→ August 27, 2020
→ By

Klawchat 8/27/20.

My latest post for subscribers to the Athletic looks at the debuts from Triston McKenzie, Sixto Sanchez, Wil Crowe, and Joey Bart. I reviewed the new tile-laying and set collection board game Succulent for Paste.

Keith Law: Let us have peace, let us have life. Klawchat.

Guest: Have you had a chance to see Tony Gonsolin throw this season? Has his new knuckle-change elevated his ceiling at all?
Keith Law: Yes. He has only thrown 16 of those knuckle-curves and has no ability to command the pitch at all right now. I don’t think it’ll make any difference until and unless that changes.

Ken: Buehler to the DL and the Dodger don’t call up Tony Gonsolin? Seems odd.
Keith Law: He threw on Monday at the alternate site. He wouldn’t be available to pitch tonight or tomorrow.
Keith Law: That was what I guessed even before a quick Twitter search confirmed it.

Henry: What’s your long-term thoughts on Ian Anderson? I was impressed yesterday.
Mark: The Athletic was kicking around White Sox trade proposals for Lance Lynn, including cashing out Reynaldo Lopez or Dylan Cease for Lynn. Based on what you have seen so far from Cease’s starts and his years of control, would you make that trade if you were Hahn?
Keith Law: Yes, I would. Not sure Lopez has any trade value right now, though.

Gus: Has Corbin Burnes returned to where you thought he would be (before last year’s disaster)?
Keith Law: Not yet. He’s still throwing fewer strikes than I expected. Stuff is there, and whatever the issue was last year – mechanics or just tipping pitches – it mostly seems to be resolved.

Nate (Seattle): What can be done to reduce K% & increase BIP%?
Keith Law: Raise the bottom of the strike zone. I think an automated zone will result in fewer called strikes anyway, although the tradeoff there might be fewer swings in total.

Chuck: Who is the best Royals pitching prospect:  Lynch or Asa
Keith Law: Lynch.

WhiteSoxAndy: Obviously we had last season as well, but I’m gonna reiterate you were right to believe in Lucas Giolito!
Keith Law: That can’t be right. The internet told me I’m never right about anything and I suck at my job.

Greg: Does Atlanta have a pitching development problem? How can guys with the quality of stuff that Touki, Wright, Bryse Wilson, Newcomb have somehow be unable to even be a backend starter so far?
Keith Law: (Points at Max Fried)

Patty O’Furniture: So, Ian Anderson looked pretty dang good eh?
Keith Law: He looked good, but not great. His breaking ball wasn’t very good, with very short break for its velocity, and I don’t think any of his pitches was really plus. He showed good command and I love how he pitched. The individual pitches were a little lighter than I’d hoped, though.

Kelly: Your guess on the name(s) or prospect rank of the PTBNL in the Walker trade to Jays?
Keith Law: Might just be cash considerations. He’s a free agent in a month. I honestly don’t know what they discussed though.

Matthew: With Triston McKenzie rising from the ashes after 2 injury-plagued seasons, any chance Franklin Perez follows suit?
Keith Law: Perez’s injuries have been more serious.

Blake: I feel kind of conflicted about my team’s choice not to sit out last night’s game. One one hand, I feel a bit disappointed they didn’t feel empowered enough to take a stand. On the other, who am I to expect them to refuse to do their job to make a statement? I guess this isn’t a question, but curious if you have any thoughts
Keith Law: I was disappointed that other Cubs and Cardinals players chose to play when Black teammates of theirs chose to sit out.

David: Hey Keith, I know it’s probably close to impossible for you to upgrade/downgrade your opinion on a player at an alternate site, especially after Britt Ghiroli’s excellent piece on how scouts aren’t allowed at those sites, but is there reason to be encouraged about Jarren Duran? Alex Speier wrote about his swing change and he seems to have unlocked power in his swing. Or is that something you would need to see a player show at a hopeful [insert state name] Fall League?
Keith Law: He has truly changed his swing, and I think it will lead to more power, but I wouldn’t treat what I have heard about it the same way I would treat information from live games.
Keith Law: He’s a better prospect now than he was six months ago. That doesn’t equate to the same kind of jump in status or ranking we might get in a normal year, where he’d get to prove it against actual pitching.

Aaron Gershoff: Can Justin Dunn (of Edwin Diaz/Robinson Cano fame) be a solid starter now or does he need more time?
Keith Law: He’s averaging 91.0 on his fastball. That’s not going to get it … dunn.

Michael: When scouting short players, is there any way to project power like Altuve, Eaton, Pedroia, etc or do most scouts see those types of players as “spark plug” Eckstein type guys?
Keith Law: I’d look at their swings and their lower body strength. Pedroia’s issues were that he wasn’t that strong as a prospect – if you can find video of the September when he debuted, his body looked bad – and most scouts, myself included, thought his swing was too uphill.
Keith Law: He improved his body a ton, and he made that swing work for him with exceptional hand-eye.

Josh: With the Walker trade do you think the Mariners give Logan Gilbert a shot at a few starts or give that 6th rotation spot to the bullpen?
Keith Law: I’d give Gilbert the spot. He was pretty close to ready after last season anyway.

JT: Will MLB finish its season, or can we expect a boycott for racial justice?

I *love* this so much. My introduction to social justice was reading about the death threats mailed to Hank Aaron when I was 9 or 10. Baseball taught me to be a better, more caring person. I love that it could do so again.
Keith Law: My guess is that the wildcat strikes we’re seeing in other leagues won’t come to MLB. The league and its players as a whole are too conservative.
Keith Law: Meaning a full-season strike – I wasn’t talking about individual games.

Drew: Love the scouting articles. With respect to Triston McKenzie, you had him ranked high as 19. Can you ballpark where he’d fall if you set the rankings again? And what’s his ceiling?
Keith Law: That guy we saw on Saturday would be back in the top 20 again. He might be an ace.

Soto Popinski: Thanks for continuing to speak out during these times. I can’t say it eliminates the dread of the next few months but at least there’s not any resignation
Keith Law: We fight, or we surrender. I don’t see another choice.

Henry: You published but didn’t answer my Ian Anderson question above? Thanks.
Keith Law: I did answer the same q later – the software swallowed your question so I answered someone else’s.

cool guy: what did scouts miss about cavan biggio?
Keith Law: Nothing. This season so far is such a tiny sample that there are weird outlier results all over the place – unless you think Mike Trout is really a .333 OBP guy.

Reds Fan: How much do you buy the mechanical changes Jose Garcia has made over the past year? If you were ranking again, do you feel he would be higher or lower than 93?
Keith Law: No change. I thought 93 was appropriate, if on the optimistic side.

Robert: Adell looks far from ready for the majors, especially in the field. Would you hold him back after watching him this season to preserve his confidence, or is this just something he has to get through with no minor leagues?
Keith Law: I might start to play him more selectively to get him at bats against pitchers he might be better able to see or hit right now. He doesn’t look ready, unfortunately.

Matt: What are your thoughts on Connor Seabold?  Would developing a better breaking ball to add to FB and change allow him to become a mid-rotation starter?
Keith Law: I mean, “developing a better breaking ball” is not a minor tweak. He’s a fifth starter/swingman type. I didn’t have any problem with the phillies’ end of that trade.

Jonathan: What’s wrong with Pete Alonso this season? Alternatively, was 2019 a mirage for him?
Keith Law: How about something in between? He might never hit 53 homers again – especially since the baseball seems to be a little less happy-fun than last year – but he’s not a .402 SLG guy. To return to my small-sample point above, Biggio has more homers this year than Alonso. Do we really think Biggio is the better power hitter?

Nelson: Has anybody ever had the velocity of DeGrom with his level of command?
Keith Law: Scherzer?

Steven: Who do you prefer going forward, Luis Urias or Luis Garcia (Nats)?
Keith Law: Urias.

Noah: Max Fried has been pitching like an Ace. Can he keep this level up or will he fall into a #2/3 type starter when the sample size is bigger?
Keith Law: With that stuff, athleticism, and command, I think he can be a top 20 starter in baseball for the long term.

Steven: Was Fried, Giolito and Flaherty the best high school rotation ever?
Keith Law: I can’t think of a better one.

Jameson: A few of your Athletic co-writers put together a piece on the emergence of Yaz this year as a “super star” (their words not mine). Do you share a believe in this premise or are us Giants fans still going to see a regression?
Keith Law: I do not believe he’s a super star, or a star.

Neal: Thoughts on Luis Robert from what you’ve seen thus far?
Keith Law: Pretty much what I expected – big tools, especially the power, great defense, lot of swing and miss with vulnerability inside.
Keith Law: Great player, with flaws.

Tim: Does Zack Collins have a MLB future? Seems like there is no room for him in Chicago.
Keith Law: Last guy on the bench, sure. Emergency catcher, DH/PH with patience and power, there’s some value there.

Greg: I guess I’ll ask it another way. You’ve long been the high man on Touki and Bryse Wilson. Why hasn’t Atlanta been able to get more out of them?
Keith Law: Wilson is still just 22, and he got to the majors very early. I am quite high on him. Touki has shown flashes of it, but I think he still doesn’t have the consistency to his delivery, especially his arm swing, to repeat it 80-100 times every fifth day yet. I don’t know why, exactly; is it body control, or just that his arm is so fast/loose, or something else? Newcomb you mentioned above, and I don’t think he’ll ever repeat his arm stroke enough to throw strikes. He’s so loose that there isn’t really an easy way to fix it to improve the path of his arm or how close he gets to the same release point. He’s always going to be wild, unfortunately.

Scherzers_Blue_Eye: Victor Robles’ offense is another Giolito situation, right? Just be patient?
Keith Law: I’d say yes.

Kamal: At this point is looks like the NL Rookie of the Year is Cronenworth’s to lose. Was he a legit prospect in Rays system and do you see this as sustainable?
Keith Law: That’s a ridiculous statement on a player with less than 100 PA (and with a .375 BABIP, which is clearly not sustainable). I like Cronenworth a bit, but in a normal season nobody would speak about a sample of 87 PA as if it were meaningful. Just among rookies currently playing, I’d probably bet on Bohm or even Carlson to be better the rest of this mini-season.

Morris: I get why the Giants feel they need to disassociate from Aubrey Huff. But if they want to do that, how can they justify honoring Will Clark and retiring his number? This is a well known racist from who called Chris Brown the N-word in public, never apologized (and still hasn’t), had his white manager (Roger Craig) explain his actions and racism away, and had the team quickly ship away the black players (Brown, Jeffrey Leonard) who were bothered by his bigotry. Why two different standards for two terrible people?
Keith Law: That’s a great question, and whenever they trot him out in front of the press, someone needs to ask him point-blank about it.

Nick: Dominic Smith has been outstanding this season.  If you were running the Mets, what would you do with him going into 2021?
Keith Law: If the DH is permanent in the NL, as it will be sooner or later, he should be their 1B full-time, with Alonso the DH.

Guest: I know you are always pro-player (as am I), how would you have felt (in Clev’s case) / do feel (Pleasac) about keeping them down long enough to delay FA by a year as punishment, given how egregious their behavior was?
Keith Law: I would have been fine if the team or MLB had suspended them the rest of the year for putting their entire clubhouse at risk through deliberately reckless actions. I am pro-player. I am not pro-asshole.

TP: SSS or is this the Dom Smith you have been waiting for?
Keith Law: It’s SSS, but I am at least pleased that the Smith we’re seeing matches the guy I expected him to be. He just has to do it for a longer period before I can confidently say yes, this is him.

Mac: Do you think there will be a fall league this year?
Keith Law: It sounds like it.

Brian: Maybe I read it wrong but I thought I saw an article where Fowler and Flaherty ok’d the Cardinals playing. Which if that is the case does that change your mind saying they are doing what their teammates thought was ok.
Keith Law: No, it doesn’t, especially because we don’t really know what that sounded like – or whether they felt pressured to absolve their teammates of any obligation to sit out with them.

Joe: Pretty sure I saw that the Reds broadcast of the Royals game on August 19 suddenly isn’t available on the MLB.tv archive… I wonder why?! It’s one thing to erase it but it did happen…
Keith Law: Maybe just edit out Brennaman’s slur, but leave the apology?

Cam: Should Whitley’s injury issues be concerning at this point? Doesn’t seem like he could even have a shot at the MLB for another couple years.
Keith Law: Another couple of years? If he’s really just out with a forearm strain, as the Astros have said, why couldn’t he compete for a job in February? His last eighteen months have been a hot mess but there’s also nothing here to point to him being unable to pitch in the long term.

Jim: Do you see anything that might have Jays fans optimistic in the Taijuan walker acquisition? His career numbers (although small sample size) are not that good against AL east teams.
Keith Law: I love the arm and the athleticism. For what I assume is minimal cost, he’s a great pickup. I do worry about his homer-prone tendencies and the park in Buffalo, which seems to be very favorable to LH power hitters.

Dylan: What caused the White Sox to give up Luis Basabe?
Keith Law: Been hurt a lot, body has been slowing down, and no place to play in their system.

Carson Fulmer: What happened to me?
Keith Law: Violent deliveries often have bad outcomes. I never believed he was a starter, and maybe all the time he spent trying to be one ended up reducing his odds of being an effective reliever, either through wear on his arm or the mental toll of trying to do something he couldn’t?

Uli Jon: Observation I’ve had at a sadly late point of my life.  Black friends always have literature regarding the history and figures around what it means to be black in America.  I think the problem is that whites in America do no such self-reflection, either personally or in school. Look to Germany, which kinda sorta had a horrid history but has reckoned with it on a national level.  I’m a 50ish straight while male.  My ancestors were not here until the 20th century, but I 100% have profited from the ways in which this country has continually tilted towards me.  I have to recognize my culpability and ensure it stops. Now.
Keith Law: Well said. And, as someone who reads a ton, I agree that the American canon doesn’t have much to offer the privileged class (to which I also belong) that would force us to rethink our positions and/or encourage us to actively seek and push change.

Michael: Not a boycott, withholdinig labor is a strike.
Keith Law: I believe I said that too.

Mac: Thoughts on Brady Singer?
Keith Law: I love how he competes, but his results so far haven’t been great, and that’s even with some good luck against LHB (for whom he doesn’t really have an effective weapon).

Mark: Thoughts on Julian Merryweather? He’s looked great in small busts, think he can hold up as a starter or is he more of a high leverage multi-inning reliever upside?
Keith Law: The latter. Did throw hard as a starter, but didn’t have much else to support that role.

JT: Am I wrong to think of all unwritten baseball rules as just white supremacy in action? Fernando Tatis cannot help being better than everyone. He simply is. Behold.
Keith Law: I believe unwritten rules exist to enforce traditional power structures. Ever play any of those card games (often drinking games, at least in college) where new players don’t know the rules, and the existing players get to make them up as they go along without having to tell the newbies? If you have, think of how they allowed you to arbitrarily target or favor certain friends or other players. I know that’s a frivolous example, but I think the analogy still works: The beauty of unwritten rules for the powerful is that such rules can be applied however they want, whenever they want, to whomever they want – or ignored as the enforcer chooses.
Keith Law: Also, Tatis Jr. is a fucking star and should be allowed to swing 3-0 and run like his hair’s on fire and make every highlight reel he can, because MLB is far better off when players like him and Javy Baez and Francisco Lindor and Yu Darvish and Luis Robert are doing amazing things on the field.

Brian: Can baseball erase Aubrey Huff from the record books permanently?
Keith Law: The less we pay attention to him, the sooner he’ll go away.

Kas from Fort Worth: What does Leodys need to hit to be considered a legitimate starting starting CF with the defense he brings
Keith Law: Not much, really. And I think he can get to a .340+ OBP which would make him a regular.

Cal: Is Gavin lux finally out of the dog house?
Keith Law: I assume he’ll be called up in the next few days, although I wonder where he’ll end up getting AB.

David Fletcher: What do you see as the biggest cause for the Angels failure this season? What would you do to improve the team going forward?
Keith Law: Lack of starting pitching. They did make a run at Cole and didn’t get him; that was the free agent who’d make the biggest impact on their season and playoff odds.

Amir: James Kaprelian maintained 95-97 mph during his brief MLB appearance. If he can maintain the velocity, can he become a useful bullpen arm?
Keith Law: Yes. All about health with him, I think.

Chris: Do you have issues with Boston’s side of the Workman trade? They sure didn’t get anything to even go into their system. Doesn’t seem to bode well for additional trades Bloom makes in the next few days.
Keith Law: Is anyone really giving up significant prospects in trades for rentals or relief pieces this year? You’re getting a month of the regular season, and half the league gets into the playoffs anyway, so most real contenders would likely see those additions as “nice but not essential.” And there’s still the specter of more outbreaks causing a premature end to the season.

Zach: Keith, covid has gotten me back into playing video games for the first time in a long time. I dusted off my copy of Baldur’s Gate 2 since they are finally releasing BG3 this winter. You played them back in the day, right? Any desire to play #3?
Keith Law: I played through BG, BG2, and BG2: ToB many times. It’s the best video game I’ve ever played. I would be doing myself a grave disservice if I didn’t check out BG3.

Ryan: Will Dylan Carlson develop into a DUDE?
Keith Law: Yes. I think his approach will get him there, if not this year, soon.

Michael: DeGrom was a 9th rounder out of Stetson. Is baseball really that much of a late bloomer sport that a guy picked in an organizational round can become one of the best pitchers ever?  Seems to happen a lot
Keith Law: Not quite an organizational round, although you are correct that the expected value of a 9th round pick is nearly zero. Degrom is an unusual case, though; he was a converted position player who’d already had TJ.
Keith Law: I see him as a reason to keep the draft to at least 12-15 rounds, and why teams that choose to keep their scouts (as opposed to all the firings and furloughs, so billionaire owners can boost their profits for 2020 by a rounding error) will have a real advantage going forward.

JR: In general, are you enjoying the season so far? I thought having sports back would be a nice diversion (I know you’re a baseball only guy, but I enjoy the various leagues), but it just hasn’t been for me. I’m guessing it’s a mix of getting used to not having sports in my life + even though they’re back, they don’t feel the same. Watching with no fans in the stands, social distancing, etc. (which is the right thing to do) makes it a constant reminder of how fucked up things remain instead of the diversion we hoped sports would be, IMO.
Keith Law: I am enjoying it, but I went into the season knowing what it was, and figuring that whatever we got from MLB this year was a bonus.

Frank N.: When will you admit the Biggio take was just plain bad? You’re very quick to let everyone know the wins of your evals, but quiet on what you missed on…and missed on big time.
Keith Law: I have posted a column every year listing players I missed on for at least six years now, so that’s just some bullshit. And no, I didn’t miss on Biggio. He can’t hit major-league fastballs, and even during this tiny sample where he’s produced that’s held true.

Jason: Is there any specific player that you can think of that really proved you wrong (you didnt think much of them and they have become a star)
Keith Law: Quite a few. Goldschmidt is probably the biggest example, and knowing I missed on him made me more willing to reconsider Rhys Hoskins (a fourth-rounder, RHB, 1B only, not a great body, was old for low A) but the swing worked and his approach was pretty good.
Keith Law: I’m actually struggling because it’s a long list of guys who really changed something about themselves where I either didn’t acknowledge the possibility of the change, or vastly underestimated the probability of the change. I never thought Shane Bieber would add at least a full grade of FB velocity. Kolten Wong worked his way to be a much better defender than I thought he’d ever be. I dinged Austin Riley on his bat speed and poor defense, but he cleaned up his body and worked hard to become maybe a 60 defender at third. Marcus Semien has become a completely different player than he was at Cal or even in the White Sox’s system.
Keith Law: Oh, wait, I’m quiet on guys I missed on. Scratch all that.

Stu: Gary Cohen is great every night,  but last night he was really good talking about BLM.
Keith Law: He is really great at his job because he seems so diligent. I’m actively disappointed when Ron or Keith make a bad point (often because they fall back on conventional wisdom) and it derails the way the three of them generally work. They might be the best booth in the business.

Justi: Why won’t MLB push guys like Tatis, Soto & Acuna more? is it because they’re afraid of offending the guys who don’t watch football anymore because two players kneeled four years ago? a Padres-White Sox WS seems to be something that could “save” the sport.
Keith Law: Those three players have something in common…

Santaspirt: Bohm looks like a legit hitter. But his defense has been shaky. Understanding the small sample caveat, he looked overmatched on anything hit hard to 3rd base. Is that indicative of his defensive potential, something he will eventually even out, or just random noise from the SSS?
Keith Law: His defense has looked awful. You’re being kind. Some of it is that you see harder contact more frequently in the majors than in AA or below, where he played before. But I’m wondering if his reactions aren’t quick enough for the position. Maybe he goes to 1B and Rhys to DH.

Luke: Best board game of 2020 so far and where would it rank in your top 100 if you had to slot it in somewhere?
Keith Law: I am going to bet that the best game of 2020 so far is either in my to-play queue or on its way to me. Sonora is the best I’ve played so far, but I know of a few that I’m pretty sure will beat it in the end.

Foolsgold: Dustin May has out of the world stuff, but not translating to K/9 (6.2),  Should i be worry?
Keith Law: Tiny sample. And he’s young.

Jim: So Washington optioned Kieboom “to give him lots of AB”.  Do you think it’s a matter of him being rushed, or is his hit tool just not as good as they thought it was?
Keith Law: I don’t think he was rushed.

Johnny Lee: Bobby Witt Jr. or Austin Martin?
Keith Law: Martin for me. I have more confidence in his hit tool.

addoeh: Marty Brennaman once called the President of Marshall University a “q***r”.  Homophobia runs in the family.
Keith Law: Pretty good argument against nepotism hires.

27: Keith, How could anyone possibly say they want four more years of this? It’s exhausting, embarrassing, and sad.
Keith Law: Nothing will be more exhausting and depressing than watching ~50-60 million Americans vote for four more years of this. Even if Biden wins, it’s a reminder that a huge portion of the electorate saw this Administration and said, “Please, sir, may I have some more?”

Joe in Quincy: Will Schillings connection to Bannon impact his hall chances? Or has that ship sailed due to his FAR right outlook?
Keith Law: I think he’s getting in this year.

Tom: you mentioned yu, boy hes been fun to watch
Keith Law: This is my perception, but I feel like the baseball world thinks he’s been a disappointment. He hasn’t. When healthy he’s been anywhere from an above-average starter to top 5-10 in his league.

Nelson: What is your take on Otani’s offense going forward? I think I remember you being somewhat down on his offensive potential when he first came to MLB, but, this year not withstanding, he’s seemed to have a decent outcome thus far. Has he surpassed your expectations?
Keith Law: I’ve thought that the more he played as a hitter, the more he’d get a bit exposed – the power is absolutely real, but the way his bat works he’s pretty vulnerable in, and if you can keep him from getting his arms extended you can probably keep him in the ballpark. I don’t think 2020 is indicative of anything but I would be surprised if he repeated 2018-19 while playing full-time, even just as a DH.

Snowy: What do you think about the job Farhan Zaidi has done so far with the Giants? Love the way he has found viable mlb contributors seemingly out of nowhere
Keith Law: Agreed and I like his approach of giving castoffs opportunities rather than trotting out veterans about whom we already know.

Aaron: Keith, I promise this isn’t a ‘gotcha’ question: Has your opinion changed on Dinelson Lamet? Seems your opinion was that he’d be an unbelievable reliever but his potential as a starter was limited by platoon splits. I don’t think he’s really developed that third pitch you wanted for him, but man he’s been awesome this season. Thoughts?
Keith Law: He’s looked incredible, and he’s done so without a good changeup for LHB – he actually has a reverse split this year, including a .159 BABIP vs lefties, which all seems unsustainable to me, but the flip side is he’s pounding the zone with two plus pitches and if he keeps crushing RHB and can just keep lefties from killing him he’ll be a really good starter anyway.
Keith Law: Small sample caveats apply.
Keith Law: well that’s terrible.

addoeh: Are you back on the Islanders bandwagon?  Granted, they are very defensive and nothing like Bossy, Trots, and Potvin.
Keith Law: I had no idea they were in the playoffs until my sister told me the other day.

Tom C: I remember when Mike Cameron had a chance for his 5th HR in the game and got piped a 2-0 fastball. But he took it and explained later he didn’t think it would be right to swing there. I remember thinking “Dude how many chances in your life will you have to hit 5 HRs?”
Keith Law: Agree. And nobody remembers him taking a 2-0 fastball.

AL: Is Andres Gimenez a dude or a backup type ?
Keith Law: I could see him maybe ending up a regular but not a star.

Brian: If there’s an Arizona Fall League in 2020, do you think teams will send more of their high caliber prospects just to get some at-bats and innings?
Keith Law: Yes. And then I’ll have to make a serious decision on whether it’s safe for me to fly there, because from a scouting perspective it would be invaluable.

Frank N.: Can’t hit FBs? He’s got a career 136 wRC+ against them….be better than that. Admit you’re wrong about it.
Keith Law: Small samples aside, he doesn’t hit velocity. That’s not the same thing.

Dave: Any new kitchen gadgets that are going to end up on your annual list?
Keith Law: I can’t think of anything new this year, even with more cooking than usual (because of no travel). I did get a spiralizer attachment for the KitchenAid but haven’t had a chance to try it yet.

Paul: Pending sale aside…am I wrong in thinking that the Mets are closer to a rebuild than a contender? The upper levels of the farm system or pretty bare now. .The pitching is a mess and the team is pretty weak up the middle.
Keith Law: I think their window may have closed most of the way this year. A healthy roster would have been very competitive in a full 2020 though.

Ben: Keith, I disagree with your take on unwritten rules.  In drinking games it’s done to maintain dominance and “win” the game.  In baseball, they’re all about basic sportsmanship and usually protect the loser.  Nobody likes to get beat and then have it rubbed in their face.  It only seems like a racial issue because leagues from other countries don’t have similar tradition, so when they come to the US they get in trouble.  A lot of people got pissed when Bret Boone (apologize if it was another Boone) was doing bat flips too, and he’s a white MLB “legacy” player.
Keith Law: I remember Bret Boone’s bat flips and I hated him for it. I thought it was incredibly obnoxious, especially for a player whose power appeared rather suddenly. But I do not remember anywhere near the days-on-end conversations about his bat flips (or more of a bat drop, I think) like those we’ve had over Tatis or Acuna or Baez.

Michael: This election kind of feels like an episode of The Good Place.  The Bad Place people lie and cheat and project and since they don’t care, nothing happens. The Dems had to apologize for two soldiers showing up in a video in American Samoa, but then the GOP trots out active duty soldiers next to the President and it’s nothing.  I hate it here.
Keith Law: That’s a good analogy. We are in the Bad Place. And I don’t like our odds of getting out.
Keith Law: That’s all for this week. Thank you all for your questions and for reading. Stay safe, wear your masks, and make sure you’re registered to vote.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With:
→ August 27, 2020
→ By

This is How You Lose the Time War.

This is How You Lose the Time War won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novella this year, limited to works that run between 17,500 and 40,000 words, among the many plaudits for its unusual call-and-response structure and its commentary on war. Written by Amal el-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, the book follows two time-traveling soldiers on opposite sides of an interdimensional war who find common threads between them and eventually fall in love through their letters to one another.

The only names we get for those two soldiers are Red and Blue, although they’ll refer to each other by various puns and nicknames as their relationship moves from taunting to affection over the course of the novel. The nature of the war they’re fighting is never quite clear, other than that they both seek to alter the courses of history in various instances of the multiverse by changing single events that will ripple forward in a sound-of-thunder-like pattern to enact massive changes in societies, civilizations, and even entire species. They go about implementing those changes in different ways, but they seem to be assigned to similar or related tasks, so their paths nearly cross multiple times, which allows them to start communicating with each other, secretly, in strange and incredibly imaginative ways.

They are, of course, being watched at the same time, by shadowy presences and interdimensional seekers, spies who want to decode Red and Blue’s missives to one another, and eventually that matter has to come to a head to provide some narrative thrust to the story. How the two figure this out and plot a way to escape their pursuers and fool their bosses, which risks splitting them apart forever, is the real purpose of the story, since we never get that much sense or meaning of what exactly the two sides want from the Time War.

This is How You Lose the Time War is a slow burn despite its short duration. The prose isn’t easy; both authors jump right into the new vernacular of their multiverse, and it teeters on the edge of the ridiculous for a while before the plot comes along to subsume any concerns you might have about word choices or syntax. There’s also a leap, pun intended, when Red and Blue go from rivalry to deep affection in the span of just a few letters; it felt incredibly sudden, as if the mutual respect they develop on the temporal battlefield was enough to make them fall in love with each other, visible in the abrupt shift in the language and tone of their notes.

It’s hard to entirely buy why they fall so hard for one another, but the payoff is strong; it feels like the two authors needed the first half of the book to find a shared rhythm, and once they got it, they could both put their feet on the gas. I didn’t quite buy how they fell in love, but once Red and Blue are there, and their budding relationship is threatened by the powers that be (were, will be, always are?) in their timelines, it’s credible and compelling – and the way it ends is satisfying and avoids the too-predictable traps into which the authors might have fallen. The novella is probably my least favorite format of prose fiction, compared at least to novels and short stories, but This is How You Lose the Time War felt like it was just the right length, and the way the two authors intertwine their voices produces a remarkable, emotional book.

Next up: I’ve already finished N.K. Jemisin’s The City We Became and moved on to Jessica Luther and Kavitha Davidson’s Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,
→ August 26, 2020
→ By

Palm Springs.

Palm Springs, available now to stream on Hulu, is a smarter reboot of Groundhog Day, without the cameo from an impossibly young Michael Shannon, but in some ways still falls prey to the flaws of its inspiration. It’s a time-loop story that explicitly rejects the idea that there’s some moral lesson the trapped protagonists have to learn to escape it, and instead forces one of them to confront the fears that have led him to accept his fate rather than fighting it.

Nyles (Andy Samberg) is a guest at the wedding of his girlfriend’s sister, and when we first see the ceremony, he comes to the rescue of another of the bride’s sisters, Sarah (Cristin Millotti), as she’s fumbling through the maid-of-honor speech she didn’t realize she was supposed to deliver. This leads to them hooking up, but that’s interrupted by something else and, long story short, they both end up caught in a time loop where they must repeat the day of the wedding over, and over.

It turns out that Nyles has already been stuck in this time loop for a while, and that itself leads to all sorts of complications, especially once Sarah tires of it after a few trips around the carousel and decides she wants out – with or without Nyles. It turns out that they each have a significant secret that they don’t reveal to the other for quite some time, and while Nyles’ secret infuriates Sarah, Sarah’s secret is the bigger revelation. There’s also one more person stuck in the time loop, Ray (J.K. Simmons), who throws a wrench, or an arrow, into the works, although his role is best left undiscussed.

For a swift movie with a thin, familiar premise, Palm Springs does quite a bit right. It’s often very funny, and it’s a lot more than just Samberg playing the same character he always plays (Nyles is little more than Jake Peralta without a badge). The whole subplot with Roy, including how he got stuck in the time loop in the first place, is frequently hilarious, as are some of the smaller bits in the first half of the film. Millotti displays quite a penchant for comedy, especially when outraged – there’s an art to dropping an F-bomb and making it funny, and she has it – and by about halfway through the film, it’s clear that she is, or at least should be, the main character here. While flawed, she’s the stronger, smarter, and wittier of the two, and she’s ultimately the one who finds a possible exit from their infinite loop.

Which brings up the two major problem with Palm Springs: Why is Sarah romantically interested in Nyles? True, he’s far more into her than she is into him, but she is into him, even though their connection beyond the shared experience of the time loop is thin. She does far more to make their time in the loop more tolerable than he does. She’s also more willing to examine her own misdeeds than he is. She’s a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, right down to her petite frame and “doe eyes,” and if you couldn’t guess from the fact that she’s into the aimless protagonist who can’t get out of his own way that this script was written by a man, well, it was.

There are some minor technical issues with the way Palm Springs handles its time loop, although that’s true of just about every work of fiction that includes time travel. (I’ll argue forever that Connie Willis does it best in her Oxford series of novels and stories, because she makes time travel itself extremely difficult and limited in scope.) The script is so concerned with getting its two protagonists out of the loop that it sort of forgets everyone else involved, which is understandable Sarah’s secret is left unresolved in the end, even though it affects more characters than just her and Nyles, and, if you’ve seen the movie already, I’d love to know what you thought of Sarah’s grandmother’s last comment to her near the end of the film. But ultimately, it was the unconvincing nature of Sarah’s interest in Nyles that brought Palm Springs down from great to merely good – still very funny, and sometimes thoughtful, just not entirely plausible form any perspective other than Nyles’.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,
→ August 25, 2020
→ By

Fairy Trails.

Uwe Rosenberg’s Patchwork is one of the best pure two-player games on the market, combining polyomino tiles, a rondel mechanism for tile selection, and a little bit of take-that into a fun but reasonably intense two-player experience. His newest two-player title, Fairy Trails, is something quite different for him, a lighter game in both theme and mechanics, but unfortunately it falls a bit short of his prior standard, including cute art I thought made the game harder to play.

Fairy Trails comprises a deck of cards, each of which shows two colors of trails on it extending out to all four sides, and nineteen tokens per player. On each turn, you will play one of the three cards in your hand to the table, and will try to complete trails in your color. Some of those cards show trails ending in cul-de-sacs, but most extend the trails to one or two other edges of the cards, so finishing them involves a little advance planning. Trails also have spaces on them for houses, and once you’ve completed a trail in your color – meaning that the trail is closed at all ends, with nothing terminating at a card edge – you can place your tokens on all of those house spaces. The first player to place their 19th house token wins.

The game’s simplicity is its best feature; there’s almost no learning curve here. Once you see how the trails work, and that you aren’t just looking for cul-de-sacs but need to try to loop your trails back to themselves, and can also stymie your opponents by making that harder, you have the game’s mechanics. Turns aren’t necessarily that quick, however, because of the number of permutations you have to work through to choose which card to place, where to place it, and then which orientation, most of which won’t end up closing a trail completely, leaving you to consider whether to extend an existing trail, hoping to get more house tokens on it when it’s completed, or move it closer to completion.

That leads to the game’s biggest issue, the art, which is pretty enough but makes parsing the trails’ routes much harder. The two colors are distinct enough, but the trails overlap each other in confusing ways, making it hard to see the trail that’s ‘underneath’ the other one, and since the background of the yellow trails is a grayish-purple, it looks too much like the color of the fuchsia trails. The trails are also drawn in a wispy style, like a font with too many serifs, which may improve the aesthetic value but also contributes to the confusion about where the trails go. The dark green backgrounds also don’t quite help – they don’t provide enough contrast with the two trail colors, yellow and fuchsia.

Two example cards from Fairy Trails.

My other main complaint with Fairy Trails is that the mechanics themselves aren’t that interesting; it’s like a poor man’s Carcassonne, where your moves are somewhat limited by your cards, but here you can’t try to jump into your opponent’s trail to steal points, and with just a single feature to complete and score, the game is kind of repetitive. You can add a card to make it harder for your opponent to close one of their roads, which means they can’t place any house tokens on it, but you might do so at the expense of a move that would help close one or your trails, or extend it in a way that’s more profitable when you do close it, so the take-that element exists but is of limited strategic value.

I had a hard time teasing apart the two problems I had with Fairy Trails. Would I like the game more if the art weren’t visually confusing, so that evaluating moves or scoring trails was faster? Rosenberg’s heavier worker-placement games often suffer from a surfeit of mechanics and scoring options; would the art here have bothered me less if, say, there were one more way to score, or one other option beyond just building trails? I did play this with a younger player who likes games, but she ended up losing interest halfway through, I think because it was such a long process to close her trails and place tokens on them. Fairy Trails seems like the core concept for a good, light two-player game is somewhere in here, but it’s not finished the way that Rosenberg’s games usually are.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,
→ August 22, 2020
→ By

Stick to baseball, 8/22/20.

I had three posts for subscribers to the Athletic this week, one column on what’s going on each day over at teams’ alternate sites; and two scouting notebooks, one on Casey Mize, Dane Dunning, and Alec Bohm, and the other on Tarik Skubal, Dylan Carlson, and the Nats’ Luis García.

My guest on the Keith Law Show this week was my friend Craig Calcaterra, late of NBC Sports’ Hardball Talk and now the author of his own subscription newsletter Cup of Coffee. I also appeared on Blue Jays broadcaster Dan Shulman’s podcast Swingand a Belt, talking about what this lost minor league season means for prospects and the teams that employ them; and on the U.S. Army’s Mad Scientist program podcast The Convergence, talking about my new book, The Inside Game, and what might help people become better analysts in a world awash in data.

For Paste, I previewed many of the major board game titles due out for the rest of 2020, including the follow-up to Wingspan from Elizabeth Hargrave and a new game inspired by New Jersey’s infamous Action Park.

My free email newsletter returned this week, with thoughts on just how exhausting this science-denying, homophobic slur-using world has become.

And now, the links…

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,
→ August 20, 2020
→ By

Port Royal.

Port Royal came out in 2014 and was brought to the US in 2017 by Steve Jackson Games, one of the oldest extant board game publishers, who first rose to prominence with the 1980 game Car Wars and have since had success with the extensive line of Munchkin games. Designed by Alexander Pfister (Isle of Skye, Great Western Trail), it’s a very simple press-your-luck card game with a pirate theme to make Sid Meier proud, where players draw cards from a common deck and take one per round, but you can bust if you push too far when trying to draw something better, with the ultimate goal of becoming the first player to accumulate 12 victory points from cards and expeditions.

That deck has three main card types: ships, persons, and expeditions. The ships all have gold coin amounts ranging from 1 to 4 coins, and if you choose to take that ship, you get that many coins, represented by cards drawn face-down from the deck. (Their face-up side has no meaning when they’re used as coins.) They can also show a number of crossed swords on the bottom of the card, ranging from 1 to 6, or just a skull and crossbones. If you draw two ships of the same nationality on your turn, however, your turn ends immediately and you get nothing.

The persons can cost anywhere from 3 to 9 coins to hire, and they come in seven basic roles. The most common are the Sailors and Pirates, who are worth one or two swords each, respectively. You can use all of your pirates together to ‘repel’ any ship with a sword number equal to or less than your pirates’ total number of swords, discarding that ship card but keeping your pirates. This is one way to reduce your odds of busting on a turn, although you can’t do anything to repel ships with the skull & crossbones on them.

Other people you can hire give you lasting benefits for future turns. The Settler, the Priest, and the Captain all can help you complete Expedition cards, which require two or three of those in a specific combination and grant you 4 or 6 victory points. The Jack-of-all-Trades costs a bit more but is a wild card that can represent any of those three people for the purposes of fulfilling an expedition. The Governor lets you take a second card on your turn. The Admiral gives you 2 extra coins if it is your turn to take a card and there are at least 5 cards in the display. The Mademoiselle lets you pay one fewer coin to hire a person. The Jester gives you 1 coin if there are no cards in the display when it’s your turn to take a card – even if that’s because you busted. Traders give you an extra coin if you ‘trade with,’ meaning take the gold coins from, a ship of their matching nationality.

Once you’ve completed your turn by taking a card, if there are any cards remaining, all other players get the opportunity to take a card from the table by paying you 1 coin and then paying the regular cost to hire a person or simply taking a ship and receiving its gold value. This means what you leave on the table might be a consideration for what you take, or how far you keep pushing your luck – it may be better to keep going rather than take a mediocre return and leave a valuable card on the table for another player who has the coins to buy it.

Pushing your luck can yield another benefit as well. If you can get four ships of different nationalities on to the table without busting, you get to take a second card on that turn; if you get ships of all five nationalities, you can take three cards. There are also a couple of taxation cards in the deck, where all players with 12 or more coins must give back half of their stash, and either the player with the most swords or the fewest victory points gets a one coin bonus.

Person cards can be worth 0 to 3 victory points; expedition cards are worth either 4 or 6 points each, although they require you to turn in Settler, Priest, or Captain cards that are worth 1 point each, so taking an expedition adds 2 or 3 net points to your total. The official victory condition is 12 points, after which you complete a full round so every player has had a chance to be the start player an equal number of times. You can also just agree to play to any point total you like, or to say you can’t win without completing an Expedition, two popular variants.

I’ve played more than 100 games of Port Royal online, and I own the physical game as well (which is just a deck of cards, so it’s really portable). I definitely have my preferred strategy, and I think the Just One More Contract… expansion helps address some of the base game’s issues with certain cards being too valuable. But even the base game is still kind of a blast, because it’s a gambling game at heart. Every turn is a bet, one you can make a little smarter by collecting swords and maybe keeping an eye on what ships have gone by, but ultimately it’s no better than smart luck, and I find it very enjoyable even when I bust a few times and know I can’t come back to win. (Although I did do that once, busting three times early in a game, taking more risks after that to try to get extra cards, and storming back to overcome an 8-point deficit. Good times!) If you’re into push-your-luck games, like the Quacks of Quedlinburg, Clank!, or Can’t Stop, I definitely recommend Port Royal.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,
→ August 19, 2020
→ By

The Glass Hotel.

Emily St. John Mandel’s 2014 post-apocalyptic novel Station Eleven is one of my favorite books of this century, a gorgeous, lyrical story about a global pandemic (!) that leads to an improbably swift societal collapse, and small graces of humanity that survive it. Her long-awaited follow-up novel, The Glass Hotel, appeared this spring, and it’s far more grounded in the mundane realities of our world now, revolving around a Ponzi scheme run by a Bernie Madoff proxy character and a remote hotel he owns in British Columbia. Once again, the prose is beautiful, and the characters well-developed, but this time St. John Mandel has a harder time with the resolution, with an ending that felt far less satisfying no matter how I chose to interpret it.

As in Station Eleven, The Glass Hotel lacks a clear, single protagonist, instead giving us a wider array of characters who’ll flit in and out of the story as she moves around in time. The novel begins with the half-siblings Paul and Vincent; he’s a would-be musician and a bit of a ne’er-do-well, she’s a high school student who later bartends at the hotel, where she meets Jonathan, a financier several decades her senior who happens to be running a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme. Jonathan is widowed and makes Vincent an offer for her to serve as, for lack of a better term, a kept woman, appearing in public as his wife but not so in legal terms, which she accepts and seems to enjoy until his arrest and her return to a life of self-reliance.

Although the downfall of the Ponzi scheme has its appeal – I love a good story about con men or other frauds – the stories of Paul and especially Vincent are just more interesting, because their characters are more interesting. We don’t get any insight on why Jonathan would run this scam, and defraud hundreds of clients, many of whom lose their life savings because they put it all in his fund for its impossibly high (and consistent) rates of return. Paul screws up royally in the first proper chapter of the novel, and then ends up working with Vincent, briefly, at the hotel. Vincent has fallen off the side of a boat in the prologue, although the explanation of how she got there waits until the very end, but she returns in the next several chapters as we get her backstory along with Paul’s.

Following those two characters, even with the unnecessary jumping back and forth in time, is the real appeal of The Glass Hotel, especially since the hotel of the title isn’t even in the book all that often – it’s the setting where Vincent meets Jonathan, and where Paul commits a crime of vandalism that only becomes more serious in our eyes much, much later in the novel. If anything, I wanted more of Vincent, both because her character is so solid and complex, and because her arc, from an unhappy if comfortable suburban life to bartending at a hotel to sudden wealth beyond anyone’s imagination to an equally sudden fall, is itself more than enough to support an entire story.

There’s a section detailing the implosion of Jonathan’s scheme, bringing in several new characters and one or two we’d seen previously, that just flies, almost as if this were an action sequence rather than the end of a long white-collar crime, although I did get the sense that the collection of people involved in the fraud were a bit too diverse – we get an array of possible responses to imminent arrest and possible incarceration, but they’re also too distinct from each other, giving it the subtle feel of something that was carefully plotted rather than created organically. That same feeling comes up several times in the book, where the prose is so lovely but you can’t help but catch glimpses of the structure and foundation beneath the novel.

I do love St. John Mandel’s writing, and tore through most of this book in three days while we were away for the weekend; an uneven book from her is still a solid read, and her skill for creating compelling characters is itself reason to pick up anything she does. There’s even a brief David Mitchell-like reference to the pandemic of Station Eleven, and I assume to her earlier novels as well. Vincent deserved a better ending here.

Next up: N.K. Jemisin’s The City We Became.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,
→ August 18, 2020
→ By

She Dies Tomorrow.

She Dies Tomorrow is the latest film from actress/director Amy Seimetz, her first since 2012’s Sun Don’t Shine, both of which she also wrote. It’s a strange, subtle psychological thriller that doesn’t quite stick its landing but still gives the viewer plenty to ponder beyond the strange behavior on the screen.

The protagonist Amy (Kate Lyn Shiel) wakes up at the start of the film and realizes that she is going to die tomorrow, a fact she repeats regularly through the rest of the film, and she drops steeply into malaise, which scares her friend Jane (Jane Adams), who then breaks into Amy’s house to try to save her. Unfortunately, whatever has convinced Amy that she’s at death’s door is contagious, and Jane begins to say that she is going to die tomorrow, exchanging her fairly cheerful demeanor for a flat affect, eventually leaving her house in her pajamas to go to her brother and sister-in-law’s small cocktail party. She’s not exactly a hit there, telling everyone she’s going to die tomorrow, but when she leaves everyone else who was there has caught the bug too. Each of them devolves in their own way, and the film is deliberately ambiguous about some of what happens, but it doesn’t really go well for anybody.

She Dies Tomorrow is the slowest of burns; there are long passages where it seems like nothing is happening, such as when Amy plays the same classical piece four times in a row without any other action on the screen. It’s dark, but also often quite funny, as in the bizarre dolphin discussion at the cocktail party, or Jane’s reaction when the lights go out, or, depending on your perspective, in Amy’s obsession with having her skin made into leather goods after she dies. But the plot itself is short – not thin, but brief, with the spread of this fear-virus just about the only real thing that happens before the last few scenes. (There’s one brief bit of violence, but it’s off screen, and I think the script leaves it unclear who actually perpetrated it.)

The point of this film isn’t what happens, however, but how the characters react to this intense conviction that their deaths are imminent. Most tumble quickly into a “nothing matters” reaction, giving the entire movie a Camus/Sartre sort of atmosphere, although Jane’s reaction is a more intriguing combination of numbness and hilarity (which is why Adams is the real star of the movie, even if she’s not the one on the poster). Amy decides to joylessly try some dangerous activities, and eventually goes back to the vacation home she’d visited with her then-boyfriend, who may be the person who gave her this contagion. Jane’s brother and sister-in-law understand she gave them the pathogen, and believe she also gave it to their daughter, and discuss this with absurdist nonchalance, even as they consider whether to seek some sort of revenge. Jane eventually wanders into a house occupied by two women who say they also have the fear-virus, and who are confronting their imminent demise with thoughts of what they’ll miss about life, even without really considering whether there would be any ‘them’ to miss it. Jane’s response is to ask to swim in their pool, which produces a tragicomic scene as she does so while the two women sit outside and talk, apparently oblivious to and unperturbed by their visitor.

The ending of She Dies Tomorrow contributes to this terse script’s ambiguity, as we see Amy waking up on the rocks by the sea in a dress, and it seems like at least some of what came before this might have been a dream, which is extremely unsatisfying when it comes to plot; if you’re going to do that, just lean into it and put Bobby Ewing in the shower. The film works much better instead if you view it as an interpolation on several responses we might have to realizations of our own mortality and the finite nature of our lives, to how we might react if the plans we’ve made for the future turn to dust before an empty hourglass. She Dies Tomorrow doesn’t judge its characters or advise us on how to cope with the calamity of so long a life when it may be cut short at any moment. It’s as terrifying as any stock serial killer wearing a mask and wielding a weapon.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,
→ August 15, 2020
→ By

Stick to baseball, 8/15/20.

I had one column this week for subscribers to The Athletic, looking at the demotion calculus in a short season with no minor leagues, plus notes on Spencer Howard, Ryan Castellani, and Luis Basabe. I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

My podcast guest this week was Dr. Angela Duckworth, author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, discussing concepts from her book and how baseball scouts and executives might apply them – and how to avoid the pitfalls of using “intangibles” as a cover for more insidious biases. You can buy Grit here via bookshop.org.

You can also buy my new book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us about Ourselves, which came out this April, via the same site. I’ll send out the next issue of my free email newsletter as soon as my fall board game preview comes out over at Paste.

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: Carina Chocano spent hours taking MasterClass sessions and wrote about the product for The Atlantic, asking what it is they’re really selling since they’re not selling actual education.
  • Novelist Chimamanda Adichie suffered a concussion earlier this year, and wrote about the experience, including the introspection that came with the temporary loss of part of her brain function.
Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
→ August 14, 2020
→ By

Or What You Will.

Jo Walton’s Hugo-winning novel Among Others   is one of my favorite novels of any genre, a beautifully written story around two incredibly compelling characters that just happens to have a slight element of fantasy to it. It’s an exemplar of genre fiction in that the fantastical parts of the book accentuate the plot but don’t define it. That book led me to pick up her 2019 novel Lent, which delves into Renaissance and Roman Catholic history and, again, uses a fantasy-like twist to tell a better story, but where the main character is the real star. And that, in turn, led me to her brand-new novel Or What You Will, which seems like an even more serious novel while drawing on the great history of metafiction in literature, going back to Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler… and Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds to explore life, death, and meaning in new ways.

Or What You Will gives us Sylvie, the author, in her 70s, widowed, writing her new novel while visiting Firenze, which serves as the inspiration for her fictional duchy of Thalia and a series of novels set in the equivalent of the Renaissance, featuring several characters borrowed from Shakespeare’s plays (notably The Tempest and The Twelfth Night, the latter of which gives this book its title). The narrator and protagonist, however, is a voice in Sylvie’s head who has become many characters within her novels, and who realizes that when Sylvie dies, he will too, so he hatches a plan to make them both immortal through her writing – not just through fans, but a form of actual immortality in a Thursday Next-like world inside her books.

The chapters alternate, roughly, between scenes from within this new Thalian novel, which include Orsino and Viola (The Twelfth Night), Caliban and Miranda (The Tempest), Geryon (Dante’s Inferno), and the real-world Marsilio Ficino; and conversations between Sylvie and the narrator that unfurl the former’s life story, including an abusive first marriage and an idyllic second one, a brutal and unloving mother, and a late-blooming yet successful literary career. Those introspective chapters, which I assume at least draw a little from Walton’s own life (she didn’t get her first published novel until she was 35), are clearly the superior ones here, implicit meditations on life and legacy, unfolding a fascinating personal history of a three-dimensional character. The chapters set in Thalia are strongly reminiscent of Lent, which was set in Firenze during the Renaissance and featured Ficino and Pico della Mirandolo, who also appears in this book, but there are a couple of twists to life in Thalia versus that of real-like Italy that put it strongly in the realm of science fiction or fantasy. The characters in Thalia are aware that their world is different, and that other worlds exist, although they only know Sylvie as a god. It becomes a bit like Lisa Simpson’s “I’ve created Lutherans!” experiment; we’re looking down at these people, waiting for them to figure out what we already know, and knowing that they’ll have to figure it out for the book to end. There’s a separate intrigue around the rivalry between Orsino and Geryon, and the sudden appearance of Caliban from beneath the ground, which is moderately interesting but takes a clear back seat to the main storyline.

Walton manages to keep the narrator’s specific plan to save Sylvie’s life, and thus his own, out of the novel until close to the end, and introduces a clever wrinkle for the narrator to surmount for the entire plan to work. The conclusion is a bit beside the point, however, since it doesn’t work in our world and thus prompts you, the reader, to think about your own mortality and legacy, something that has at least been on my mind more than ever this year, between the pandemic, friends losing loved ones, and changes in my own life. That’s really why the novel works even with its implausible fantasy elements – that, and Walton’s typically lovely writing, especially when it comes to describing our world’s Firenze, a city she clearly loves – these themes are universal and timeless, and the way she presents them is both novel and still as comfortable as the familiar routines of Sylvie’s writing life.

Next up: I’m halfway through Emily St. John Mandel’s newest novel, The Glass Hotel.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,