Continuing my roll through Hugo winners, I finally got around to Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land right before Christmas. It’s long been on my to-read list, but I figured I’d eventually find a copy in a used bookstore and waited until that happened to read it, even though I’ve read a few other Heinlein works (Double Star and Starship Troopers, both Hugo winners) and enjoyed them. Stranger is something else entirely, however – a deeply philosophical work, a new version of the Christ figure in literature, and a book with just a veneer of science fiction about it. Heinlein’s views on religion, morality, and human nature may not be yours or mine, but this novel gives you plenty to consider and reconsider on these subjects and more, simply because he sets off the correct bomb in the middle of the metaphorical town square.

That bomb is the person of Valentine Michael Smith, a man who was born on Mars and raised by Martians, an alien race, apparently much older than ours, that evolved quite differently from our own and possesses physical powers well beyond anything humans have acquired. When “Mike” returns to Earth with a second spacecraft, he’s suddenly the most sought-after person on our planet, with the government hiding him, multiple authorities trying to steal from him, and the media chasing him, and, eventually, one reporter and his nurse friend choosing to free him, sneaking him out of the hospital where he’s a de facto prisoner. Mike and the nurse end up at the estate of Jubal Harshaw, a polymath, hack author, and attorney who takes an immediate interest in Mike’s case and becomes his mentor and cicerone and protector all in one, negotiating for Mike’s freedom under the guise of the latter being the leader of humanity on Mars.

Mike ends up exploring human religion and philosophy, including the megachurch/cult of the Fosterites, and selects pieces of that he finds worthwhile in building his own Church of All Worlds, where members advance through various levels of enlightenment towards an inner circle, learning the Martian language and acquiring some of the same psychokinetic abilities Mike has. The Church of All Worlds becomes a counterculture haven, preaching free love and naturalism, eschewing modern capitalism, and living in a commune-like structure each time they set up shop in a new town. Their popularity threatens many existing forces, from the government to traditional religions, who whip up enmity towards its members and Mike in particular, leading to an entirely predictable ending that completes his Christ-like journey through the novel.

The novel’s title comes from one possible translation of a phrase in Exodus 2:22, “And she bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.” Smith comes here as ignorant of human customs as a baby, and even has to learn to use his body properly in our higher gravity. He brings Martian concepts of dualism and an afterlife, of war, commerce, and, of course, of water, which is revered through the practice of “sharing water” with someone, after which you are “water brothers,” a sort of blood oath that bonds you to each other for life. He adopts some trivial aspects of human culture, at least temporarily, such as wearing clothes, but takes on a mystical role to those around him – first Jubal’s employees, then gradually more and more who take to his own message of free love, spiritual enlightenment, and … uh … being nice to everyone.

That’s where the book goes a bit off the rails for me, at least, although Heinlein is aiming for something very big here and probably gets as close to his goal as most authors could. Smith’s religion is cultlike too, and it’s not very clear what he’s preaching or promising – people see that he can move stuff with his mind, and he’s offering a sort of spiritual salvation without stigmatizing or forbidding sex the way the Catholic Church and many evangelical Protestant groups do, so of course they’re flocking to him. And there’s certainly something Christ-like in his messages of love, tolerance, and nonviolence, as well as his willingness to sacrifice himself for the good of everyone around him. But Smith’s transition from ingenue to wiseman/Pied Piper is wildly abrupt and unexplained; in one chapter, he’s still confused by common human norms, and in the next, he and Jill, the nurse who got him out of the hospital, have run off to join a traveling carnival. (I read the version of the novel that was first published; Heinlein later restored material cut by his publishers in a separate edition that’s about 30% longer.)

Where Heinlein succeeds, however, is in crafting a sci-fi story that’s powered by the plot, not by the scientific details. None of the action in the book takes place on Mars; we meet Smith on earth, and for a time it’s unclear whether there’s anything different about him beyond his experience. He has psychokinetic powers learned from the Martians, and some very different ideas on death, but Heinlein uses that to drive the story – how would Earthborn humans respond to the appearance of a man with these abilities? It’s a twist on the Second Coming, but rather than playing it straight, Heinlein adds the interplanetary twist. There’s also an ancillary subplot, never fleshed out, about what the Martians might do to earth, having previously destroyed a nameless planet and civilization between Mars and Jupiter, but it feels unnecessary and unfinished, especially since the novel stands just fine on its own without that attempt to justify Mike’s return to earth.

Stranger in a Strange Land is a big novel of ideas – or perhaps a novel of big ideas – and whether it works may depend on your acceptance of some of the more mundane aspects of the philosophy Mike preaches to his followers. And it is preachy – there’s no question that Heinlein is advocating something here, which I thought caused the last of the novel’s five sections to drag until the last few pages. The real power in Heinlein’s concepts here, as voiced by Smith, is how absurd human conflicts, from war to prejudice, would appear to someone who fell in from the sky and wasn’t raised among the rest of us. If there’s a lasting message to take from this novel, that should be it.

EDIT: Oh, I forgot to mention the one absolute nails-on-chalkboard line in the book, where one character (Jill?) says that nine times out of ten, a rape is at least partly the woman’s fault. I know it was written a half-century ago, but it’s absolutely cringeworthy, and knocked the book down a full grade for me.

Next up: I knocked out Thomas Hager’s non-fiction book The Alchemy of Air, about the invention of the Haber-Bosch process, and have just started Ben Fountain’s 2012 novel Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction that year.

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→ December 25, 2016
→ By

Top Chef, S14E04.

I did not recap episode 3, since I didn’t even watch it until five days after it aired. I’m just jumping ahead to episode 4 and should be on schedule with every episode at least until spring travel begins.

So we start with some comments from Tesar on how Katsuji “gets a hall pass for being an asshole.” And that’s why 1) he’s back on the show and 2) I’m not happy to see him on the show. What Katsuji seems to think of as gamesmanship is borderline harassment. It’s not good TV and it has nothing to do with food.

* Quickfire: The new EIC of Food & Wine, Nilou Motamed, is here as the guest judge. Each chef has a box in front of him/her, and must use everything in the box – the gag is that it’s “not quite everything you wanted for Christmas.” The boxes contain cooking tools as well as ingredients: pressure cooker, tequila, pomegranate, wasabi, melon baller, chocolate pretzels, squab, and so on. We’re ripping off Chopped here, right?

* Jim says melon ballers are “from a pantry in the 1950s” but I use mine constantly to take out the seeds of apples. Cut the apple (or pear) in half, then use the baller to carve out the half-sphere with the seeds and tougher flesh from each half of the fruit. I don’t use them for melons, though.

* Shirley’s using white chocolate in place of butter. I’m not sure how that’ll work – white chocolate is fat plus a lot of sugar, while butter is fat, milk solids, and water.

* Emily has never used a pressure cooker, which I find hard to fathom. Tesar points out that they use them on this show all the time, so basically don’t come on this show without learning. Also, how do you not own a pressure cooker when you’re a chef? You don’t cook at home, ever? This isn’t some sort of novelty device. I just used mine two nights ago. They’re fantastic.

* Jim’s stand mixer bowl is smoking … it would have been nice to know why. I’m just sayin’.

* Shirley burns her squab in a tequila fire – although that can’t be what actually happened. Tequila is usually 80 proof, and that’ll burn if vaporized (like, say, heating it in a hot pan), and of course if it’s bringing any sort of lipids with it those will burn too. But 80-proof tequila shouldn’t just burn on its own, and even if it did the fire would be cool enough to slip your hand through it (not that I recommend doing so). I once created about a three-foot high flame by adding rum to a pan that was much hotter than I realized, and it didn’t ignite anything else – not even the wood cabinets the flame touched – or leave any scorch marks anywhere. So I guess I’m really wondering what was in that fire to char the exterior of the bird.

* We only see a few of the dishes here, I guess for time’s sake, not that we’d want to see more food on a show about food. Katsuji made braised squab in tequila and soy with pretzels, pomegranate, and wasabi in his salsa … Tesar made a pan-seared squab with mole and an avocado and pomegranate salad; he calls avocado “light and refreshing” which it’s not, with about 75% of the caloric content of an avocado coming from fat … Brooke made a pan-roasted squab with a clove, tequila, and pomegranate stock, and some melon-balled squash … Emily made a pan-roasted squab with a soubise, and Padma delivers the deadly compliment, “well, the squab is cooked nicely” … BJ made a pretzel-encrusted squab with wasabi cauliflower puree, tequila, and pomegranate; Nilou asks if that was the texture he wanted from the deep-fried squab, so we know what that means .. Jim made a roasted squab with beets, fennel broth, and a smoked pretzel and tequila whipped cream (that’s what was in the stand mixer, I suppose) … Casey made a smoked chili, tequila, and squab soup, then compressed pineapple with several of the other ingredients from the box … Shirley made a roasted squab with wasabi rapini and flambe tequila. She didn’t use the melon baller because she didn’t have hers – Sheldon appears to have taken it at some point. Then Padma makes a bizarre comment about hoping it’s not a sudden death quickfire. If Sheldon took her melon baller, shouldn’t he be eliminated (hypothetically) rather than Shirley? And the fuck is Padma talking about here anyway?

* Bottom three: Shirley, really because she charred her squab “to within an inch of its life” … Emily’s soubise was gummy, and now they’re saying she was not “kind to that protein” … BJ’s squab was very tough. Top three: Brooke, Casey, and Tesar. The winner is Casey, again, so she gets immunity.

* Anyone else see a little bit of Kristen Bell in Casey?

* The guest judge this week is Mike Lata of Fig, a very highly-rated restaurant in Charleston that made Eater’s list of the 38 most essential restaurants in the country for 2016. Also, he used to be Emily’s bossn and fired her once.

* The elimination challenge is based on the Italian feast of the seven fishes. I never had this growing up, even though I’m ¾ Italian, and I’ve never had it as an adult because my wife is allergic to shellfish. The twist on this episode is that the chefs are going to use “trash fish,” incidental catches that are often discarded because “consumers aren’t familiar with them,” which makes them good for chefs interested in sustainability. Jim seems comfortable with the concept, though, having won the Great Ameircan Seafood Cookoff in 2011.

* Casey gets first pick of the fish and chooses amberjack, which I’ve never thought of as a trash fish; if you’ve had the kind of sushi or sashimi called “kampachi” or “kanpachi,” you’ve had amberjack. The remaining chefs are combined randonly into teams of two. Tesar gets Katsuji, the only person Katsuji didn’t want to work with, although later they’re bickering like buddies in the confessional. Shirley’s paired with Sheldon, but they’re getting along fine in Whole Foods. BJ’s paired with Silvia, Silva with Neck-Tat, and Jim with Amanda.

* The other fish available are tunny, blackbelly rosefish, gray tilefish, triggerfish (which Lata was the first chef in Charleston to serve), mullet, and barrelfish.

* Tesar wants to use canned tomatoes; Katsuji wants to use fresh heirloom tomatoes. Each is acting like the other is insane. But doesn’t this depends on the time of year? If tomatoes are in season, you’ll never beat fresh. If they’re not, then they’re not going to have much taste, if any.

* Shirley wants to use mullet shank, the tail end of the fish, which has fewer bones (?).

* Emily is deferring to Brooke on everything, so Brooke ends up the de facto head chef on their team with Emily playing the role of a line cook. That could go either way – Brooke’s probably the best competitor on the show this year, one of the best they’ve ever had, and Emily appears increasingly to be a train wreck as a contestant.

* Silvia is making pane carasau, a traditional yeast-raised flatbread, similar to pane guttiau (which you might have seen at Trader Joes). Both are Sardinian, with the former using yeast and the latter not. To Americans, they’re more like crackers – I’d compare pane guttiau to what matzoh would be like if you made it with something like puff pastry dough, so it shatters rather than breaks.

* Tesar and Katsuji are now each making a sauce with the tomatoes, and then each ends up plating some of the dishes with his own sauce. This should have been a disaster.

* Sheldon & Shirley made a Sichuan peppercorn (a Chinese spice that isn’t a true pepper) braised mullet with tofu, celery, and buttered radish. Tom seems to have gotten a small bone, but says he loves the dish, especially the use of the Sichuan pepper. Blais likes the combination of tofu and fish together because their textures are similar. I’m not sure if I’ve ever had mullet, although it seems like the most familiar name among the trash fish after amberjack (I’d never heard of triggerfish or barrelfish before this show).

* Hugh is back! Judges’ table is always better with his dark Canadian humour.

* Silva and Neck-tat had Tunny. I’ve heard the term before, because it can refer to a couple of fish, but I’m assuming this one is little tunny, a fish in the tuna tribe (Thunnini) but in a separate genus from the fish we eat as tuna. That Wikipedia article mentions anecdotal reports of ciguatera poisoning from eating tunny, so I’ll pass on this one, thanks.

* Lata says he’d go calabrian with tunny, making a spicy preparation because the fish itself has such a pronounced fish flavor. The team made a ras el hanout-dusted tunny, seared so it’s nearly raw in the center, with melted leeks, parsnip puree, wild mushroom ragout, and xo jus. Graham Elliott says is “looks like a $30 tuna steak dish.” Hugh deadpans that “we were all guessing that you’d fail miserably.” One thing no judge mentioned was the taste of the center of the fish. If tunny is oily and has a strong fish flavor, and the chefs didn’t address that throughout the fish, what happened when the judges got to the middle of those “steaks?”

* Brooke and Emily made roasted blackbelly rosefish with fiddleheads, marble potatoes, leeks, corn, coconut, and tamarind sauce. Lata says it’s a tough fish to work with and needed more than just the sear? All the judges seem to agree that the dish was totally confused, with a bunch of different ideas all on one plate. Brooke won’t throw Emily under the bus, however, even though Emily contributed nothing to the concept of the plate. Tom says “leek sauce all day, all this other stuff get rid of it,” which I suppose would be great if this were a leek challenge.

* BJ and Silvia made a barrel fish brodo with leeks, kale, cauliflower, and pane carasau. They poached fish, but as it dried outside of the poaching liquid, it seized up and became tough; Tom suggests they could have flaed it back into the broth, although if the broth was still hot enough to be safe, wouldn’t it have continued to cook? The broth was apparently excellent, but there wasn’t enough of it, and Silvia’s pane carasau is probably the most-praised aspect of the dish.

* Tesar and Katsuji made trigger fish with chili sauce, fennel puree, bottarga, and breadcrumbs. Tom says the sauce is terrific and the fish was cooked beautifully. Hugh says they bridged a monumental gap to put aside their egos, which also says to me that it’s no accident that these two chefs were asked to return this season.

* Jim and Amanda made a gray tilefish with tomato and fennel broth, and some apparently very undercooked beans. Tom asks, “Who cooked the beans?” and Amanda responds, “I did. Why?” She looks like she just ran a marathon.

* Casey’s amberjack dish is a catastrophe, but we never really saw anything about why? She barely cooked it at all, and her rice porridge is gummy and tasteless. So what was she doing during her allotted time in the kitchen? She thinks she’d be sent home if she didn’t have immunity, so what the hell happened?

* Tom: “There’s a reason why these fish don’t usually end up on a table – they’re very difficult to work with.” For some of these fish, that’s almost certainly true – tunny being oily and fishy is going to be a deterrent no matter what chefs or fishermen do, but gray tilefish is supposed to be lean and mild-tasting, and amberjack is lean and firm like mahi-mahi or swordfish. Some of the problem is just education: consumers only look for a few common types of fish, like salmon, because they’re familiar with those and know how to prepare them.

* The top three are Sheldon and Shirley, Jamie (Neck-Tat) and Silva, and John and Katsuji. Katsuji’s sauce was amazing. S&S’s dish ate like something they’d cooked before. The mullet had a lot of bones, but they made the best of it. Every component of Jamie and Silva’s dish was done very well and it showcased the fish. John and Katsuji win, and Katsuji wins the individual honor for the sauce. He even tears up, I don’t think he expected that. I’m sure he’ll handle the victory in a quiet, professional manner.

* Padma says Casey “really needed” that immunity. The other three teams are on the bottom, by default. Jim and Amanda’s dish died for a few reasons, but Mike says in his kitchen one of his commandments is never serve undercooked beans. The inclusion of mussels also took the dish away from the star ingredient. Brooke and Emily’s dish just had way too much going on, and it obscured the fish. Silvia and BJ’s fish tasted like overcooked chicken. BJ made the broth, Silvia did the bread, but the fish was both.

* While the chefs go back to the stew room to wait, Katsuji starts going after Emily for failing to tell everyone more about Mike Lata’s preferences. What a dick move.

* Mike says the barrel fish (Silvia/BJ) was overcooked, while Tom says BJ overreduced the sauce. Brooke and Emily put too much on the plate, but it seems like the judges are giving them a pass because the two were “too nice to each other.” Jim and Amanda’s fish got lost in “all that stuff.” Tom says that could be the worst dish because of the beans, which Amanda cooked. At this point I assumed she was gone, given the emphasis on the beans, and also, how do you serve undercooked beans on Top Chef and survive?

* Yet BJ is eliminated. He could have gone home last week, or the prior week with the pork that he cooked poorly, a move that tanked his team because it took so much of the team’s budget. That’s three rookies out and one veteran who was just barely eliminated in four episodes. I thought Amanda had ‘earned’ the elimination, given what we heard from the judges, but it’s hard to weep for BJ with him on the bottom so many times already. But we’re now at seven veterans to five rookies, and two more of the rookies (Neck-Tat and Emily) seem perpetually close to elimination.

* I guess it’s time to rank ’em … Brooke is the clear #1 in this group, and of the rookies I think only Silvia has shown the potential to catch her. I’d go Brooke, Silvia, Shirley, Sheldon at the top. Bottom three: Emily, Amanda, and Neck-Tat.

* I’ll catch up on LCK later this week. In the meantime, have a safe and Merry Christmas.

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→ December 24, 2016
→ By

Stick to baseball, 12/24/16.

For Insiders this week, I wrote up Cleveland’s deal with Edwin Encarnacion and the Clay Buchholz trade, as well as a piece last Saturday on some potential problems in the new CBA. I also held my regular Klawchat on Thursday.

My first-ever piece for Vulture ran this week, a holiday gift guide to boardgames for gamers at various levels (including newbies to the hobby).

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

And now, the links…

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→ December 22, 2016
→ By

Klawchat, 12/22/16.

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

Klaw: Bow down before the one you serve. Klawchat.

Jimmy: Over/Under 3 division titles for Cubs in next 3 years?
Klaw: Pretty sure “under” is the safe bet on that one. You can build the best team in history on paper, but you can’t control for injuries, non-performance, or, say, the Pirates collectively having career years and slipping past you.

G: So, after the bizarrely affordable Nova signing, do the Pirates still have a series of blockbuster moves ahead of them? Acquire Quintana, deal McCutchen?
Klaw: I’d like to see them do that, if possible – trade Cutch now if a strong offer comes in, because his value will be lower next winter, and of course I’m a big Q fan. Those moves probably make them a 90-win team again, no?

Nathan: Suggestions for an aspiring baseball nerd who has yet to grasp advanced defensive metrics and statistics?
Klaw: I heard about this book called Smart Baseball that’s coming out in April. You should check it out. The writer’s a funny guy.

Matt T: Idk if you have in the past, but if offered a chance for a book signing, would you ever do it? I’d love to get your autograph. Been a huge fan of yours for awhile
Klaw: Yes. If Harper Collins doesn’t have me to do a full book tour, we’ll still do some ad hoc events around my spring travel. Also, I have confirmed there will be an audiobook version of Smart Baseball.

TCJ: Any thoughts on Jason Hewyards new swing?
Klaw: Any thoughts today would be pure piffle. Let’s see it against live pitching before we think anything of it.

Jim: My girlfriend gets bored with board games to the point that she tries to lose on purpose so she can stop playing. What game(s) would you recommend for a smart, creative, and historically-bored-with-board-games person? If possible, something that works as a two player? Thanks!
Klaw: I’d say stick to games that play well in 30 minutes or less. 7 Ronin. 7 Wonders Duel (no connection). Patchwork. Jaipur might be too light, but it plays very fast. I put a whole list of the best two-player games at the bottom of my top 100 ranking.

Jake: Do you see Cody Sedlock starting in high A next season ?
Klaw: I would expect him to, yes. He’s polished enough.

Ross: How high of a ceiling do you see for Delvin Perez?
Klaw: True ceiling, all-star regular at short. Probability of that, maybe 10%.

Aron: Are there any dishes that you never get at a restaurant because you can make it easily/better? Any that are so time-consuming to make at home that you never make them and just get them at restaurants?
Klaw: I don’t order pasta dishes in restaurants unless the pasta is freshly made, and you won’t see me order something like pasta alla carbonara for that same reason. Long-cooked dishes like brisket (smoked or braised), pot roast, etc. are easy choices for me at restaurants because of the time required. I also eat more seafood out because I can’t cook shellfish at home (wife is allergic) and don’t cook much regular seafood either.

Alex: Do you see Dakota Hudson as a high potential guy?
Klaw: High ceiling? no. Move fast, get him to the rotation soon to extract value, mid-rotation upside.

Michael nuno: Your thoughts on Thomas Szapucki. What’s his ipside ?
Klaw: Probably a number two. Well above-average starter.

Mattey: What’s on the menu for Xmas Eve, Xmas day at Casa Klaw?
Klaw: Nothing special on Christmas eve. Going to do a roast pork shoulder on Christmas day.

Pat: Head Like a Hole. If 1st round draft picks were fully tradable, what kind of Major League talent would s straight up trade for a first round pick bring? Obviously, the higher the selection, and the more deep the draft pool the better, how much contract control is left for the Najor Leaguer(s) involved, etc. But any general sense what a first round draft pick is worth in terms of Major League talent?
Klaw: Depends on the pick, too, but a top 10 pick should return an average regular with a few years of control. The expected return on a pick that high probably is less than that in terms of annual production, but it comes with six years of control, three of them (or three-plus) at the minimum salary.

John Wick: What do you see as Kyle Tucker’s upside? Would he be a sticking point for you in a Quintana deal?
Klaw: I’m a fan, think he’s at least an above-average regular in a corner who hits for average with power, but if he’s the best player in the deal, I’m OK with that for Houston, because Q is an ace.

Tom: Do Alex Faedo and Kyle Wright have TOR type potential?
Klaw: Yes, Wright more than Faedo for me. They are the only college starters in this class I’d say have that potential. Houck looks like a reliever. Lange doesn’t have this stuff. Bukauskus has ace stuff but he’s a six foot RHP with some effort.

Anonymous: Keith, I truly appreciate your work. Good stuff. Thank you. Now what do you think about Bud Selig being elected to the Hall of Fame? Don’t you think there’s a bit of hypocracy there considering voters have decided not to let players connected to steroids into the hall? Seelig turned a blind eye to all of it so that baseball could profit. Also, his ideas on how to implement instant replay (4 dude string around waiting to talk to someone in a remote location) and the all-star game winner gets home field advantage were absolutely garbage. Yeah he made MLB a lot of money but is anyone considering the opportunity cost of what could have been. Baseball is truly regional (root for the home team) in that hardly anyone on the east coast knows who Mike Trout is. Thoughts?
Klaw: Absolute joke. It’s a big baseball circle-jerk. But I think it has opened the door for writers to vote for Bonds, Clemens, and even suspected-without-evidence PED guys to get in. So that’s good. But let’s not normalize Selig’s reign. He shut the sport down in ’94. He colluded against free agents in the 1980s. He ran players and the sport down for most of the first decade of the century, caved to Congressional pressure, and instituted policies (e.g., HGH testing) that have delivered no tangible benefit to the sport. The industry thrived under him, and he gets some (but not all) credit for that, but don’t forget the harm he did first to put baseball in the position in which he found it.

JJ: Any thoughts on Josh Tobias, the player acquired in the Clay Buchholz trade? Does he have any upside, or is he just a warm body to complete the salary dump?
Klaw: I wrote that deal up the other day.

Thomas: How is Joe Mixon not in jail?
Klaw: Because he’s good at hand-egg. Better question: How is Stoops or the Oklahoma athletic director still employed?

Doug: Happy Holidays to you and your family KLaw! Thank you for always being accessible and answering questions via multi-mediums! Curious, what kept Patch The Sky off of the top 10 (or expanding the 10 to 11)? I know you loved the three song romp that opens the record…did the back half drop off that much for you?
Klaw: Found it kind of repetitive after that. Not bad, certainly, but I felt like I was listening to the same songs again. Had I gone to 16 albums as I originally intended it would have been on there.

Anonymous: Regarding your answer last week about relievers and the HOF – are you saying that Rivera should be the threshold for relievers to make it in?
Klaw: I’m saying he’s above the threshold, but no other modern reliever comes close to the threshold. There’s an enormous gap between him and whoever you feel is #2 (Hoffman, Wagner, other).

Scrapper: In a year with more celebrity deaths than I can recall, was there a particular celebrity’s passing that impacted you this year?
Klaw: Prince, given his age, talent, and the fact that I have been a huge fan of his music, at least his peak output, for about 25 years.

CB: Now that Ryan Howard, A-Rod, etc. are off the books, what’s the worst contract in baseball right now? Cabrera? Pujols?
Klaw: Probably Pujols. Not that productive, under contract forever. At least Miggy produces. Dark horse right now: Stanton. Can’t earn that kind of coin if you’re rarely healthy.

Ivan’s a BUCKS-aneer: Not that he’s so great, but I’m shocked Nova got so little guaranteed in this pitching market. Toronto’s gamble with Happ paid off so well last year. Granted, he’s a lefty & hadn’t had TJ surgery, but I though Nova would at least match that pact, since so little pitching is available. I think this is a GREAT gamble for the Pirates to take. How do you feel?
Klaw: I think so too. Between that and the bargain salary for Hudson, the Pirates have had a nice week working in a bad pitching market. I’d be very happy with these moves if I were a Pirates fan.

Tom: Hi Keith- what do you think of Marco Gonzales for the Cardinals going forward? Any chance he can stick as a starter or do you think he’s a reliever post-injury?
Klaw: Starter for me. Not sure what that looks like as a reliever – I don’t think he’s going to have better stuff in short stints; he’s a fringy fastball, plus change, above avg CB guy, who’ll have to work to the edges of the strike zone with his fastball. That’s not the profile of a guy who’ll be better as a reliever.

Dave: What would you do if you were the Orioles? Tear it down, make some incremental upgrades for the short term? The system is pretty barren and player development is lacking, so I’m worried about this being a messy rebuild like the Reds.
Klaw: All in for 2017, then look at dealing Machado after the season. Or in July if things go really pear-shaped, which they might if Duquette can’t find some starting pitching.

JWR: What is your favorite holiday movie?
Klaw: Muppet Christmas Carol. We usually watch that, Holiday Inn (yes, the original cut), and White Christmas.

JWR: If you were suddenly instilled as GM of the Angels and if the owner said that he would accede to whatever vision you see for the team, would you trade Trout for a mega-package?
Klaw: Yes. It’s the best path back to contention for them. It’s going to take a lot of time to rebuild that farm system to the point where they can field an organic contender around Trout.

Big Hen: unless the Mets get someone outside the org. isn’t their best OF alignment, Yo-Lagares-Conforto from left to right? I get the skepticism but they can’t play Grandy in CF and Bruce in RF, I will throw up.
Klaw: If Lagares is healthy, yes, I agree with that. I see no role for Granderson or Bruce there at this point.

Lars: How do you think trump’s predictably horrendous approval ratings will impact his decisions? On the one hand, he doesn’t seem to care at all about keeping his word and doing what he promised. On the other, he is about as ego-driven as you can possibly be.
Klaw: I don’t do much in the way of political predictions anyway – I never predicted anything around the election or primaries, because WTF do I know – but I will predict this: Trump is and will remain unpredictable. I guess “mercurial” is the kind word. If the Republican party believes they can control him, I would predict that they’ll be disappointed.

LarryA: Last week you metionned briefly ordering mail-order coffee beans. Wouldnt lower quality but fresher beans rasted locally be better than older beans packed and shipped from across the country?
Klaw: No, not if they’re packed correctly, and I’ve learned that better quality beans benefit from a few days of rest after roasting, especially for pour-over or other drip coffee use.

Greg: I know you’ve had concerns about Austin Riley’s bat speed. In the second half, his Ks went down a lot and he hit 17 homers while hitting .284. Did you hear anything that was encouraging on him, or are you still really down on him?
Klaw: There’s nothing different; he just hit better in a smaller sample. The default expectation for prospects who aren’t promoted should be a better second half than first, because other prospects in the same league were promoted and, presumably, replaced with younger or lesser players. Sometimes that doesn’t work out – guys get tired, play hurt, etc. – but it’s a good starting point.

Marshall MN: Reports say the Trumbo offer was pulled by the Orioles, the rumored amount seemed really high anyway. I have a feeling internally that they are probably kicking themselves for not pulling their monstrous offer to Crush Davis last year as well. Why pay Trumbo $70 million when you could get a slightly downgraded version of him off the street for less money and less years?
Klaw: Pretty sure the Davis thing came from Angelos, not Duquette. No way I’d pay Trumbo that when you can get the next Trumbo for essentially nothing – trading a possibly-racist backup catcher, or claiming a guy off waivers.

Ty: Acuna is triple slashing 375/446/556 in the ABL through 20 games. Is the ABL High A quality and if so could Acuna open up in AA and be a skip away from the big leagues despite the relatively few professional at bats?
Klaw: ABL is below high-A quality. Maybe below low-A quality. But I like Acuna a lot anyway.

Jeremy: what did you think was the best and worst thing to come out of the new CBA?
Klaw: I hate the international amateur system – the players blew that, they should have taken a draft – and that we don’t have trading of draft picks. I like reducing the link between free agents and the draft, love the ban on hazing (duh), and love that the league is going to stop subsidizing Oakland. Move the team or sell it.

Jiminy Christmas: Michelle 2020? Warren 2020? Hanks 2020? Who would make you most excited?
Klaw: Booker? I really don’t know. Good chance it’s no one on our radar now. The DNC’s position that nothing is really wrong so let’s keep all the same people doesn’t give me a ton of hope.

splash: I have a two hour flight tomorrow. Is there a recent collection of short stories you could recommend?
Klaw: Edith Pearlman’s Honeydew.

Ben: I’ve been tasked with cooking the Christmas prime rib. I just got an Anova sous vide circulator and want to use it. The roast is 10 lbs, boneless, and I’m looking for medium rare. My thought is to cut it in half and put them in separate bags (to make it easier to handle), cook at 134 for about 6 hours, then finish in a 450 degree oven to brown it. Does that sound about right? Got any tips?
Klaw: I have never cooked prime rib via any method, but my gut reaction reading this is that 134 then 450 oven is going to push you to medium. Also ensure you have some resting time, maybe 30 minutes, between the sous vide and the browning step.

Joe: Have you gained respect for anyone (in the public eye) you didn’t expect to since the election? Lost any?
Klaw: Lindsay Graham has been one of the few Republicans to continue to say anything at all against Trump, and while that’s a low bar, I’m pretty impressed by his relative willingness to stand his ground.

Jeremy: seems like whoever inks EE for 3/$60M for DH-only duty will be pretty happy in 2017/2018, no?
Klaw: I think so. If EE’s agent is bluffing, as I kind of think he is, there’s a little bargain potential there for a team with cash.

Craig: Can you win at this game:


Klaw: I think two of those are players. This isn’t as fun as “Ikea item or death metal band,” though. (UPDATE: I only got 2/5 right. Womp womp.)

Tim: Derrick Goold and Baseball America just put out the Cardinals top 10. I was surprised Jack Flaherty wasn’t on it, but Goold did offer a solid explanation. Sounds like managers and coaches within the league just weren’t that impressed. What are your thoughts? I was excited by the selection and he seemed to have success, but that’s admittedly stat-lining.
Klaw: That surprises me that he’s not in their top 10, but I haven’t done anything with their system yet, and as a general policy I don’t criticize anyone else’s lists. Usually I don’t even mention other lists, but Derrick’s a friend and knows that organization extremely well.

Jeremy: Brett Anderson as a 7th starter insurance is a better option than Brian Johnson/Henry Owens/Elias, right?
Klaw: Yes. Most of Anderson’s career, he’s been good when healthy. I’d be fine giving him a deal where he gets like $500-700K a start or something. Like, here, you earn the minimum with your first start, and every additional start where we don’t have to put you on the DL, here’s another check. Not that I think he needs incentive – I’ve talked to Brett, it’s not like he wants to get hurt – but it’s totally reasonable to pay a good-when-healthy guy for how often he’s healthy because you’re probably both going to be happy with the return.

Oscar: Any books for first time parents that you recommend? Thanks.
Klaw: The Happiest Baby on the Block.

Matt: Have you heard anything about Chesny Young in the Cubs system? Seems to be able to hit no matter where he goes…zero power an obvious issue. Is there a potential UTIL here, or just a AAAA guy?
Klaw: No power indeed, don’t see those guys much in the majors any more, think he sees the majors but would say 60/40 against him having any kind of role.

Bryan: Klaw, please correct any portion of the following that I have wrong. Regarding Schilling, I think you have said in the past that you consider him a friend and that you would vote him into the Hall. I am all for his Hall candidacy, but a little surprised you would count him as a friend. Do you object to people that claim Curt is a bigot?
Klaw: You’re conflating a bunch of things here. Yes, Curt’s a friend, and I get along very well with him. Yes, I would vote for him for the Hall, because I think his performance merits it, not because I know him. No, I do not object to people who call him a bigot, and I could not disagree with him more on pretty much anything on politics, race relations, LGBTQ rights, and so on. I can be friends with people I disagree with politically; we’re friends with a family around here who are gun-toting, possibly survivalist Trump supporters. I wouldn’t and don’t support any of the stuff Curt has said about minority groups, and I said at the time I understood ESPN’s decision completely.

Kyle KS: What is the appropriate punishment for college football players that act violently against women? Mixon would’ve been taken in by another college due to his talent. A lessor player would’ve been forgotten and no one would remember the consequence. The NFL tolerates players with recent incidents of violence in college like Tyreek Hill who was kicked off his team but has talent. Should the NFL go to a zero tolerance policy to take an actual stand against this behavior?
Klaw: Zero tolerance policies are complicated, as many people have written recently, because taking away the livelihood of an abuser can make the victim, if she’s still with him, worse off. However, for an individual school to say, we’re revoking your scholarship because you hit a woman … that’s well within their rights, and they can certainly take a moral stand even if Mixon would end up playing for another school. Give the scholarship and the possibility of an education (ha!) to a more deserving person.

JR: How annoying is it when you know you are going to be in a place where you will have some reading time (airplane, doctor’s office, etc.) and then the person next to you tries to start a conversation while you are deep in your book. “what are you reading” “is it good” “what’s it about.” So annoying. I’m not anti-social, but I planned ahead and brought a book, so leave me alone.
Klaw: It really depends. This happens to me a lot, of course, because I always have a book. Sometimes it’s clear the person is just being kind and the smalltalk won’t last. Sometimes the person really knows the book I’m reading, or is truly asking if it’s worth reading. And I’ve had some wonderful, entirely serendipitous conversations because of stuff like that. If my gut reaction is that this person is a wacko, or going to be rude, or about to proselytize to me (that’s happened a few times), then I try to polite close the conversation. But I try to at least start with the assumption that s/he doesn’t realize s/he’s being rude and go from there.

Tim (NJ): We traditionally do a tenderloin for christmas – sear in pan, finish in oven (rosemary, mustard seeds, etc). Any recs/thoughts on how to spice it up?
Klaw: Beef? Black pepper. Cloves. Garlic. Lots of garlic. I’m not a huge fan of beef – I’d choose pork over it every time – so I’m probably not the ideal person to ask. If it’s not a short rib or a brisket, which are both good because they’re fatty as hell, I’ll have the pork shoulder, thanks.

Jeremy: do you do ‘Elf on the Shelf’ with your daughter?
Klaw: No. That little fucker is creepy.

addoeh: I sw you aren’t doing a long write-up, but any quick thoughts on last week’s episode of Top Chef?
Klaw: Yes, I apologize for skipping last week but I will resume with tonight’s episode. I thought it was bad TV, in a sense, that every dish was apparently good, and we didn’t get a ton of explanation of why the guy who went home went home. Asking “did you make your own bread” seemed a bit of a stretch too – we almost never see anyone make his/her own bread on this show. Also, if every dish includes radishes, tell us more about how the chefs are cooking them, because that’s something I have only eaten raw.

Pat D: Should I try to defend that guy by saying “at least he voted for the maximum amount of players” or is the vote for Hoffman over Raines just way too indefensible?
Klaw: If you put Hoffman, who faced a total of about 4400 batters in his entire career, over Raines, who *reached base* about 4000 times in his career, you don’t understand the first thing about the sport and shouldn’t vote. This is so incredibly fundamental, and that voter’s friends being all “don’t ballot shame” is just a way of avoiding accountability, which is exactly the wrong direction for the electorate to take. You want the vote? Fine. Be accountable. Don’t vote stupid.

Ed: Is Dylan Cease ready for Myrtle Beach, or would you keep him at Eugene?
Klaw: You’re skipping low-A there. He needs to go to a full-season league, yes. I might be willing to jump him to high-A because of weather, but I don’t think he’s demonstrated he’s ready for high-A hitters just yet.

Tim (NJ): Top Chef – so they put 8 veterans with a massive thumb on their scale (experience with contest, more experience after contest) against 8 chefs new to the competition. This seems like a ratings grab, bc from a competition standpoint, this seems really fixed.
Klaw: I’ve been disappointed with the season to date for that reason.

Adam: Do you see any HS or college players poised to shoot up draft boards between now and June? Do you see any that look like they’ll fall?
Klaw: No. Too early for that.

Tim (NJ): If a fortune teller told you Senzel would win ROY in 2018, would that surprise you?
Klaw: No. Although it wouldn’t shock me if he played 50 games in the majors in 2017, either. Kid can hit. You’re not waiting on a ton there.

Tom: Just wanted to say thanks for all the columns, chats, Saturday links, your kindness in Twitter convos, and of course, restaurant recs. A lot of people try to speak for me on Twitter that I’m only interested in your baseball stuff and nothing else. “No you can’t take that away from me.”
Klaw: You’re welcome, and thank you for the kind words. I couldn’t stick to baseball if I wanted to. People who demand that of me get muted or blocked.

Zoey: Keith, how much does pedigree play into prospect rankings? I’m wondering even if it’s subconscious, would a guy like Patrick Weigel rank higher if he was a say a top 50 pick?
Klaw: Not on my rankings. Once you’re in pro ball, the slate is clean.

Tyler: So the original title was suppose to be “Smrt Baseball” right? Publisher forced you to add the a?
Klaw: We thought Smrt Baseball would be unsearchable.

Chris: Given the how sharply the cost of good relief pitching has risen, has it caused you to re-evaluate how you rank prospects that are likely relievers?
Klaw: No, because the value a reliever delivers hasn’t really changed, and we’re not any better today at predicting who they’ll be than we were five years ago. Betances is a great example – total washout as a starter, awful command, goes to the pen, completely different guy now.

Carl: No question. Just wanted to say thanks for the great content, science advocacy, & common sense. Now let me get back to Star Realms while eating leftover Ruhlman Roast Chicken and reading this chat.
Klaw: That’s a strong combination. And you’re welcome. I stand for science.

CB: Weird, I heard the author of Smart Baseball is a biased tool of the liberal media who hates all 32 teams and feels the need to comment on things other than baseball.
Klaw: That too.

Ed: What are your thoughts on Eddy Martinez’ first season? About what you expected? Better / worse?
Klaw: Worse than I expected. Same for Yusnier Diaz. Hopeful both are better in 2017 now that any rust is gone. But maybe I overrated both guys.

Andy: Gary Bettman, the NHL commish, overlapping a lot with Selig, seems utterly incompetent. The NHL canceled a full season and had multiple labor disputes. Yet the NHL is still a money maker for the owners. Losing money on an established sports league at this point would frankly be more shocking.
Klaw: TV money is the determining variable here. It’s like when Democrats tried to give credit for the Internet economic bubble to Bill Clinton. Yes, he made some decent policy decisions. He was also sitting on the oil deposit when it started gushing … oh, god, this analogy is terrible, I’m sorry.

Geoff: Hi Keith – spending a year of grad school in Gainesville, is the UF team worth checking out? I’m from Massachusetts, never seen big time college baseball. Thanks
Klaw: Always worth checking out, with two potential first-rounders this year in Faedo and Schwarz, and Guthrie not far behind.

Zach: Hey Keith, aside from ATCQ (Goat) has any hip-hop album really stood out for you this year?
Klaw: Nothing really. Kendrick’s untitled record was good, but I never felt compelled to go back to it after March.

Joe Schmo: My wife went to see her primary because of some numbness in hands and face. He thinks it could be caused by stress so he prescribed Xanax. He’s the medical professional…but it worries me that he’s offering it to her so willingly without going through a proper diagnosis from a psychiatrist. Am I overreacting?
Klaw: Xanax is a go-to script for primary care docs these days, even though it’s quite habit-forming. I feel like i know a dozen people who’ve told me they have it. I’ve taken it maybe four times in my life, all during my episode of panic attacks and inability to sleep in 2012, and then stopped when I was able to sleep again because I worried about long-term use.

Cletus: Nats should give closer to- Glover, Treinen, or other??
Klaw: I bet they acquire someone but I’d put Glover over Treinen.

Felix: In all of your travels, where did you find the best brisket?
Klaw: Franklin BBQ in Austin is the best, Little Miss BBQ in Phoenix is second. 4 Rivers near Orlando is good too.

Zach: I imagine you’re too busy to really play video games, but was the younger Klaw a gamer? Picturing you as the Rpg type.
Klaw: Only a little. I played some computer RPGs like Bard’s Tale and the original Pool of Radiance but didn’t have a ton of patience for them. Loved the original Civilization game, though. I lost a lot of time one semester in college to that.

Andrew: Isn’t there a logical fallacy to the rise in Clemens/Bonds voters as a result of the Selig HOF selection? In theory, if we shouldn’t use Jim Rice to argue that similar players are HOFers….shouldn’t we not use Selig to justify Bonds/Clemens? (p.s. I’m still pro Bonds/Clemens in the HOF, but still)
Klaw: In this case, I think voters are saying, well, we asked you for guidance on PED guys, and you implicitly gave it to us by putting Commissioner See-No-Evil in, so, all’s fair now.

Andy: I know you aren’t a fan of the extremely vague character clause. Bonds and Schilling’s on field play is good enough for you to vote. If it comes up, would someone with an offense like Chapman’s violate your personal character clause to vote for the HOF?
Klaw: Probably not. If he had Rivera’s credentials, for example, and this one incident is the only one of its kind he has (nothing worse, either), I would likely include him, reluctantly. Of course, with Chapman, there’s been other stuff, some smaller offenses that are public, some character issues that are not.

Chris: Do you think people are finding false comfort on stating over and over again that 2016 has been a particularly terrible year? I mean, can’t it get much worse? And isn’t it likely that it will?
Klaw: It can, it probably will, and it’s not like the universe is aware that the western system of numbering collections of days is about to see the last digit roll over.

Jay: Could Bryan Reynolds be an above average CF (offensively and defensively) at AT&T park? ETA in 2018 or 2019?
Klaw: Yes. I’m in. Some risk with high K rate but great value pick there with upside on both sides of the ball.

Ryan V.: Shazaam, starring Sinbad – great movie, or Greatest Movie?
Klaw: That story is in my list for Saturday’s links post. That’s absolutely amazing. The power of a collective delusion?

Andrew: Do you agree with eat like a king during breakfast, a king at lunch and a pauper for dinner? Trying to find ways to improve my diet.
Klaw: No. I eat more at dinner than the other two meals, typically. I don’t know that it’s best, but it works for me.

Mikey: Give me a reason to believe in Javier Guerra. He really struggled with the stick. Can he figure it out or is he a future Rey Ordonez?
Klaw: I think he was very young for the level, has plenty of ability, and is in a good situation now with an organization that is committing a lot of resources to helping him. He’s going to be good.

Dan: Did you watch The Magicians series? Have only read the first book and am ~7 episodes in. It took me a while but I finally enjoy how different it is from the source material.
Klaw: No, it’s on my to-do list, which is getting longer rather than shorter.

addoeh: Through odd circumstances, someone has taken your espresso machine away from you and will give it back if you do one of two things; watch three hours of Calliou or a three hour video of the 2016 Cleveland Browns highlights. Which will you watch?
Klaw: I don’t know football well enough to be bothered by watching a bad team play badly.

Moltar: Definitive ranking of renditions of A Christmas Carol: 1.) Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol 2.) Muppet Christmas Carol 3.) Scrooged 4.) Flinstones Christmas Carol 5.) Patrick Stewart version
Klaw: You missed the George C. Scott version, which I think is my favorite straight-up adaptation.

Andy: If Bud Selig were still commish, he would threaten to contract Oakland and TB, and then sell both teams to Jeff Loria for practically nothing.
Klaw: Also a problem we tend to forget. He certainly didn’t solve either team’s situation, or even push towards a resolution.

Joey Bagodonuts: I just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas and say that I look forward to being mentioned in your draft projections for 2017.
Klaw: Thank you, and I can tell you now that you merited a mention in Smart Baseball.

J: Yes The R&R Hall of Fame is ridiculous as art is not a competition, but one band/performer you think should be in that is not? Using the current no criteria criteria of couse
Klaw: I was floored that Bad Brains, who are incredibly influential despite having no popularity themselves, were nominated but left out. You don’t have to like their music to recognize that they influenced entire genres and broke the race barrier in punk.

Steve Fratantaro: Hi Keith. i’m curious to hear your thoughts on the contract Odubel Herrera signed recently. Seems like a team friendly deal to me. What do you think?
Klaw: Team friendly if he never gets any better, bargain if he does. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve heard questions about his work ethic, however, and if those are legitimate – let’s face it, makeup rumors can be complete bullshit – then there’s some risk to the team here.

Jeff: Gavin Newsom is a darkhorse I would watch for in 2020, but 2024 is probably a better bet. But given the recent reports of how Trump partially makes his Cabinet decisions based on looks, maybe 2020 is a real possibility. Can you imagine how intimidated Trump would be seeing Newsom standing across the debate stage? He’d probably call him “Dreamy Gavin”.
Klaw: I’ve been impressed by Newsom’s commentary so far, especially on some pretty contentious issues, but it’s easier to take a firm stand when you’re preaching to the choir in your home state. It’s hard, for example, to remain so firmly pro-gun control when you see how much of the electorate opposes that and will vote on that one issue.

Nelson: Coffee question. I use the Kalita Wave with a burr grinder. Do you vary your grind with the bean? Do you locally roasted beans or mail order? Thoughts on Ronald Acuna as compared to Andruw Jones?
Klaw: Yes, I have to vary the grind by the bean for whatever I’m making. I don’t see the Acuna/Jones comparison, though.

Craig: Regarding Schilling’s drop in HOF support, do you think it is permanent or do you think that voters are latching on to his comments as a way to cull their ballot down to 10 names (i.e. “I have 12 guys I would vote for and only 10 slots, so the jerk gets cut first”) and he’ll rebound as the ballot sorts itself out in future years?
Klaw: I think the timing of his post about lynching reporters is having a direct effect on his support, but I don’t know if that endures. We may not know for another year or two until we reach a point where most people agree the number of qualified candidates on the ballot is ten or fewer. Right now I would say there are twelve and I’d accept any answer from about eleven to maybe fifteen.

Ang: What are you doing with the pork shoulder for xmas? I really like the recipes I’ve been using, one Korean with a long gochujang marinade and the other a kind of kalua pork, but would like to try something new this year,
Klaw: Using the Momofuku bo ssam recipe, which is easy, almost foolproof, and damn good.

Klaw: That’s all for this week, and I apologize for being a little slow today – I woke up with a migraine, slept another hour and a half after I got my daughter to school, and still am not at 100%. Thank you all for bearing with me, for your questions, and for your support throughout the year. Have a Merry Christmas, for those of you who celebrate it, and for the rest of you, may the calendar keep bringing Happy Holidays to you.

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Top 10 albums of 2016.

The last few years I’ve ranked a number of albums equal to the last two digits of the year, so I should have been due for a top 16 albums list for 2016 … but I can’t do it. I just couldn’t find that many albums I could truly recommend as complete listens, records that were mostly good from start to finish, as opposed to albums that had three great songs (Jagwar Ma’s Every Now and Then) but had a lot of filler.

I’ve always slipped one metal album on to the list for fellow fans of the heavy stuff; the best metal record I heard this year was Kodama (amazon • iTunes) by French shoegaze-metalers Alcest, six songs, mostly long ones, that create a cohesive sound that carries over shifting tempos and movements and the occasional death growl. It was just a fair year in metal, I think, with a lot of well-known artists releasing albums that were pretty ho-hum (looking at you, Metallica and Megadeth). Other favorites of mine this year: Gojira’s Magma, Entombed AD’s Dead Dawn, Omnium Gatherum’s Grey Heavens, Animals As Leaders’ The Madness of Many, Dark Tranquility’s Atoma, and two I’ll suggest with reservations – Cobalt’s Slow Forever, which is brilliant musically but marred by screeched vocals a la Obituary; and Astronoid’s Air, kind of like shoegaze-death metal with clean, often harmonized vocals, but lacking much in the way of hooks.

You can see my ranking of the top 100 songs of 2016, which I posted last week and informs this list as well.

10. Radiohead – A Moon Shaped Pool (amazon • iTunes). I mean, it’s a Radiohead album, so it’s brilliant and intricate and slightly experimental, but it’s also on the ambient, ethereal side of things, which, as a fan of their first three albums, I find a bit disappointing. There are two standout tracks here, “Burn the Witch” and “Desert Island Disk,” but there are plenty of other worthwhile moments on the album (like the two-step drumbeat that underlies “Identikit”) and nothing truly unlistenable.

9. Wire – Nocturnal Koreans (amazon • iTunes). Barely an album at 26 minutes for eight songs, it’s essentially the discarded tracks from their 2015 self-titled album, but cleaned up with better production, and the result is a distillation of Wire’s best sounds, musically and technically.

8. The Coral – Distance Inbetween (amazon • iTunes). In a year when the Stone Roses dropped two singles in an unexpected comeback, their brand of blues-heavy psychedelic rock was done better on two albums that landed in my top ten, including this one. The Coral seemed on the verge of dissolution after losing two key members in the last few years, but this album sees them back to their mid-aughts heyday of driving, throwback rock, including tracks like “Fear Machine,” “Chasing the Tail of a Dream,” and the opening track “Connector.”

7. Lapcat – She’s Bad (amazon • iTunes). Experimental-ish electronic music, picking up where the xx’s first album left off (an album the xx themselves seem to have forgotten), led by Cate Coslor’s sultry vocals but powered by the sparse, atmospheric synth lines behind her. They’re apparently big Portishead fans and the influence is clear on “She’s Bad,” “Lavender,” and “Nebraska.”

6. SULK – No Illusions (amazon • iTunes). This is the other Stone Roses-influenced album here, this record opens with a three-song punch that will transport you right back to “She Bangs the Drums” and “I Wanna Be Adored,” although they’re missing Ian Brown’s swagger here. Even when the melody doesn’t click, they still evoke a time and feeling with guitar lines like the one behind “Love Can’t Save You Now.”

5. White Lung – Paradise (amazon • iTunes). This album was so hyped, and I bought into it completely, that I found myself a little disappointed when it came out and it was merely very good, a 60 rather than a 70. It’s smart punk, well-informed by decades of punk-pop fusions, but “Hungry” was the only single that I thought stood out on its own, although “Kiss Me When I Bleed” and “Below” are solid too.

4. School of Seven Bells – SVIIB (amazon • iTunes). I tried not to bow too much to sentiment here, as this is the farewell record from SVIIB, whose founding member, Ben Curtis, died three years ago this month of lymphoma at age 35. His bandmate and former partner Alejandra Deheza returned to the studio a year later and completed the record they’d begun, producing an album of two parts. The first seven songs are typical SVIIB fare, dreamy electronica given texture by Deheza’s smoky, low-register vocals, mixing upbeat tempos with a clear sense of loss in the lyrics to songs like “Open Your Eyes,” “Ablaze,” and “A Thousand Times More.” Then the album closes with two ballads to rip your heart right out of your chest.

3. Thrice – To Be Everywhere is to Be Nowhere (amazon (for $5!) • iTunes). That’s Riley Breckenridge of the Productive Outs podcast and the band Puig Destroyer on drums for these post-hardcore stalwarts, whose latest album was their first in five years and something of a return to heavy rock after 2011’s Major/Minor. This hits a particular sweet spot for me, as I’ve always favored guitar-driven music, even to the point of listening to some extreme metal, but also am drawn to strong melodies and smart lyrics. “Blood on the Sand” and “Black Honey” made my top 100 but I’m also a fan of opener “Hurricane” and the angry “Death from Above.”

2. Wild Beasts – Boy King (amazon • iTunes). The best rock record of the year finds Wild Beasts coming down from their art-rock heights to produce their most accessible album to date, a disc devoted to the idea of toxic masculinity (“Now I’m all fucked up/And I can’t stand up/So I better suck it up/Like a tough guy would”). Their willingness to experiment is corraled here within normal song structures, and they’ve created hypnotic, twisted dance songs like “Alpha Female,” “Get My Bang,” and “He the Colossus” that fill out the record along with the slower but still catchy “Big Cat” and “Tough Guy.”

1. A Tribe Called Quest – We got it from Here … Thank You 4 Your Service (amazon • iTunes). Another record informed by loss – founding Tribe member Phife died in March, just as the quartet were finishing the album – this isn’t merely the best record of the year, it’s one of the best records of the century and my favorite rap album of the last twenty years. Where the Tribe were always pioneers of Afrocentric lyrics and infusing jazz and other traditionally black music into their songs, they were fundamentally about peace and personal, spiritual uplift. We Got it from Here, however, finds the Tribe seriously pissed off, and their lyrics and vocabulary reflect it – but Q-Tip, Phife, and the revenant Jarobi White are as energized as ever, dropping rhymes like they never quit, like The Love Movement never happened, like the state of Black America is more important than whatever personal feud kept them apart for almost two decades. Busta Rhymes hasn’t sounded this good since The Coming. Kendrick Lamar is here. Jack White is here. Elton Fucking John sings on this record. And there are hooks everywhere – on “The Space Program,” “We the People,” “Melatonin,” “Dis Generation,” “Ego,” and more. I didn’t see this album coming, and I don’t give any record extra points for coming from an artist I love or one that’s been gone a long time. The only flaw here was that, at sixteen songs, it probably could have been shorter, but with Phife gone, I’m happy to hear everything he recorded before he left. This is almost certainly the end of the Tribe as we knew them, but what a fucking way to go.

Others I considered that didn’t make the cut – and I listened to a LOT of albums this month to make sure I had enough of a sample to put together a list at all – included sad13’s Slugger, Bob Mould’s Patch the Sky, Jagwar Ma’s Every Now and Then, Broods’ Conscious, and Daughter’s Not to Disappear.

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→ December 19, 2016
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A Fire Upon the Deep.

Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep shared the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1993 with the vastly superior The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, a “tie” that beggars belief if you’ve read both books. Willis’s ranks among the best novels I’ve ever read, period, and comparing Vinge’s to it is unfair to the latter book, which is certainly ambitious and epic in scope and theme. Where A Fire Upon the Deep falls short of the greatest sci-fi novels I’ve read is in the stuff that makes a novel a good one: Vinge can’t give us compelling, well-drawn characters, despite his imagination and remarkable ability to create a complex, textured universe within his book.

Set millions of years into the future, A Fire Upon the Deep finds the Milky Way populated with numerous races, including humans, who can travel faster than light – but only if they’re in a zone sufficiently far from the galaxy’s center. These “zones of thought” affect everything from technological and philosophical progress to speed of travel, so a spaceship that moves from the Beyond down into the Slowness (nearer the black hole at our galaxy’s core) can go from traveling at several times the speed of light to a mere fraction thereof.

The story opens in confusing fashion, but after a hundred pages or so it becomes clear that the main plot thread revolves around an ‘ancient’ threat unleashed by the humans of a planet known as Straum, who appear to have found a dormant AI routine, implemented it, and opened Pandora’s Box on a “perversion” that attempts to take over huge swaths of the galaxy. One ship survived the apocalypse at Straum to jump to the Slowness, where the ship lands on an earthlike planet that, it turns out, is populated by a race of wolves, later called the Tines, who have the ability to think in groups: an ‘individual’ Tine is a pack of four to eight wolves who operate with one mind. The Tines attack the ship’s denizens, a family of four, killing the parents and taking the two kids as captives, one to each of the Tines’ two warring camps. These two plot strands are connected in a way that isn’t immediately obvious, spurring a cross-galaxy space chase, an exploration of predetermination, and a story of the intrusion of modern combat technology on a primitive society.

This is a space opera, with shifting timelines, multiple perspectives, intersections between several alien races, and even a pit stop that might as well be the book’s Mos Eisley, with no shortage of sci-fi wizardry. Vinge’s Rainbow’s End, which foresaw the era of wearable technology, was bogged down by his need to give us extraneous details, and A Fire Upon the Deep isn’t much different, especially when it comes to details of the operations of various spaceships – we don’t need any of this, and it brings everything to a crawl (like we’re stuck in the Slowness). Here, this problem is compounded by a plot that can only have one ending: there is no question that the people working to stop the ravenous “perversion,” known as the Blight, are going to win out in the end. The story would just end abruptly if there were any other resolution, and if I tell you one or more heroes will die in the effort, you can probably pick them out before the halfway point.

The other core problem here is that Vinge expends so much effort on crafting this brilliant, imaginative universe that the characters are all far too thinly drawn to create any emotional investment on the reader’s part. The kids are actually both kind of annoying, even though they’re orphans on a strange planet with no other humans around, and for almost the entire book each thinks the other is dead. If you can’t generate any empathy for those characters, you have a serious problem. Another character finds out her home planet has been basically blown up and her whole family annihilated; it’s a ho-hum moment that passes without any real emotion in the text or, obviously, off it.

I didn’t actually hate this book, although it may sound that way; I just wouldn’t recommend it that highly. It’s an achievement in scope and vision, but not as a work of cohesive fiction. I assumed that the Blight would lose the race, and that certain characters would survive, but I can’t say I particularly cared about any of the characters, and there was nothing specific to their individual story arcs beyond mere survival. The mark of great fiction, genre or otherwise, is more than mere plot; without strong characters or good prose, it’s just a story, and that’s all A Fire Upon the Deep was for me.

Next up: I’m halfway through another Hugo winner, Robert Heinlein’s classic Stranger in a Strange Land.

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→ December 17, 2016
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Stick to baseball, 12/17/16.

My main piece for Insiders this week went up this morning, on the many lost opportunities in MLB’s new collective bargaining agreement, discussing money and rights the union may have left on the table, and why the agreement seemed to come together so late. I also wrote about the Dodgers’ two re-signings earlier in the week, and I held a Klawchat here on Thursday.

At Paste this week I ranked the ten best boardgames I saw in 2016. A few folks have asked why the highly-rated Scythe isn’t on the list; I think that game is too long and overly complicated, with playing times that can top two hours (and a retail price of $90). All ten games I listed are clearly better, in my opinion.

In case you missed it, my list of my 100 favorite songs of 2016 went up here on Wednesday night.

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

And now, the links…

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→ December 15, 2016
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Top 100 songs of 2016.

As with all of my music lists, this represents my personal preference. If I don’t like a song, it’s not here. That wipes out some critically-acclaimed artists’ 2016 releases entirely, including Frank Ocean, Angel Olsen, and Bon Iver. Other folks liked that stuff. I didn’t. Everything’s fine.

The top 100 playlist has all tracks ordered from 100 to 1, as usual. I have changed one thing from past years; the last three years I posted a top albums list first, and this a day later, but this year I’m saving the albums list till the following week. I started that post, realized I only had about eight albums I felt strongly about, and decided to go back and listen or re-listen to about a dozen others before writing up whatever number I can reach.

If the Spotify widget won’t display for you, you can access the playlist directly.

100. Dinosaur Jr. – Goin Down. The opening track on Dinosaur Jr.’s first album in four years, Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not, sounds very much like vintage Dino Jr, but the album ended up feeling repetitive to me … just like vintage Dino Jr. I like this song though.

99. HAELOS – Separate Lives. This British electronic trio produces music that is clearly influenced by 1990s trip-hop but manages to transcend that genre’s tendency towards, uh, music for the heavily stoned with faster beats and more pronounced melody lines on top of the spaced-out rhythm.

98. The Aces – Stuck. A one-off single from a then-unsigned quartet, this is one of the year’s best straight pop songs, effervescent without being cloying. I do wonder if they’ll have to change their name at some point to avoid confusion with the blues band of the same name, who backed up singer Little Walter and recorded a few songs on their own.

97. The Faint – Young & Realistic. A new single to promote their retrospective Capsule album, this is dark electronic indie music from the Omaha stalwarts and perhaps my favorite song of theirs since their 2004 record Wet from Birth.

96. D.A.R.K. – The Moon. A sort-of-supergroup, D.A.R.K. stands for Dolores (O’Riordan, of the Cranberries), Andy Rourke (of the Smiths), and Ole Koretsky (of … I don’t know what). Their first album, Science Agrees, came out in September, and it’s full of dark, moody songs like this one, light on melodies and not particularly sounding like either O’Riordan’s or Rourke’s old bands.

95. Preoccupations – Stimulation. Formerly known as Viet Cong, Preoccupations issued their first album under their new name this September, but their sound hasn’t changed, a meld of garage-rock sounds from the 1960s and early punk/guitar-driven new wave from the late 1970s. I like their overall sound more than I like their songs, and I do not stick around for the 10-minute tracks they have included on each album to date, but “Stimulation” shows their potential when they hit on a memorable melody.

94. Bastille – Good Grief. I assume I’m supposed to dislike this because Bastille is so popular, but guess what – it’s a great song, just like “Pompeii” was, and both pair a cheerful melody against a song about death and despair.

93. Sleigh Bells – I Can’t Stand You Anymore. Sleigh Bells have a critical and cult following of which I am not a member; I loved “Rill Rill” and got off the train before it derailed (derilled?) into noise-rock. This lead single from their album Jessica Rabbit, which just dropped a few weeks ago, does a better job of keeping Alexis Krauss’ voice out in front, and has a minimalist backing track led by a solid guitar riff without the trappings of some of their earlier, more dissonant works.

92. Spirit Animal – World War IV (To the Floor). Spirit Animal’s EP World War IV is as eclectic as this song, with bits from all different genres, in one measure drawing on 1970s funk, then shifting into an ’80s metal riff for the chorus.

91. Christine & the Queens – Tilted. This song first appeared in 2014 in French as “Christine” but was rereleased earlier this year in a mostly-English version, and the chorus is one of the year’s best earworms, not to mention the indelible image of the line “I’m doing my face/With magic marker.”

90. Cloves – Better Now. Kaity Dunstan, aka Cloves, made my top ten last year with her incredible piano-and-vocals track “Frail Love,” and is back now with this lead single from her debut album, due out at some point in 2017. Still just 20 years old, she should be a mainstream star by this point next year, based on her output to date.

89. Bear’s Den – Auld Wives. Bands with “Bear” in their names are almost as trendy as those with “White” in their names right now. This London duo seems to have drunk heavily on darker, gothic music since their first album of Mumford-esque folk-pop, although “Auld Wives” was the only real standout from their sophomore album.

88. Descendents – Victim of Me. I wanted to love Hypercaffium Spazzinate, the Descendents’ first album since 2004, but I just kind of liked it; it’s older, wiser (one song is called “No Fat Burger”), but a little tamer too. I still like their general sound, a poppier take on classic punk that isn’t sanitized like Green Day’s commercialized version.

87. Atomic Tom – Someone to Love. A soaring new-new-wave track that gave me a-ha flashbacks, but in a good way, with the same kind of huge energy as that branch of ’80s synth-pop, but with more guitars and less artificiality.

86. Animal Collective – Golden Gal. The song opens with a sample from the show Golden Girls, which has somehow come back around to cult popularity – if you’ve ever been in a Big Gay Ice Cream shop, you’d think the show never fell out of favor – but it’s a good example of how AC’s Painting With showed them dabbling more in conventional song structures without losing their inherently experimental style that made them distinctive in the first place. “FloriDaDa” is the best song on the album but appeared on my top 100 last year.

85. Wire – Numbered. Think of a number … Wir(e) sound remarkably young on Nocturnal Koreans, their 15th album, coming out more than 38 years after their first record Pink Flag introduced the world to “Three Girl Rhumba,” to which this new track alludes in multiple ways. Wire remain cynical post-punksters who seem to drop melodies almost in spite of themselves, and their latest album, only 26 minutes long, was one of the year’s best.

84. Daughter – No Care. Daughter’s album Not to Disappear tended more towards lugubrious quietcore, but this one track brings a manic, angry energy that breaks up the album. The way the song seems about to careen out of control puts the lie to its title and chorus, as if the lady, singer Elena Tonra, doth protest too much.

83. The Wans – Run Baby Run. A hard-rock trio from Nashville with some blues or even country underpinnings, like the Black Keys did a few lines and got angry. This is meant as a compliment.

82. Kate Nash – Good Summer. I miss the lyricist behind “Foundations,” but I still love Nash’s voice and she has a knack for crafting a pop hook, even though this bit of candy veers towards bubblegum more than I’d like.

81. Black Honey – All My Pride. This female-fronted post-punk act from the UK appears twice on my list, not including the song “Black Honey” by a completely different band. If you were into White Lung, who also appear here, you’d like Black Honey, which has a similar vibe with maybe 10% less rage.

80. Lucius – Pulling Teeth. Lucius are weird, practically a walking stereotype of Brooklyn hipster musicians, but they had a huge year in 2016, with an album in March, Good Grief, that had a couple of outstanding singles on it, and this track from an upcoming 10″ along with “The Punisher.” If you can get past the superficial stuff, Lucius actually produces some really novel pop sounds that draw upon many different eras going back to the 1950s.

79. Broods – Free. I could listen to Georgia Nott sing just about anything – and she’s not too hard on the eyes either – but this duo’s new album marked a significant change in direction from their debut record, which made my top albums of 2014, bringing bigger production values, more electronic elements behind her vocals, and a clear right turn towards commercial pop. I worry they’ve lost a little of what made their debut special to try to appeal to a broader audience, but two core facets are still here – Nott’s voice and strong vocal melodies.

78. The Big Pink – Hightimes. Nothing will ever match “Dominos,” but this was a solid return from The Big Pink after years of meh singles that followed their kick-the-doors-down debut track.

77. Mt. Si – Oh. This new project from Sarah Chernoff of Superhumanoids, an absolutely superb vocalist, dropped a four-track EP in February that showcases her voice with sparser electronic backing than she’d get with her regular gig.

76. Halsey – Castle. Halsey’s everywhere thanks to that awful song she did with the Chainsmokers – who are on my short list for Worst Artists of 2016 along with Twenty-One Pilots and DNCE – but this track, released as a single this spring thanks to its inclusion in the dud film The Huntsman, is both a great showcase for her voice’s smoky qualities and the swirling melody in the chorus.

75. Grimes – Medieval Warfare. A mediocre Grimes song is still better than a good song by a lot of other artists; this track, which sounds like a B-side from a single off Art Angels, appeared on the Suicide Squad soundtrack.

74. Hey Violet – Brand New Moves. Get used to this group, as I think they’re about to break through as a pure-pop act aimed at teenaged listeners, with their abysmal “Guys My Age” already getting some airplay and their label the new one formed by the 5 Seconds of Summer boybanders. “Brand New Moves,” the title track from their latest EP, is by far their most sophisticated song, with elements of R&B and even some darkwave distinguishing it from the pure-pop crowd.

73. of Montreal – it’s different for girls. If you can handle Kevin Barnes’ idiosyncratic vocal delivery – before I knew this band was from Athens, Georgia I assumed they were from another country – of Montreal creates some compelling experimental pop music, sometimes exasperating but sometimes clicking, as it does on this comical semi-feminist track.

72. Lush – Out of Control. A very quiet comeback from these early 1990s shoegazers who had a brief moment in the sun with their modest alternative hit single “Ladykiller” back in 1995, but one that found Lush moving back to its Spooky/Split roots.

71. Chairlift – Romeo. Their best song to date, “Ch-Ching,” made my top 10 of 2015; the album Moth didn’t quite live up to the expectations set by the lead single, but this was the second-best track on the record.

70. Regina Spektor – Grand Hotel. Just vocals and piano, with Spektor managing to craft something of a story, heavy on physical imagery, about a hotel that has a direct connection to the underworld.

69. Dawes – When the Tequila Runs Out. This has a little bit of a novelty-hit feel to it, but I’m not averse to novelty hits if they’re smart and still catchy.

68. Wild Beasts – Tough Guy. Get used to this band, as they’re going to show up again on this list; Boy King was the best rock album of the year. Wild Beasts was always an experimental outfit, a la alt-J or Everything Everything, but on this latest album they toned down a little bit of the madness to create more compact, accessible songs that are still way out of the mainstream.

67. Thrice – Black Honey. Another of my favorite albums of the year, Thrice’s post-hardcore To Be Everywhere is to Be Nowhere had a bunch of standout tracks, including this one, the complex opener “Hurricane,” and one more song higher up this list. I feel like Thrice has taken up the mantle of bands like Clutch or Corrision of Conformity fell off, making music that clearly descends from hardcore but works with slower tempos and real hooks. Full disclosure: I know their drummer, and perhaps so do you, as it’s Riley Breckinridge of the Productive Outs podcast.

66. The Struts – Kiss This. I like this song. Don’t @ me.

65. Black Map – Run Rabbit Run. This group’s members are all parts of other bands I’ve never heard of, so forgive me if I balk at Wikipedia (which is never wrong) terming them a “supergroup.” This is an extremely catchy hard-rock song with a real bluesy riff underpinning it.

64. Banks & Steelz – Giant. So many of these rap/rock partnerships turn out to be disasters that I was shocked when this one – Paul Banks of Interpol and RZA of Wu-Tang Clan – produced a couple of decent songs, including this one, which is probably the strongest rap performance I heard from RZA on this record. Ghostface Killah also appears on the lead single, “Love + War,” although I found the chorus to that song really week.

63. Leagues – Dance with Me. This Nashville outfit had a couple of minor hits in 2013 with “Spotlight” and “You Belong Here” and returned this fall with Alone Together, which has a similar sound that blends indie and electronic sounds with alt.country tempos and riffing. I like their way of bringing those styles together, as it’s less cloying than other bands that try to mash them up into something pop, but Leagues hasn’t found the commercial success they deserve yet.

62. Car Seat Headrest – Fill in the Blank. So everyone comments on the funny intro to this song, which sounds like a college student on the campus radio station announcing the next song, which is by some artist she’s never heard of so she has to look it up. I think that’s genuinely funny … the first time. And then it’s never funny again. I also was totally underwhelmed by this album, which is making a lot of folks’ top ten lists for the year, between Will Toledo’s whiny voice and the fact that it sounds like it was recorded in a storage locker. That’s a lot of words about not liking Car Seat Headrest, but I think this song has a good hook.

61. Hippo Campus – Boyish. Minnesota indie-rockers who sound nothing like Prince, which I thought was illegal if you were from the Twin Cities or something. The pairing of the keyboard line and the vocal melody gives this song its most persistent hook, more than the call-and-response act in the chorus. Their debut album, Landmark, is due out on February 24th.

60. Suede – Outsiders. Anderson, Oakes, and company have put out a couple of solid albums the last couple of years for an unexpected second act that will never match their “Metal Mickey” heyday but brings some lyrical and musical maturity to their Britpop roots, even hitting the top ten in the UK. There’s a real sense of yearning and loss in a lot of songs from these two records, as on “Outsiders,” which marries some great guitar work from Oakes with melancholy vocals from Anderson.

59. Temples – Certainty. Temples’ second album is due out in March, with this as the teaser first single, driven by an organ riff after the chorus that reminds me of the earliest output of the Charlatans and their own reliance on a Hammond organ on their debut record.

58. Sad13 – <2. That’s Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz, who have a song much further up this list; she issued her solo debut, Slugger, this summer, and it sounds a lot like Speedy Ortiz’s two albums to date, which is a good thing – melody and anti-melody, often using dissonant sounds, vocals that seem to be fighting the music at times but always manage to come together by the end of the song. If anything, “<2” is a bit more melodic than the best Speedy Ortiz songs (like “Tiger Tank”), but if you liked her work before the solo album you’re going to like this.

57. The Kills – Doing It to Death. It’s not quite “Sour Cherry,” but what is? Jamie Hince’s guitar work is really the star of the song, even overshadowing Alison Mosshart’s vocals when the latter are mixed toward the front of the track.

56. Jagwar Ma – Give Me a Reason. Jagwar Ma are an Australian indie-pop trio, and they’re only “indie” in the sense that they haven’t really broken through yet – this is great, smart, complex music that would fit in fine on pop radio except for the fact that it’s better than almost everything else on those stations. “Give Me a Reason” sounds like a lost Madchester track that’s been remastered but would rank among the best songs by the Happy Mondays or the Inspiral Carpets.

55. ELEL – Animal. This eight-member outfit finally released their first full-length album, Geode this fall, including their minor hit “40 Watt” from last year and this song, my favorite from them to date, which encapsulates their mixture of soul and Caribbean rhythms into typical rock song structures.

54. Hundred Waters – Forgive Me for Giving Up. Hundred Waters had my #1 album of 2014, then released this one-off single this year, along with a very weird remix of their song “Show Me Love” that included Chance the Rapper. (I didn’t like it.) This song is more like HW’s other output, using Nicole Miglis’s potent vocals as another layer of melody.

53. White Lies – Come On. This is unapologetic ’80s new wave revival music, one of the two best tracks on their October album Friends, along with “Don’t Want to Feel It All.”

52. Nani – I Am Volcano. They describe themselves as “manic-wave,” but this sounds like very early post-punk to me, like what Siouxie Sioux might have produced had she stayed in a more guitar-driven direction than going towards what would become new wave. I think this is a band to watch.

51. Jeff Beck – Live in the Dark. Yes, that’s the Jeff Beck, the 72-year-old guitar virtuoso and author of the song “Constipated Duck.” His Loud Hailer was his first album in six years, and he hasn’t lost anything as a guitarist or author of memorable licks. Singer Rosie Bones (of the London duo Bones, with guitarist Carmen Vandenburg, who also appears on this album) can get in the way of Beck’s work sometimes, but on “Live in the Dark” her deep, bluesy vocals complement his work and turn what he’s called a “guitar nerd” sort of track into a viable radio single.

50. The Temper Trap – Fall Together. TT’s best song since their 2008 hit “Sweet Disposition” also carries a big chorus and anthemic feel tailor-made for playing to a big stadium crowd in their home country of Australia.

49. The Coral – Fear Machine. I thought the Coral’s album Distance Inbetween was one of the best of the year, and a criminally underheard rock record that particularly satisfies me as someone who grew up on the hard rock of the ’70s and ’80s but bailed on the stylized, overproduced groove and rap-metal acts of the 1990s. The Coral quaffed deeply on what was called metal in the 1970s and this song grooves in a way that so-called “groove metal” doesn’t. Recommended if you like Band of Skulls.

48. Last Shadow Puppets – Bad Habits. LSP’s surprise second album left me pretty cold other than this one single, and even this isn’t close to “Standing Next to Me,” the glorious throwback single from their first album. Alex Turner is capable of better.

47. Trashcan Sinatras – Let Me Inside (Or Let Me Out). I loved the first two albums from these Scottish folk-rockers, which produced alternative hits like “Obscurity Knocks” and “Hayfever” (the latter featured in a Beavis and Butthead episode). Wild Pendulum, their first album in seven years, leans more towards the folkier side of their sound, but the first three songs on the album have a little more energy to them, like their best singles from their 1990s period did.

46. School of Seven Bells – Ablaze. The farewell album from SVIIB was finished after the death of member Benjamin Curtis, who recorded with partner Alejandra Deheza up until a few months before leukemia ended his life; Deheza returned to the studio after taking over a year away from music and completed the album, which is a tremendous, emotional record in its own right, and a fitting tribute to Curtis. SVIIB never broke through as they deserved, but I hope this album will find its audience in time given the presence of several great singles and the crushing suite of ballads that closes the record.

45. FREAK – Nowhere. I wrote in November’s playlist how FREAK has been compared to Nirvana, but I don’t hear that as much as I hear Drenge and Royal Blood and other stripped-down British garage-rock acts, maybe with a little more hard-rock edge to it.

44. KONGOS – Take It From Me. The South African (by way of Arizona) quartet behind the 2012 hit “Come With Me Now” put out a presciently-titled album called Egomaniac this summer, featuring more of their kwaito-infused rock; this received moderate airplay but I thought it was the best song and most radio-friendly single from that full-length.

43. Stone Roses – All for One. It’s not vintage Stone Roses – if it were, it would probably be in my top five – mostly because someone seems to have emasculated Ian Brown between Solarized and his reunion with John Squire, whose guitar work sounds pretty much as it did in his abortive efforts with the Seahorses.

42. Corinne Bailey Rae – Stop Where You Are. Rae’s first album in six years, The Heart Speaks in Whispers, was a welcome return for one of the most beautiful voices in music, absent since the album she recorded after her husband’s death in 2008.

41. Van William – Revolution. Van Pierszalowski of WATERS recorded two songs as Van William this year, with help from First Aid Kit on this folky track, although it’s still very clearly the same voice (literally and figuratively) behind WATERS’ hooks and lyrics. Full disclosure: Van’s a Dodgers fan and a fan of third-wave coffee, like I am, and we’ve chatted about both a number of times over the last year-plus, so I won’t pretend to be objective here.

40. SULK – Black Infinity (Upside Down). It’s a better Stone Roses song than either of the songs the re-formed Roses released this year, although in this case I’m talking first album Roses more than second.

39. Monica Heldal – Coulda Been Sound. Heldal’s vocals remind me of Kat Edmondson’s bubbly, evocative style, and the fingerpicked acoustic guitar here would have fit perfectly on Ben Howard’s 2011 Mercury Prize-nominated album Every Kingdom.

38. Lapcat – She’s Bad. I need to spend more time with the new album by this Swiss-American electronica trio; this title track features a hypnotic guitar line over a classic trip-hop rhythm that could easily have come off Massive Attack’s Mezzanine.

37. Ten Fé – Overflow. Still waiting for a full-length album from this new wave-ish duo, who’ve produced a couple of great singles so far in the same vein as White Lies.

36. Drowners – Pick Up the Pace. Named for a Suede song, this quartet had a couple of songs I liked in 2013 that appeared on their debut album, but this year’s On Desire was a relative letdown, sounding too derivative of their Britpop idols without enough hooks like the ones that drive the chorus and bridge of this track.

35. DMA’s – Too Soon. This Australian band sounds right out of mid-90s Britpop, to the point that Noel Gallagher (ex-Oasis) said he’d “boo them” when he saw them at an event where his new band was playing with the DMA’s. I’m over the antics of the brothers Gallagher, and the hackneyed music they put out now, but this DMA’s track does a pretty good impression of that particular moment in music time without coming off as unoriginal (the way Drowners can).

34. Sundara Karma – The Night. A British band (from Reading) whose members cite Bruce Springsteen as an inspiration, although I don’t hear that directly in this swirling, yearning song, more like a focused version of Arcade Fire’s brand of slow indie-rock.

33. Porches – Be Apart. I can be pretty harsh on songs that have this kind of sound, like a bunch of kids playing around with their first Casiotone keyboard, but man this song, from Porches’ album Pool, is just creepy as hell and that makes it great.

32. Thrice – Blood on the Sand. The best pure single off Thrice’s To Be Everywhere is Nowhere, although I think their album as a whole rewards full listens.

31. Japandroids – Near to the Wild Heart of Life. I’ve said before I wasn’t a big fan of Japandroids’ critically acclaimed 2012 Celebration Rock album, which I thought was more noise than melody and lacked the big hooks I’d expect from an album with such plaudits. This lead single and title track from their upcoming album is far more memorable, with the vocals getting more emphasis in the production as well.

30. Swet Shop Boys – Tiger Hologram. The unexpected partnership between actor Riz Ahmed (The Night Of and Rogue One) and Heems (ex-Das Racist.) produced this alternative rap gem that seems to nod to Indian music but is firmly grounded in the shorter musical lines of American hip-hop. Riz outrhymes Heems here, but it’s the repeated synth line that hooked me on this track.

29. Sløtface – Empire Records. Punk-popsters from Norway who had to change their name from Slutface because no one wanted to write about a band called Slutface. I think they’re better off this way. This is the title track from their four-song EP, with a full-length album to come in 2017.

28. Dinosaur Pile-Up – Nothing Personal. Finally released in the U.S. this year, nine months after it first appeared in their native UK, Dinosaur Pile-Up’s Eleven Eleven yielded this very Nirvana-esque rocker with a driving core riff. There’s some good heavy stuff on Eleven Eleven, like “Willow Tree” and “Anxiety Trip,” although I found their slower or lighter material more like bad grunge.

27. Frightened Rabbit – Get Out. These Scots received a lot of favorable reviews for their latest album, Painting of a Panic Attack, but I thought most of the record lacked any clear hooks or strong melodies, with the exception of this song, which perfectly balances their normal folk-rock sound (think early Belle & Sebastian) with a cathartic release in the chorus.

26. White Lung – Hungry. This Vancouver punk act seemed poised for a big breakthrough with their 2016 album Paradise, which featured a couple of strong advance singles, including this one, and very positive reviews, but it sank without a trace here in the U.S. That’s a shame, as it’s made a number of publications’ best albums of the year lists and will be on mine as well.

25. The Head & the Heart – All We Ever Knew. TH&H seem to be good for one really great song per album, which isn’t to say their other stuff is terrible, just that I find a lot of it to be repetitive, and maybe too folky for me. This song has a couple of good hooks and the violin lines in the bridge bring real textural interest to a part of the song that might have been an afterthought.

24. Yeasayer – I Am Chemistry. I stand for science, and songs about science, or songs that just make a lot of allusions to science. Also, this song is really mesmerizing to listen to.

23. Broods – Heartlines. I noted above that Broods seemed to aim for a wider audience with their sophomore album, but there’s still enough of their atmospheric sound on the record to retain me as a fan, along with Georgia Nott’s outstanding vocal work.

22. Bob Mould – Voices in My Head. Hüsker Dü’s lead singer bounced back with a surprising return to his power-pop roots on Patch the Sky, an album that fits in the space between his first band and the short-lived Sugar; it’s as if Mould can’t help but write one memorable guitar riff after another, and this song, “The End of Things,” and “Hold On” rip open the album in fine form for someone who should be thirty years past his peak.

21. Black Honey – Hello Today. God, this song makes me miss Velocity Girl.

20. Wild Beasts – Get My Bang. I could probably have stuffed five Wild Beasts songs on the top 100 but I settled for three. It’s probably sacrilegious to say a band of four British white guys is continuing the tradition of funk-electronic-pop founded by Prince, but the way they’ve amped up the bass here bears his unmistakable influence. I could even see Prince writing about toxic masculinity, the overarching theme of their album Boy King.

19. Bat for Lashes – Sunday Love. Natasha Khan, who records as Bat for Lashes, wrote an entire concept album called The Bride about a woman whose fiance is killed en route to their wedding. It’s depressing as hell. This is a beautiful song, though, even though it’s about grief.

18. HAERTS – Eva. The longest song I’ve ever included on a year-end list, this nearly eight-minute opus is really a great four-minute HAERTS song with a three-minute instrumental outro.

17. With Lions – Down We Go. Never look back, Sister Sociopath. Heavy southern blues-rock that just grooves like there’s a foot on the accelerator the whole time.

16. ATCQ – We The People. The first single from the Tribe’s triumphant final album is an angry rant about black lives not mattering, with a hint of defeat about the political climate that isn’t supporting the change we need.

15. Van William – Fourth of July. A slice of sunny acoustic pop that Van Pierszalowski released this summer, his first song under the Van William moniker, although the upbeat guitar work and the various “whoa-oh-oh-oh’s” mask some dark lyrics about losing one’s faith.

14. Gone is Gone – Violescent. A new side project featuring the lead singer of Mastodon and one of the guitarists from Queens of the Stone Age, Gone is Gone has produced a short album and a couple of singles already in the last year, music that’s a little heavier than straight stoner rock but I think not fast enough to be called metal. This song is my favorite by them to date; they take the depressed-grunge sound of Alice in Chains and tune it down, with heavier, less slick production.

13. The Naked & Famous – Higher. I’ve liked TNAF’s sound but compared them unfavorably to CHVRCHES, who mine similar territory with better results. This, however, is a real standout track from the New Zealand group, their best song to date, an anthemic work with a pulsing synth line and shout-along chorus.

12. Phantogram – You Don’t Get Me High Anymore. The duo really dug deep for the title of their third album, Three, which featured this lead single comparing a lover to a drug in the most unflattering of terms.

11. School of Seven Bells – Open Your Eyes. Released too late for my 2015 top 100, this song from SVIIB hit the perfect melange of poignancy for late bandmember Ben Curtis and the spacey electronica the duo made on their previous three albums. Alejandra Deheza’s whispered lyrics seem so much more melancholy in the context of her former romantic and professional partner’s death.

10. Lucius – Almost Makes Me Wish for Rain. It’s not quite Shirley Manson saying she’s only happy when it rains, but Lucius has managed to craft a clever song about looking for the bad when everything’s good – to the point of an inability to just be happy in the moment – in a song that infuses indie-pop with a healthy dose of Motown.

9. Bear Hands – 2AM. I mean, the core message of the song is an essential truth: Nothing good happens past two a.m. It’s less of a rock song than their previous alternative radio hits “Agora” and “Giants,” and there’s real craft in its crescendo from the ambling verse, like a drunkard who’s stayed too long at the party, to the voice of conscience in the tight chorus.

8. Jagwar Ma – O B 1. It’s a slow build, but a big payoff in Jagwar Ma’s best song to date, a minute and a half to the two-stage chorus that turns the song’s rhythm and tempo on their heads. Unlike their first hit, “Save Me,” which was great for three minutes but then seemed like a song that couldn’t find the exit, this one keeps the beat going strong right past the five-minute mark thanks to the long intro and the layered backing music.

7. FKA Twigs – Good to Love. I hated FKA Twigs’ highly-regarded but, in my opinion, utterly juvenile debut LP1, which showed she had many influences and could use them to curse in lots of different musical styles. Then she blew me away with this stunningly gorgeous ballad. “I’ve got a right to hurt inside.” Yes, you do whatever you need to do, just keep writing music like this, please.

6. Wild Beasts – Big Cat. Boy King was one of the best albums of the year, and if you listen to this and don’t find yourself singing “Big cat top of the food chain” over and over for hours, you might be tone-deaf.

5. Everything Everything – I Believe It Now. I’ve lumped Everything Everything with Wild Beasts and alt-J as British bands doing experimental things within alternative rock’s frameworks, with Wild Beasts veering towards art-pop and Everything Everything writing the musical equivalent of Zadie Smith’s hysterical realism. This one-off single, written for British soccer telecasts, is their most focused track yet, a huge, bombastic anthem that finds the quartet keeping themselves just a shade more under control than usual.

4. Speedy Ortiz – Death Note. Go figure: Speedy Ortiz’s best song so far was a rejected track from 2015’s Foil Deer that they released as a one-off this spring.

3. Glass Animals – Life Itself. Glass Animals always does interesting things with their percussion, but I haven’t thought much of their songwriting to date because they seemed more focused on being weird than writing tight songs. This, though, flattened me on first listen. It’s a perfect pop song, with multiple melodic elements, witty lyrics, and, of course, interesting percussion sounds.

2. ATCQ – Dis Generation. It’s about as close as we’ll ever get to a “Scenario” reunion, with Q-Tip, Phife, Jarobi White, and Busta Rhymes rapping fast, with each other, over each other, around each other, and, in Busta’s case, back and forth to himself. It’s the best he’s sounded in twenty years, and the energy of the studio is palpable in every line. Jarobi “imbibing on impeccable grass.” Tip making “a jubilant noise” and praising the likes of Kendrick Lamar and Earl Sweatshirt as “extensions of instinctual soul.” Busta Rhymes rhyming “In the church of Busta Rhymes, it’s my sermon you’re getting/Horizontal spittin’, I’m the exorcist of your writtens/’Don’t interrupt me n****!’/Sorry, that’s the sin I’m forgivin’.” And Phife, may he rest in peace, reminding us all that “we still the highest of commodity grade.” Yes, you were, and will forever be.

1. Radiohead – Burn the Witch. No song this year stayed with me like this one; their album A Moon Shaped Pool was too tepid for my tastes, but the interplay between the strings and Thom Yorke’s vocals – reminiscent of his work on P.J. Harvey’s “This Mess We’re In” – is like a surge of electricity that won’t stop, and some of the lyrics, including the line that “this is a low-flying panic attack,” stand as reminders of the art that Radiohead is capable of producing.

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Klawchat, 12/15/16.

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Klaw: Flaccid ego in your hand … it’s Klawchat.

Greg: Atlanta has mentioned wanting a catching prospect in AA or AAA. Would Baltimore part with Sisco?
Klaw: I didn’t think so a few months ago, but now I think they might, especially with Castillo potentially there for two years. I like Sisco – not a star, but a good regular who can hit.

Evan: In a previous chat you mentioned that you used points for a vacation. Curious if you have any recommendations for a hotel chain to use for business travel. Thanks!
Klaw: I’m a Marriott whore like everyone else in baseball.

Matt: So umm…Russia. Apparently more than 50 members of the Electoral Collage demanding an investigation to Russia tampering w/ the election. Think there’s merit to this or it’s just smoke and mirrors?
Klaw: I think it’s probably less dramatic than the headlines appear, but I would also favor an investigation if only to determine whether something happened at all that we need to protect against in 2018 and 2020. If Trump’s camp specifically worked with Russian hackers or authorities, that’s a legal question that I probably don’t know enough to answer.

Armin: Hi Keith, wouldn’t it be the perfect time to trade Masahiro Tanaka? 1. If he stays healthy he will definitely opt out of his contract after the 2017 season. 2. He has had elbow problems in the not so distant past. 3. The market for top talent has been set with the trades for Miller (deadline), Chapman (deadline), Sale, Eaton, etc. I know the Yankees want to be competitive while still rebuilding but this seems like a good opportunity to cash in on Tanaka. What do you think?
Klaw: It’s a good time to explore his market, with no starters really out there, but if the Yanks trade him it’s probably a hit of a couple of wins a year that they can’t easily replace.

Adam: Assuming that the pre-season rankings of draft prospects holds up until draft time, is there a prospect with upside so big that you take him over one of the “big three” of Greene, Kendall, or Wright?
Klaw: We have Kendall 1, and I think that’ll hold for a while unless he has a surprisingly poor spring. Royce Lewis is a guy to watch, with 1-1 kind of upside.

section 34: I keep reading that the CBA is considered a win for the owners. Why?
Klaw: I’m going to write about this very soon. I generally agree with that sentiment.

JG: What ado about the Padres these days? Seems counterintuitive to target any quality SPs to ensure a quality tank. And maybe the same thought about targeting a Jose Iglesias as a SS upgrade.
Klaw: I think tanking in baseball is overstated – teams don’t tank so much as they trade away players who can help now for prospects who can help later. So that implies acquiring a quality SP or two whom you can trade at the deadline.

Ben: No question here. Just find it funny that Javier Vazquez (43.3 bWAR, 53.9 fWAR, 105 ERA+, and one very famous 2nd place Cy Young vote) can’t even crack the Hall of Fame ballot, while Jack Morris (43.8 bWAR, 55.8 fWAR, 105 ERA+, and all teh wins!) came within a whisker of being inducted.
Klaw: All about the narrative. And maybe skin color has a little something to do with it.

Robert: Keith, we don’t know his justifications, but I have a lot of issues with Steven Marcus’ 2017 HOF ballot. What is the fairest way to determine if a reliever is HOF worthy? I have a hard time, statistically or anecdotally, of giving a HOF vote to any reliever outside of Mariano Rivera (but definitely not Trevor Hoffman).
Klaw: I think Rivera should be the threshold for career innings going forward. He pitched more than Sutter, Hoffman, or Wagner, and pitched better than any of them, and had that postseason resume to boost his candidacy. If you can’t even reach Mo’s modest 1200-odd innings, then most likely you’re not worth further discussion, because it’s hard to believe you could have been as valuable as Rivera while pitching less.

Andy: One thing on the anti-hazing thing. It seems like, it’s just banning it as part of a team organized thing. I’m sure that Huston Street is still free to wear cheerleading and Hooters outfits wherever and whenever he wants to. I’m guessing he will choose not to do so, because of various reasons like unmanly and that he’ll be made fun of. And I’m sure he wouldn’t understand the irony.
Klaw: Agreed. A reader said to me on Twitter (I think) that this is not about the 8-10 rookies a year who are fine with dressing up as a gag. It’s about the one or two who aren’t fine with it. And that’s exactly it.

Mike: Given the automatic depreciation of Rockie hitters’ stats, would you project they can get better than a #3 or #4 starter for Charlie Blackmon? Related question: has Bridich lost his mind?
Klaw: Really don’t understand their offseason so far. $18 million for a mediocre LHR after giving up pick 11 for Desmond? Blackmon’s pretty well regarded though because he’s always had great tools, so there’s enough of a belief that he’ll produce outside of Coors. He’s not Dante Bichette.

Nick: If you were Lunhow, would you trade Musgrove + Martes + Tucker for Quintana, and why or why not? I go back and forth as an Astros fan but think I’d be happy with him pulling the trigger.
Klaw: If I’m Luhnow I do it. If I’m Hahn I’m not even countering because it’s so low. FWIW, I don’t know that that was ever discussed by the clubs.

Jake: Hi Keith, not trying to come at you, just legitimately asking. Why do you occasionally rush to break trades on Twitter? You strike me as the type that would say “leave the rat race to Heyman, Rosenthal, etc. and analyze thoroughly once all details are known”. What’s the benefit in those extra 5 minutes? Thanks for the chat!
Klaw: Because if I get news, I share it. I have no idea why you’d even ask.

Keith: Now that the White Sox are clearing their MLB roster, do you think Matt Davidson will get a chance to play? Last I heard, his 3B defense was considered plus. Does he still have everyday starter upside to you?
Klaw: He’s not a plus defender, but he has a good swing and average power. I hope he gets one more chance before he’s discarded to the NRI scrap heap.

A Short Guy: Will guys like Nick Allen (2017) and Nick Madrigal (2018) get first round consideration or does their height hurt them too much?
Klaw: Don’t think either ends up in the first round for that very reason.

Seath: My Fiance and I are having a Christmas Eve Dinner with my parents at my brother and his wife’s house. Because they have a newborn, my Fiance and I would love to provide the main course for dinner but are having a hard time figuring out what we can cook if we have to also transport it. What do you reccomend?
Klaw: You want weight to it so it’ll retain its heat in transport, or can be reheated without doing damage to it. Something like a stew (HT Carl Weathers). Maybe Serious Eats’ pressure-cooker Green chicken chili? That’s a go-to dish for me.

Nick: How close was Clarke Schmidt to making your top 30 draft list? I remember you liked him in previous tweets and chats.
Klaw: I like the stuff, but it’s a bad delivery.

Ceej: Would you move Moncada to CF to take advantage of his speed?
Klaw: If he shows he can’t improve at 3b. Lifelong infielder moving to CF shouldn’t be taken as a given that it works.

Jackson: How is it ok to support a Casey Affleck movie and not support Chapman or any other POS? If you’d resign if forced to sign Chapman, shouldn’t you refuse to see the Afleck movie?
Klaw: Three people have asked variations of this profoundly stupid question. The analogy to seeing Affleck’s movie is watching Chapman pitch, not signing him to an $86 million deal. Think critically for a second before playing this dumbass “gotcha” game.

Jeff: Speaking only in terms of fit, and not expected cost to acquire, is Logan Forsythe, Brian Dozier or Yangervis Solarte the best option for the Dodgers current roster?
Klaw: Dozier’s a legitimate all-star, and if they can acquire him without giving up Bellinger or Verdugo I’d do it. Those two kids are close to major-league ready with huge upsides, and I don’t think I’d part with either for Dozier’s age-30 and -31 seasons.

Ed: Have you ever made figgy pudding?
Klaw: Piggy pudding? With bacon?

Kramer: Can Carson Kelly be an everyday Catcher? What do you see his upside as?
Klaw: Yes, above-average regular for me. Great athlete, great kid, really improved defensively over the last two years, more pop in there than he’s shown to date.

Danny: Thoughts on Josh Staumont? I think he’s a RP without a drastic uptick in command (which is possible but he’s not a fresh prep pitcher).
Klaw: I agree with you completely. He can be around the strike zone, but I saw maybe his best outing of 2016 and it was still below-average command. He was just blowing A-ball guys up with pure stuff.

Marshall MN: The Onion had a great headline this week about Rick Perry getting nominated as Secretary of a department he once wanted to get rid of (Dept Energy) – oh wait that wasn’t a satirical headline from The Onion, it was reality.
Klaw: I’m waiting for General Sherman to get the nod for Secretary of Agriculture.

BoBo from FishTown: Thoughts on Brandon Brooks of the PHL Eagles ‘coming out’ about His anxiety atttacks that have prevented Him from playing the last few games? And His coach calling it a ‘weird situatuon’?
Klaw: I’m glad he felt confident enough to talk about it publicly and deal with the ignorance that he’s getting from his coach and from fans.

John: How does Jeren Kendell stack up with recent draftees from the SEC (Senzel, Swanson, Bregman, Benintendi)? How concerned are you about his k-rate?
Klaw: I ranked him at 1, so I’m obviously not that concerned about his K rate; he’s unusually toolsy for a college hitter. He has more upside than the first three guys you mentioned, but those three were also better hitters as sophomores and better equipped to get to double-A quickly than Kendall is right now.

Pramit Bose: There has been some sentiment around here that the Jays acted too quickly in signing Kendrys Morales to a 3 year deal given that there hasn’t exactly been huge demand for power this off season. Do you think this is the case? And are we starting to see organizations value more “complete” players (i.e. offense, baserunning and defense) than one dimensional ones?
Klaw: Yes, I was out of the country when that happened but I thought it was a bad deal for the Jays given all the comparable players out there who’ll probably end up signing for a year.

Lee: Keith, which of the Braves pitching prospects will likely have the most impact on the team? Seems to me Fried is getting overlooked and could be a future ace.
Klaw: Don’t think he could be an ace but I think he could be an above-average starter. Toussaint might have the best upside of anyone, but isn’t as close to getting to his ceiling as Fried is to his.

Chris: Keith, I wanted to thank you for turning me on to the concept of sipping rums. I now prefer them to bourbon. Have you tried either Dictador or Zaya 12 year?
Klaw: Not yet. Not familiar with Dictador at all.

Marshall MN: Plus just generally in regard to any hazing…why should any of it be allowed? I hate when hear stories about rookies having to buy the vets dinner (especially given how comparatively little most rooks make), or carrying their bags, or doing anything that demeans them. It isn’t needed, there are better ways to build camaraderie, and a lot of times all of this stuff just ventures in physical/mental abuse.
Klaw: I tend to agree with this, as I explained in my email newsletter this week, but I’m realistic about what teams will be able to enforce in the short term, and I thought the introduction of any policy on the topic was a big first step.

Priya: Any trick to identifying which prospect with Sale like deficiencies will defy the odds and stay healthy or is it a fool’s errand?
Klaw: I don’t think so, but I tend to think in a certain way, building heuristics and being very critical of exceptions to those guidelines. Sale violated several of them – the bad delivery, the lack of a breaking ball in college, and the narrow frame – and yet has had a Hall of Fame start to his career. Credit the White Sox with drafting him in spite of the questions about whether he could start, and with getting him from a 40 breaking ball to a 70. But if I saw another Chris Sale I’d probably have similar reservations because the majority of guys with those issues don’t pan out.

Tom: Agree that people are playing the wrong game of “gotcha”. The question they should be asking in relation to the Casey Affleck film is, “If you were still a Yankees fan, would you purchase a ticket to watch a game knowing they employ Aroldis Chapman?”
Klaw: Yep. Or, if I were a film director, would I cast Casey Affleck, knowing the accusations that he’s harassed women? (Probably not.) But for me to deny the quality of his performance would be analogous to denying Chapman’s effectiveness as a pitcher, which I’ve been very careful to avoid doing. Chapman’s a great pitcher I wouldn’t want on my team. Affleck’s a great actor I wouldn’t want in my film.

Pat D: So based upon your answer to Ed’s question, is John Denver & The Muppets the greatest Christmas album of all time, or merely one of the very good? Also, appreciated the Coach Z reference on Twitter this week.
Klaw: I grew up listening to that album so I can’t pretend to be objective. Pretty much any vintage Muppets Christmas thing is good, including the Muppet Christmas Carol, which we watched last night as I sang along with my daughter. If they gave a prize for bein’ mean, the winner would be him!

Tommy Tutone: What do you see from Paxton this year?
Klaw: More of the same maddening inconsistency, I think.

Jason: Keith, hopefully you can help me out here regarding the Russians. I’m a Republican who didn’t vote for Trump (or Clinton, for that matter). Let’s assume that the Russian government did release the emails purposefully to help Trump. Why would that mean that the electoral college should then vote for Clinton? As long as they weren’t actually tampering with the votes themselves, why should this interference be actionable? It’s not as if Putin favoring Trump was some secret
Klaw: Is anyone arguing the EC should vote for Clinton? I have not, and would not, even though I voted for her and would prefer to see her as President than any GOP option. The idea of faithless electors isn’t to give the election to the other party.

Tommy Tutone: How good is Lance McCullers? Will he be a #1?
Klaw: I’ve said for a while I think LMJr will end up in the bullpen because of his delivery. It’s ace stuff, but he has yet to hit 160 innings in any season and keeps getting hurt. I’d rather see him stay healthy all year.

Chris: How batshit crazy are these guys in Washington that are trying to pass legislation allowing guns into the stadiums?
Klaw: I mean, do you want to be in the stadium with people who decide to bring guns into it? Who says, hey, I’m going to see the M’s, where’s my TEC-9?

Troy McClure: I’m surprised someone with social anxiety would say such harsh things to so many readers. You shouldn’t always assume bad intent with bad questions.
Klaw: Don’t drag my anxiety into this irrelevant discussion. And “gotcha” questions always have bad intent.

Perry: What do you think on the next CA Attorney General stating that he will not adhere to federal law regarding immigration and will go so far as to obstruct the federal government from enforcing its laws?
Klaw: This is how we get cases into the judicial system, no?

Jeremy: Who should get the most innings behind the plate in 2017: Castillo, Joseph, or Sisco?
Klaw: Castillo. If Sisco’s not their catcher of the future any more, they should trade him for a young starter.

Chris: Given the amount they can get in return, should Baltimore trade Machado if they get off to a slow start? They aren’t terrible but they aren’t great and their farm system is sorely lacking, so I think this should actually kick start a real fix.
Klaw: I think they’re going to have to explore trading him soon, but since they were a WC team in 2016 doing it now would probably be seen as a white flag. Explore it in July, push it in November.

Vin: Are you a believer in a Parker/Williamson LF platoon for SF?
Klaw: I am not.

Jim: Ken Rosenthal wrote an article about how the Braves farm system is considered not mature enough yet and how that hurt in the Sale talks. Also that their pitchers were high risk with mid rotation upside. Why do people keep writing these things about the Braves system yet they are ranked Top 5 by nearly every prospect guy?
Klaw: No idea. Atlanta has so many prospect arms that I think your second sentence is not a fair summary of the system; they have many with higher upside, and of course many with lower upside. You can’t just take the average of all the prospects.

Jeremy: Any favorite Christmas books for children? We give one to each child to open in bed each Christmas morning and, with 4 kids, we feel like we’re running out of quality options.
Klaw: Not specifically Christmas but my daughter always loved Stranger in the Woods.

Tom: So you wouldn’t cast Casey Affleck in a movie but you’ll vote to put Bill Clinton back in the White House? He settled out-of-court on multiple sexual assault lawsuits.
Klaw: Bill Clinton hasn’t run for President since 1996. It’s funny how people do this with a woman running for office, but never with a man.

Todd-bowls: It feels like Greene is decent at two positions rather than great at one. Agree or Disagree
Klaw: Great defensive shortstop. Questionable bat. Potentially great pitcher, huge upside, not there yet. So it’s a little more involved although I understand why you’d ask that.

Rusty: Keith, do you have an opinion on acupuncture?
Klaw: I’ve seen no research that indicates it works, and there’s no known biological mechanism to explain why it would work. Here’s a good essay on why.

Rob: I know the Pirates are probably unlikely to get involved, but would Meadows, Keller and Newman be enough/too much to get Quintana?
Klaw: I don’t think that fits the White Sox’ goals for such a deal and probably isn’t enough close-to-the-majors value, but it’s better than the reported Houston proposal.

Chris: Rockies with a puzzling offseason so far, eh?
Klaw: I don’t understand it. They’re not a terrible team, but so far they haven’t done enough that I could project them to even 85 or so wins, and I could easily see the Desmond deal going south on them quickly.

Chuck: If there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence that something is effective but no science-based research, is there merit for you? Thinking of acupuncture or anything else.
Klaw: Well there’s a lot of research on acupuncture that hasn’t shown it’s any better than a placebo. If there’s zero research, and a plausible explanation why something might work, then I’d consider it.

Aron: What kind of package from the Mariners gets Smyly?
Klaw: Not sure the two teams really line up. The M’s system is thin at the moment. Plus, do they have a shortstop prospect who can’t stay at short? That’s Tampa’s favorite kind of player.

Lee: It appears the Red Sox are going all out for a championshipo with the recent moves they’ve made. So why the apparent hesitation to cross the luxury tax this season? Wouldn’t signing EE to a 3 year deal make them more likely to win a World Series in their “window”?
Klaw: Yes, it would, in year one, but I could imagine they might not want to go that long on a player his age.

Chris: Do you think Reynaldo Lopez will be given time to develop as a starter with the Sox, with the fallback on going to the pen or will he be a pen guy with the Sox right off the bat?
Klaw: Sounded like they’ll let him try to start, which is fine given that they’re not trying to win right now, but I have said before I think there’s no chance he can stay healthy and effective as a starter.

Jake: If last years draft was held today who would be the top 5 picks? Moniak still #1?
Klaw: I don’t think the Phillies have changed their view on him to alter that. I have a feeling in a few years we’ll look back and wonder how Groome fell to 12.

Anthony: What would do with Joey Gallo? Should they let him play everyday at 1B or start him in the minors?
Klaw: I think he needs to play regularly and the Rangers need to accept that there will be a long period of adjustment. Gallo still strikes out too much, but he’s improved his ability to lay off stuff outside the zone and to make contact within it over the last few years. He’ll come up, he’ll struggle again, but he’ll make some adjustments and get to a point where he’s at least productive. He can strike out 200 times in 600 PA and still be a valuable player because of the power and walks.

brandino: Where would Cal Quantril rank in the hierarchy of college pitchers in this years draft (assuming he was the best college pitcher in last years draft)?
Klaw: He’s another one, like Groome, where we may look back even in a year and think how big a steal he was where he was picked. A healthy Q would be in there with Wright and Faedo.

Jake: Who do you think is the better prospect Gleyber or Rosario?
Klaw: Gleyber. Both studs. Gleyber’s just uncanny though – he plays like he’s 25.

Concerned Giants fan: Read Jeff Passan’s article about how the future Dodgers are quite scary. Your thoughts on how their combination of prospects/$$ compares to the Giants’ also sizable budget? I need to know whether to be concerned about that Dodger prospect pipeline coming up.
Klaw: If they keep that prospect core, they’re indeed going to be very scary, because their lineup will be strong and inexpensive, and they will be able to buy pitching and still stay under the cap. So be concerned.

Ridley Kemp: The Trainspotting sequel is going to break my heart, isn’t it? Everything about it looks like a re-hash (except for the welcome Wolf Alice inclusion). Am I foolish to hope?
Klaw: I’ve actually never seen the original. I’m pretty bad with 1990s movies.

John: Do you see Tom Raines as a much better HoF candidate than Kenny Lofton? Raines a much better hitter but similar overall fWAR.
Klaw: Better peak for Raines too. Raines was one of the 2-3 best players in baseball for a short period. Lofton never had that peak.

Rick Gassko: Do you think Aaron Judge, Hunter Renfroe and/or A.J. Reed ever get past their low contact rates and high K rates seen in their major league debuts to become above-average regulars? What are the odds on each that they are busts?
Klaw: I’m most optimistic about Judge, then Reed, then Renfroe. Renfroe is the one I’ve seen look the worst on breaking stuff, and I think he’s the least patient. Reed’s issue is modest bat speed, but his eye is good. Judge has the best idea, and the longest arms.

David: I know it’s far away, but is there any prospect of Gavin Lux playing SS for the Dodgers? Trade bait in a few years, or could he be their future 2B?
Klaw: I would let him play short for a few years and see how he looks and how his body changes. I think right now he has the raw ability to do it, but if he loses any speed he would likely move to second. Bigger concern right now is cleaning up his swing a bit to address the hit tool.

Reilly: At a recent team caravan event, Frank Coonelly expressed frustration over the fan base’s exhaustion over the FO’s “unwillingness to spend.” My opinion has always been smart moves/spending is more important than moves/spending for the sake of. What say you?
Klaw: Never been a fan of spending for spending’s sake. Is the team in question missing out on good deals? Playing clearly inferior players to save money? Skimping on draft picks or on July 2? Those things would concern me, rather than just looking at total payroll.

Sigmund Fraud: You seem like a great husband/father. Cooks, works from home a lot, involved in raising his kid… so what is Mrs. Klaw’s biggest pet peeve? Surely you can’t ALWAYS be so wonderful. (or would you beg to differ?)
Klaw: Oh, she’d have some things to say, I assure you. Not least among them is how much time I’m online doing stuff.

Steve: Hi, Keith. I know you’re not a fantasy baseball guy but I’d really appreciate your real life expertise here. I can only keep one of Urias or Alex Reyes. Which one? Thanks!
Klaw: Urias. More optimistic about him short- and long-term. Reyes has huge upside but has had arm soreness and the delivery isn’t ideal.

Tim (KC): The Rockies reportedly want Eaton-type return on Charlie Blackmon (free agent after 2018). Seems like they don’t understand player value/contract/economics. They seem to be really become delusional this off-season. Are the Rockies ready to contend or is this the next Padres/Diamondbacks (what is it will the NL West)?
Klaw: Eaton’s value was as much in the contract as in the player himself. Blackmon’s probably a better bet to hold his value, but as you said, Eaton’s contract, both cost and years of control, made him a much more valuable asset.

Chris: Josh Byrnes got a raw deal in San Diego and Preller has ruined the organization. People who point to their minors looking great now forget that Preller dealt Turner, Ross, Grandal and others. How does he still have a job?
Klaw: Byrnes inherited a good system from Hoyer/McLeod and left it in worse shape. Preller’s first year was bad, but this year he’s restocked the system quickly and thoroughly. And while he should have kept Turner/Ross, Myers is a good player and they didn’t end up with nothing.

addoeh: Do you think the new CBA will curb the Dodgers spending? It seems to me they’ll just shrug their shoulders and say “Ok.”
Klaw: I think it will, because it’s a tax and loss of draft position (and bonus pool). Also, they are likely to have Seager, Verdugo, and Bellinger as their core making no money at some point very soon.

Jake: Who would you have taken in last years draft at #1? You seem to like Groome, Rutherford and Corey Ray the best.
Klaw: I had Ray 1, but I said there were a couple of guys who were worth that spot, including the others you named.

Jon: Keith, Re:Gallo. Isn’t he a more athletic version of Adam Dunn? Dunn was productive at the plate in the same manner as Gallo with a ton of K’s but killed teams with his defense. Gallo’s not as terrible. Do you think it will take a new team to get that chance?
Klaw: Gallo’s not a terrible defender – he’s a good athlete, as you said, with an 80 arm. But if he’s only Adam Dunn, well, Dunn was a good player for several years, just frustrating.

Ron: Buxton takes the next step this year? Maybe breakout? Incredible physical tools. If he squares one up he can hit it as far as anyone.
Klaw: I’m buying.

Jim: Shouldn’t Tim Raines get in the HOF before Tom Raines gets any consideration?
Klaw: I wanted to vote for Claude Raines but I didn’t see him on the ballot.

Joe: Keith, I enjoyed your Disney food reviews, even though they are a few years old now. Did you ever publish any reviews about the attractions that you liked at Disney?
Klaw: I haven’t, and it’s funny you ask because my daughter asks when we might go again, but last time around she was only interested in a handful of rides. I think she enjoys being there more than doing the attractions.

Bob: You said in reply to my Twitter question that the gap between the best and worst FOs has gotten small. I wonder, then, if the new market inefficiency is how well you develop talent. Mike Trout or Corey Seegar are going to be stars regardless, but there are plenty of prospects that benefit from good coaching. Some teams seem to do this better than others, don’t they?
Klaw: I think there are still inefficiencies but they’ll be less obvious. Development is a large area for inefficiencies. Health is one. Using Statcast data to improve game plans, or to contribute to development, is another. We just may not spot these until after the fact.

Mark: Any tips for a 24 year old looking to take up baseball in junior college? The one thing I have going for me is that I can really, really run. Like Billy Hamilton run. What do I have to do to get noticed by scouts this upcoming season?
Klaw: I really don’t know the answer to that. I suppose the obvious, but real, answer is that you are going to have to hit a lot to get anyone to overcome the skepticism of seeing a 24-year-old in JC.

Kenny: If the 3 major parts of the game are offense, defense, and pitching, which 2 would you emphasize the most when putting a team together? In other words, if you could make your team very strong in 2 of them, while being weak in one, which 2 would help you win the most?
Klaw: I think there are two major parts: run scoring and run prevention. Pitching and defense go together in run prevention but the share for each is either unknown or variable. If you can build a great offense that also contributes to run prevention, well, that’s a good way to go, but those players are rare and often expensive.

Joe: Does Jason McLeod accept a GM spot now that he has helped the Cubs finally win a WS? If not, what is he waiting for?
Klaw: He just signed an extension so I don’t think he’s going anywhere now.

Walt: The story of the former Wake Forest assistant football coach turned radio announcer, who took his frustrations of not being retained by a new head coach out by giving game plans to other teams, seems to be a cautionary tale for anyone in sports. What kind of safeguards to teams have against former employees giving away all of their secrets?
Klaw: What else can you do besides NDAs? I guess then you sue the hell out of violators to make it clear that there are real penalties involved. Beyond that, I don’t think you can stop someone intent on leaking your secrets.

Scott: I can’t stop buying board games. Any suggestions?
Klaw: You’re asking someone who owns over 100. I have no help for you.

Bob: Follow up, if I may. If player development is an area where you can really improve over the other guy, then this issue should factor into hiring a new GM, shouldn’t it?
Klaw: I think it should.

Tim (KC): What is your HOF ballot this year?
Klaw: Raines, Bagwell, Bonds, Clemens, Vlad, Edgar, Mussina, Pudge, Schilling, Walker. Still leaving guys off because of the 10-man limit. (Most of you know this, but I do not have a ballot yet. Two more years.)

Duane: If you had a choice of never reading a new book or never trying a new food, which would you choose?
Klaw: I could go on very happily eating all the amazing things I’ve already eaten, but I’d shrivel up without new books.

MikeM: Is there a release date for your prospect lists in 2017. I really enjoy reading them every year and are one of the main reasons I have an Insider account.
Klaw: It’s up to the new baseball editor but she told me she was looking at the third and fourth weeks of January. We’re going to roll them out over more days – so it might be, say, 25 prospects a day for four days.

HugoZ: Is having an inflammatory statement on a t-shirt a great reason to deprive someone of your HOF vote?
Klaw: The statement in question targeted the profession of the voters. That said, I still had Schilling on mine, as you saw.

Jon: Concerning Mark heading off to JC. If he’s serious about pro ball, would an indy league team be a better route than a Juco program?
Klaw: I think he’s more likely to be seen at a JC, but his performance in an indy league might carry more weight. I assume part of going to a JC here is to work towards a degree, though.

mike: Is Dom Smith the Mets everyday 1b next year? Theres alot of varying opinions about him in the prospect community
Klaw: In 2018, I think so. Still developing but it was nice to see more power from him now that he got out of the Mets’ A-ball environments.

Ben: Piggy backing off of the team building question. If EE’s market were to crater to the point that an NL team gets involved, let’s say the Cardinals. Do you think his bat in their lineup would be worth the defensive downgrade with EE at 1b and Carpenter at 3b?
Klaw: I’d roll those dice, so to speak. Huge boost with the bat.

JJ: Since it appears the Red Sox’ heavy lifting is done this winter, what does that mean for Blake Swihart? Is he ticketed to be the everyday catcher at Pawtucket? How much did the lost year that was 2016 hurt his development?
Klaw: I think that’s indeed the plan, unfortunately. He should be playing everyday for somebody.

Rob: Based on previous statements, I’m guessing you’d advocate for either a long suspension or ban for Familia. My question is: what should players like him, Chapman, and Reyes be doing instead of baseball? Ray Rice has apparently been speaking to NFL rookies, telling them to not make the same mistakes he did. Not a bad intention, but I don’t know if it’s actually effective.
Klaw: I like that Rice is doing that, although I’m not even sure how we’d know if it was effective. Such players could also spend time volunteering at battered women’s shelters. As for Familia, I saw the charges were dismissed but I have no idea what the details were and assume MLB will conduct its own investigation as they have with other players in similar situations.

Greg: Wife and I are going to Charleston for the weekend. Any recommendations on what to do or eat?
Klaw: Husk if you can get in. Fig, Fat Hen, Minero, Evo.

Joseph: I’m interested in getting my brother coffee for christmas. Can you recommend a couple good brands or flavors? My coffee knowledge is non-existent and the only thing I don’t want are kcups.
Klaw: K-cups are evil. If he has a pour-over device (like the Hario V60 I’ve mentioned) or a French press, then you want some good single origin coffees from small roasters. There may be one near you, or you could mail order from places like Intelligentsia, Four Barrel, Cartel, or Archetype, all of whom are among my favorites. I mentioned Royal Mile in NJ on Twitter recently – they have (had) an Ethiopian Kochere that was one of the best coffees I’ve ever tried.

Chief Sockalexis: Given the new CBA does Shohei Otani still sign with a large market team?
Klaw: I think he’s got a few options. I have a feeling he’ll get paid one way or another – perhaps signing a contract here that forces a team to non-tender him after two years or something. I assume every team that can find $20 million for the posting fee will bid though.

Doug: Josh Byrnes traded Anthony Rizzo for Andrew Cashner. But yet Chris thinks he didn’t get a fair shake in SD? Give me Preller all day over Byrnes.
Klaw: And I hated that deal at the time for the Padres. I think Preller’s on the right track but it’s going to take several more years to get to their goal.

Klaw: That’s all for this week – thanks as always for reading and for all of your questions. I will chat again before Christmas, probably at the usual time next Thursday.

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