→ April 4, 2020
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Stick to baseball, 4/4/20.

I had two new pieces for subscribers to the Athletic this week, one on the great 1980s video game Earl Weaver Baseball (for which I spoke to one of its lead developers), and one with the latest on MLB’s plans for minor league realignment and contraction.

On the gaming front, I had nothing new this week but have a few more pieces filed. Last week, I reviewed ClipCut Parks, a new “flip-and-cut” game that is great for younger kids who love using scissors but not much of a game for older players, for Paste. For Vulture, I updated my ranking of the top 25 board game apps available on mobile platforms. For Ars Technica, I reviewed the new app version of the legacy game Charterstone.

My second book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, is due out on April 21st from Harper Collins, and you can pre-order it now via their site or wherever fine books are sold. Also, check out my free email newsletter, which I say I’ll write more often than I actually write it. To be perfectly honest, I just haven’t felt up to writing that lately.

And now, the links…

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→ April 3, 2020
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Music update, April 2020.

Well, we’re all home now – or ought to be – so let’s listen to some new music, nineteen songs this month, most of which just appeared in March. If you can’t see the widget below you can access the playlist directly here.

Moses Boyd featuring Poppy Ajudha – Shades of You. Boyd’s new album, Dark Matter, is the most interesting record I’ve heard since black midi’s Schlagenheim came out last June, and a lot more accessible at that, often evoking the same hypnotic, avant-garde vibe that Radiohead approached on Kid A and Amnesiac. A jazz drummer and producer, Boyd mixes pulsating instrumentals with tracks that feature guest vocalists, including this song, the album’s best thanks to searing vocal work from the south London singer Ajudha.

Waxahatchee – Can’t Do Much. Katie Crutchfield’s latest album, Saint Cloud, dropped last Friday, and is her most complete work yet, with “Lilacs” and this song the two standouts for me so far.

MID CITY – Forget It. An energetic power-pop track about gaslighting from a Melbourne quartet, with a strong flavor of the Killers circa Hot Fuss.

Artificial Pleasure – Lose Myself Again. I’m not sure exactly what it is about Artificial Pleasure that makes me think I’m listening to Heaven 17 sent forward forty years through a time machine, but I’m here for it.

Purity Ring – peacefall. Purity Ring’s latest album, WOMB, just came out this morning, including this single and February’s “stardew.”

Myrkur – House Carpenter. Myrkur, the nom de chanson of Danish musician Amalie Bruun, started out as a bizarre hybrid of dark folk music and extreme metal, but her latest album, Folkesange (Folk Songs), dispenses with blast beats and heavy guitar work in favor of traditional sounds that wouldn’t be out of place on an album from the Chieftains.

ARCADES featuring Prides – Stars. ARCADES have written numerous hits for K-Pop acts BTS and TXT, with just a few singles they’ve recorded themselves; this latest hit my radar because of the presence of the Scottish duo Prides, whose indie-pop sound blends quite well with ARCADES’ songwriting here.

Phantom Planet – Time Moves On. I remain pleasantly surprised by the return of Phantom Planet, and the fact that their new singles have been pretty good, although I think last year’s “BALISONG” is the best of the lot so far.

Catholic Action – Another Name for Loneliness. Catholic Action’s Celebrated by Strangers has earned some rave reviews from independent music press on both sides of the Atlantic, although I found the album a little light on hooks overall; this is my favorite track from the record, reminding me a bit of “Love Vigilantes” due to the main guitar riff.

Allie X – Sarah Come Home. The singer/model Alexandra Hughes released her second full-length album, a concept work called Cape God, in late February; it’s uneven, as her first album CollXtion II was, with this song the best on the album, an upbeat dance-pop track that contrasts with the darker tones on the record as a whole.

Adam Snow, Freddie Gibbs, Tedy Andreas – 9 to 5. Producer Snow’s name comes first, but Gibbs is the star here; the moment Houston rapper Andreas shows up he sucks most of the energy right out of the track, although I enjoyed his name-check of my former colleague Dan Le Batard.

Alkaline Trio – Minds like Minefields. Alkaline Trio released a three-song EP in March just called E.P. after their spring tour was cancelled, with this anthemic punk-pop track released as a single.

The Wants – Motor. This NYC trio show some heavy post-punk influence, unsurprising as lead singer/guitarist Madison Velding-VanDam has spoken about his love of Gang of Four. “Motor” was originally an instrumental track, but the spoken-word vocals that appear about halfway through definitely add to the song’s appeal by breaking what might have been a bit of a monotonous guitar riff otherwise.

Fake Names – Brick. Fake Names is a punk supergroup with members of Refused, Bad Religion, Minor Threat, and other bands. This lead single from their upcoming, self-titled album isn’t even two minutes long but is definitely a throwback to the heyday of melodic hardcore acts like BR and the Descendents.

Poppy – Concrete. I have no idea what to make of Poppy, a singer and Youtube personality who blends bubblegum and J-Pop elements with brief bursts of highly polished heavy metal. She has a fan base that’s independent of her music, based on her videos, her graphic novels, and I think her overall persona; I obviously am not in tune with any of that, but this song is weirdly catchy even though it feels like two completely disconnected tracks that have been smushed together in post-production.

Moon Destroys featuring Paul Masvidal – Stormbringer. Moon Destroys are a new progressive metal project with former members of Royal Thunder and Torche, with a new sound that blends prog and stoner/sludge metal sounds. Their first single featured Troy Sanders of Mastodon, while this has Paul Masvidal of Cynic on vocals … speaking of which, I just learned that former Cynic and Death drummer Sean Reinert died in January at age 48, which is awful news.

Wolf – Feeding the Machine. The title track from Wolf’s first album in six years shows that not much has changed for these guys, who seem firmly stuck in the late 1980s musically, with classic thrash sounds that would have fit well in the San Francisco sounds of that era.

Kreator – 666 – World Divided. Mille Petrozza’s voice has taken a beating – he sounds older than 52 on this track – but these guys can still bang out thrash riffs with the best of them.

Testament – Children of the Next Level. Testament just released their 13th studio album, Titans of Creation, this morning; I feel about this record as I have about most of their music in the last decade, that guitarist Alex Skolnick is still an iconic author of thrash riffs, and a tremendous shredder, but the songs all leave me a little short of compelling hooks. I like Testament, but I don’t attach to their songs the way I have with many of the other pioneers of thrash.

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→ March 31, 2020
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The Souvenir.

Joanna Hogg’s autobiographical coming-of-age drama The Souvenir made a slew of best-of-2019 lists, taking the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at last year’s Sundance Film Festival and winning Sight and Sound‘s poll for the best film of 2019. My friend Tim Grierson has been a big advocate of the film, ranking it 7th among films of last year, and of director Joanna Hogg, which was really enough to get me to watch it. It is a very British movie, understated and often ponderous, but it’s bolstered by two very strong performances by the leads and the resolution gives a real catharsis to everything the film has asked you to endure up to that point. (It’s streaming now on Amazon Prime.)

Honor Swinton-Byrne plays Julie, a 24-year-old would-be filmmaker, in film school at the moment, who meets a Foreign Office staffer in his mid-30s named Anthony (Tom Burke) and almost falls into a desultory affair with him, despite his secretive nature and tendency to subtly put her down. It seems like he’s gaslighting her from the start, but it becomes more evident when he starts to borrow money from her – despite him having a job that often sends him abroad, while she’s a poor student – and eventually she learns via a friend of his (Richard Ayaode) that he’s hiding a heroin habit. She’s too enamored of him to leave, however, despite his increasing duplicity, and the relationship begins to consume her as Anthony’s situation gets worse.

This is a very slow burn until the last quarter of the film; there are no screaming fights, no violence, just a few verbal confrontations where Julie ends up apologizing even though Anthony is clearly in the wrong. It’s painful to watch her abase herself for a man who has never shown himself to be worth this kind of devotion; I’m not even clear what his redeeming qualities are supposed to be, as he’s not charming, good-looking, or kind. What finally pushes her to the breaking point is several steps beyond what a rational person would need to say ‘enough,’ but that’s the emotional center of the film – just how far Julie has fallen into this trap, and how easily it happened to her. There have been many entries in the “young woman falls for a feckless, manipulative, older man” genre, but this one, based on Hogg’s own life in film school in the late ’70s, feels extremely realistic because it doesn’t have the Big Moments and never comes across like a film trying to make you feel something specific.

Swinton-Byrne is very convincing as Julie, imbuing the character with naïveté rather than just innocence, and making it a bit more plausible that she’d fall under Anthony’s spell because she seems so lonely in the early scenes – and thus more appreciative of someone, especially an older man, giving her attention. Burke does what he is supposed to be doing with Anthony, although the attraction of such a mopey, vaguely derisive man is beyond me; he does carry himself with an air of sophistication that might explain it, although perhaps it’s just the upper-class English accent that got me. Ayaode is only in one scene, but he grabs the whole thing from the two leads and utterly owns that entire conversation – sitting next to his real-life wife, Lydia Fox, as they talk – while not just delivering a key piece of information to Julie, but doing so with a unique affectation that totally commands your attention. Swinton-Byrne’s mother, Tilda Swinton, appears in the film as Julie’s mother, although her character is something of a cipher and she has little to do until the last few scenes.

The Souvenir is quite good, but also so slow and quiet in parts that it feels almost expressly anti-commercial: The audience for this sort of movie is very small, a set that probably comprises fans of art house films, Anglophiles, and not a whole lot more. I liked it, but I can’t say I enjoyed it, between the pace and the horror of watching Julie so unaware that Anthony is taking advantage of her. It’s a film to be appreciated, rather than one that seeks to entertain.

—

I’ve seen 31 movies from 2019 so far, and I have three more I’d really like to see before closing the book on the year, so to speak, all of them foreign-language films. Two are streaming now on Hulu, Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Monos, while the third will stream on Amazon Prime in about two weeks, the Oscar-nominated Les Misérables. (Amazon also will premiere the Brazilian submission to the 92nd Oscars, The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão, this Friday). I’ll probably watch the first in the next few days, and then I’ll rank the movies I’ve seen from 2019, but if you have suggestions I’m all ears.

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→ March 30, 2020
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Queendomino.

Bruno Cathala won the 2017 Spiel des Jahres for Kingdomino, a very simple, quick-playing game of tile-laying that’s cleverly balanced and playable for just about any age. On each turn, four domino-like tiles with two terrain squares and sometimes with one or more crowns on them will be laid out for the players to choose. The catch is that the tiles are placed in numerical order, where the more valuable tiles have higher ranks, and choosing a more powerful tile drops you in the selection order for the next round. Play continues until all the tiles are gone, by which point each player has at least had the chance to create a 5×5 grid around their starting square (twelve tiles per player). It’s super easy to learn and play, but there is plenty of potential for some strategic play if you’re all reasonably experienced gamers. It’s also one of the least expensive games on my top 100, usually selling for about $15.

The game’s runaway success led to a significant expansion called Age of Giants, that added new components and tiles as well as pieces for a fifth player to join; a roll-and-write two-player version called Kingdomino Duel that I thought was only tangentially connected to the original; and Queendomino, a standalone sequel game that you can play together with Kingdomino. Queendomino has also proven popular, but I think it does everything wrong: It adds complexity to the original game without making it more enjoyable, and probably doubles the game length.

The biggest difference in Queendomino, played by itself, is the introduction of red terrain squares that show construction sites, on which you can add single-square tiles with completed buildings that award you bonus points, mostly variable based on other things you’ve built on your grid. You buy those tiles based on a sliding scale, with the tile on the rightmost space in the market free and each one to its left costing a coin more. Some tiles let you place knights, which collect taxes based on the size of the area on which you just placed a knight, while others let you place towers, which can be worth points at game-end. The player with the most towers at any time gets the Queen token, which gives you a one-coin discount on any tiles you buy from the market.

The end-game scoring brings along the mechanics from the original game, where you multiply the number of squares in each contiguous area of any terrain (color) by the number of crowns on squares in that area, while adding bonuses from the construction tiles based on how may distinct areas you have, how many knights/towers you have, or just a fixed point value. The Queen token goes on the board of the player who has it as an additional crown, so it can easily be worth another 8-10 points. 

I could understand the criticism of Kingdomino that it’s too simple; I personally prefer games that are more complex, whether I’m playing with family and friends or whether I’m playing online. But if you have a limited amount of time, or are playing with any kids 8 or younger, it’s perfect – you can rip through a game in 15-20 minutes and it is incredibly easy to teach. But Queendomino ruins Kingdomino’s simplicity with needless complexity: it makes individual turns take longer and makes your current score harder to calculate at a glance. Some games just don’t need to be busied up with additional rules, especially not those that make the down time between your turns take that much longer.

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→ March 28, 2020
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Stick to baseball, 3/28/20.

One new article this week for subscribers to The Athletic, looking at what the agreement between MLB and the players’ union might mean for this year’s draft. It’s not very good for the draft prospects themselves, unfortunately. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday and a Periscope (where my voice gave out!) on Tuesday.

On the gaming front, I had four new pieces this week. For Paste, I reviewed ClipCut Parks, a new “flip-and-cut” game that is great for younger kids who love using scissors but not much of a game for older players. For Vulture, I updated my ranking of the top 25 board game apps available on mobile platforms. For Ars Technica, I reviewed the new app version of the legacy game Charterstone.

My second book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, is due out on April 21st from Harper Collins, and you can pre-order it now via their site or wherever fine books are sold. Also, check out my free email newsletter, which I say I’ll write more often than I actually write it.

And now, the links…

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→ March 26, 2020
→ By

Klawchat 3/26/20.

I’ve updated my ranking of the top 25 board game apps for Vulture. My review of the digital adapation of Charterstone is up at Ars Technica.

Keith Law: So let it be written. Klawchat.

Trav: What the hell is going on?
Keith Law: Well, the United States has the world’s worst response to the coronavirus pandemic, thanks to the current Administration, and as a result several thousand Americans will die when they would have survived had someone else been in charge.

Todd Boss: Since the 2020 baseball season is delayed, is Bryce Harper still overrated?  🙂
Keith Law: I’m sure someone on sports talk radio blames him for the Phillies being winless so far in 2020.

Aaron C.: Favorite Opening Day memory from BEFORE you started hatin’ everyone’s favorite team?
Keith Law: Weirdly enough, I don’t think of many memories specifically as Opening Day, despite going to quite a few of them. I think the Pedro-Carpenter matchup where we (Toronto) knocked Pedro around and ended up winning a slugfest was Opening Day, but I’m really not even sure.

WhiteSoxAndy: (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?
Keith Law: I do need a little time to wake up, thank you.

Deke: Best guess — what does the world look like in, say, July?
Keith Law: Pandemic still raging in developing nations, with worldwide deaths in the six figures.

Jordan: Why do the Astros seem unwilling to give Kyle Tucker consistent PT? Does still have the same long term upside as he once did?
Keith Law: I think some of it is his perceived lack of energy or effort, and some just the presence of other players. Upside is unchanged.

Aaron C.: What’s your favorite recipe from Ruhlman’s Twenty? I have the cookbook and…some time on my hands.
Keith Law: The braised duck legs. Never tried a recipe from that book that was less than good, though. His mayonnaise is my go-to as well.

OC Joe: Your thoughts on the MLB Draft proposal reported by Kiley? (July date, 5-10 rounds, 10% of bonus money up front, 45% deferred to 2021, 45% deferred to 2022)
Keith Law: Not what I’ve heard from industry sources.

Chris: Have you tried the Charterstone app? Any word on if it’s any good?
Keith Law: Yes, and I filed a long review to Ars Technica that should run any day now. I played a full 12-game campaign on Steam and thought it was good.

Todd Boss: Is it just me, or does an abbreviated “sprint” of a season kinda sound cool as hell?  Imagine a 60-game season where every game counts and has post-season tension, then leading to a post-season not riddled with fatigue and injuries?
Keith Law: It would be fun, but I also think an abbreviated season will mean games every day, and thus games where all the regulars are in the lineup will be infrequent.

JG: One day the current occupant of the White House will be gone.  But isn’t the REAL problem, the MILLIONS of American voters who are saying they approve of the job he’s doing with the pandemic, economy, etc?  They’re not going anywhere.
Keith Law: Nope. The hope is that there are enough rational people out there to outnumber the cultists, and that the rational people vote, because we know the cultists will.

Zach D: With the pause for MLB, starting pitchers are obviously impacted more. Can you see the league saying: we’re giving you 2 weeks to get ready then game time, and teams just using starters for 60-70 pitches for the first month of the season?
Keith Law: My guess is ~3 weeks of ramp-up, expanded rosters, and then pitchers used more gently maybe all season.

Dark Johnny Rises: Chris Rodriguez’s ceiling?  Make the rotation by 2021?
Keith Law: Call me when he’s healthy. He’s missed two years now.

Jaylen: Why is Nick Lodolo’s upside maybe not as high as someone like Spencer Howard? How would you compare Josiah Gray to those guys in terms of long term upside as well?
Keith Law: Stuff, delivery, FB quality. I did compare all three on my top 100 and would refer you there.

Krontz: When you play Dominion, do you roll your cards out on table before your turn?  My normal buddies and I do, to speed stuff up.  It’s not an issue at all.  I played with other friends recently and they were shocked I did that, saying it was a huge advantage strategy-wise I was giving them.  I told ’em to look as much as they wanted at my cards, not a big deal to me.  Am I missing a critical element?
Keith Law: Doesn’t everyone kind of know what’s in your deck anyway? They see every purchase you make.

Dark Johnny Rises: What do you think about Drew Rasmussen?
Keith Law: Promising reliever.

Chris: Thoughts on the proposed player service time situation?
Keith Law: Still working on a column on this subject. I do think any solution has to give players who play an entire, abbreviated season a full year of service. Anything less creates a systemic problem for years to come (problem for players … owners would win big).

Mike: Keith, what would YOU do re: the MLB Draft?
Keith Law: Still thinking about that one too, but it has to be somewhat shorter, both for practical reasons (less time to scout lower-round players) and needs (more top picks will play in short season, so there’s less need for filler guys).

Andres: Not baseball related, or hobby related, but how do we even begin to recover from this? As in, great, we survive, now how do we undo all the financial damage? Does Trump get re-elected despite the poor response?
Keith Law: We don’t, not really. Some significant number of Americans will lose their lives, and they won’t just be old people sacrificing themselves to save the stock market. (Holy shit, the people advocating that are *terrifying*.) A huge portion of our population will be affected by the losses of loved ones. The economy will be harmed for years. (Note: The stock market is not the economy. It’s not even a good proxy any more.) The labor force will be adversely affected. Many small businesses won’t survive this. I doubt we could ever have mustered a response like South Korea’s, but we could have saved so many more lives had the government been more prepared and responded sooner. Instead we had Kudlow on TV a month ago saying the virus was well contained, a bald-faced lie that only slowed the national response.

Dark Johnny Rises: Bryan Abreu looks like he can be a hader type?  What do you think?
Keith Law: I think Abreu is right-handed, so no, he can’t.

Darren: IF it was a normal year where would you probably be and what would you be doing?
Keith Law: Flying back from Arizona, most likely.

Darren: I personally do not believe we will have baseball this season, and if we do it will be without fans in attendance. Do you think there will be any part of an MLB season this year?
Keith Law: Yes. Half a season. Maybe some games with fans, some without. If we don’t get any games, it’s a sign of a larger problem with the pandemic.

Darren: Have you played Pandemic in the past month or two? I keep playing with my boys for hope the world can be saved.
Keith Law: Yep, played on Saturday. Got smoked once, won the second time.

Guest: Considering it looks like the prep and college seasons are going to be wiped out, is it too early to start linking teams with draft prospects or do we need “combines” or “pro-days” to get that kind of buzz?
Keith Law: No teams had any real meetings to discuss their plans, but I would imagine if they were candid with us most GMs/directors could tell you who they’d probably take in round one.

Erik: Pancakes or waffles?
Keith Law: Waffles.

Don: Would teams be incentivized to keep elite prospects in the minors during an abbreviated 2020 season in order to easily manipulate service time?
Keith Law: I thought the opposite – in a shorter season, there’s more variance, and bringing up a top prospect could have more direct impact on your playoff odds.

Aaron C.: Without getting too deep into your business, how’s your daughter dealing with all this? I have a 16 y/o son who alternates from loud false bravado to quiet concern/worry.
Keith Law: Still doing really well. I’m very proud of her for how she’s taking the possible loss of all the fun parts of eighth grade – she’s upset, of course, but keeping perspective too. I do think she’s a bit bored though.

Zach D: PSA to the Media: Stop broadcasting Trumps daily covid briefing. He’s using it as a campaign rally act since he can’t do those at the moment. It’s like after lie.
Keith Law: They should have stopped airing his briefings three years ago. Better late than never I guess.

John: Isn’t the fact the stock market has climbed because of the bailout package proof that the stimulus is only really good for the rich?
Keith Law: They bailed out corporations, which is what the market wanted, but in no way helps the average American; I think only about 50-55% of Americans own any stock at all.

Danny: Moncada’s defensive numbers were terrible at 2B but quite good at 3B.  Do you see him as an above average defender at third or was that just noise?
Keith Law: I wrote before he was traded that I thought he was better suited to 3b, after seeing him there in the AFL. It looks like that’s been true – his first-step quickness plays up there, and his upright style is less of an obstacle.

Adam: I read your top 100 in the Athletic.  Great stuff!  Do you happen to have a good former/current pro comp for kelenic?
Keith Law: I really don’t do player comps, sorry. I think they’re more likely to misinform than inform.

Erik: Has Greg Jones improved much at SS? I saw him play a handful of times in college and thought he was destined for CF at the next level. Are the Rays really bought in on him as a SS?
Keith Law: He hasn’t. I don’t know what they truly believe.

Joe: With all the other great candidates, how did Joe Biden end up as the nominee?  Do people think that because he is a white, middle of the road guy that he will appeal to the biggest subset of people?
Keith Law: Because he had name recognition. I think that’s 90% of it.

Alex: Just finished Trust Exercise and found it incredibly thought provoking and absorbing.  Just curious, do you have a theory of who the main villain was (SPOILERS): one person represented by separate characters or perhaps multiple people?  I would favor the latter, but it seems like many people favor the former.
Keith Law: Yeah, I don’t know that I have come to an answer to that one. The fact that someone may have ‘stolen’ another character’s tragedy (?) throws it all into disarray in my mind.

Mike: Confession: got 7 Wonders for Christmas, have read the instructions 3 times and still not played.
Trav: I don’t know how MLB could manage allowing fans toward the fall. Reading multiple medical officials suggesting it’s possible, if not likely, that a successful flattening of the curve means another round of this come autumn/winter.
Keith Law: We just don’t know yet.

Dave G.: I’d say that Trump didn’t create this Republican part; it (and Fox News) created him. His skill was reading the room and knowing how to put on the racist, misogynist, xenophobic, pseudo-Christian show the audience wanted. It might not be as bad when he leaves, but the problem isn’t going away.
Keith Law: No, not quickly enough, but I do think the long-term trends on bigotry and on religiosity are both pointing down. Eventually, those people will be sufficiently outnumbered that we won’t get a bunch of budding theocrats in office every time the Republicans win.

Guido L: What is a good recipe to make that’ll last awhile but doesn’t use super expensive ingredients?
Keith Law: I’m a big fan of making extra grains (rice especially) so that I can repurpose them as leftovers (fried rice, although that trick works with many grains).

addoeh: “Increasing the amount on unemployment checks will decrease people’s willingness to work” said someone who has never had to be unemployed.
Keith Law: Or someone who has simply never made that little money and doesn’t grasp that unemployment checks don’t go very far.

Matt: Venn Diagram of people that want old folks to sacrifice their lives to save the economy and those that are pro-life is a circle right?
Keith Law: No question.

Sam: Not that I think the bailout was good or have super in depth economics knowledge, but couldn’t you make the argument that while relatively few Americans own stock, most Americans work for companies that have stock and stabilizing the market may have preserved those jobs at least a little longer?
Keith Law: You couldn’t because it’s not true. 48% of Americans work for small businesses. That doesn’t include the self-employed, or people who work for closely held businesses.

Trevor: Bill Ripken’s book State of Play synopsis: “Advanced statistics and new terminology have taken hold of baseball today, but do they accurately reflect the reality of the game?” Yes. Yes, they do. That is the answer.
Keith Law: I was offered a review copy of that book multiple times. I did not accept the offer.

Matt: I know you too busy to write about it, but did you watch start of Top Chef last week?
Keith Law: No. I haven’t watched Top Chef in several years now.

Arnold: Whenever it is held, how does MLB conduct a draft when there was little or no high school or college seasons to scout?  Do they go by the 2019 season?
Keith Law: Scouts went out and saw players last summer and fall, and then briefly this spring. It won’t be the same draft that it would have been with a full season this year, but they have enough looks and data to have a draft.

Nick V: If you were the GM of an average team/market/payroll with an average roster but a poor farm system and were given 10 years of job security, what would your strategy be to bring that team in contention?
Keith Law: In the current environment? I’d strip the major-league roster to build up the farm system. Being average is a poor strategy under the current system.

Gregory: How much impact will this shortened season have on the development of minor league players? Much impact on ETA? Increased injuries?
Keith Law: It will slow some guys who needed reps – players who might be more physically gifted but were/are still working on baseball skills.

tnj629@gmail.com: A coworker says this virus was engineered by the Chinese government in retaliation for Trump’s policies.  How should I reply to him?
Keith Law: You can’t, really. He’s delusional. Maybe just hand him a tin foil hat.

addoeh: What prospect that you ever scouted most impressed you the first time you saw them?
Keith Law: Harper.

Bryan: Do you think the Dodgers will use Gonsolin in a “flex” role as mainly a long reliever but one of their 12 starters when needed throughout the year?
Keith Law: I assume most teams will try to have a Gonsolin or two on their roster – someone who can start, but isn’t officially in the rotation, so he can be a long reliever or make spot starts as needed. Pitching stats this year, if we get a half-season or so, might be the weirdest ever.

Aaron C.: For some reason, my wife bought a shit-ton of potatoes. Any go-to recipes in the Law household? (I mean, I *could* eat homefries for the next four days, but…)
Keith Law: I parboil them, toss them with olive oil that I’ve used to brown some garlic (strained out), salt, pepper, and chopped herbs, then roast for an hour at 425, turning to brown on several sides.

Drew: As a practicing Christian, I find the platforms of Warren, Sanders, (and now by proxy, Biden) to be way more in line with the teachings of Christ. I even think there’s room for pro-life voters on the left, since their policies reduce the need for abortion. Do you hold out any hope for religiosity to be less cultish and better balanced between the two parties or am I an outlier?
Keith Law: I would like to see real demographic survey data on this; my impression is that the moderately religious are becoming less common, so that we have more polarization – the nonreligious are clearly growing at the fastest rate, but the extremely religious are at least not shrinking, and they vote as reliably as any group. They have every right to believe and practice what they want, but I don’t want them making policy decisions (or choosing judges) for the country.

Jeries: Would a trade for Arenado require more or less than the Red Sox got for Betts?
Keith Law: More if there’s no Price-like contract attached.

Jeremy: Props to all of the leagues, universities, businesses, etc. that are still finding ways to pay employees who are being force to stay home. Those who aren’t, especially the ones who have the resources to do so, and the people that support their actions, can all go to hell.
Keith Law: Including my alma mater, with the largest endowment in the nation, which is kicking the low-wage dining workers to the curb.
Keith Law: I can’t wait till the next fundraising call!

Pat D: Should we be surprised that a place like Liberty University is already planning to bring students back to campus?
Keith Law: I’m surprised on one level. I’m not surprised that their dear leader is pushing false narratives and anti-science viewpoints. I’m surprised he’s acting on those. Maybe he actually believes his own bullshit.

Todd Boss: One fun point about the GOP/Lindsay Graham argument that “we’re giving unemployed people too much money so they won’t want to work.”

Its almost precisely the argument that the minimum wage needs to be increased!  “Hey, why should I work when I can get nearly as much in welfare/disability as I would working 40hrs/week at $7.25.”  

Hypocrite much?
Keith Law: They view it as an argument to reduce welfare/disability checks, to keep them below the minimum wage, and then they can argue to reduce the minimum wage.

Stu: A friend of mine and I were discussing how long COVID can live on surfaces.  It’s pretty scary that some could for instance touch your leg with their hand and the virus can live in that surface for a while.
Keith Law: The virus can, but that isn’t the same as enough viral particles to make you sick – especially since the virus is respiratory. If you lick your leg (ew?) you still probably wouldn’t get sick from that.

Dan: How does Mitch Keller’s slider addition last season change his projected outcome, if at all? Have to imagine it’s still tough to project a front-line SP without a legitimate changeup. The slider looked pretttty nice though.
Keith Law: It doesn’t change it. He has to find a pitch to get LHB out.

Danny: How many annual pop-up guys will suffer from no prep/college season? Keoni Cavaco is an extreme example but how many guys legitimately pop-up like that from not on the radar to top 4 rounds?
Keith Law: I’d guess a dozen or so a year, mostly HS and JC kids, rarely four-year college guys. Brent Rooker would be one of the latter – if he doesn’t get a full spring as a fourth-year junior, he doesn’t go on day one of the draft.

Sam: Any prospects you are particularly disappointed to not get to see this year?
Keith Law: All of them. Not joking. I miss the actual nuts and bolts of going to watch players and write about them.

Scott: With stores having empty shelves mostly around me, what’s the best way to store vegetables and other aromatics for the long haul?
Keith Law: Aromatics should last weeks; many vegetables freeze well. I don’t have a root cellar or anything similar but those do work. If you have white vinegar, you can pickle onions rather than tossing them.

Leo: What can you tell us about Oscar Marin? Didn’t seem to be a big name coming over to PIT, but pitchers seem to be buying in. Of course, Ray Searage admitted to not being an analytics guy so anything is an improvement. Can you see a big jump for Musgrove or a return to glory for Archer coming?
Keith Law: No, I don’t see a big jump for Musgrove coming, and Archer is just a ‘who knows’ at this point as the Rays couldn’t seem to get more out of him either.

Avery: Have you seen Tanner Houck at all? What pitch type or possible delivery change could help his splits be less dramatic?
Keith Law: I have. His low slot and lack of an average changeup make him a likely reliever. His platoon splits are the symptom.

Josh: Where does Dwight Gooden 1985 season rank for you in terms of all time best single season pitching performances?
Keith Law: By Baseball-Reference’s WAR, it is the best pitching performance in the integrated era. I would probably still give the nod to Pedro in 2000 (5th all time) for the ‘best’ honor, given the better competition and high offensive environment.

mike: 3 million filed for unemployment, and the markets are up. anyone that thinks the economy and the markets are linked is delusional….I can’t believe I fell for this shit when I got my MBA. Capital doesn’t give a damn about labor, other than how it can exploit it. Hell, we are taught that in school….
Keith Law: That is generally true: Capital doesn’t care about labor. They care about public sentiment, sometimes.

tnj629@gmail.com: I told my coworker what you said.  This was his reply – Don’t know who Keith Law is or why he is credible?  China has a connection to this. Media can try to cover for them all they want.
Keith Law: I told you – you can’t reason with people like that. He’s like an anti-vaxxer or a creationist. They believe what they want to believe, and facts won’t change their minds.

Eamon: From what I could read it sounded like MIL traded for Urias to play SS. Is there any chance (aside from current injury) Arcia keeps that from happening and pushes Urias back to 2B?
Keith Law: Doesn’t sound like they’re open to that possibility, but I haven’t asked anyone with Milwaukee about this.

Luke: Former Mets “Big 5” – Matz, Harvey, Syndergaard, deGrom, Wheeler. TJ, TJ, TJ, TJ, TJ. Fun times!
Keith Law: deGrom was before he was even a prospect, though. The others, sure.

Dark Johnny Rises: With recent J2 classes producing 19-20 yr old mlb’ers like Vlad, Tatis, Acuna, Soto, and the next guys like Wander and maybe Luciano.  Has int’l scouting improved to rank these guys early?  Do you think Jasson has a chance to be the next one?
Keith Law: I do think scouting and development have improved for those kids, yes. Teams are identifying players more efficiently than they did ten years ago, and clearly helping the elite kids develop faster as well.

addoeh: If you parents named you Richard, would you go around as Dick Law?
Keith Law: Probably not. You should ask my dad.

Fuzz: Wouldn’t corporations that receive gov’t assistance be disincentivized to run efficiently and profitably as those seeking unemployment? Or is this more likely a way for the GOP to funnel tax dollars to GOP donors (Corp execs, owners, etc.) so they will then, in turn, give some of it back to the GOP in donations?
Keith Law: No, no, corporations that receive government assistance would never do that. They’re too busy funneling money back to politicians to ensure the spigot stays open and no nasty environmental regulations get in their way!

Adam: Luisangel Acuna.  Is this a player to keep an eye on?  Bloodlines and seemed to do well his first year.  What’s the upside?
Keith Law: He’s in the Rangers farm report.

Pat D: Listening to CNN right now with them interviewing Peter Navarro.  He’s once again blaming things on Obama for what they “inherited.”  And people believe this shit.  It’s why I know they’re all just cultists.
Keith Law: The Trump Administration inherited a pandemic response team too.

Dark Johnny Rises: Will Chris Paddack’s 2 pitch mix succeed in the majors?  Or does he really need to develop the CB?
Keith Law: I think you can succeed as a major league starter with a plus CH, above avg FB with command, and fringy breaking ball. I don’t think the same is true if you switch the breaking ball and the CH.

Matt: You should up these chats to 2x a week since there’s nothing for us to do.
Keith Law: Aside from the fact that they’re kind of exhausting to do, there isn’t enough baseball stuff to talk about to support even one a week right now.

Hodgey: You can’t expect the jump back to his MVP-like seasons, but is Matt Carpenter get himself into Comeback POY talks? Or was last season the start of a mighty quick downfall?
Keith Law: He’s 34. He’s almost certainly declining.

Tim (KC): Thanks for the chat Keith… so the Braves, then Padres, White Sox and maybe the Rays; who is the next team on the way to building an elite farm system?
Keith Law: Giants.

Aaron G: I crunched numbers last night and figured that we’d have one million-ish infected by April 8th (standard doubling, 3.5 day rate). Assuming summer beings relief, what do you think the odds are of a fall/winter COVID-19 comeback?
Keith Law: I’m really not qualified to even guess at that one. We don’t know what immunity if any you get if you’ve been infected with COVID-19 and recovered.

Dean: Before Sale had TJ news would it have been easy to dump him off on another team?  Or were teams wise enough to stay away?
Keith Law: Everyone knew he had an underlying injury. Teams see everything you see and more.

Griz: hey Keith, regarding Parks game – I agree the photo part is a little wonky but hey, that seems to be the ticket to victory thus far for me, as the end scores have always been close, and those few points from pictures have made the difference.
Keith Law: I agree that the points end up mattering because it’s all fairly close, but it strikes me as a weird or just not-fun way to get points. It’s kind of perfunctory, like, oh, fine, i’ll take a picture.
Keith Law: OK, that’s all for this week. I won’t promise another chat for next week because who the heck knows what will be going on, other than that we should all still be staying home as much as possible. I will be writing some stuff for the Athletic in the next week on off-field topics, and I have a lot of board game content coming too. Be safe, everyone.

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→ March 25, 2020
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Sabrina & Corina.

Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s Sabrina & Corina is her first published volume, a slim collection of eleven stories about women of mixed Latina and indigenous ancestry grappling with identity, sexism, and cultural changes in the rapidly shifting landscape of Denver, the author’s hometown. The book was shortlisted for the National Book Award (won by Trust Exercise) and the Story Prize (won by Everything Inside) and made numerous year-end top ten lists for 2019, due, I assume, to its beautiful prose and the window it opens on to characters and subcultures that do not often appear in contemporary literary fiction.

The title story is told through the eyes of Corina, remembering her cousin Sabrina with whom she shared much of her childhood before they grew apart as Sabrina became more licentious, and who has now been strangled by some unknown man months after the last time Corina saw her, the latest in a long string of women in her family killed or harmed by men. That leads into “Sisters,” which jumps back a few decades to tell how Corina’s aunt was blinded by a violent man – and how little people even seemed to care about what happened to her. “Tomi,” one of the standout stories in the collection, is told by a woman who’s just coming home from prison to live with her brother and his son, the title character, as she tries to rebuild trust with her family even as Tomi is struggling with his mom leaving the family, leading to a confrontation when Tomi tries to go see his mother across town. Every story has some incident of death or another kind of loss, set against the backdrop of a city that marginalizes women of color in multiple ways – economically, geographically, socially – and creates the conditions for these cycles to repeat themselves.

I wouldn’t put this among the top contenders for this year’s literary awards – at this point, the Pulitzer is really the only significant one left – because there just isn’t enough here. The stories are great, without a letdown in the collection, but there is a sameness across the volume that made me want Fajardo-Anstine to stretch out beyond these themes and character archetypes. I assume she will do so as she grows as a writer, whether in more short stories or in longer forms of fiction, but by the time I reached the final story, the plaintive “Ghost Sickness,” I realized how similar the characters and settings had become over the course of the book. There’s a tenuous quality to the stories, especially their main characters, where I felt connected to what was happening but not to the women at the centers of these events, and in nine or ten of the stories the protagonist might as well have been the same person. It is a very promising debut effort, however, a bit like a rookie season by someone you think is going to become a star in another year or two – just not as well-developed a work as you’d expect of someone further in their career.

—

I’d set a goal for myself for 2019 to read ten works of literary fiction, and this marked the tenth such work I’ve read, which means I feel like I have read enough to rank them. This isn’t a Pulitzer prediction in any way, but a matter of personal preference. I wouldn’t be shocked to see something from this list win the award for fiction next month, though.

1. Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken
2. The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
3. Feast Your Eyes by Myla Goldberg
4. Trust Exercise by Susan Choi
5. Everything Inside by Edwidge Danticat
6. Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine
7. The Topeka School by Ben Lerner
8. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
9. Exhalation by Ted Chiang
10. Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips

The one 2019 work of fiction I haven’t read but plan to read when I can is Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House. If something I haven’t read wins the Pulitzer, I’ll read that too.

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→ March 24, 2020
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Uncut Gems.

Uncut Gems was one of the best-reviewed movies of 2019, taking home the Best Director, Best Editing, and Best Actor honors at the Independent Spirit Awards in February, and landing at the top of many critics’ year-end lists, including those of my friends Will Leitch and Tim Grierson. (I count 20 critics who put it on top of their 2019 lists on this Metacritic roundup, which includes Tim’s list but not Will’s.) After finally catching it on demand this week, I can at least add my voice to the chorus – it’s tremendous, maybe not my favorite movie of last year but close to it, and one of the most intense, relentless movie experiences I’ve had in quite a while. (It’s available to rent now on amazon and iTunes.)

Adam Sandler plays Howard Ratner, a jeweler in New York’s Diamond District who has a sliiight gambling problem and, as a result, makes one reckless decision after another, including regularly pawning valuable pieces that other people have loaned to him. As the film opens, we see the discovery of a large black opal in an Ethiopian mine, a stone that Ratner has negotiated to obtain so that he can sell it at auction for what he expects to be over a million dollars. He’s harassed by goons from a loan shark, Arno (Eric Bogosian, looking pained at every moment), who is extremely pissed that Howard keeps betting rather than paying him back. And in another early scene, Howard’s assistant Demany (Lakeith Stanfield) manages to get then-Celtics star Kevin Garnett into the shop, where Garnett becomes obsessed with the uncut black opal stone and asks to borrow it because he seems to think it will bring him good luck on the court. Howard is also busy having an affair with an employee while still living with his estranged wife, and appears to owe several other people money, but can’t stop himself from betting or making other really terrible decisions.

Directed and co-written by the Safdie brothers, Uncut Gems grabs you by the throat from the start and never lets up until the closing sequence (a gimmicky shot that mirrors one from the beginning of the film). Everything about this movie will induce anxiety in the viewer, not least the music, which often feels like the soundtrack to a 1980s arcade game, and the frenetic cinematography, which often puts the viewer uncomfortably close to the action. The story itself never gives you a chance to catch your breath: Any time it appears that Howard might have a way out of trouble, something goes wrong, usually something of his own doing. Meeting Garnett turns out to be the worst-best thing to ever happen to him, not least because he’s a bit starstruck and suddenly decides to bet huge amounts on complicated parlays involving Garnett and the Celtics. This four-dimensional balancing act he’s trying to pull is absurd and you know it’s destined to fail and you shouldn’t even want this guy with no apparent redeeming qualities to succeed, but knowing what the consequences will likely be if it doesn’t work will still put you on the edge of your seat and have you rooting for Ratner in spite of yourself.

Sandler’s performance here is remarkable, and it’s a crime he wasn’t nominated for Best Actor here. Gone is the joking, crude comedian persona, replaced by a nervous, obsequious, crude version of himself, with minuscule changes to his appearance that somehow were enough to make him seem like Not Adam Sandler. He is this character, so that everything he does fits with what we know about him; without the performance there’s no way this film would be watchable, let alone good, because everything depends on him being credible. Garnett is the other real revelation here – sure, he’s playing a version of himself, but, as with Sandler/Howard, you have to believe that Garnett really wants that stone, and you have to believe his interactions with Howard are authentic. There’s a lot of stunt casting here – Mike Francesa appears as a bookie/restaurateur, John Amos has a brief cameo (which makes for a good in-joke about the Safdies’ prior film, Good Time), the Weeknd plays himself, Tilda Swinton and Doc Rivers make voice cameos – but Garnett’s is the one that has to be credible for the film to work, and he does it.

I still have two more movies I want to see before posting a very-late ranking of 2019 movies, but this is clearly in my top 5 for last year. I couldn’t put it over Parasite, which was just as gripping, and also quite funny in parts (as is Uncut Gems), but also has a more serious underpinning than this film does. The Uncut Gems script also has a few moments that don’t quite add up, but the ending works, and some of the flourishes that pop up towards the end of the film (Wayne Diamond’s character doesn’t appear until maybe 80% of the way through, but damn is he effective) pay off in more substantial ways than I expected. I’m not that shocked that an indie thriller starring an actor known for lowbrow comedies was snubbed by the Academy, but Uncut Gems deserved more recognition than it got.

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→ March 21, 2020
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Stick to baseball, 3/21/20.

My one new piece at The Athletic this week looked at the top 30 prospects for this year’s MLB draft, which is itself up in the air, although I am inclined to doubt that the draft would be completely cancelled because I think there’d be a flurry of lawsuits from players (and their advisors).

In response to many reader requests, I posted a ranking of my favorite board games for two players – some are just two-player games, some play more but work quite well for two. I have more board game content in the works for Paste, Vulture, and Ars Technica in the next few weeks as well.

My second book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, is due out on April 21st from Harper Collins, and you can pre-order it now via their site or wherever fine books are sold. Also, check out my free email newsletter, which I say I’ll write more often than I actually write it.

And now, the links…

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→ March 20, 2020
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On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.

Vietnamese-American poet Ocean Vuong’s debut novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous made the longlists for this year’s National Book Award (won by Trust Exercise) and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction (won by Lost Children Archive), both in the same year that Vuong earned a Macarthur Foundation grant. A grim, epistolary work of auto-fiction, On Earth is a difficult and unsparing read that’s probably better from a critical eye than it would be in the eyes of most readers (mine included).

Written as a series of letters from the protagonist, Little Dog, to his abusive mother, now that Little Dog is an adult, On Earth goes back to Little Dog’s childhood, to stories his mother and grandmother told him from before they left Vietnam, and to his adolescent years, when he first fell in love with a local boy named Trevor who became addicted to opioids. Little Dog is closer to his grandmother, Lan, who helps take care of him and tries to protect him when his mother becomes violent, and who helps him get to know an American veteran, Paul, who became her husband and Little Dog’s surrogate grandfather. The novel bounces around in time between those three settings – Vietnam, his childhood, and his relationship with Trevor – but hurtles towards multiple deaths that define the end of the novel, and the way it’s constructed, the story unfurls as a tapestry that weaves grief and memory together for a somber and often depressing read.

Entangled with those themes is Little Dog’s three-pronged intersectionality – he’s an immigrant, a person of color, and openly gay, all of which are true of Vuong as well. Little Dog also arrives in this country unable to speak English, and he becomes the first member of his family to learn to read, which makes the entire conceit of the novel as a series of letters to his mother more poignant or a little bit farcial. On Earth is more interesting as a new entry in the long tradition of immigrant fiction, especially given how many variables are different – how extreme the fish-out-of-water aspect is when his family ends up in Hartford, Connecticut; the added challenge of his sexual orientation at a time when society was more bigoted than it is now, and with a mother who doesn’t really understand it; and his mother’s work at a nail salon, a haven for exploitation of women who’ve immigrated here from east and southeast Asia.

There’s plenty to dissect in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, but Little Dog himself is too much of a cipher – even with all of the details we know about him as a person – to make this slight book connect with me. I sympathized with him, but never empathized with him; perhaps it’s the nonlinear narrative, perhaps it’s the dispassionate way in which Vuong writes, which always seemed to keep me at arm’s length. There’s a scene in the novel where Vuong describes something in explicitly physical terms, but never grapples with the emotional impact of it, during or after. That seems to be emblematic of the work as a whole. In the end, Little Dog seems to forgive his mother, to arrive at some sort of understanding, but I still wasn’t sure how he got to that point even with 240 pages leading up to that point.

Next up: I finished Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s short story collection Sabrina & Corina and started Jo Walton’s Lent.

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