→ November 22, 2025
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Stick to baseball, 11/22/25.

One new post for subscribers to The Athletic this week, breaking down the surprise trade that sent Grayson Rodriguez to the Angels for Taylor Ward.

Over at AV Club, I reviewed the game Ink, the newest title from Kasper Lapp and his best game since his award-winning Magic Maze.

My next free email newsletter might have to wait until after this weekend’s PAX Unplugged convention, as I’ll be there gaming as much as humanly possible.

And now, the links…

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→ November 20, 2025
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We Do Not Part.

Han Kang won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature in part for her 2021 novel We Do Not Part, which appeared earlier this year in English translation for the first time. This exploration of one of the darkest moments in modern Korean – and American – history works through a struggling female protagonist, somewhat similar to the lead character of her novel The Vegetarian, who finds herself called to the hospital bedside of a friend with whom she was once collaborating on a project about the Cheju genocide. This call leads to a visit to the sick friend’s house, where the lines between reality and dream start to bend, and it’s unclear whose memories we’re reading or how legitimate they are.

Kyungha is a writer who is deeply isolated and almost certainly depressed, often forgetting to eat, sometimes lying for hours on her apartment floor to escape the oppressive heat of the city’s summers. When she sleeps, she’s plagued by nightmares related to the massacres at Cheju, which inspired a scene in her latest, unfinished novel. She gets a call from Inseon, with whom she’d worked on a documentary of sorts about the same killings; Inseon is injured and will be stuck in the hospital for weeks, so she asks Kyungha to go to her house to feed her bird Ama. Once there, however, Kyungha gets stuck in the house without power due to a blizzard, and she begins hallucinating, or perhaps she has died and is experiencing something paranormal, with the result that she ends up hearing the history of Inseon’s family during the massacres.

Cheju (or Jeju) Island is located south of the Korean peninsula and currently has over 600,000 people living there. The residents of the island had begun protesting the planned election in the southern half of Korea, controlled by the United States at the time, because they believed it would lead to a permanent partition. In 1948, the communist party on the island organized a general strike, which turned into an armed insurgency. The strongman Syngman Rhee, the first President of the Republic of Korea, responded with brutal force, with the full backing and consent of the United States, killing somewhere between 15,000 and 100,000 people on the island. The Korean army forces killed children and babies and gang-raped women and girls. Tens of thousands of others were imprisoned for their alleged roles in the insurgency. After the massacre, it was illegal to even mention the government’s actions on Cheju until 1990, and South Korea didn’t hold a truth & reconciliation commission until 2003, when the government finally admitted they had committed genocide against the people of Cheju. (For more on the history of the Cheju genocide, the Wikipedia article is superb, as is this 2000 story from Newsweek.)

We Do Not Part deals with such heavy material that it’s hard to call it a “light” read, but Kang is such a strong prose writer – and some of this may be a credit to the translators, e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris – that it is an incredibly compelling, accessible read, even for someone (like me, before I read the book) with zero knowledge of the history involved. The first half of the book reads quite a bit like Kang’s novel The Vegetarian, with the protagonist’s alienation permeating all aspects of the narrative, while the second half veers almost into magical realism. As Inseon and her mother retell the histories of Inseon’s father and uncle from the time of the genocide, including witnessing massacres of civilians, Kang’s technique and prose give them a hazy quality to emphasize that these are ghosts or spirits or even Kyungha’s subconscious relating these stories.

I’ve been sitting on this post for four days now, and I think I’m just stuck on this one. I loved this book, but I also know this book has way more going on than I understood or appreciated. I’m not Korean and I didn’t know a single thing about the Jeju genocide until I read it and went to Wikipedia to figure out what I was missing. I’ll just stop here and say the book is fantastic, and I would recommend this even before The Vegetarian.

—

In 2021, LitHub published a list of the 50 best classic novels under 200 pages, which included several titles I’d already read and enjoyed, so I copied the list into a Google sheet and started reading my way through it – often just reading whatever I found in bookstores on my travels. I grabbed Clarice Lispector’s Near to the Wild Heart at Changing Hands last month, since it’s on the list and takes its title from the same James Joyce quote that Japandroids used for their best album. It got the better of me; I did finish it, but I struggled because nothing happens in the novel. It presents the inner monologue of Joana, flashing back to her childhood and her present marriage to her faithless husband Otávio, with the sort of disjointed sentence structure of Joyce or Alfred Döblin or Virginia Woolf, all of whom I have found difficult to read. This one just wasn’t for me.

Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man also comes from the LitHub list; he’s better known now for his Berlin Stories, which inspired the musical Cabaret, but this is a more serious novel and seems like it was considered his best work during his lifetime. The title character is George Falconer, a gay man whose partner Jim has recently died. George is British and now lives in California, in the house he shared with Jim and some pets he seems to have gotten rid of after Jim’s death, teaching at a local university and trying to find new meaning in his relationships with other people. The story moves in fits and starts, but picks up towards the end with two much more meaningful conversations, before the slightly ambiguous ending (I think it’s real, but I see online some people believe it’s a what-if). Falconer is a flawed character, pretentious at times, mopey at others, probably just not a very nice guy, but still makes for an interesting study. I can’t find an answer to this, but I wonder if John Cheever was paying homage to A Single Man in his novel Falconer, another influential gay novel that came out about 16 years after this one. The dialogue here can get a little stilted, but it seems to be in service of making George’s awkwardness in social situations – but not in terms of his own sexuality – clearer on the page.

Next up: Susan Orlean’s The Library Book.

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→ November 15, 2025
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Stick to baseball, 11/15/25.

Nothing new from me at the Athletic this week as I wait for a trade or signing to write up. I did hold a Klawchat on Thursday here on the dish.

At Endless Mode, I reviewed Vantage, the new open-world cooperative game from designer Jamey Stegmaier (Tapestry, Scythe); it’s like the old Choose Your Own Adventure books converted to the tabletop, but despite incredible art and a massive amount of content in the box, I found it frustrating to try to play.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter this week, finally. I’ve gotten a bit stuck with one or two of the ideas I’ve had for newsletters and I think that held me back from writing one.

And now, the links…

  • I don’t understand why this has received so little attention, but the Senate passed a bill that would wipe out the U.S. cannabis industry, which will do significant economic harm to a nascent industry and to the states that have benefited from taxing an activity that is just going to move underground anyway.
  • Canada culled a flock of ostriches where at least some were infected with the H5N1 avian flu, despite some ridiculous interference and protests from anti-vax nut jobs. The ostrich farmers in question tried to hide the infections and didn’t follow requirements for basic biosafety.
  • The unionized writers at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette have been on strike for over three years now, but finally got their day in court and won a ruling that covers management’s violations back to 2020.
  • Child rapist and cult leader Warren Jeffs went to prison over a decade ago, but the harm he inflicted on his community continues, as measles has swept through Colorado City because he preached that vaccines were part of a government plot to make people infertile.
  • The husband of Michigan Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson (D) is the VP of development for a company planning to build a massive data center in the state over objections from the local community. At best, it’s a huge conflict of interest.
  • This LitHub piece is well worth reading if only for how it explains why the phrase “Critics say” should not appear in serious journalism. You need to name those critics and show what they’re saying and why it might be valid.
  • Alex Berenson, dubbed “the pandemic’s wrongest man” for his consistently incorrect predictions about first the spread of the virus and then the effectiveness and safety of the vaccines against it, lost his lawsuit claiming the federal government “censored” him when Twitter nuked his account in 2021. He’s still making bank from his Substack newsletter, though.
  • Chile named its Miss World winner this past week, which is newsworthy because Ignacia Fernández is also a death-metal vocalist for the band Decessus and even gave a performance as such in the finals. There are very few female vocalists in that particular subgenre; I could only name two without searching, Arch Enemy (Alissa White-Gluz) and the defunct Nuclear Death (Lori Bravo).
  • The Climate-Colored Goggles newsletter writes about the Dodgers’ partnership with Phillips 66, a fossil-fuel company driving the same climate change that’s feeding the devastating wildfires that hit California just about every year.
  • Mystic Lands, the sequel/update to the card-crafting game Mystic Vale, has six days left on its successful Kickstarter (although I am surprised it hasn’t raised more money given the original’s popularity).

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→ November 13, 2025
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Klawchat 11/13/25.

Keith Law: My friends are saying, “Shut up, Keith, just g?t in the car.” Klawchat.

Barbeach: Thanks as always for the Klawchat. I can’t see how the Yankees can consider promoting Spencer Jobes to majors given his triple A strike out rate. And I don’t understand why Jasson Dominguez isn’t getting more of a chance given his left handed OPS and good batting eye. Thoughts?
Keith Law: I agree completely on Jones, who was awful after that initial hot streak in AAA, when pitchers made a pretty clear adjustment. I didn’t put him on my midseason top 60, because I’m not a fucking goldfish, but a few commenters were aghast because at that moment Jones was homering every other game or something. From that date (7/27) to the end of the season, he struck out 41% of the time. Not sure how you can put that in the majors. As for Dominguez, I think they need to return him to CF. Playing left isn’t working out for him or the team, and maybe it’s carrying over to the plate?

Jon: Keith, was wondering if you had tried any of the new Stonemaier Games games this year, specifically Vantage. Never has seemed as though their games have been your bailiwick.
Keith Law: My review of Vantage went up yesterday. I didn’t like it. I did like Tapestry, Pendulum, and the Wingspan family of games, all of which are from Stonemaier, and I liked Expeditions enough in my one play of it. Never been a big Scythe fan.

JoeRo: Hi Keith. Look forward to your chats. Have you read any books by Edward Ashton? Mickey 17 was such a disappointment, very different from the novel, which was really funny and original. How about David Wong/Jason Pargin? Enjoyed his latest- I’m Starting To Worry About This Black Box Of Doom.
Keith Law: I’ve never read any of those authors, or seen Mickey 17 just because the reviews were pretty tepid.

davealden53: Chase Petty had an abysmal 2025 in both MiLB and MLB (small sample), but expectations seem to remain fairly high.  How are those reconciled?  Bad luck or growing pains?
Keith Law: Whose expectations remain high? Reds fans’? I had him as a fourth starter coming into the year, but you can’t be a sinker/slider guy with 45 control and 40 command, and now we’re back to concerns that he’s got too much effort in the delivery to last as a starter.

davealden53: In recent chats, you’ve responded to my questions about the impacts of reducing pitching staffs to 12 arms.  Thank you for that.  One final question: How much do you think runs per game would increase with 12-man staffs?  You seem to think the increase will be fairly small and I fear something larger.
Keith Law: I’d just be pulling a number out of the air. I have no basis for an estimate here.

Guest: Thoughts on Braden Montgomery AFL seasons and prospects for next year?
Keith Law: Didn’t see him in the AFL – he was rehabbing a hamstring injury, I believe.

davealden53: What a remarkable four innings in Game 3 from Will Klein!  Fluke or does he have a future?
Keith Law: He’s never thrown strikes consistently enough to have the kind of future you might be envisioning. It’s high-leverage stuff, and if he has a Kimbrel-like leap in control, he’ll be an elite closer or setup type. Very low odds of this happening.

Michael: I asked a question poorly to you about buy low candidates. I know a player like Hunter Brown wasn’t a free agent last year, but you could have gotten him on the (relatively) cheap in a trade. Same for someone like Maikel Garcia. Any thoughts on who might be an attainable future 4-6 WAR player that hasn’t broken out yet? Is Jo Adell finally ready?
Keith Law: I don’t believe for a second that you could have gotten Hunter Brown cheaply a year ago. Less certain on Maikel, but teams don’t let those guys go very easily.

Michael: Do most people not actually have real beliefs? For years I heard about the elite having a secret sex trafficking ring and QANON was a real thing. Now we discover elites did have a sex trafficking ring, they weren’t secret about it and people who claim to care about kids and sex trafficking are mostly yawning because their side is implicated. I’m liberal, but fuck Bill Clinton if he’s involved in this or anyone else too. Blows my mind that there isn’t universal calls to arrest all of these people.
Keith Law: Completely agree. Larry Summers was President of my alma mater and still works there at the Kennedy School. I have already emailed them as an alum to ask what the hell they’re doing with this guy still on staff. Someone asked on Bluesky if people would feel the same if Obama were in the files and … yeah, of course. No one is above the law, or basic morality.

DC51stState: Hi Keith—Baseball question, about two guys who rocketed through the minors. Jac Caglianone and Cam Smith (especially) were promoted so quickly that it wasn’t always clear to me how to evaluate them or set expectations, since their spring training/minor league performance seemed to outpace their rankings before midseason rankings could consider their overperformance. What are your expectations for those two players? Would you be willing to fit in an assessment of a guy like Cam Smith (maybe 2026’s JJ Weatherholt) in May/June if that guy does break camp with the major league club and doesn’t  look back? I respect your opinion and experience a great deal so those assessments would be interesting to me.
Keith Law: I read this twice and I don’t understand the second question. On the first, I think Smith can take his first half from 2025 and hold that for a full season; he seemed to tire from the long season. (I can’t believe Dana Brown said Smith might start next year in triple A. Absolutely not. That’s malpractice.) Caglianone wasn’t ready for the majors when he came up, and it showed pretty quickly – his issues staying in the zone have been there since he was a college sophomore – but I buy the bat in the long run, for hit and power.

Michael: Is 4 WAR from a pitcher the same as 4 WAR from a hitter?
Keith Law: In the sense that both added four wins’ worth of value from their production relative to replacement level, yes.

Alec: What does a Mackenzie Gore trade package look like? I cant imagine as high as Crochet given he’s a boras guy and wont extend probably. Maybe one top 100 guy and 2 40+ FV dart throws?
Keith Law: Extensions should not be a factor in a trade – you are only acquiring the option to extend him, which is worth somewhere between nothing (my personal view) and a tiny fraction of the player’s value beyond his free agency date. I would expect him to return more than you say, because starting pitching is always so scarce in the offseason, and the top of the FA pitching market isn’t much better than Gore.

Michael: In the last few months we’ve watched Gavin and Stacey, The Inbetweeners, and Such Brave Girls. All three are better than any network comedy I’ve ever seen in the US. Any others you like?
Keith Law: I thought Derry Girls was brilliant. Helps a little that I grew up Catholic, I suppose.

Ken N.: Do you think Jasson Dominguez could be an above average starter for the Yankees if they give him regular playing time?  Can he still play center field?  Thank you.
Keith Law: Yes, and I don’t see why he couldn’t.

Ray Crittenden: I feel like Bichette to Boston is a really good fit that isn’t being discussed as much.  With his age and the contract estimates being thrown out there, it just seems like a solid match, especially with Boston’s remaining infield prospects being further away.
Keith Law: If you’re saying to play 2b, then yes, it’s a good fit.

Pat: Connelly Early vs Payton Tolle – who, if either, starts the year on the mlb roster?  And what do the sox do about the glut of back-end types like Crawford, Fitts, Harrison, etc.
Keith Law: I’m higher on Tolle, whose stuff just kept getting better as the season went on, assuming he can hold that velocity without injury.
Keith Law: Fitts is a 5th starter at most. Harrison needs a proper breaking pitch, even if it’s a cutter, which the Giants did try with him but without success.

The Rat King: So much talk about the Red Sox trading for a pitcher – of all the names bandied about, who would you personally push the hardest for?  Or would you prefer to just go the FA route?
Keith Law: Why not try both? They have the prospect depth to acquire just about anyone, but if the prices are too high, they certainly have the cash to pay any free agent too.

Biffer: This may be a silly question because human beings are human beings and biases are impossible to avoid, but do you think there’s a bias in prospect analysis? By that I mean do you think that certain teams have players who are propped up because of the team they’re with and vice versa? This isn’t so much about the elite guys, but the fringe top-100 types and even guys in the middle of a team’s top 30.
Keith Law: I know there are biases within my rankings and writings, but I do not believe I have that particular one, primarily because a prospect can change teams at any time. Rating a guy higher because he’s with the Dodgers or Brewers (two very strong development orgs) could look ridiculous if he’s traded in July to a poor developing org.

Chris: Hi Keith! This will be my first year cooking a thanksgiving turkey and I want to go the spatchcock route. I did a search on your site and found a 2022 Twitter live stream you did, but do you have any go-to recipes or other resources you can share?
Keith Law: Serious Eats is probably the best bet. I don’t use baking powder, just salt, because the baking powder always left a bit of a weird texture on the skin. Also definitely make sure you have at least a cup of water in the sheet pan to prevent the rendered fat from hitting the hot pan and smoking.

Eric: Instead of just sighing and thinking we’re not going to get much baseball in 2027, I’ll ask: What are the odds Tony Clark is still in charge of the MLBPA when the collective bargaining agreement runs out? It’s not usually a good sign when a union leader is under federal investigation.
Keith Law: I have some questions about the timing of all of this. Seems rather convenient that that investigation would pop up on the eve of CBA talks, no?

Guest: Hey Keith…are Angel fans just shit out of luck until Arte sells the team? What a friggen disaster.
Keith Law: Probably.

B: Is it just me or is it odd that the only team in modern history with a sanctioned cheat code (Ohtani taking ABs after being pulled from the mound) keeps winning WS? It’s like if a team took, say, vintage Ronaldo out of the game but could still have him take free kicks and PKs. WTF baseball.
Keith Law: I think it’s just you. That’s not a “sanctioned cheat code.” Any team could do it if they had a player worthy of the role.

John: Where should the Red Sox be playing Kristian Campbell?  Not “Worcester vs. Boston”, but what position?  He looked extremely clueless at second base last year, and it kind of seemed like his bad defense started to affect other parts of his game.  They said he was going to “learn” first base in the minors, but then moved him almost exclusively to the outfield by the middle of August.   Outfield is the one place the big league club doesn’t need more bodies.   I sense the organization doesn’t actually have a plan — the MLB version of “Obamacare sucks; we’ll dump it, and come up with something better later.”
Keith Law: If he’s in triple A, I’d probably work on his defense at second, where he has the most value, but LF may be the most likely long-term position. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see him moved this winter.

Matt: What would you do with Kevin Alcantara given the Cubs OF depth and the fact that he’s out of options? Trade him, open up room by trading another OF or stick him on the bench for a year knowing Happ and Suzuki are FAs after 2026?
Keith Law: I’m assuming they’ll apply for a fourth option on him. I believe he qualifies.

Crew: Do you think the Dodgers should go into another year of planning to use Rushing as a back up C/fourth OF?
Keith Law: Seems like a poor use of the player.

Josh: Can you explain where teams are really losing money? Because it’s not low level scouts where the cuts get made. It’s like if I owned a restaurant that I told you lost money every year because of food costs and we need to cap staff pay because the head chef makes too much and that’s why the food sucks…so we’re going to fire the dishwasher, but also if you want to buy it, it’s going to cost you $1.5B. I get the salary numbers get all the attention because they easy and tied to individual performance, but the math ain’t mathing.
Keith Law: They’re not losing money. Maybe one or two teams is, but I doubt that, because lower-revenue teams get a big fat socialist check from MLB. They’re just assuming you’re dumb, and the players are dumb, and they get help from some writers who are dumb enough to pass this stuff along uncritically.

Matt: Thoughts on Luis Morales’ debut with Oakland? Is he trending towards being a mid-rotation starter or do you still see a lot of relief risk?
Keith Law: I think you’ve identified his ceiling and floor there. Odds of starting are much higher now than they were a year or two ago. I’d bet on a starter outcome.

Patrick (WI): Thanks for taking time for us once again, Keith. How does a labor stoppage affect MiLB? Are teams shut down from any organized activities, or can they run minor league complexes?
Keith Law: In the past, teams could run their minor league operations for any players not on the 40-man – those were the only union members, and they were the only players who were locked out. In this case, now that minor leaguers are represented by the union (a different bargaining unit within MLBPA, I think), the owners could lock everyone out. I doubt they would but I think that is now possible.

Patrick (WI): Keith, show plans for the holidays/early new year? Being on the East Coast, a lot of the bands you’ve been highlighting have to be touring this winter.
Keith Law: Right now it’s just the Beths. I checked November schedules for the local spots and nobody I was really keen to see was playing.

Aaron C.: Ever ordered a sandwich that you still think about? I had a Korean fried chicken sandwich from a spot here in San Diego earlier this month and I might leave my wife for another.
Keith Law: Absolutely – many I’ve tried to replicate at home. A place I used to go to all the time outside Boston had a chicken cutlet sandwich on scali bread (a very Boston thing) with fresh mozzarella, basil leaves and red pepper flakes. The restaurant is gone but I try to make something similar all the time. I’ve had a few fried chicken sandwiches that would make the cut – Crack Shack & Nocawich come to mind. There’s a place in Charlottesville, I think it’s the Viceroy, that does a vegetarian sandwich with grilled broccoli & other veg + mozzarella that is also superb, and I try to get it any time I’m down there.

Geese: Klaw thanks for the chat…. Would you be against or for a salary cap and floor and would even be possible with the new CBA
Keith Law: I oppose a salary cap, period. It boosts the owners at the expense of the players and will not make a significant difference to parity or to the willingness of cheapass owners to compete.

Aaron C.: In the past, you’ve correctly scouted and assessed green bean casserole for the holiday slop that it is. Any other 20-grade sides to see on Thanksgiving?
Keith Law: I never do mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving. They don’t hold heat well and they don’t reheat well at all.

David: Obviously everyone is talking about the Rockies and their, um, nontraditional approach.  Does DePodesta have a realistic shot at fixing this if ownership actually lets him run the show?  Or was this hire ten years too late?
Keith Law: I don’t think we know – he’s been gone a long time, and the industry has changed a lot, but I don’t believe he’s completely forgotten baseball or ignored the revolution that’s taken place. I’m very curious to see who he hires – I was told he could only hire 1 or 2 new people – and if he hires some retread or goes for someone ‘new’, not necessarily young but someone who’s likely to have new ideas and complements what Depo brings.

Dee: I was going to ask how you liked the new Tame Impala, but you’ve already answered that!
Keith Law: Loved “Dracula” but I thought the back half of the album dragged badly. Nobody listens to techno, Kevin.

CB: Keith, is it time for some alarms to go off regarding Arjun Nimmala’s performance in the low minors the last two years?
Keith Law: No. He played through some injuries last year, and when healthy was among the best hitters in his league.

Matt: I came for the baseball and stayed for the music updates. Just want to say thanks for continuing to churn out those monthly playlists, I’ve found many of my favorite artists from them so cheers and I’m looking forward to the year-end lists
Keith Law: It’s funny, I only get a few comments on those, but people tell me all the time they found new songs or artists they like because I post those, including some scouts. That’s all the reason I need to keep going.

parlay: Is this the year the Orioles make an impact free agent signing?
Keith Law: Recent history says no. But they really need to.

MagicOriole: Can the Orioles pull a Blue Jays and go from last to World Series?
Keith Law: I don’t see why not, if they add some real pitching.

John Z.: Hi Keith. I know Anthony Volpe was rushed, but his offensive performance has been brutal. He’s still young, I know, but at what point do you consider pulling the plug (and I realize shortstops don’t grow on trees, which is why he’ll probably be their SS this season)?
Keith Law: Way too soon for that, unless they’re going to go acquire an All-Star SS.

Ben: If you were in charge of the Cubs, what would your offseason plan be?  Upgrade to the rotation?
Keith Law: I’m not that worried about the rotation if Imanaga accepts the QO, but they are going to lose their second-best hitter from 2025 and none of their top hitting prospects (Ballesteros, Alcantara, Caissie) is going to replace that production right away.

Josh: Given the org is apparently not going anywhere…should the Twins go full tear down now that Bux has said he’s willing to wave his no trade clause.
Keith Law: I wonder how much of this is the ownership situation spinning in circles. Tearing it down isn’t going to help their sale value.

Henry: In thinking about the Dodgers robust baseball ops system, why haven’t other teams replicated their model of hiring as many top professional development staff as they have to support their players? Even if you were a small market team, that would probably be my biggest priority in developing talent.
Keith Law: I don’t understand why more teams haven’t replicated some of their org structure, or just hired away a Galen Carr or an Alex Slater to be a GM and bring their institutional knowledge.

Jason: Should the brewers trade Freddy Peralta or keep him for the 1 year $8m?
Keith Law: Unless they get blown away, I say keep him and compete, just as I said for the Tigers/Skubal.

Guest: What do you think of what the Nats are doing in their front office and MLB coaching staff. Their new President of Baseball Ops is 35, their new manager is 33, their new pitching coach is 30…is experience not as important in today’s game?
Keith Law: Their new manager is 33 and has at least four years of experience managing in the minors. Age <> experience.

Matt: I’m curious if you’ve started digging in on the 2026 draft class at all and what your thoughts are. From an outsider’s perspective it seems like one of the best crops of college position players in years (Cholowsky, Burress, Lebron, Gracia, etc.), but it’s always hard to separate hype from reality this far out.
Keith Law: It may rival the 2023 class for college bats, but the arms I don’t think are at that level and the HS class is very TBD beyond Grady Emerson. Tyler Bell and Eric Becker belong on your list, BTW.

Jason: What is the ceiling for Jesus Made and Luis Pena?
Keith Law: Made’s going to be a superstar. Pena could have an All-Star ceiling.

Darren: Cantillo, Genao, Stephen a good starting point for a Ketel Marte trade?
Keith Law: Is Ketel Marte available in trade? I wasn’t aware of that.
Keith Law: Also, LOL no it is not.

Will: I was a bit surprised by the Dillon Dingler gold glove win. Is he the catcher of our future in Detroit?
Keith Law: Gold Gloves are useless. Just ignore them. I would much rather start Dingler than Rogers, though.

Darren: Did you get a chance to see Espino and/or speak to anyone who did out in the AFL?
Keith Law: He threw one inning while I was out there, and I wasn’t at that game. Velocity was good, shockingly, but it was … one inning.

Jim: The more I read about Munetaka Murakami, I feel like a team is setting themselves up for a massive overpay. Is he a risk worth taking for a contender with a need at corner infield or DH?
Keith Law: Yes, but you have to think/believe you can help him adjust to MLB pitching – not just that it’s better, but that pitchers work differently here (e.g., throwing inside a lot more), and that the approach he used in NPB the last two years to sell out contact for maximum power is not going to work here.

Chris: Hey Keith, thanks for chatting. Do you think the Orioles got overconfident in their ability to improve (‘fix’) their prospects’ swings? From my limited perspective, it seems like they aren’t having much success recently, and it makes some of their draft pick choices look fairly foolish now.
Keith Law: Name one player whose swing they’ve fixed. I will give them partial credit on Gunnar Henderson, who did some himself and some with the team, so I guess let’s say beyond him.

JJ: Is Hurston Waldrep a SP long term with adjustments he made this year or is he still high risk of being only a reliever?
Keith Law: This time last year I was at 100% reliever. Now I’d say better than even chance he can start.

Jason: With the number of OF prospects the Dodgers, should they pursue Kyle Tucker given the term/salary required? Are they better off looking for a 1 to 2 year solution before their prospects are ready?
Keith Law: I know the Dodgers are just linked to every good FA, but I don’t think Tucker is a great investment for them. They do have a ton of OF depth coming, and I’m more concerned about the age of their infield.

Guest: What is the primary factor that most often pushes a prospect from a starting pitcher to reliever? Is it (a)No 3rd pitch so have platoon split or difficulty getting third time through order, (b)Bad command, (c)Injury/durability, (d)Other? Has this changed at all from when you started your career?
Keith Law: All of those things are true. I think (c) has changed a little because of the nature of the injuries we see, but you identified three of the main things I look at when trying to determine if I think a pitcher projects as a starter.

JR: How would you grade the first 5 years of the  Mets/Cohen regime? Mets fans were happy to get rid of Wilpons. And there was lots of talk of turning the Mets into the Dodgers of the east. They’ve spent a ton of money and appear operate like a quality organization, but for whatever reason, can’t sustain consistent high level success.

They’ve made the playoffs twice since he took over, and one year was getting bounced in wild card with home field advantage. They haven’t won the division. They had a collapse this year. They were awful to start the season last year before turning it around. They sold at the trade deadline in 2023.  Is it bad luck, poor front office personal, identifying the wrong players, playing in a very tough division, or something else?
Keith Law: Eh, I think you’re underselling them a little bit. I do have some concerns – they barely use pro scouting, which is the most pound-foolish thing I can imagine; and they went weirdly cheap when trying to build their rotation this year, which led to them relying on three rookies to save their season – but on the whole this is a much better-run organization than it was when the Wilpons owned it.

DW: What are your thoughts on the 3 “big” Japanese players who have been/will be posted?
Keith Law: They’re all in my top 50 FA rankings.

Chris: Keith, fair to assume you’ll be going to PAX Unplugged again this year?
I think last year was my final one, after going every year. I haven’t been enjoying it the past few years.
Keith Law: I’ll be there. That’s too bad that you haven’t enjoyed it – last year was maybe the best one I’d been to. For just playing new/upcoming games it is unbeatable. I wish it were four days!

Braydon: Not sure how easy this is to answer in hindsight, but what is the biggest rebuild you can remember in your time covering baseball? How closer are the current Rockies to that?
Keith Law: The Astros bottomed out pretty badly around 2012. Not just in terms of W-L, but the farm system was thin, with a lot of guys who didn’t develop much or at all.

Jon: Do you think the quick rise of Trey Yesavage through the Jays system will change approaches to player development? Do you see more pitchers being promoted as quickly or is he a special case?
Keith Law: We’ve seen a lot of guys like him already – Mike Leake, Michael Wacha – who were just super advanced as college pitchers with success at the highest level who were then able to jump to the big leagues in less than 18 months. Skenes too, although he is in his own league.

Darren: How excited should I be getting about Ralphy Velasquez?
Keith Law: Meh.

DS: If you were David Stearns, how would you go about fixing the Mets defense with an eye towards “run prevention”?
Keith Law: How about sliding Vientos to first and installing a capable 3b?

Wally: The annual Boras pun-filled presser is tired, right? Makes him seem doddering.
Keith Law: I’ve known Scott professionally for 20 years, and I can honestly say I think he’s better than that. He’s smart enough for a higher caliber of humor than the bad puns and dated references.

Chris: Do you think it’s time to re-evaluate the number of innings needed for pitchers to be qualified for official individual awards and leaderboards? Last season only 52 pitchers league-wide hit the minimum innings pitched number.
Keith Law: That’s enough pitchers to make it meaningful – and if you drop the threshold you do sever the continuity with MLB history. I wish there was some incentive there for teams to let guys reach the 162 IP number.

Guest: How do you rank Chase Burns, Trey Yesavage and Cam Schlittler?
Keith Law: The same way you did.

Michael: Are the Bluejays not catching enough grief for blowing the World Series? How does Kiner-Falefa, a pinch runner, get thrown out at home? Is that bad coaching that his lead was so short?
Keith Law: I mean, you don’t necessarily lose a playoff series on a single play. If you’re going to criticize Schneider, you have plenty of fodder from the entire series, including a fair bit of small ball, too many TOOTBLANs, and some suboptimal pitching choices.

Billy Ocean: Does Carter Jensen catch 100+ games next year? Power looks real but what’s your scouting on his plate approach?
Keith Law: He’s always had a good approach, going back to low A.

Bret S: Should I care at all about AFL results? If not results can anything happen there that would be notable either way? As a Cardinal fan I’m thinking specifically of Miguel Ugueto.
Keith Law: I would not say you should care, unless a hitter really struggles/shows a specific deficiency there. The pitching is weak overall and the ball carries well, so hitters’ #s are generally inflated.

Moose: You mentioned (on Seattle radio) during the 2025 deadline that you’d have dangled Cole Young in trade talks if you were the Mariners to land a bat — is it something they should still be considering this offseason considering the current holes at 1B/3B/DH, or was there enough/anything to like about his ~225 PA’s last season to think they can feel good about rolling with him at 2B to start 2026?
Keith Law: Yes, I would absolutely shop him. They have MIF coming with higher ceilings.

Jason: What are the odds that we miss games in 2027? Its so annoying to me that people just think its a foregone conclusion. Couldn’t they just start negotiations now??
Keith Law: How often did you start your homework two weeks before it was due?

Jacob: Thoughts on the Rays decision to release Fairbanks?
Keith Law: They didn’t release him.

Guest: After a disappointing season, what is Andrew Painter’s realistic upside? Is TOR still a plausible outcome?
Keith Law: I am worried I’m oversimplifying things here, but I think having him throw the slider so often contributed to the poor results. It’s not as good as his curveball and after a full year of it, maybe it’s time to push it back to fourth in his arsenal and let him go FB-CB-CH.

Guest: What are your expectations for Kyle Teel as a hitter going forward?
Alan: How did AJSS, Waldrep, and Baldwin all exceed industry expectations? Why does Atlanta’s farm system consistently rank in the bottom third of the league?
Keith Law: What you saw in 2025. His path to improvement comes with more reps vs LHP, whom he did not hit a lick last year.
Keith Law: AJSS didn’t, Waldrep was a first-rounder, and everybody had Baldwin as their top prospect coming into the year. What does that have to do with their system rankings, which are about the total talent in the systems rather than one or two guys?

John Z.: Keith, what are you cooking for Thanksgiving?
Keith Law: We haven’t settled on the menu yet but requests from the children include my pumpkin pie (yes) and “no gravy” (no).

Dave: Always love your turkey prep chats, Keith. Will we see one this year?
Keith Law: Planning on it!

Michael: Best food recommendations for NYC?
Keith Law: oh god, that could take me a week.

Moose: What do you make of The Jurrangelo Cijntje Experiment after his first professional season? Should he just transition to being a righty full-time?
Keith Law: Yes, he should.

Matt: Speaking of sandwiches, I believe you are a Smithtown guy.  Ever venture to the Se-port deli in Long Island?  Amazing sandwiches, especially the Boone!
Keith Law: Smithtown native, but I haven’t been to the Island in ten years.

Jon: Following up on the taters, I’m thinking of fixing Kenji’s Hasselback potato gratin. Ever try it?
Keith Law: I haven’t. Looks great, but that sounds like a lot of work.
Keith Law: Never been a big fan and I thought the latest album was a snooze.

Yuri: +1 to the music lists. I never comment, but listen every month and its one of the highlights of my music month for me every time!
Keith Law: Glad to hear it!

TomS: The tush push is cheating, right Keith? It’s like the lead runner taking out the shortstop three feet off the base in a double play attempt.
Keith Law: LOL. Any team can do it. And it’s not against the rules. How is that cheating?

JH: Do you think Jacob Reimer could be a big league regular at 3b or 1b? Is the bat good enough to be above average at 1b if he has to move there?
Keith Law: Not a 3b.

Darren: When are your org Top 20’s landing?
Keith Law: End of January/early February. Exact date isn’t my decision.

Ken: What do you make of Henry Bolte? He cut his K numbers some this past season.
Keith Law: And they’re still too high.

Woodsy: What are your Mount Rushmore espresso-based drinks? Or are you strictly a purist?
Keith Law: I’m a purist. I usually go with a traditional macchiatto, and a cortado is about as far as I go. When I’m in Italy, though, I’ll do a cappuccino in the morning, because that’s what one does there.
Keith Law: No sweetener, no cocoa or caramel or lavender or chai or tomato paste or whatever you sickos put in there.

Woodsy: Do you believe Mamdani’s win is a sea change toward a more progressive / populist brand of politics for the Dems, or will the old guard need to be gone for that to happen? I don’t know what the answer is to get them back on track nationally, but whatever this style of “leadership” is, it ain’t it.
Keith Law: I think it is. Mamdani is just the latest example of a younger, progressive candidate who has rallied voters in a way that traditional collaborators Democrats have not since Obama. I’m not saying he specifically is the future, but his model is one to emulate.
Keith Law: That’s all for this week – it had been a while since I’d done one of these and for once I had a good window. I’ll try to make them more regular during the offseason. Thanks as always for reading & for all of the questions!

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→ November 8, 2025
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Stick to baseball, 11/8/25.

I had two new pieces this week for subscribers to the Athletic, my annual ranking of the top 50 free agents (which I’ve updated to reflect option decisions and the probable return of Cody Ponce from the KBO) and a column on why the Contemporary Era Committee should put Dale Murphy in the Hall of Fame. I also held a Q&A on Monday after the rankings went live.

At Endless Mode, I looked at the massive board game Luthier, which has its own soundtrack to reflect the composers depicted within the game.

I’ll do another newsletter any day now, I swear.

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: ProPublica investigates what was really happening in Portland before Trump illegally sent the National Guard to the Oregon city. The short answer: not much, just peaceful protests and a whopping three people charged with crimes.
  • The Atlantic has the unbelievable story of a Wisconsin man who appeared to have drowned while fishing, but when police couldn’t find his body, the story started to get very weird.
  • The Guardian examines Tucson residents’ fight against a data center that is going to put a huge strain on the region’s water and energy supplies. It doesn’t help that the center’s developers have been sketchy about who’s going to use the facility – but it’s probably Amazon.
  • One major lesson from Tuesday night’s decisive victories by Democrats is that supporting trans rights is a winning issue – or, I suppose, at least not a losing one. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been rushing to throw trans rights out the window as he lines up to run for President in 2028, and it’s both cruel and unnecessary.
  • The stochastic terrorists of the online right, especially on Twitter, directed death threats to Arizona teachers who wore the same Halloween costumes they wear every year, because the right-wing loons assumed without evidence that the costumes were mocking the death of Charlie Kirk.
  • An 18-year-old man in Oklahoma was convicted of raping two girls, including strangling one until she fell unconscious, but the judge approved a plea deal that charged him as a minor and turned a minimum of 10 years in prison to counseling with no prison time. Jesse Mack Butler was 16 at the time of at least one of the assaults. The linked story implies that he received favorable treatment because his father was the football director at Oklahoma State, where the ADA went to school; I think he got favorable treatment because he’s a white man.
  • Bluesky’s official blog noted the huge traffic surge during the World Series, with a 30% bump for Saturday’s game 7, and in doing so they used a post from yours truly.
  • And the campaign for Movers & Shakers, a railway game of building routes and completing contracts, also funded inside of a day. It’s looks a bit lighter than the typical title from Quined, who specialize in heavier Euros and have a great reputation.
  • Damion Schubert looked at 365 board game rankings, condensed the games by game families (e.g., putting all Ticket to Ride games into one bucket), and then compiled the top 100 families based on those individual rankings. The list skews towards medium-heavy games, but not the heaviest, which I appreciate, and there are three families in this top ten that appeared in my own top ten last November. (Damion confirmed my list was one of the 365.)

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→ November 6, 2025
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Music update, October 2025.

Three great albums and a whole host of other good releases in October, so this month’s playlist is overstuffed, clocking in at just over two hours. You can access the playlist on Spotify or, now, Apple Music.

Sudan Archives – A Bug’s Life. Brittney Denise Parks’s latest album The BPM is tremendous, easily one of the year’s best, with just one skip for me (“Ms. Pac Man”) and some absolute bangers like this track. The album is fundamentally a dance record, with influences from house music to techno to EDM to classic R&B. There’s even some string accompaniments on the album. It’s going to end up near the top of my year-end list.

Creeper – Mistress of Death. The sort-of title track from their latest album, Sanguivore II: Mistress of Death, is one of the best songs on it, although “Prey for the Night” is the easy leader. They’re such an anachronism: in the 1980s, they would have been lumped in with American hair metal bands, but now they stand out because almost no one is making music like this at all.

Just Mustard – Endless Deathless. This Irish shoegaze band just put out their latest album We Were Just Here – they capitalize everything, I’m too tired for all that yelling – and it’s excellent, although I’m undecided if it’s better than 2022’s Heart Under, which was one of the best shoegaze albums of this current revival period. They’ve got a lot of Slowdive to them, especially with a female vocalist whose voice softens the harshness of the walls of distorted guitars.

Courtney Barnett – Stay in Your Lane. Barnett hasn’t released a proper album of her own since 2021, although in 2023 she did an instrumental soundtrack for a film called Anonymous Club, and she hadn’t released any original music at all in the last two years. Then this lands, and it’s … almost a pop song? It’s really upbeat, catchy, more guitar-driven and a little less powered by Barnett’s idiosyncratic vocals and brilliant lyrics. Perhaps this is a new phase, and I’m into it.

Momma – Cross Your Heart. Momma is the Veruca Salt of the 2020s, and I’m fine with that. They’re not breaking any ground here, but they have a good ear for melodies, and the sound is so similar to Veruca Salt – who had a couple of absolute bangers, even though they burned out quick – that they strike a familiar chord in my brain.

Rocket – Crazy. Speaking of which, Rocket is named for the Smashing Pumpkins song, and they do sound quite a bit like their idols, although it’s not as overt, more like a similar vibe, and their vocalist is miles better than Billy Corgan anyway.

World News – Everything’s Coming Up Roses. The second great track this year from this British jangle-pop band, with a very U2-like guitar sound (including the use of a digital delay, more evident on their last single “Don’t Want to Know”). They’ve put out a few EPs, but there’s no album yet. They did tease an album in progress in an interview in July.

Automatic – Black Box. This LA-based trio does a very post-modern sort of synthesizer-driven rock, unusual in that it doesn’t call back much to the heyday of synthpop in the early 1980s. Their third album, Is It Now?, dropped in September, and it’s a strong listen that doesn’t truly have a standout single. It’s dark and moody, more of a vibe than a collection of hits.

Thrice – Gnash. One of the best songs off Thrice’s Horizons/West. I saw their live show at TLA in Philly on Sunday, and they sounded incredible, even though there are a lot of mixed feelings about that venue. I think the last time I saw them was at the Franklin Music Hall and I remember it being louder but less clear. Anyway, I’m a fan, not just because their drummer is half of Productive Outs.

Doves – Spirit of Your Friend. This track will appear on the upcoming best-of compilation So, Here We Are, but the song apparently is about twenty years old, and the band ‘unearthed’ it and pared it from seven minutes to 3:39. It’s quite good but I have a hard time placing it somewhere in their sound chronology; it’s definitely post-The Last Broadcast, but I guess before Kingdom of Rust?

Weird Nightmare – Forever Elsewhere. This is METZ guitarist Alex Edkins indulging his poppier inclinations – I actually like his solo work here more than I like METZ’s harder sound. If you like Cloud Nothings, you’ll love Weird Nightmare.

dust – Drawbacks. Wikipedia tells me there was a band called Dust in the 1970s that released two albums; this is not that band. The new dust is an Australian post-punk band that sounds a lot like early Fontaines D.C. with a little darker edge. This is the lead track from their latest album Sky is Falling.

Dear Boy – After All. It’s the chorus. I was lukewarm on the song, but that line, “are you close enough to change me,” absolutely stuck in my head for days. I’ve read some reviews that try to place them with Britpop or new wave, but none of that fits for me; it’s California indie-pop, with strong harmonies and a great hook in that chorus.

Massage – Daffy Duck. I can’t help but say this band’s name like that scene from one of The Pink Panther movies, where Clouseau asks if they have a message for him but says it like “massage.” Anyway, Massage is a five-piece indie-pop band from LA who just released their first LP, Coaster, and I found this on some playlist somewhere, after which I couldn’t get it out of my head. They have a clear pop inclination, with a guitar sound that’s much more college radio than OMGHITZ!

Portugal. the Man – Angoon. So far I’ve liked the singles from their upcoming album Shish, due out on Friday, more than most of their last album Chris Black Changed My Life, which felt very much like a reaction to the huge commercial success of Woodstock. This sounds much more like their true sound, based on their pre-Woodstock output.

Orchestra Gold – Baye Ass N’Diaye. Orchestra Gold is based in Oakland, while their sound draws heavily on Malian music – not too dissimilar to the Touareg music of Mdou Moctar – while combining it with psychedelic rock and a dash of early funk. I bet they give a hell of a live show.

Danger Mouse & Black Thought feat. Rag’n’Bone Man – UP. For now, it’s a one-off single, but after the outstanding collaboration Cheat Codes in 2022 I’ll take anything Danger Mouse and Black Thought do together.

Noname feat. Devin Morrison – Hundred Acres. This is the first single from an upcoming album from Noname, whose last album Sundial was one of my favorites of 2023, called Cartoon Radio; it’s spare, mostly just Noname spitting rhymes over a synthetic piano loop. She’s one of the best MCs going.

keiyaA – k.i.s.s. Did I put this jazzy, gritty R&B song on my list because the album is called Hooke’s Law? You’re damn right I did.

Cœur de Pirate – Les enfants des temps derniers. One of the most upbeat tracks from Cœur de Pirate’s latest album Cavale, “Les enfants” sounds like a celebration throughout, even though it’s about being “a child of these last times,” facing the possible end of the world.

Weakened Friends – Weightless. I loved their track “Awkward” from 2023, which this Portland, Maine-based trio chose not to include on their new album Feels Like Hell, which does however include a cover of Ednaswap’s “Torn” (the same one Natalie Imbruglia covered). Sonia Sturino’s wobbly vocals work in small doses, but the more she invokes that trait the worse it gets; it’s only there in spurts on this track, so it gets the seal of approval.

Mourn – Dormir Tarde. I’ve been a fan of Mourn’s for probably a decade now, boosting them when fellow Spaniards Hinds were getting all the love from the indie music press. This indie-rock trio put out an album last year, but this is their second new single of 2025, so perhaps there’s another album or EP in the offing.

The Twilight Sad – Waiting for the Phone Call. The Twilight Sad were a five-piece but are now just a duo, featuring singer James Graham and guitarist Andy MacFarlane; The Cure’s Robert Smith joins them here on guitar. They haven’t released an album since 2019, so I’m assuming this is the lead track from something due out next year. It’s a little more energetic than what I typically expect from this band (whose name is, as it turns out, accurate).

Miles Kane – Sunlight in the Shadows. Kane, who is also half of The Last Shadow Puppets with Alex Turner, comes up with some serious guitar earworms, although he doesn’t have Turner’s voice or charisma.

Sports Team – Medium Machine. This is one of the seven bonus tracks from the deluxe edition of Sports Team’s latest album Boys These Days, which is out now. I didn’t love the album, at least not as much as their previous record, the more raucous Gulp!

Yowie – Skrimshander. I don’t even know what to call this beyond “experimental,” but it grabbed me anyway, probably because of the inventive guitarwork at the forefront. They’re a trio from St. Louis whose drummer is the only original member still in the band. It’s weird, don’t be fooled, but I dig it.

Glass Tides – Failure. Glass Tides are a post-hardcore band from Adelaide, Australia, who’ve toured with Thrice, which gives you some idea of their sound, although their vocalist doesn’t have the power of Thrice’s Dustin Kensrue.

Litania – Ghunghru. Psychedelic doom from Italy and Serbia. I found this track buried on the Spotify All New Metal list and it stood out immediately, not least because the vocals aren’t screamed or growled. There’s a real groove to this track that I dig.

Friendship Commanders – FOUND. Sludge metal with vocal harmonies? Sign me up. They’re duo, with incredible vocals from Buick Audra, and just released their fourth album, BEAR. This is the first track I’ve heard from them; I like that combination of heavy, perhaps drop-tuned guitars and beautiful vocals.

Coroner – Consequence. Dissonance Theory, this Swiss thrash trio’s first album in 32 years, did not disappoint; it is as good as their final two records, 1991’s Mental Vortex and 1993’s more experimental Grin. The lyrics are a little trite, as on this song’s refrain “at least you’re having fun,” but man can these guys churn out some powerful riffs. I’ve always preferred them to Celtic Frost, who are generally regarded as the pioneers of the Swiss thrash sound and progenitors of European death metal (and for whom Coroner started out as roadies), and this album is a good example of why – it’s more accessible without sacrificing the power of the thrash riffs.

Testament – Shadow People. Para Bellum, the fourteenth album from these Bay Area thrash stalwarts, dropped last month, and it includes straight-on thrash tracks like this one as well as more death metal-inclined songs like “For the Love of Pain,” which has an outstanding riff but wears out its welcome between the vocals and the blast beats. Alex Skolnick can still shred, even at age 57. I guess there’s hope for me yet.

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→ November 1, 2025
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Stick to baseball, 11/1/25.

My ranking of the top 50 free agents this offseason will run on Monday over at the Athletic, and I’ll do a Q&A that day or the day after, depending on my schedule.

Over at Endless Mode, I reviewed the new two-player game Leaders, which is pretty meh in his basic mode but really shines in expert mode, where players get to draft the character tokens they’ll use in the game versus the semi-random setup in the original.

And now, the links…

  • Suriname has long been a carbon-negative country, as the nation’s share of the Amazon rain forest absorbs more carbon dioxide than the poor population of the country can produce. That may change as the country pursues an offshore oil-drilling initiative, claiming they’ll use the funds to build a sustainable green economy.
  • Radley Balko explores how false accusations of child molestation destroyed a preschool teacher’s life, even after they were ruled unfounded. Jordan Silverman ended up losing custody of his sons and saw his health and career wrecked by the allegations and vindictive parents who wouldn’t accept the official ruling.
  • The BBC looks at the probably stolen election in Cameroon, where dictator Paul Biya, who has ruled the African nation for 43 years, claimed victory and a new term that will run until he’s 99 years old. An opposition leader who also claimed victory has led the country, and there have been protests for at least the last three days.
  • The lab-leak conspiracy theory was already dead, but here’s another nail for its coffin: Scientists found another Covid virus in Brazilian bats, proving that the mutation that allowed SARS-CoV-2 to infect humans is a natural phenomenon.
  • Meanwhile, Florida is trying to kill its own citizens by ending all childhood vaccination mandates. It took less than a year for rollbacks in vaccination rates and mandates to lead to measles outbreaks. Florida is going to be the epicenter of outbreaks of multiple diseases within the next twelve months, and there’s no keeping them within the state’s borders.
  • I mentioned last week how Indiana University had shut down its student newspaper because the paper dared to print the news. Many alumni pulled their donations in response, and the school relented. You have the power to do something, somewhere.
  • The Guardian also has the details on a maybe-new scam where moped riders bump a potential mark’s car and then demand to see the victim’s driver’s license and/or insurance documents so they can open up new insurance policies in the victim’s name and submit bogus claims. I say “maybe-new” because this sounds like a twist on several other scams involving staged accidents.

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→ October 31, 2025
→ By

Someone You Can Build a Nest In.

John Wiswell won this year’s Nebula Award for his novel Someone You Can Build a Nest In, while also making the shortlist for the Hugo for Best Novel and winning the Locus Award for Best Novel. It’s a queer love story that tries to approach some enormous questions about the meanings of family, secrecy, and what it means to trust and be trusted, but it gets bogged down too much in the details of how its shapeshifting protagonist works.

Shesheshen is that main character, a shapeshifter with no natural form who lives by eating living creatures – including humans – and absorbing their body parts to create facsimiles of them, although she* can also use inanimate objects to take the places of bones and other hard physical structures. Thus she can imitate a human’s form and even some of its senses despite lacking a circulatory or nervous system. She recalls being born from a sac of eggs within a host human and having to defend herself when her siblings tried to attack and presumably eat her, eating them instead to survive. She lives in a castle outside a town whose residents fear a “wyrm” in the countryside, and the story opens when three adventurers, one the scion of a noble family, invade the house to try to kill her – despite not knowing what manner of creature she is – and collect some sort of bounty. She survives the battle but is wounded, and when she wakes after a fall, she finds herself in the care of a traveling woman named Homily who rescues her and nurses her back to health. Shesheshen develops feelings for Homily, something she has never experienced before, which becomes far more complicated when the full picture becomes apparent.

* I believe Wiswell used she/her pronouns for Shesheshen, while specifically identifying other characters as nonbinary, but obviously the concept of gender for a literal shapeshifter is a bit silly.

Shesheshen learns early on that there’s a connection between Homily and the people who want her dead, and also realizes that Homily thinks she’s a human, but despite coming close multiple times she decides not to tell Homily the truth until much later in the story (mild spoiler, but obviously that reckoning is coming at some point). This presented the most compelling aspect of the entire narrative, even more than the “will they/won’t they” between the two main characters or the eventual conflict between Shesheshen and the Baroness Wulfyre, who has sworn to kill the wyrm and take its heart so that she can lift a curse on her family. Instead, Shesheshen goes through the very familiar and normal set of rationalizations as she vacillates between coming clean – hi, I’m a human-eating monster of no fixed shape, also I think I love you – and avoiding the inevitable conflict and recriminations, both of the actual truth and her choices to deceive Homily for what turns out to be quite some time. It’s a superb portrait of the internal monologue that people who are conflict-avoidant (raises hand) go through, and the lies we even tell ourselves to rationalize our decisions.

Wiswell’s a fine prose writer, but there is just way too much ink spilled here about Shesheshen absorbing and digesting parts of the humans and creatures she attacks. The issue isn’t so much that it’s gross – it is kind of gross, but I’ve seen worse, and Wiswell’s descriptions aren’t lurid – but that it occupies so much of the page when we should be following the plot. There’s a lot happening in this book, and I’d say at least one very big twist, and it gets a bit drowned by all the blood and viscera being spilled by Shesheshen and some of her enemies.

Wiswell has a neuromuscular disorder and other disabilities, which he speaks about often and incorporates into some of his work; I was looking for the possible metaphors for disability and visibility in Someone to Build a Nest In, but if they’re there, I missed them, and thus possibly missed some significant context for the story itself. All I saw was a mildly interesting love story (where you know they’re getting together somehow, although it could prove tragic in the end) boosted by Shesheshen’s moral dilemma and the wrong choices she continually makes, even as she tries to convince herself they’re the right ones. That made for a solid novel but hardly the best of the year, certainly not over finalist The Book of Love by Kelly Link, which remains the best new novel I have read this year.

Next up: I just finished Theft, the newest novel by Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah, and started Dorothy Baker’s Young Man with a Horn.

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→ October 25, 2025
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Stick to baseball, 10/25/25.

I ended up unable to do a links post last weekend because I was out scouting the Arizona Fall League (which also prevented me from doing something else on Saturday morning), so we’re back now and at least I can post my AFL wrap-ups. I broke them up into one post on the notable pitchers and another on the notable hitters I saw in the eleven games I attended, but of course I couldn’t see everyone.

Over at Endless Mode, I reviewed the games Twinkle Twinkle, a solid family-level tile-laying game; and Duel for Cardia, an excellent two-player capture-the-flag game that gets a lot of mileage out of its two 16-card decks.

I sent out another issue of my free email newsletter about two weeks ago, so I’m due for another one now that I’ve written some more stuff.

And now, the links…

  • An Arizona wannabe influencer tried to extort a local bakery, JL Patisserie, for a collaboration fee, or at least a bunch of free food, in exchange for a favorable video. The bakery declined; the woman showed up anyway, and then posted a negative review that had some false claims in it, so the bakery posted a point-by-point response … and then all hell broke loose. I went there and got a chocolate-pistachio croissant for $8.50; it was probably the best croissant I’ve ever had, and I’ve been to France three times.
  • Sen. “Cancun” Ted Cruz is targeting Wikipedia, claiming the site – which has extensive rules on reliable & verifiable sourcing – has a “left-wing bias.” Well, if you’re saying facts have a left-wing bias…
  • Defector has a good laugh at the Free Press writer – I’m not calling them journalists, sorry – Olivia Reingold, who is complaining that most of her friends are shunning her after she wrote a story claiming that the Gazan babies who died of starvation were actually sick with other things, so it wasn’t that big of a tragedy. I need a quantum violin to play for her, because anything else would be too large.
  • The hosts of a left-wing podcast called out Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) for his votes for Trump appointees and generally clubby attitude towards the rise of authoritarianism.
  • Raas: A Dance of Love is an upcoming board game from two Indian designers, now up on Gamefound; it’s the first game I’ve seen that uses an aspect of Indian culture and is also designed by people from the subcontinent.

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→ October 11, 2025
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Make Me Commissioner.

Full disclosure here: I got a review (electronic) copy of this book from Jane Leavy’s publicist, but also contributed a little to the book, as Jane asked me a few questions and mentions me once in the text as well as in the acknowledgements.

Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong With Baseball and How to Fix It doesn’t exactly deliver on its title, and it isn’t really about Jane Leavy asking to take Rob Manfred’s job – although I have little doubt she’d be an improvement, as she doesn’t just like baseball, she loves it. It’s a series of interconnected stories, reminiscent of George Will’s Men at Work, that explain a lot about where baseball is right now as a sport and a pastime. I disagree with large portions of it, both Leavy’s opinions and the opinions of many of the people she spoke with in researching the book, but I also tore through it.

Leavy has been a sportswriter for … let’s just say longer than I have, and prior to this she wrote three biographies of Hall of Famers, most notably her biography of Sandy Koufax called A Lefty’s Legacy. This is Leavy’s first book where she’s the main character, as we tag along with her to Cape Cod League games, spring training games, Savannah Bananas games, and a few big-league games as well, listening in on conversations with players, coaches, scouts, and executives about baseball in our era. There’s a lot about analytics, of course, as well as baseball’s attempts to capture the attention of younger fans, both by changing the game on the field and updating how the sport is presented when the players aren’t actually playing.

The stuff about the Bananas works the least, and the idea that baseball – Major League Baseball, specifically – has to be more like the Bananas is, well, bananas. (The book was published a week before Defector revealed that the Bananas’ charity is maybe not very charitable.) The Savannah Bananas are entertainment, not sport. They build on baseball to put on a show, the way that WWE builds on real wrestling to put on a show. You might like one, both, or neither. But turning MLB into something more like the Bananas, which Manfred floated when he brought up the idea of the “Golden At Bat” – never has it seemed more like the guy just doesn’t understand baseball culture or tradition – risks alienating everyone: Current and longtime baseball fans will think it’s a joke, while people who like the Bananas for what they bring aren’t going to suddenly embrace ‘real’ baseball for putting the pitcher on stilts.

The lesson of the Bananas, if there is one, is that the fans do matter. Leavy does not suggest, or agree with the idea of, adopting Bananas ideas into pro ball; she does suggest making the sport more family-friendly, with earlier game times (good), cheaper tickets in family-only sections (good, but owners don’t really like giving up money), and more in-stadium entertainment (not a long-term strategy).

What baseball really needs to do is improve the product on the field – without diluting it, or making it into something it fundamentally isn’t. The pitch clock, of which I think Leavy approves, has been game-changing, literally. We get the same amount of baseball in about 10% less time. The baseball density has increased. The baseball per minute ratio is at its highest in decades. And the predicted rise in pitcher injuries doesn’t seem to have happened, probably because every pitcher was already hurt anyway.

This is where Leavy gets into the conversations that prove more interesting, if not always enlightening. She talks to players (Alex Bregman, Chase Delauter), execs (Mike Rizzo, still head of the Nationals when this went to press), coaches, and scouts. She goes to Driveline, and wonders what the cost of all of this easy velocity is. She’s asking people in the trenches what they think baseball should do, and the answer is that they don’t have the answers. That’s fine, if perhaps not the most compelling hook for a book, but along the way, she also talks to Bregman about his struggles in 2024 and how he’s changed his swing over time, and talks to Rizzo and Red Sox hitting development director Jason Ochart about the rise of analytics, all of which rank among the best conversations in the book. Leavy is clearly more of a traditionalist and not a huge fan of analytics, but not to the point of refusing to learn or understand it, which puts her miles ahead of some our colleagues whose response is to make bad WAR puns or call people who cite advanced statistics “nerds” like this is Happy Days (a show that actually gets a mention in the book).

Leavy’s love of the game comes through on every page, even when she says things with which I completely disagree. I’d be fine with her as Commissioner, although at this point I think a potted plant might be an improvement over someone who wants to eliminate another 20% of the minors. The book doesn’t get much into the weeds about the revenue model in the sport, which is a major reason why the sport has remained strong despite the aging fan base, so as a prescription for how to ‘fix’ baseball, it falls short. It’s just an engaging read about baseball as it is today, when most baseball books – including my own two – don’t really give you the feel of the game, the way so many of the best baseball books of the 1980s and 1990s did. Make Me Commissioner does, and reminded me so much of the books on the sport that helped forge my own voice.

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