Uncategorized — Page 75

→ November 6, 2019
→ By keith

Standard Deviations.

While working on my own forthcoming book The Inside Game (due out April 21st from HarperCollins; pre-order now!), I stumbled across a chapter from Prof. Gary Smith’s book Standard Deviations: Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data, and Other Ways to Lie with Statistics, a really wonderful book on how people, well-meaning or malicious, use and misuse stats to make their arguments. It’s a very clear and straightforward book that assumes no prior statistical background on the part of the reader, and keeps things moving with entertaining examples and good summaries of Smith’s points on the many ways you can twist numbers to say what you want them to say.

Much of Smith’s ire within the book is aimed at outright charlatans of all stripes who know full well that they’re misleading people. The very first example in Standard Deviations describes the media frenzy over Paul the Octopus, a mollusk that supposedly kept picking the winners of World Cup games in 2010. It was, to use the technical term for it, the dumbest fucking thing imaginable. Of course this eight-legged cephalopod wasn’t actually predicting anything; octopi are great escape artists, but Paul was just picking symbols he recognized, and the media who covered those ‘predictions’ were more worthy of the “fake news” tag now applied to any media the President doesn’t like. Smith uses Paul to make larger points about selection bias and survivorship bias, about how some stories become news and some don’t, how the publish-or-perish mentality at American universities virtually guarantees that some junk studies (found via p-hacking or other dubious methods) will slip through the research cracks, and so on. This is more than just an academic problem, however: One bad study that can’t survive other researchers’ attempts to replicate the results can still lead to significant media attention and even steer changes in policy.

Smith gives copious examples of this sequence of events – bad or corrupt study that leads to breathless news coverage and real-life consequences. He cites Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced former doctor whose single fraudulent paper claimed to find a link between the MMR vaccine and autism; the media ran with it, many parents declined to give their kids the MMR vaccine, and even now, twenty years and numerous debunking studies later, we have measles outbreaks and a reversal of the eradication the hemisphere had achieved in 2000. Smith chalks some of this up to the publish-or-perish mentality of American universities, also mentioning Diederik Stapel, a Dutch ex-professor who has now had 58 papers retracted due to his own scientific misconduct. But these egregious examples are just the tip of a bigger iceberg of statistical malfeasance that’s less nefarious but just as harmful: finding meaning in statistical significance, journals’ preferences for publishing affirmative studies over negative ones (the file drawer problem), “using data to discover a theory” rather than beginning with a theory and using data to test it, discarding outliers (or, worse, non-outliers), and more.

Standard Deviations bounces around a lot of areas of statistical shenanigans, covering some familiar ground (the Monty Hall problem and the Boy or Girl problem*) and less familiar as well. He goes after the misuse of graphs in popular publications, particularly the issue of Y-axis manipulation (where the Y axis starts well above 0, making small changes across the X-axis look larger), and the “Texas sharpshooter” problem where people see patterns in random clusters and argue backwards into meaning. He goes after the hot hand fallacy, which I touched on in Smart Baseball and will discuss again from a different angle in The Inside Game. He explains why the claims that people nearing death will themselves to live through birthdays or holidays don’t hold up under scrutiny. (One of my favorite anecdotes is the study of deaths before/after Passover that identified subjects because their names sounded “probably Jewish.”) Smith’s reach extends beyond academia; one chapter looks at how Long-Term Capital Management failed, including how the people leading the firm deluded themselves into thinking they had figured out a way to beat the market, and then conned supposedly smart investors into playing along.

* Smith also explains why Leonard Mlodinow’s explanation in Drunkard’s Walk, which I read right after this book, of a related question where you know one Girl’s name is Florida is incorrect, and thank goodness because for the life of me I couldn’t believe what Mlodinow wrote.

I exchanged emails with Smith in September to ask about the hot hand fallacy and a claim in 2018 by two mathematicians that they’d debunked the original Amos Tversky paper from 1986; he answered with more detail that I ended up using in a sidebar in The Inside Game. That did not directly color my writeup of Standard Deviationshere, but my decision to reach out to him in the first place stems from my regard for Smith’s book. It’s on my list now of books I recommend to folks who want to read more about innumeracy and statistical abuse, in the same vein as Dave Levitan’s Not a Scientist.

Next up: About halfway through Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Calculating Stars.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, data science, frauds, highly recommended, junk science, non-fiction

→ November 4, 2019
→ By keith

Riding the Rails with Paul Theroux.

Paul Theroux first came to my attention a few years ago when I picked up one of his later travelogues, Last Train to Zona Verde, which chronicled his trip (mostly) by train from Cape Town up the western coast of southern Africa through Namibia, detouring into Botswana, and eventually into Angola. It was weirdly fascinating, no less so that this older white American would enter territory where he would stand out in the worst ways, potentially attracting unfavorable attention, and that he had to abandon his original plan of traveling all the way up the coast and inland into Mali once he reached the Angola-DRC border. It’s a grim trip, where the curmudgeonly Theroux documents the bleak poverty he encounters at each stop, noting environmental degradation and tourism aimed at westerners who have too money and think that poor is cool, while, in my view, missing what his own privilege and perspective bring to his observations.

Several readers suggested I go back and read Theroux’s better-known, earlier travelogues, especially The Great Railway Bazaar and The Old Patagonian Express, both of which appear in an e-book trilogy called Riding the Rails With Paul Theroux, which I got on sale for the Kindle for $4 and which includes the later book Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, where he recreates the trip of the first book thirty years later. They are long, meandering, fascinating, and unstinting; they don’t cast Theroux in a particularly good light; yet they also open a window on places the vast majority of us will never see, from Tashkent to Baku to Santa Ana to the Khyber Pass, exposing cultures, foods, and traditions that remain ‘foreign’ to the west even in this era of globalization.

The Great Railway Bazaar made Theroux’s name as an author, especially of this very specific style of book: a non-fiction narrative work that follows the author on a trip where he documents the mundane, not merely the extraordinary. Much of the content of all three books revolves around the modest inconveniences and occasional joys of traveling in proximity to other people, including the varying customs of folks traveling by train in different countries and the ways in which train travel becomes a signal of economic status in those cultures. This first book chronicle’s Theroux’s trip by train from Paris through Istanbul, Teheran, India, Burma, and Thailand, eventually putting him in South Vietnam (after the U.S. withdrawal, before the fall of Saigon), after which he flies to Japan and returns home via the Trans-Siberian Railway. The journey, we later learn in the third volume, cost him his marriage – he returned home to find his wife, who opposed the trip, has taken up with another man – but made him a literary star.

The second book follows Theroux from Chicago through Texas, Mexico, most of Central America – twice he has to take to the skies, skipping Nicaragua as too dangerous and jumping past gaps in the rail lines – into South America, eventually ending up in Esquel, a small inland city in Patagonia, on the Argentine side of the Andean border with Chile. The third book sees him revisit the first trip 33 years later, but due to massive political changes, he heads north to avoid Iran and Afghanistan, passing through the Caucasus, Turkmenistan (shortly before the death of its deranged dictator Saparmurat Niyazov), and Uzbekistan. He remarks at length on the changes he’s seen in India’s big cities, while places like Sri Lanka and especially Burma (now Myanmar) have barely changed, before visiting Cambodia for the first time since the Khmer Rouge fell and Singapore for the first time since his novel Saint Jack was banned there, finishing his trip again via Japan, Vladivostok, and Moscow. (He flew from Tashkent to Amritsar, lacking a ground route through Tajikistan.) His description of these changes blends the factual and his own disdain for pretty much all of it: he denigrates Indian megacities for their unfettered growth and evidence income inequality, then derides the next two countries he visits for their failures to thrive.

By far, the most entertaining parts of Theroux’s books are his encounters with countries furthest from my own experiences as a traveler; I have been to over 20 countries, but only one is outside of North America or Europe (Taiwan), and all of my visits to developing countries except one were for tourism. I’m probably never going to Azerbaijan or Turkmenistan, and the odds of me visiting El Salvador or Honduras are extremely low given their current levels of political turmoil and violence. He comments on how “Considering their history – not only the riots, civil wars, and revolutions, but also the uproarious earthquakes and incessant vulcanism – it is a wonder that (Central American countries) exist at all and have not furiously vanished beneath the sea,” an amusing sentiment made more so by the flips in fate in the intervening four decades. Nicaragua was too dangerous to visit, so he went to El Salvador. Colombia and Costa Rica have developed into fairly well-off economics, at least by the standards of their neighbors. Turkey raced forward between his two visits, only to regress rapidly since Ghost Train was published. He visited South Vietnam a year before the north invaded and unified the country; now he compares his visits to Saigon and Hue, while visiting Hanoi for the first time. He visits the famous temples at Angkor Wat for the first time since the Khmer Rouge came and went; and the secret red light district of Singapore for the first time since its autocratic government banned his novel Saint Jack. He passes through the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, which has almost no Jews living in it, of Russia, a place I didn’t even know existed before reading this book. So much of the pleasure of these books is Theroux visiting places I’ll never go, sometimes making me envious, other times letting me know I don’t need to feel that bad about missing them.

Theroux’s status as an author stood him in good stead even on his first trips, as the last two books include encounters with some very famous authors he meets on his sojourns. He spends days with Jorge Luis Borges in Buenos Aires, meets up with Orhan Pamuk – about to win the Nobel Prize for Literature – in Istanbul, goes to the home of Arthur C. Clarke – who’d be dead within two years – in Sri Lanka, and travels a bit with Haruki Murakami in Japan. Each of these conversations feels like one of those essays I’d find in the New Yorker and would share with you all in a Saturday post; Borges and Clarke really come to life on these pages, while Murakami comes off as reticent and pensive, although I suppose that’s unsurprising.

Theroux, though, doesn’t come off very well in his books. He doesn’t seem to like other people very much, especially not people working jobs he views as menial. He might be a little bit racist. The first two books in particular stand out for Theroux’s stereotyping of various peoples and overemphasis on physical characteristics, including skin color, while the third is more muted but still has his voice and, with it, his obvious tendency to create a clear distinction between himself and anyone he deems as ‘other.’ He’s also more than a little bit sexist, and some of his commentary on sex and the skin trade comes off as creepy even before you consider that he made the trip in the third book when he was about 65 years old. Some of the commentary in the first two books may have been acceptable in its time; much of this material in the third book was already cringeworthy in 2008, when it was published, and it’s all worse now.

There’s also something quaint about these books in the era of cheap air travel and, outside of Europe, very limited and/or expensive rail options. I could forgive Theroux’s act a bit, given the window on the world he opened and the existence of at least some self-deprecation. He’s also acutely aware of the poverty he sees, and understands his economic privilege even while othering so many of the people he encounters on the trains. There’s something quite admirable in his willingness to leap into these journeys, to travel to places most of us wouldn’t dare visit on our own for fear of disease or violence or simply the unknown. Even where the text hasn’t aged well, the voyages themselves justified the time.

Next up: Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Calculating Stars, winner of this year’s Hugo Award for Best Novel.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: non-fiction, travel writing

→ November 3, 2019
→ By keith

Parasite.

Parasite won the Palme d’Or this year at the Cannes film festival, making director Bong Joon-Ho the first South Korean to win the top prize at that event, and the film has since racked up tremendous critical accolades and earned $5 million-plus already at the U.S. box office. It’s enough of a hit that it showed at my local, mainstream multiplex this weekend. It’s South Korea’s submission for this year’s Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, and I’ll be shocked if it doesn’t make the shortlist. On this Friday night, there were 20 people in the theater, including us, there to watch a Korean-language film with no actors who’d be recognized at all in the U.S. I’m thrilled to see it get this kind of audience because Parasite is a remarkable, funny, dark, and deeply metaphorical movie.

This upstairs, downstairs story revolves around the Kims, an unemployed family of four living in a dank semi-basement in Seoul where they steal WiFi from neighbors who forget to turn on passwords; and the Parks, a very wealthy family in the city with two young children and more money than they know what to do with. The two families intersect when Ki-woo, the Kims’ college-aged son who doesn’t attend school because he can’t afford it, gets a job filling in as the English tutor to the Parks’ teenaged daughter, Da-hye. Seeing how well the other half is living, Ki-woo hatches a plan to get the rest of his family hired – his sister as the Parks’ son’s art teacher, his father as the chauffeur, and his mother as the housekeeper – by also getting their existing help fired. This all goes very well until one night the housekeeper returns, revealing a secret of her own, turning the film from a hilarious farce into a darker satire that ultimately ends in violent chaos.

For about 3/4 of its running time, Parasite is consistently, laugh-out-loud funny. From the lengths to which the Kims go to perpetrate their con on the Parks or to justify their increasingly unethical behavior to themselves, on to the utterly ridiculous Park family themselves. The three Park characters who have something to do in the film – their son barely speaks at all – are all deeply stereotypical, with the mother (stays at home, can’t take care of herself or the house, heavily neurotic) and daughter (acts/dresses below her age, falls in love with her tutors) both so much so that I wondered if they were meant to be caricatures. The plot to get rid of the chauffeur is amusing; the subsequent plot to get rid of the housekeeper is bananas. Even as the film starts to become violent, there are still moments of humor, including some great physical comedy, until the final cataclysm tears the cover off and reveals the swirling mess of class rage that was beneath the surface the entire time.

Bong isn’t subtle about the fact that the film is replete with metaphor; Ki-woo uses the word “metaphorical” several times, often because he is trying to impress the Parks, but the presence of the word at all felt a bit like a message to the audience to wake up and smell the symbolism. There’s water everywhere in this movie, but while it’s clean and revivifying for the Parks, it’s anything but for the Kims; while water brings the Parks a modest nuisance, it eventually contributes to the Kims’ destruction. The physical locations of their living spaces – the Kims halfway (or more) underground, the Parks on the upper floors of a house with lower floors that they never even visit themselves – correspond to their relative status and their absolute status within a South Korea that rapidly developed after the Korean War but has created substantial income inequality, especially for older citizens. The rock, the Parks’ son’s artwork, the use of American “Indian” imagery – Parasite is absolutely rife with metaphors to underscore the conflict between the Parks and the Kims.

I assume Bong’s use of Kim, the most common family name in South Korea, for the lower-class family, was not a coincidence; Park is the third-most common name, so perhaps the point was that neither of these families is all that atypical, and that Bong is trying to represent wide swaths of Korean society. He’s also created a real dramatic balance between the two families; while the Kims are rascals, they’re not heroes, and if you were still rooting for them at the time that they dispatch the housekeeper, their ruse should be enough to dissuade you. There are no heroes here, no ‘good guys;’ it’s a movie about a lot of regular people who do bad things in the quest for money and all that it brings: status, comfort, freedom from future financial worry.

I won’t spoil any of the end other than to say it turns quite violent, although in the context of everything that has come before, it felt like the inevitable conclusion after two hours of growing tension that had no outlet for release, as the Kims wanted to preserve their ruse at all costs. When one of them finally realize that the Parks will never see them as anything but the hired help – and thus as lesser people – Parasite reaches a disturbing climax and conclusion that will cause you to rethink everything that came before.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2019 best director nominees, 2019 best international film nominees, 2019 best picture nominees, 2019 movies, highly recommended, korean films, movies

→ November 2, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 11/2/19.

This isn’t quite new, but I put out a formal announcement this week that my second book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, will be out on April 21, 2020. You can pre-order it now on HarperCollins’ site.

On the board gaming front, I ranked the top 25 board games of the 2010s for Paste this week, and also wrote about some recent programming games, where players issue instructions as if they were writing code, over at Ars Technica. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

You can get more of me by signing up for my free email newsletter, which I send out irregularly but definitely not often enough to bother you.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: A ProPublica investigation found billionaire Dan Gilbert got a huge tax break with the help of the Trump Administration after making large donations to Trump’s campaign. The tax break in question involved “opportunity zones,” incentives aimed at spurring new development in disadvantaged urban areas – not, as in Gilbert’s case, for investments already made.
One dollar of every $10 spent on AmazonBasics products is spent on batteries. One writer tried to track where those batteries come from and what their impact is on the environment. She found a few answers, but not enough, and a lot of opacity from a company that is already under fire for labor concerns, climate impact, and its logistics operation’s effect on road safety.
Allie Conti, writing for VICE, describes discovering a vast, nationwide hosting scam on AirBnB that costs unsuspecting guests hundreds of dollars and leaves them without a place to stay.
The well-titled article “The Fight Over a Shitty Rock” has a very serious point: There’s a dispute roiling over Rockall, a tiny and uninhabitable islet in the North Atlantic claimed by the United Kingdom, and whether the islet extends the UK’s fishing rights against the wishes and claims of Ireland.
The chocolate industry has already been criticized for its use of child labor and even slaves; now the Washington Post points out that cacao farmers in West Africa are decimating forests, accelerating climate change, while western chocolate producers talk about sustainability without addressing this issue at all.
Spotify’s dominance in the streaming industry is still tenuous and hasn’t led to consistent profits, which explains in part the company’s acquisition of podcast producers Gimlet Media.
Anti-vaxxer nuts send racist, violent threats to people who post pro-vaccine messages, and Facebook does absolutely nothing about it. The people running these sites – Twitter is no better – talk a big accountability game when it comes to abuse and harassment, but they don’t back it up with actions.
Facebook also lets right-wing propaganda site The Daily Wire violate its rules by using sock puppet accounts to promote its content. Again, Facebook does … nothing. And they blocked pro-vaccine ads while letting anti-vaxxer ads run. It’s okay if we’re still getting paid.
Anti-vaxxers love to claim that measles is ‘benign,’ but there’s growing research on just how harmful a bout of the viral disease can be in the long term. New evidence shows that causes ‘immune amnesia’ in survivors, whose immune systems must relearn how to fight infections because measles wiped out 11% to 73% of antibodies already present in that person’s blood.
The anti-vaxxer faux-documentary Vaxxed has a sequel, but the producers aren’t saying where it’s playing for fear rational people will try to stop it, so keep your eyes open, rational people, and demand any theater near you that tries to show Vaxxed 2 pull their screenings.
An evidence-based technique called motivational interviewing is proving useful in addressing vaccine-hesitant parents. It involves one-on-one conversations between parents and trained counselors who don’t tell the parents what to do, but “simply talk through parents’ fears and goals, and let them decide what to do.”
Louisa Thomas wrote of the ‘stories’ the Houston Astros have told, which don’t always align with reality, in the New Yorker. I know of at least three more departures from their baseball operations department in the last few months, only one of which, longtime Jeff Luhnow lieutenant Oz Ocampo, is public.
Michael Stipe and Mike Mills spoke to the BBC about their album Monster on the 25th anniversary of its release.
Writing for Paste, Annie Merkley writes about what it’s been like as an American in the midst of the protests in Chile, a piece that also explained to me what the protests have been about.
It’s from June of 2018, but John Pavlovitz’s “Now You Want Civility?” post seems apropos after all the pearl-clutching over Nationals fans booing President Trump last Sunday. And, by the way, one of the clutchers was Delaware Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat I’m hoping gets primaried the next time he’s up.
VICE asks if sex addiction is real, or a misidentification of people who have sexual habits or preferences that might vary from the median.
A Spanish court acquitted five men of rape because the victim was drunk, so they didn’t have to use force. This is separate from the “Wolf Pack” rape case that led to protests earlier this year.
A legislator from Cobb County, home of your Atlanta Braves, is trying to make it a felony for trans kids to get gender reassignment via surgery or drugs. In two thousand and fucking nineteen, we are still doing this. This isn’t ‘protecting kids,’ as she claims; it’s going to do nothing but increase suicides.
Deep sleep may help protect the brain against Alzeimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases by triggering electrical pulses, according to one new study.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: chocolate, climate change, frauds, georgia, lgbt rights, links, longreads, sleep, social media, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ November 1, 2019
→ By keith

Music update, October 2019.

October may have been a weak month for new music, but it’s also quite possible I was too busy with finishing up the first draft of The Inside Game, going to the Arizona Fall League, and watching the playoffs to find new tracks as often as I usually do. I’m definitely behind on some promising albums that came out in the last few weeks, but here’s my list of the best new songs I heard this past month. If you can’t see the Spotify widget, you can access the playlist here.

Sleater-Kinney – ANIMAL. A non-album track from the now-duo, who I saw this past week in Philadelphia. They were great live, and rocked a lot harder than I expected given their sound on records.

Michael Kiwanuka – Rolling. The Guardian named KIWANUKA, the third album from this English singer/songwriter, one of the best albums of the decade, which got my attention. If you played me this soul/rock/funk song cold, I’d guess it was from 1972, and I’d wonder why I’d never heard it before given how fucking great it is.

Mourn – Jumping Someone Else’s Train. This Barcelona trio released Mixtape, an EP of covers from indie-rock artists who recorded before these women were born, including tracks by Come, dEUS, Chris Bell (of Big Star), and this song by the Cure.

White Reaper – Hard Luck. The world’s greatest American band released their third album, You Deserve Love, a week ago, but I haven’t had time to get into it yet. I’ve liked the songs I’ve heard so far, which very much follow the same punk-influenced, upbeat alt-rock pattern of their first two albums.

LIFE – Niceties. Tough name in the Google era, but LIFE are Brighton punks who are appropriately angry at the world, and who just released their second album A Picture of Good Health, which has a lot of songs that push the boundary into outright abrasiveness (or push right through it). This and “Hollow Thing” are the standout tracks.

CHVRCHES – Death Stranding. The Scottish trio’s contribution to the soundtrack of the video game Death Stranding is better than anything off their last album.

MisterWives – the end. MisterWives, which is really a vehicle for charismatic lead singer Mandy Lee, are really a pop band who’ve been mislabeled an alternative act because they haven’t broken through yet. I thought “Machine” might do the trick a few years ago. Maybe this very catchy, poppy track will be their breakthrough.

Foals – Like Lightning. I think my ultimate verdict on Foals’ two albums this year, Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost, Parts 1 and 2, will be that they had enough material for one incredible album but spread the best tracks across two uneven LPs instead.

Great Grandpa – Bloom. My favorite track from the quintet’s new album Four of Arrows, “Bloom” has a little of all of the sounds Great Grandpa usually incorporates, but doesn’t skimp on the main hook or let the tempo flag (as on “Digger”).

Maisie Peters – Look At Me Now. By my count, the now 19-year-old Peters has released 17 songs across two EPs, including the new It’s Your Bed Babe, It’s Your Funeral, over the last three calendar years, although she’s received virtually no press or airplay in the U.S., which I think is a damn shame. This track, from the new EP, is a good example of her style, although it’s not quite as immediate as “Place We Were Made” or “Best I’ll Ever Sing.”

Tei Shi feat. Blood Orange – Even If It Hurts. I’m just so-so on the song as a whole, but good luck getting this chorus out of your head.

Floating Points – Anasickmodular. It was tough to pass up on “Bias,” also from Floating Points’ new album Crush, but I think this is a better track from neuroscientist Sam Shepherd’s latest album of electronica.

Longwave – If We Ever Live Forever. Longwave returned from a decade-long hiatus with last year’s “Stay With Me,” and they’re now back with a new album, with this as the title track. It’s more guitar-driven than last year’s song, but still has some of the bass/synth underpinnings that recall ’80s new wave and alternative.

Potty Mouth – Favorite Food. A battle with an intransigent record label forced Potty Mouth to go six years between its first and second albums, with the latter, SNAFU, dropping this past March, but they’re already back with another punk-pop single that just came out this morning.

Highly Suspect – Canals. The Grammy-nominated trio have just enough of a blues rock/metal foundation to keep pulling me in even when they seem to be actively trying to piss their listeners off. I love the guitar work in this one, which reminds me a lot of Royal Blood.

Alcest – Les jardins de minuit. This two-man French “blackgaze” (what a dumb term) metal project is back with Spiritual Instinct, a harder album than 2016’s superb Kodama and I think their heaviest since Écailles de Lune in 2010. There’s some blast-beat silliness on here, but the soundscapes Alcest creates through the rest of the track are immersive with brief moments of brooding heaviness.

Wilderun – O Resolution! This is some Blackwater Park-level shit, right down to the superfluous death growls, but I am totally here for it. I’m even getting a little Candlemass out of the backing vocals.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2019 in music, alternative, electronic music, Music, progressive metal

→ October 31, 2019
→ By keith

Klawchat 10/31/19.

My second book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, will be out on April 21, 2020. You can pre-order it now on HarperCollins’ site.

I ranked the top 25 board games of the 2010s for Paste this week, and also wrote about some recent programming games, where players issue instructions as if they were writing code, over at Ars Technica.

Keith Law: Conquering the worm. Klawchat.

Joe Torre: No question…I just wanted to say Thank You to Anthony Rendon for bailing us out in Game 6
Keith Law: The umps got it right, though. The rule is pretty clear, and while it’s seldom invoked, the call on the field was correct – and not reviewable.

DF: Is the Pirates offense being held back by bad drafting or bad development? Picking guys with good bat to ball skills in the swing change era feels like to right approach to me, but it isn’t translating to the power numbers other teams are generating.
Keith Law: I think they had a development approach that gave up power for contact, but changed that last year.

Lee D, LA: Keith — Dodgers better off spending $200M+ on Cole than Rendon, right?
Keith Law: Not sure I agree – or disagree. Both would help.

Andy: To anyone who is happy about Deadspin dying: Do you work a job where a new boss came in, made a ton of changes that made the job less fun, less personal, and less profitable? Did you and your co-workers loudly complain about it, but ultimately did nothing? Well the writers of Deadspin didn’t. They left. It’s possible (even likely) to not agree with all the sites/writers decisions, and mourn the loss of a vibrant community somewhat related to sports.
Keith Law: Very well said. I wouldn’t say I liked all their content, or all of their writers, even. That is far from saying I don’t support them, or rue the absence of a site that revels in anti-authoritarian viewpoints.

Brian: Is the 2nd half of 2020 a realistic time frame to start seeing Lynch, Singer & Kowar brought up to the Royals or is 2021 more likely?
Keith Law: I expect them all to see the majors in 2020 if healthy.

TomBruno23: What should I tell my Royals friends who apoplectic with rage at the hiring of The Leader of Men?
Keith Law: … except that I’m not sure I want one of the worst tactical managers of the last decade doing anything with those young pitchers.

Tribe called jest: Better long term offensive profile, Abrams or Royce Lewis?
Keith Law: Lewis. But Abrams has more chance to play short.

Andy: I hope there’s a chapter in your next book about how teams make bad decisions based on interviews, instead of looking at the track record. I mean seriously, who can look at Matheny’s time at the Cardinals and think, that’s the guy who should be managing a young team?
Keith Law: Or any team, really. This is *such* a retrograde decision, and I think it’ll hold the Royals back for a while.

Karma1 Astros 0: Any chance for George Kirby to be more than a 4-5 starter?
Keith Law: Yes.

Lone Star: Higher on Jung or Baty at the plate? I know Jung is a better bet at defensive value.
Keith Law: Baty. I don’t agree with that on Jung; both may end up at 1b.

Sam: How does Cole not get in the game last night? There were multiple high leverage spots they could have used him and saving him for the lead also made no sense. Is there anything to the argument you want him to start an inning clean and not bring him in middle inning with runners on?
Keith Law: This to me is the only thing Hinch did wrong last night. Cole should have been in the game sooner. But ultimately the failing was on the players; Harris is a great reliever and didn’t execute. (Also, Kendrick hit a pretty good pitch.) Harris gets that additional out and we’re not having this conversation.

Devon: True or False: the best part of the World Series was Trump and friends getting booed?
Keith Law: False. Although I think it’s perfectly fine that he was booed. The civility pearl-clutchers really lost their moral high ground when Trump mocked a disabled reporter.

Concerned Fan: What can MLB really do to the Astros about their pretty clear and brazen negative culture in their front office? Obviously they could dock them draft picks or apply some other punitive penalty, but how do you actually *fix* that?
Keith Law: I can’t agree with the premise – we don’t really know about their culture; I think you’re inferring something that might be true and it might not – but *IF* the culture is negative and pervasive, you target the people at the top who created and/or tolerated it.

Bruce: I’m a lover of non-fiction and have recently read a couple of books you reviewed including Bad Blood and Amity and Prosperity. Both were great – can you recommend any others that you enjoyed?
Keith Law: Just recently: Billion-Dollar Whale, The Queen, The Drunkard’s Walk, The Rise & Fall of the Dinosaurs, Big Chicken.

Bruce: Josh Hader for Corey Seager?
Keith Law: I would not trade Seager, a potential 7-WAR everyday player, for any reliever.

Braves: What do you think the Braves rotation looks like by mid-next year? Only three guys I feel (somewhat) confident in are Soroka, Fried, and Folty, but each have some red flags. Apparently Newcomb wants to try starting again, but where do you they the additional 2-3 starters they’ll need to get through the year come from?
Keith Law: I wouldn’t mind seeing them add an innings guy to back up that group, which could also include Touki or Wright or Wilson at some point.

Dr. Bob: I don’t believe in Karma so the Nats win was not caused by Houston’s Taubman fiasco. But I have to admit to a little schadenfreude over the whole thing.
Keith Law: Agreed. The team that traded for Osuna, then proclaimed a “zero tolerance” policy on domestic violence, then taunted a reporter who took a strong, principled stand on the matter, lost, and the pitcher who recorded the last out for the other team is a two-time TJ recipient who was criticized for leaving the team to go attend to the birth of his child. Sometimes the story just works out.

Greg P: Klaw – will the balls be switching back to 2018 levels next year? Does MLB have any idea what their balls are doing?
Keith Law: So, we’re just not doing phrasing any more?
Keith Law: I get the sense MLB wants to restore the baseball’s physical characteristics to pre-2019 levels.

Steve: Have you read Poz’s Houdini book yet? Picked it up this week and it’s riveting so far.
Keith Law: Yes, tore through it in about four days. Really enjoyed it – but I just happen to really like Joe’s writing, too.

The Pirate Parrot: Meadows, Glasnow, and Baz for Archer? Who says no? ???
Keith Law: No takebacks!

Epsthoyet: Do I take a chance on an import and use only cash to get Shogo Akiyama to fill a couple of holes, or do I once again deplete my farm system and trade for Merrifield? I may have a cheaper and younger Merrifield on my team already in Hoerner though, no?
Keith Law: No idea if Merrifield is even available, but I wouldn’t trade multiple prospects for him. He’s helpful, but not the solution.

Nelson: Strasburg can do better than 4/100 on the market this winter, right?
Keith Law: Yes.

JR: Cole going to be well rested for opening day for his new team. Kidding aside, do you think Cole told the coaches he didn’t have it, or did AJ mess this up?
Keith Law: I did wonder if Cole said he couldn’t go – or even declined to pitch – and Hinch is covering for his guy. No idea, though.

Frank: We know the Giants are going to give bumgardner a QO. If you are them would you give one to Will Smith as well?
Keith Law: Probably not, but Smith is pretty good as relievers go. Just not sure he’s worth the QO salary.

Pat D: How much did this World Series increase the likelihood of robo-umps in the near future?
Keith Law: I hope by 1000%.

Mike: Will JD opt out?
Keith Law: I’m assuming yes.

Eric: Who’s reading the audio version of the new book?
Keith Law: Don’t know yet. I think we decided that in January last time around?

jack: I want to get into reading novels… any first suggestions?
Keith Law: Depends on what you like. I really got into reading in high school with science fiction, especially Asimov’s Foundation novels. They just spoke to me, but they might not speak to you. I imagine there’s a whole generation of readers out there who fell in love with books through Harry Potter.

Mike: With Brandon Marsh having a great fall league, where is he looking to be at in the Top 100?
Keith Law: Fall league performances don’t affect my rankings. He was already on the top 100, FYI.

XyXyX: What do you do this offseason if you are Texas? Houston is still a monster, they’ve got some interesting young players but they all have big questions, and the farm system is just so-so. Do you spend big this offseason with a new park opening up and try to build on a surprising 2019, or do you punt 2020 and look to contend again in 2021 or beyond?
Keith Law: Can’t imagine them punting, but I don’t think they can spend their way to contention in one offseason. Would imagine they’d make one big splash, to try to be more competitive in 2020, while also trying to build.

Mike: Weird question: need a good iPhone case — suggestions??
Keith Law: Not weird at all. I have an inexpensive case from tech21 that has protected my phone many times, plus a ZAGG screen protector (lifetime warranty, and I have absolutely used that feature).

HH: For those of us who will miss baseball until February: the Australian Baseball League is a nascent league with their season during US winters. They stream most games on youtube and it’s awesome to watch a league grow up before your eyes. Highly recommended (and I’m just a fan.)
Keith Law: Very true. Some MLB teams have sent prospects or fringe guys there to get them more playing time.

Raul: Obvs Cole and Stras make sense for the Padres. But so do Wheeler and Odorizzi. Do those types of arms push San Diego into WC contention if signed?
Keith Law: It’s all “yes if” for them. If Tatis Jr plays a full season, if Urias hits like he did throughout the minors, if one of their existing young starters takes a step forward, then they’re a player or two away from 90+ wins.

Zach D: So this is an overly simplified question, but which situation is better for manager – Mets or Phillies. (Roster, payroll, farm, ownership. Not media or family factors)
Keith Law: Philly.

Jon Coleman: You like the Bloom hire for Boston? How extreme do you think the makeover will be?
Keith Law: Love the hire. He’ll be great. I expect small changes at first, and never a big makeover.

Wamco: I cannot understand why people seem to hate Bryce Harper so much….why do you think that is?
Keith Law: I think because he was so good so young, and was kind of unapologetic about it. And now because he makes so much money. Those are not good reasons.

HeHateMeTeam: Do you ever get irritated about how intense people react to your opinions and preferences? Whether it’s your disinterest in The Sopranos or your preference for toolsy, high-ceiling prospects affecting minor differences in your rankings, people seem to go nuts over subjective topics.
Keith Law: Irritated is probably not the right word; flummoxed, maybe. Note that this almost never happens in person, though – it’s only online.

Paul: The Giants’ managerial search is “focused on” Joe Espada, Gabe Kapler, and Pedro Grifol (source: https://www.nbcsports.com/bayarea/giants/sources-giants-down-three-can…). Who gets your vote?
Keith Law: Big Kapler fan. He was the scapegoat in Philly, and definitely not the reason the team didn’t get to the playoffs this year. Has strong developmental experience too, which is a good fit for the Giants going forward.

E: Almost through Why We Sleep based on your recommendation. Love it. I feel like it should be required reading for every high school student in the country.
Keith Law: And every school administrator who thinks a 7:25 am start time for high school is appropriate.

Carl c: You hinted for weeks that you were reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being, but I never saw the review
Keith Law: Right here.

Bob Pollard: Unanswerable question perhaps, but assuming the Happy Fun Ball goes away, how do we even evaluate players like Soler, Schwarber, Garver, etc., moving forward? Are breakouts legit or do we have to look at them with a blanket skepticism?
Keith Law: I feel better about guys who we know had power, like the first two, than the guys who could hit and suddenly developed power, like Garver.

Raul: Half of Padres land is upset that Tingler, an unknown, was brought in instead of a “proven” guy like Washington, and that Preller is crazy considering ownership is seemingly getting impatient. My thought process is if you’re gonna lose your job, may as well go with the guy who best fits what you’re looking for instead of a name manager, right?
Keith Law: I’m a big Tingler fan, both from having met him and from his resume with Texas. Fans who don’t like a managerial hire who’s “unknown” are making a simple mistake: Just because YOU don’t know who the guy is doesn’t mean the industry doesn’t know who he is.

Jesse B : Are the WhiteSox close enough that if they grabbed Gerritt Cole they could make a playoff run this year, or are they a year away from making moves like that, ala the Cubs?
Keith Law: I think Cole or Strasburg to the White Sox would make them fringe contenders.

Brint: When do you think Spencer Howard joins the Phillies’ rotation full-time?
Keith Law: If healthy, by end of summer.

Jay: Do you think Kingery’s strong year will lead to regular playing time for a 20/20 in 2020? Pun most definitely intended
Keith Law: He has the speed for the SBs but I’ve had a hard time seeing how he’d get to 20 HR in the majors (Happy Fun Ball aside).

Brett: If you were running a front office, what effect (if any) would MLB’s ball shenanigans have on your roster/FA planning this year.
Keith Law: I’d just be wary of assuming any HR spikes from 2019 were real, and ask my R&D guys to make sure any projections accounted for this uncertainty. Also, I’d consider looking at pitchers who may have been inordinately hurt by the altered baseball – slider guys whose sliders backed up, for example.

Alex: I enjoyed your paste article on board games! Was wondering if you saw the list on greatest novels of the 2010s. What did you think? The Goldfinch was a bit high for me
Keith Law: Looking now, that’s a great list. Lincoln in the Bardo would be a contender for #1. Swamplandia! was just not that good. Station Eleven is amazing. I’ve read 7 of the top 10, then I taper off. The Night Circus is also too high. Swing Time and Americanah seem like they’re placed where they are because of who wrote them, not because they were that good. Biggest omission for me is In the Light of What We Know. I’d also throw All the Light We Cannot See and An Unkindness of Ghosts on there too.

Matt: But what happens if the owner is the one that created/tolerated that behavior? You can’t just Donald Sterling every owner that’s a prick.
Keith Law: No, but there are more remedies than just firing someone/forcing an owner to sell.

Bill: Odds we see Mackenzie Gore in the rotation midseason next year?
Keith Law: Nonzero, below 50/50.

Eric: Any consolation to be found for Braves fans today? They were a better team than the Nats all year, only to blow it vs. a pretty beatable Cardinals team in the NLDS. Every NLE team has won a pennant since they last won a WS game, and thrice now they’ve seen a team they finished ahead of in the standings go on to win the series as a wild card.
Keith Law: Nats were much better built for October, though: strong front 3 in the rotation, more patient heart of the lineup. Could see Atlanta getting there if Soroka stays healthy, Fried keeps growing as a pitcher, and one of Touki/Wright/Anderson/Wilson hits their ceiling.

Matt: In your video chat the other day, you mentioned that Carlson probably won’t see MLB in 2020 because he is only 20 yo and finished year in AA. In fact, he’s 21 and finished season in AAA. Not trying to “well actually” you, just curious if that changes his ETA for you at all?
Keith Law: He played at 20 all season; he only turned 21 last week. I use seasonal ages when discussing players. And he played all of 18 games in AAA, which, while I should have acknowledged it, is a drop in the ocean.

Andy: Despite the FO saying otherwise, seems like Cleveland will listen on Lindor. At this point do you agree with some patch that splits the middle, trying to keep competitive? Or should they just go full-on rebuild?
Keith Law: They should explore trading him now, while his value might be at a peak. Could sustain the franchise for multiple years if you make the right trade.

Buctober: Obviously accounting for your personal connection to with, curious what about Tony LaCava’s skill set would or wouldn’t make him a good GM for the Pirates now.
Keith Law: It’s a bit glib, but the two things that most sunk the Pirates recently were poor returns on trades and position players failing to develop as expected. Lacava certainly has strength in the latter, given his long player development experience. The former could be scouting, analytics, decision-making structure, or some of all of those things; I would say Tony is strongest in the third, also has long experience with the first, and showed real affinity for using analytical tools back when I worked with him in the mid-2000s.
Keith Law: I’m always wary of over-endorsing people I know well, and he was a mentor to me in Toronto, so I absolutely have a conflict when discussing him … but the Pirates would be terribly remiss if they didn’t at least interview him for the position.

Andrew: Any names to look out for in the upcoming Rule 5 draft?
Keith Law: Those rosters won’t be set for three more weeks.

Matt: What is the players union going to do about younger players not getting paid? Aaron Judge can be the face of MLB for 5 years and by the time he faces FA, no team offers him a long term deal because of his age.
Keith Law: Raising the minimum salary or adding salary arbitration for 2+ players (not just super-2 guys) would help.

Dax: Could Mike Montgomery put in a solid year as a starter in KC next year? Probably helps that he’ll no longer bounce back and forth between being a starter and a reliever.
Keith Law: I still think he’s best cast as a long relief guy.

Sean: Regarding your new book, based on the title alone I’m expecting some good analysis of, and references to the psychology of decision making. Can you shed any light on how in depth that gets? Can’t wait to read it.
Keith Law: That’s the idea, focusing on cognitive biases and illusions rather than, say, the neuroscience of decision-making. I rely a lot on popular and scholarly literature on these biases, describing how they were first identified and explaining them in lay terms. I love Thinking Fast and Slow, but that’s not a book for everybody.

JP: it appears the Red Sox did not interview a minority candidate before hiring their new Chief Baseball Officer. will MLB do anything about that?
Keith Law: There is no firm rule like the NFL has. Did they interview anyone else? I never heard another name, just that they interviewed Bloom and hired him.

Michael: Do you have any links to pieces or stories criticizing Hudson for missing game 1 of the NLCS? All I have read/heard is responses to criticism but I haven’t read any actual stories of criticism.
Keith Law: I linked to one two Saturdays ago here on the dish.

Michael: New place for your SD trip, Cafe Calabria (I think). Only certified Napolese pizza maker in SD and it rivals Bianco. In North Park, just tried it Friday
Keith Law: Much appreciated, thanks.

Ryan: I’m starting to become optimistic that Ivan Herrera will actually become a major league catcher. Do I need to slow down a bit or is he legit?
Keith Law: He’s interesting. And they sure do know how to make catchers over there.

Jordan: What did you think of Cole saying he’s not an employee of the Astros anymore and wearing a Boras Corp hat during his press conference? S
Keith Law: ?

Todd: Peter Luger’s Brooklyn got slammed in a new review. What say you?
Keith Law: I’ve never been, and since I don’t eat beef, I never will. Also, who the fuck doesn’t accept credit cards in 2019?

Zach D: Re: Astros Karma. Don’t forget blocking access for a Detroit reporter trying to do their job.
Keith Law: That never seemed to get any public resolution, but I hope MLB (and the BBWAA) don’t just drop that.

Johnny: Recent J2 classes have been producing super stars like Tatis, Soto, Vlad and more on the way like Wander, Robert, Kristian, Julio…etc. Has scouting gotten much better in recent years where top rated J2 players are converting into major leaguers? How early do you peg top prospects status on players from these classes?
Keith Law: Players in general are becoming highly productive big leaguers younger than in the past … but it’s just the guys at the top of the J2 classes, right? It’s not throughout those groups, but the stars who emerge faster. And I do think some of that is just better training, nutrition, etc. from trainers in the major countries that produce players.
Keith Law: I saw Erick Pena (KC) earlier this month. He’s 16, and while he has the baby face you’d expect, that is some kind of build on a kid that young.

Harry: When does the KLT100 drop this year?
Keith Law: I assume around February 1st. Not entirely my call.

Matt: At what point does the GOP stop attacking the impeachment process and start addressing the facts? Never?
Keith Law: Never.

Paul: Final half season of Bojack Horseman – Yay or neigh…
Keith Law: Never seen it. I did enjoy S1 of Big Mouth – just waiting for my girlfriend to catch up before we start S2 (and so I can discuss my favorite line with her).

Michael: Why don’t the Deadspin folk just start their own website and own it? Is it that expensive to do that it would be cost prohibitive?
Keith Law: It requires capital that most people don’t just have lying around.

Grover: Did it feel like people were really trying to will the “Bryce Harper must be so bitter/mad/jealous right now!” thing into existence the last week or two? Isn’t it possible he’s genuinely happy for his former teammates, and also fine with the decision he made last winter?
Keith Law: I’m sorry, that take is way too mature and tepid for online discourse. Please put your traybake back in the oven for another ten minutes and try again.

John Zirinsky: Keith: Would you give 8 years/$300 million to Cole if you felt like he was the one missing piece, or do you think spreading that around is a better play?
Keith Law: I would. He’s a difference-maker.

Jon: Did you get to see Forrest Whitley at all in the AFL? Any thoughts on what realistic expectations should be for him next season and beyond?
Keith Law: Yes, I led my AFL post with him. Stuff was all still there.

Ridley: Thank you for not sticking to baseball. FWIW, I’m excited about the new book and of the opinion that having all of these other interests makes all your writing, even the strictly baseball stuff, more interesting.
Keith Law: You’re welcome. I do hope this book opens more possibilities for me to write about non-sportsball topics (well, aside from board games).

Sedona: i would love to hear you on a fantasy baseball podcast!! Some of your industry colleagues participate. Will you consider it?
Keith Law: I don’t play fantasy sports and haven’t for almost 20 years now, so, no, probably not.

John: Odorizzi QO seems like a no brainer. Will anyone sign him away from the Twins if he gets it?
Keith Law: Yes. They absolutely should offer.

Bruce: Yasmani Grandal was fantastic for the Brewers last year but will be 31 years old next season. Is he worth a 3-4 year contract at that age and will he get one?
Keith Law: The gap between the industry view of him and the online community’s (stat-based, especially framing-based) view of him is wider than it is on any other free agent, I think.

Al: I have heard of why we sleep. From what author however, there are several similar titles. Thanks
Keith Law: Matthew Walker. Reviewed it here.

Arnold: Did this World Series validate the importance of starting pitching over what seemed to be a growing preference for strong bullpens and openers?
Keith Law: It helped the cause of the starter, rather than validating it or disproving the alternative.

Zach D: School start time. Isn’t the rationale that school has to start somewhat around the time that adults start work? If school doesn’t start until 9am, and I have to leave my house at 7am for work. Then I need 2hrs of day care each morning to get my kid on the bus?
Keith Law: We’re talking about teenagers, whose circadian rhythms run later than those of younger kids or adults.

Anchen: How does this year’s free agent crop compare to last year? Machado/Harper/Corbin vs Strasburg/Cole/Rendon. Probably would go with last year mostly because of age of the two main stars but this year looks pretty strong as well.
Keith Law: I think it’s a little deeper past the top three this year than last.

Chris P: ESPN cut off my access to Insider earlier this year and I can’t reactivate it because I’m in Canada. It’s really going to suck the most in February when I can’t read your prospect lists, even though I want to give the company money just for that. I don’t have a question, just hoping you can let your bosses know that they are missing out on international reader’s money.
Keith Law: They’re aware, but I don’t think there’s a solution in sight. I’m sorry.

Brent: What do you like about Kapler? Phillies fans were almost all happy to see him gone. Over the top positivity, not holding players accountable, horrendous game day decisions. Girardi isn’t an upgrade? Find that hard to believe.
Keith Law: Wait, positivity is bad? Only in Philly.
Keith Law: The not holding players accountable thing is nonsense, BTW. That feels like a take distilled through the dirty filter of sports radio.

Frank: Is Marco Luciano a GUY or to early to tell?
Keith Law: He’s a prospect. Too early to juice him like, say, Wander at that age.

Harry: Alex Rodriguez made a comment do Juan Soto post game “are you sure youre 21, can I see some ID, hahaha” A joke, but one in poor taste IMO. Any pushback?
Keith Law: I’m surprised that A-Rod didn’t ask Martinez about how valuable it was to have a lead that was an even number.

Pat D: On a scale of 1-14, how shocked are you that Republicans are still whining about the “process” after today’s vote? Gotta be a negative number, right?
Keith Law: Yep.
Keith Law: Y I K E S.

Erik: movies on your docket to see before “awards season” I always appreciate your reviews
Keith Law: Short term: The Lighthouse, Parasite (I couldn’t swing it this week), Dolemite is My Name, Frankie, The Irishman, The Laundromat (I hear it’s not good, I’ll probably still watch it). More coming the next few weeks though.

Ryan: Hi Keith, you seem to be fairly high on Kapler as a managerial candidate. I am curious if his handling of abuse allegations in the minor leagues from 2015 would concern you at all if you were a member of an organization considering hiring him. Im sure you probably know more about that situation than I do, so wanted to get your thoughts on Kapler’s past and how I should view him from someone whose opinions I respect greatly and generally align with my values.
Keith Law: The public story on that is simply false. He didn’t cover anything up; from talking to multiple people involved, including Kapler, it sounds like he handled it appropriately, and the subsequent accusations, which come from an employee the Dodgers fired, are not accurate. If this were a story, I’d write it, and certainly wouldn’t support a candidate who’d mishandled such cases. I believe I have the facts, however, and that just isn’t what happened.

Chris: So, I pre-ordered the Kindle version of the book. Just curious how much of a difference the paper vs digital purchase makes to the author. Thanks!
Keith Law: Virtually none, but I appreciate you asking.

HH: Feel free to punt here, but I’ve been very curious how many copies of Smart Baseball sold and there doesn’t seem to be a good way to find out. (This is just idle curiosity, since you’re the only author I know, and I have zero sense of the scale of the book market.)
Keith Law: It would actually take me a little while to get a precise number. I do get royalty statements, which do tell me that number, but it’s not easy to get to.
Keith Law: I have to take a call right now, so I have to wrap this up. Thank you all for reading, and for all your interest in my upcoming book. My rankings of the top 50 free agents should be up for ESPN+ subscribers on Tuesday, and I’ll chat at some point shortly after that. Enjoy your weekends!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: klawchat

→ October 26, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 10/25/19.

My one ESPN+ piece this week covered the possibility of realigning the minor leagues, possibly contracting several dozen teams or demoting them to nonaffiliated leagues. I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Era: The Medieval Age, the new game from Pandemic designer Matt Leacock. It’s a roll-and-build game that reimplements his own Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age, but gives it better components and a spatial aspect absent from the first game.

My second book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, will be out on April 21st, 2020, from HarperCollins. You can pre-order it now through that link (and please do so!).

You should also subscribe to my my free email newsletter, because I said so.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Shane Mitchell writes for Bitter Southerner about the long transatlantic history of okra, a global plant that came to the west a few hundred years ago from Africa and that is now essential to the cuisines of the American south. I love it dipped in cornmeal and fried, or in a deep brown gumbo.
Why do people hate vegans? They’re a convenient punchline, says George Reynolds of the Guardian, but their dietary choices force us to confront harsh environmental and medical realities about the meat-centric diet of the west while also running up against a longstanding association of meat with prosperity.
Psychologist Hans Eysenck’s work has been highly influential but also criticized on multiple grounds, including his dubious support of work that claimed there was a link between race and IQ. Cosmos details a bigger scandal, that Eysenck and a longtime collaborator may have faked data and conclusions, including studies that claimed your personality could influence your chances of getting cancer or heart disease. If all 61 papers co-authored by Eysenck are eventually retracted, he would become, per Retraction Watch, the most retracted psychology researcher of all time.
Jerome Groopman writes in the New Yorker about brain science and successful ways to break bad habits. I don’t think these are panaceas, but they’re more likely to work than negative reinforcement, self-shaming, or just trying to beat bad habits with willpower. Excuse me, I feel like I need some Oreos after typing that…
Since Prince’s death in 2016, his estate has been releasing some of the trove of unreleased material the singer and multi-instrumentalist left behind – even though he was very protective of the same music while he was alive. Paste‘s Richard Aaron looks at the ethics and implications of listening to this music, some of which has been quite good, while some was clearly never intended to see the light of day.
In my chat this week, a reader sent a link arguing that wealth taxes failed in Europe. This is at least misleading, if not outright false, according to this editorial from the Washington Post, which highlights how much easier it is in Europe to evade taxes, how loophole-ridden their wealth taxes were, and how competition across the borderless EU made it easier to just pick up and move.
Philly magazine looks at the rise of food co-ops in the city, asking how well they actually serve the communities in which they’re located.
Amazon has spent nearly $1.5 million to defeat a socialist incumbent on Seattle’s city council. Kshama Sawant led the push for Seattle’s higher minimum wage, but lost (in the end) a battle to tax large corporations on a per-employee basis and use the funds to serve the city’s large population of homeless people.
Gun sellers at a show on the Iowa State fairgrounds used Nazi symbols and racist/anti-Semitic imagery to sell guns and explosives. The state fair’s CEO passed the buck, saying that they don’t control what independent companies that rent the space do once they use it.
Author Alex Berenson name-searched himself and showed up in my replies to harass one of my longtime readers on Twitter this week. I wasn’t familiar with him or his work before, but it appears that the scientific consensus on his book about cannabis is that it’s alarmist and highly misleading.
A new California law designed to curb abuses in the so-called ‘gig economy’ appears to hurt freelance writers more than anyone else because it would set such a low bar for the number of pieces someone could write before they’d have to be considered a full-time employee.
“Prime editing” could correct up to 89% of disease-causing errors in our genes, although the research and techniques are in their infancy. As someone with an inborn error of metabolism, I’m intrigued, but can we ‘fix’ one gene (two, in my case, since it’s autosomal recessive) without causing any other unforeseen consequences?
California’s state medical board has now targeted a second doctor accused of writing bogus vaccine exemptions for schoolchildren, asking that her license be suspended or revoked entirely.
Residents of Newtok, Alaska, are moving – yes, all of them – to a new village as climate change has eroded much of the land in Newtok and threatens to make the entire town unlivable.
Antibiotic resistance – and evolution – in real time: It took just three weeks for a ‘superbug’ to evolve resistance to the drug of last resort.
Board game news: Cities Skylines, the tabletop version of the popular citybuilder video game from Paradox Interactive, is now out from Thames & Kosmos. It’s a cooperative game, whereas I believe the video game version is competitive. I saw an early prototype last year, but at that point the game wasn’t co-op yet.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: climate change, drugs, evolution, frauds, links, longreads, prince, southern cooking, stick to baseball, vaccines, vegan

→ October 24, 2019
→ By keith

Klawchat 10/24/19.

Starting at 1 pm ET. My latest board game review for Paste covers Matt Leacock’s Era: The Medieval Age, an update of his Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age that lets you build your own little fiefdom with 3D plastic buildings on a peg board.

Keith Law: Call them up, tell them about the new trends. Klawchat.

addoeh: MLB’s showcase event is going on. But instead of that, we have Brandon Taubman showing the world he is a complete ass, the Astros seeing nothing wrong with what he said, and Rob Drake itching to start a ‘cival’ war. I can’t blame Manfred is he’s shouting “what the f*ck” at no one in particular today.
Keith Law: Indeed. From a straight publicity perspective, the start of MLB’s showcase event – which features one of the best teams ever against a franchise from a city that hasn’t won a World Series since 1925 – has been a nightmare. And I won’t blame Manfred if he shouts that phrase at the Astros, who bungled the Taubman thing from the get-go. Put him on administrative leave, say you’re investigating, issue a blanket apology, and the issue withers.

Bill: Enjoyed your AFL writeup and was interested in more about Josh Lowe. Will he slow down given his size? What type of slash would you expect from him in his prime?
Keith Law: We all slow down eventually but I don’t think that’s a near-term concern for Lowe. I could see middling average, good OBP with power. Those guys were usually .250/.340/.500+ before the Happy Fun Ball.

Greg: Is Girardi a good hire for the Phils? Are am I just more relieved/thrilled they didn’t hire Dusty “Basecloggers are bad” Baker?
Keith Law: I think Girardi fits the profile of a guy who’ll be much better the second time around (technically third, but year one hardly counts). Baker would have been a fine choice for that club. The hazard they avoided was Showalter, who I think would have been a very poor fit for their current roster.

Kris: Raimfer Salinas project as an everyday player?
Keith Law: Too far away & inexperienced to put that specific a grade on him.

Rob in WI: Like you, I think it’s better if a new manager has had previous managing experience. But is the trend of someone starting in a Front Office and working into the dugout (The Counsell Method?) possibly an effective one if it streamlines the communication of the Front Office and the Clubhouse? (I have other concerns about David Ross, but I guess that’s aspect is a plus?). Thanks for the chats, Keith.
Keith Law: I think we have one successful example, Counsell, who still took a few years to develop into a competent tactical manager, and that’s nowhere near enough. And Ross wasn’t even a full-time front office person.

Greg: I sort of can’t believe it’s now an open question whether the Mets or Phillies manager position was the more attractive. I know he’s not a Wilpon and he helped land Harper, but do you see Middleton as overstepping in the managerial choices? The retread manager seems like a classic overcorrection. Maybe the Kapler hire didn’t work out, but I don’t think the overall philosophy was wrong. Just the personnel.
Keith Law: IMO, the Kapler hire worked out fine. He was fired because the pitching staff fell apart, and I don’t see how that’s his fault.

Moe Mentum: Francis Ford Coppola doesn’t like Marvel movies. Why is this a news story?
Keith Law: I really have no idea. I don’t even really care for Marvel movies, but this is definitely a “sssh … let people enjoy things” moment.

Ron: Kiriloff will be in the majors next July, next September or not at all?
Keith Law: Second half. Depends on his health and where the Twins are.

Regression to the mean: Good to see you, Gerrit, it’s been quite a while.
Keith Law: It’s hard to say from watching on TV but I thought he was overthrowing (overrotating his hips?) and it cost him command.

Ridley: I imagine you’re going to get a lot of questions like this, but that’s never stopped me before: Has there been a darker day for American democracy than yesterday?

The President’s attorney argued that the President not only can’t be prosecuted while in office; he can’t even be investigated.

Meanwhile, a gaggle of Republicans broke into a secure area brandishing cell phones, knowingly breaking the law, in an attempt to invalidate the impeachment process. This despite the fact that many of them were actually entitled to be in the hearings and that the doors were closed to non-committee members as per a rule created by John Boehner.

I’m hesitant to say we’ve reached the bottom, but I’m pretty sure we can see it from here.
Keith Law: The failure of the rest of the Republican party to condemn that little circus – led by perhaps their most embarrassing member – is the most disturbing part. Nothing matters as long as you cling to power.

Bmosc: Gut instinct on where Cole is 2020? If they strike out on him, are there any contingency plans for the Yanks that you think close the gap b/w them/Houston? Also, just announced Hicks is out 8-10 months b/c of TJ surgery. Gardner/Maybin back now or other attractcive options?
Keith Law: Still think Cole has at least as good a chance to end up with the Angels as the Yanks. Quite a few outfield options available to them if they fear Gardner’s age; would expect them to go outside for that.

Brian: Did Hinch panic a little in the 7th? The intentional walk to Soto made no sense given the situation.
Keith Law: I didn’t like the IBB but I understood him trying to get to a platoon advantage there while avoiding a high-OBP, high-damage hitter against whom they didn’t seem to have a great attack plan. He wasn’t the winning run, which to me makes it a tolerable move rather than a dangerously wrong one.

JP: better trade chip for the Mets: JD Davis or Dom Smith? Seems right now neither will have a spot in the field with Alonso taking 1B and Davis not a great glove anywhere.
Keith Law: Smith. Younger, better fielder, year seems less fluky to me.

Juwan: How much has Soto exceeded your expectations? I know that you liked him as a prospect but had him slightly below the elite tier of Tatis, Vlad jr and Acuna. Are you surprised at his ascension?
Keith Law: I am quite surprised. Way better plate discipline than he ever showed in A-ball.

T: Are you worried about the future of the sport? Between the continuing DV problems, and the more transparent-than-ever anti-labor attitudes prevailing (in terms of service time manipulation and valuing ownership profits over on-field product), and now this whole juiced/not-juiced ball…it seems like the entire sport is at a bit of a crossroads, no?
Keith Law: My worries are much more about the on-field product’s appeal and the potential that we’re pricing future fans out of the ballpark than serious but transient issues like DV (which has always been there, it just feels bigger now because these incidents make news & fans are vocal about them).

Gloria: Is there any hope for curing the misinformed Drake’s of the world? It’s one thing to not support impeachment, but a whole other to falsely believe that the GOP isn’t part of the process, it’s all being done secretly, etc. Or is there no hope b/c Fox News and GOP members themselves spew these lies?
Keith Law: From an MLB perspective, he probably needs to be given a very long time off, and required to refrain from posting on any social media.

CP: Any reason for hope of a championship in the next 20 years if you’re a Pirates fan?
Keith Law: Sure. Franchises have turned around in less than half of that time.

Timmins: What’s a realistic AAV we can expect for Cole? Will someone toss him an 8/240 type deal?
Keith Law: I think he’s getting that and maybe more. Maybe more like 6-7 years but a higher AAV. Would be shocked if he comes in under $30MM/year.

Mike: Keith, the Mets have Rosario at SS & 2 of their top prospects are SS also. Gimenez is hopefully a year or 2 away & Mauricio right behind him. Would it be prudent (insert Met joke here) to see if one of them can play OF, where there is a lack of prospects in the system? Of course it’s the Mets, so one might get moved for an overpaid reliever.
Keith Law: Gimenez just isn’t the same caliber of prospect as the other two; he’s there but not really relevant. Rosario’s second-half improvement is enough to leave him at short for the next year, at the least, and Mauricio is 2-3 years away, so you have plenty of time to let that resolve itself. If that makes Gimenez a trade piece, great. They’re already in for a few pennies on 2020.

Eric: Juan Soto should be the face of baseball for the next decade, but some dope pitcher is going to throw at him for having fun, then he’ll be ripped by “old-school” dopes and they’ll ruin our fun.
Keith Law: You know what’s weird? George Springer didn’t run that game 1 double out, and I didn’t hear broadcasters or read mainstream writers complaining about how he was ruining the sport. What’s the difference between him and Ronald Acuña or Manny Machado? No puedo identificarlo.

Rob : Any thoughts on the Padres managerial hire. At least he does have *some* managerial experience?
Keith Law: Great hire. Tingler has real managing experience and developmental experience, and that’s what the Padres need in the next two years. Green is like Kapler to me – the fans blamed him when the reality is the team wasn’t good enough to contend this year, and the manager wasn’t the reason they didn’t. Tingler seems like a great choice to shepherd the development of Tatis Jr., Urias, Gore, Patiño, etc. as the team starts to move more towards contention this year.

Tim: Is there any hope left for Corey Ray?
Keith Law: Not much, but nonzero chance.

Nate: What’s the ceiling for Eric pardinho?
Keith Law: Mid-rotation if everything works out. High floor, not high ceiling.

TP: How does eliminating 42 minor league teams help to grow the popularity of the game? I get some of the facility and travel arguments, but it seems an easier fix would be realignment and MLB teams paying for upgrades. Oh wait, maybe $ is the real issue here…
Keith Law: Nobody’s going to see most of those 42 franchises. I posted some of their attendance figures; they’re not attracting fans as it is.

Kyle: Klaw, The Mets drafted Jake Mangum last year in the 4th round. Can he be anything more than a 4th OF? The system is lacking in OF depth.
Keith Law: That’s his best case scenario for me.

Vander: Quick thoughts about Jose Israel Garcia? Has he become a guy?
Keith Law: Absolutely a GUY. Maybe their top healthy prospect right now.

hotshots1812: I know you generally prefer guys with past managing experience at some level but how do you feel about someone like Tim Bogar who has been a big league coach for ~10 years? Is an extended time as a big league coach roughly equivalent to managing a few years in the minors?
Keith Law: I don’t think I have enough data to answer that.

Jesse B : Assuming good health, is Adrian Morejon the Padres #3 behind Gore and Paddack in 2021?
Keith Law: If they try to make any kind of trade for an impact player this winter, I bet Morejon is in it.

T: Better baseball name right now than Jayce Tingler?
Keith Law: I saw Jax Biggers in the AFL.

AZ: Best 2019 movie you’ve seen so far?
Keith Law: I’ve only seen four, I think, but the good stuff is hitting theaters here now. Hoping to see Parasite Tuesday.

E: Prior to the W.S. the odds were around +195 for WAS and -220 for HOU. While Houston is the better overall team, who would bet on 2:1 odds in a 7 game series when the other team is a formidable opponent?
Keith Law: Those odds seem totally irrational to me. I’m listening to Leonard Mlodinow’s The Drunkard’s Walk right now, and he walks through this exact scenario; I think he’d agree 2:1 series odds would be bonkers.

TomBruno23: Is there a player of your youth that you thought was really good but when you look back on his sabermetrics now you think, “Well, maybe he wasn’t so good after all.”? For me it’s Vince Coleman.
Keith Law: Andre Dawson.

Maximus: Who is getting the job in Boston? I’m a Romero backer.
Keith Law: Every name I’ve heard is someone from outside the org. Jed Hoyer’s name comes up a lot. I don’t know if that’s real or just because he used to work there.

Robbie: Having been able to see prospects get their first taste of pro-ball (albeit a clear SSS), which teams would you say at this point had your top 3 ranked draft classes from this past year?
Keith Law: I would not change any answers based on such tiny samples.

Stephen: If you were Andrew Friedman, what would you do this offseason? Should the Dodgers just run it back, or actually try and chase the Yankees and Angles on Cole or go after Rendon?
Keith Law: Go for it. Team is built to win now. And accept that Kershaw isn’t what he was, which means signing Cole or Strasburg or Ryu, or trading for someone comparable.
Keith Law: I hear they want Rendon, who is a superstar, but they have a surfeit of infielders and I think they need more help in the rotation.

John: RE: Taubman… looks like the Astros might have karma against them this series.
Keith Law: I don’t believe that for a second. The Nats have just outplayed them.

Guest: If you’re Rendon, do you re-sign with the Nationals, knowing they have Turner, Soto, Robles, and the rotation, or do you maybe go somewhere else to either be the man or put a team over the hump? As a Nats fan I know what the easy answer is for me.
Keith Law: He’s taking the most money. I guarantee that, and why not? I would do the same.

Dean M: Hey Keith. I consider you as my top Scouting Dept and you helped me dominate for years. Just wanted to say thank you and keep up the great work!! Just one question… do you think Chris Sale’s best days are behind him? Or is this season just a one yr injury write off? Thanks again!!!
Keith Law: I don’t know – if he had just had elbow surgery, I’d be more comfortable saying he’ll bounce back in 2021, but now I really can’t guess.

Thomas: When it comes to positional prospects, the Tigers have nothing notable in their farm system (and nothing close to ML ready). The rebuild is probably behind schedule as a result. Should they be looking to trade someone like Faedo or Burrows for a hitting prospect or two? Or hang on for a couple years and see if the next two drafts help fill out the system.
Keith Law: Neither of those guys has enough value to get the hitting prospect you need.

Gloria: Fact or fiction? If the Pirates stayed the course and kept all of their guys (and got better coaches) they would have been contenders this year?
Keith Law: That’s two huge ifs together.

kglue: Speaking of Soto and plate discipline more generally, is there an asymmetric payoff coming into play? e.g. if you strikeout a lot but also hit a ton in the minors, you’ll get promoted with the thought, “they’ll get better at pitch recognition or plate discipline”, but that if you walk a ton and don’t show hit or power tools, you probably don’t get promoted. Kind of the old adage that no one walks their way off the island.
Keith Law: That was probably true 20 years ago, but far less so today.

Benji: Without much change in performance next year, what are your thoughts in general on George Springer as a FA next winter? Do you think his skill set will age well into his early-mid thirties or is any team likely going to regret committing to him long term?
Keith Law: Definitely the kind of player I’d project to hold value on both sides of the ball into his 30s.

Ted: What type of prospect is the pitcher from Korea who the Red Sox just signed?
Keith Law: I haven’t seen anything about them signing a Korean pitcher, sorry.

Snowy: What type of deal do you think Bumgarner would get on the open market? Local consensus seems to be ownership is opening the checkbook and re-signing him no matter what
Keith Law: If they want to do that, great, but they should let the market set his price. I wonder if demand will be tepid given how he looked this year.

Randy: What are your thoughts on K Bryant’s grievance? Of course Cubs manipulated time like every other team, but in 2015, both Mike Olt and Tommy LaStella got hurt and went on DL paving way for KB. Do you really think there is any way he is FA after 2020?
Keith Law: My assumption is he’ll get a financial settlement, not free agency. Yes, they manipulated service time, obviously. Can Boras prove this was the sole reason they didn’t promote him for Opening Day, enough to get a ruling that sets him free? That I doubt.

Pat D: If you go to Wikipedia’s page on the 2020 HOF balloting, for the Modern Baseball Committee, in addition to the 8 men not elected by that committee last time, they list 42 other players, umpires, managers and executives as possible candidates, most all of whom it seems you could at least have a discussion on whether they’re deserving. So it’ll be kinda sad when precious few ever get elected, right?
Keith Law: Those committees have really become an embarrassment to the Hall. I’ve had plenty to say about bad BBWAA selections, but whoa boy, we are way better than those guys.

Benji: If the Tigers were to seriously shop Matt Boyd this winter, do you think they’d be able to land a bat in the middle range of your top 100? Do you think they ought to shop him now regardless?
Keith Law: Yes and yes.

Ray: Isn’t it interesting how so many “patriotic” conservative pundits have never said a word about human rights abuses in China, until they saw an opportunity to yell at Lebron James for not saying enough about human rights abuses in China?
Keith Law: I posted a link to a piece from the Guardian this past Saturday that said exactly that.

Gloria: Can someone like Ray be fixed by another organization in the way you said the Astros fixed Cole or is it harder for hitters?
Keith Law: It’s never easy, but he’s had so many swing issues since entering pro ball, and yet has a good underlying sense of the strike zone, that I think there’s something there for the right development group. Would love to see what the Dodgers could do for him, to pick one example. Rays too.

TomBruno23: Finished The Mushroom Hunters yesterday, now all I want to do is try every mushroom out there. Checked out The Queen from my library today. Keep those book recs coming.
Keith Law: I have been on a similar quest for unusual mushrooms lately, but haven’t found any markets that sell them near me. If anyone has a rec for places in Philly or its environs, let me know. DiBruno’s let me down, unfortunately.

Jon G: How much scrutiny does a team that hires Gabe Kapler as a manager or front office executive deserve given how he handled allegations of abuse when with the Dodgers?
Keith Law: The public story on that does not match what I have been able to learn from talking to many people involved at the time (not including Kapler).

Todd: Florial, Garcia and Gil enough for Lindor?
Keith Law: No. The Yanks have done quite a job selling the public on Florial, but I don’t think the industry buys it.

addoeh: Regarding eliminating minor league teams, for the cities losing clubs in the east and mid-west, aren’t most of them fairly close, an hour drive or so, from another minor or even major league club? If the fans want to see professional baseball, they can.
Keith Law: And if an area has enough of a population to support another team, one will move there. Nobody in this system has any interest in keeping teams away from fans. Team owners at all levels want profits, which depend on fan bases. All of the markets I’ve heard might lose their teams are either very small or lack even remotely adequate facilities.

JR: Of the five managers hired so far (with three openings to go), all have been white guys. You think any minorities will get one of the final three positions? Any minority candidates you think that are deserving of a manager position?
Keith Law: I’m not optimistic.

Brad: What is Victor Robles ceiling? Is he a Jackie Bradley Jr.?
Keith Law: Totally different player.

Scott: Do you think Strasburg should opt out?
Keith Law: Yes, and I think he will.

Tom: Do you believe the ball has been de-juiced for the playoffs? Do you think it’s a sign of what’s ahead?
Keith Law: The baseball is clearly different. Not sure I believe it was deliberate, which is the popular accusation.

Joe: Joe Espada has twice been passed by guys who have zero experience (Boone and Ross). Is there something wrong with him as a potential hire?
Keith Law: I know nothing about Espada to answer that question, but passing over an experienced minority twice is a bad look for MLB.

Aaron Houston, Tx: What can we expect from Bobby Dalbec? Can he be a Devers type profile?
Keith Law: Totally different players.
Keith Law: Devers turns 23 today. Dalbec is already 24 and hasn’t reached the majors yet.

Salty: I vote independently and lean conservative. I don’t understand the love affair with the wealth tax proposed by the democratic candidates. It seems great in theory, but won’t the richest of the rich just use their high-priced accountants to avoid paying additional taxes like the plague? No one ever questions the candidates on that scenario? Am I completely wrong on the subject? It seems like there’s no chance the intended (hoped) revenue would ever come close to being realized.
Keith Law: Wealth is pretty hard to hide, harder than income is. I think the argument should be whether taxing the wealthiest Americans has any deleterious effects on our economy. I don’t think it does, but I don’t know the answer and I see very little discussion of it.

Pat D: Do you have an opinion about some films getting very little to no theatrical release and essentially premiering on streaming services? I’ve counted about 30 films between now and the end of the year that are set to be released that I’d like to see, so I’m not going to complain that I can stay home to watch a few of them.
Keith Law: I prefer it too since it’s 35 minutes for me to get to the Ritz art theaters in Philly.

Mike: Keith, where do you stand on the pace of play issue? It seems it takes so long between pitches now. 4 hour 9 inning games is ridiculous.
Keith Law: It’s not pace of play. It’s pace of game. There are too many commercials and too many breaks.

Rob k: NYC media is reporting there’s a potential BOMBSHELL candidate for the Mets job. Is it you?
Keith Law: It’s not, although with Tingler getting the San Diego job, there’s hope for us 5’6″ baseball dorks now.

Jason: Do you have a solution to the service-time manipulation for free agency? Regardless of where lines are drawn, teams will try to stay on the “good” side. Would age or time since signing be a better way to handle it?
Keith Law: I proposed one modest rule change back in March 2015.

Todd: How will teams get to Coors Field next season with the wall surrounding Colorado?
Keith Law: They’ll have to get really high.

Kris: Does the Girardi hire have any significance on the ability for the Phillies to get to playoffs, let alone win a title? Hard for any manager to succeed with a flawed, talet-poor roster and a franchise that’s unable to draft or develop talent. Not saying Girardi is a bad choice, but I think Kapler took the fall for a decade plus of organizational ineptitude (which doesn’t seem like it’s going to end anytime soon unless MacPhail is fired)
Keith Law: They need to go get another starter, and once again rebuild the bullpen. I do think Howard helps them in 2020, but he’s not the entire solution.

Jake: The category is: Guys who throw really hard but don’t get strikeouts because they work down in the zone and then they go to Houston. What’s the next name in this sequence: Morton, Cole…?
Keith Law: I would love to see Jon Gray in Houston.

RJ : What type of contract do you see Zach Wheeler commanding this offseason? I feel like teams might see him as a good player with great potential to take a step forward if he has an opportunity to play with better defense behind him. His advanced metrics seem to be great.
Keith Law: Buster swears Wheeler is getting 4+ years … good for him given how much time he missed with injuries. I do think he’s the third best starter on the market.

Chris: cast iron or carbon steel fry pan?
Keith Law: I own one of each.

Bruce: How well does managing in the minors translate to managing in the majors? With the handling of the players and in-game managment being so different I would think ML bench coach experience would be more valuable.
Keith Law: Is in-game management that different?

B Mand: I wanted to ask a follow-up to a question you answered last week about the Red Sox looking to see what the trade market is for Mookie. What kind of return would the Sox need to get in order to make this a worthwhile move?
Keith Law: At least two projected starters, either young MLBers or top prospects. Not just any ones, but good ones.

Eric: Went to Disney World with my family last week. Saw a guy in a red MAGA hat. It was really unsettling.
Keith Law: Well, he gave a lot of his money to one of the most LGBTQ+ friendly companies in the world to own the libs.

Larry Legend: I understand it’s not as simplistic as this but the old school scouty team beating the cold calculating really smart team makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Keith Law: Well, the Nats aren’t really “old school scouty.” They talk analytics as much as most clubs do.

Brian Godish: I’m asking this knowing the answer is “money”, but why don’t MLB teams invest some money in making their minor league facilities/travel a little bit more adequate? Teams are investing in their draft picks to produce, it would seem a decent nights sleep should be helpful for said draft picks/international signing. It seems crazy how the minors work from a financial perspective.
Keith Law: They don’t own the teams. There’s no reason for them to invest in facilities they won’t own, and that could benefit another parent org when the affiliation agreement is up.

John: Should the Twins give Odorizzi a QO?
Keith Law: Yes.

Chris B: Do you think the Indians move Lindor this offseason? If they have no plans of resigning him then this would be the perfect time to maximize the return.
Keith Law: They absolutely should. I don’t get the sense they will.

Oscar: Any cookbook recommendations for a complete novice? I’m talking super simple.
Keith Law: Joy of Cooking was the first real cookbook I ever used, and I think it’s perfect for a newbie.

Chris: If writing about baseball and board games isn’t an option, but you could write full time about either music or food, which would you choose?
Keith Law: Food. I find writing about music harder than any other things I write about; it’s the most subjective topic I hit on, and translating things I hear into words without lapsing into discussions of Phrygian modes or counterpoints is quite difficult. (And who the hell wants to read that kind of writing?)

Ricky: I’ve seen a lot of Blue Jays fans patting themselves and the organization on the back for getting rid of Osuna but…if they wanted to do the “right” thing, shouldn’t they have just cut him rather than exchange his value or something else (even if it’s at a diminished cost)? I’m not sure how much “credit” they (or any team that trades someone accused of DV for something of value) should get.
Keith Law: I have no issue with them handling it as they did. I’m actually unsure if they could just release the player under the DV policy.

Pat: By taxing “wealth”, what do do you do? These people don’t have those $$ lying around in cash, it’s in some non-liquid asset, like stock or real estate, etc. Make the wealthy sell assets to pay the wealth tax? Does that affect the value of the assets? I’m not saying high income shouldn’t pay more taxes, but, the logistics of taxing “wealth” seem fuzzy to me.
Keith Law: You open a separate argument, which is that our capital gains tax is WAY too low. We tax regular income more heavily than we tax capital gains, but capital gains tend to accrue to higher income earners and to the wealthy, not to the majority of American households.

Geralt of Rivia: Gut feeling – even with the talk of trimming the payroll, luxury tax, etc., do the Red Sox come to terms with Betts? Trade him in the offseason? Ride out 2020 with the hopes of being in contention?
Keith Law: Depends on who’s GM and what ownership wants to do, but I don’t see a good path to contention for them in 2020 with their current pitching staff.

Stu: Is toxic maleness endemic to baseball, and other male sports, or can it be fixed?
Keith Law: Toxic masculinity is endemic to any patriarchal society. It’s not just sports; they are the visible tip of a very large iceberg.

Scott: Hi Keith. Looking forward to reading book #2. What are your thoughts on Barber to the Phillies?
Keith Law: Nice guy. Don’t know much about his own philosophy, but he comes from an org that integrates traditional scouting and analytical tools about as well as any team does.

Ben: Any Seattle eats recommendations? I am headed there for work and know nothing about the food scene.
Keith Law: I haven’t been since 2001 (and it kills me).

Pat D: I find the combination of Buck and Smoltz to be pretty unbearable to listen. Do you feel that way or am I just convinced that they both hate the Yankees and make no attempt to hide that?
Keith Law: I have watched all of their games without the sound. Smoltz’s attitude on modern players and especially on analytics does MLB no favors at all. Actually, I did hear a bit of game one, and I think he referred to Scherzer “going to the computer” in Max’s brain to figure out how to get some hitter out. I mean, John, that’s what analytics departments do. So it’s okay if a player uses his fallible memory, but not okay if we use the ACTUAL FUCKING DATA?

Craig: Why aren’t more major league teams simply buying affiliates when they come up for sale? The easy way to guarantee a good location/good facilities is to own the team yourself.
Keith Law: Then you have to run the teams.

Geralt of Rivia: Are fantasy and sci-fi genres that you are less interested in? (movies/tv/books) I think I just see you talk about them less, no judgment just curious.
Keith Law: Not true at all. I’ve read every Hugo winner but four (Cyteen, the two Mars books, and this year’s winner).

Allen: Wealth is actually much easier hide then income, primarily because there is much more ambiguity in terms of what someone’s actual wealth is. Several European countries have eliminated their wealth tax because the costs of collecting it weren’t worth the revenue gained. https://www.accountingtoday.com/articles/democrats-love-a-wealth-tax-b…
Keith Law: Bookmarking this to read later, thank you.

Chris: If invited, would you ever sit for an interview on Hot Ones? And how far up the Scoville Scale could you go?
Keith Law: I would, but not very far.

Vincent Adultman: Do you think Didi would accept a QO?
Keith Law: No. He’s a top ten FA this winter.

Gloria: I’m sure some of your readers/trolls are upset by the MAGA hat comment, but I hope they realize that for me and many others it’s like seeing a KKK hood, swastika, etc.
Keith Law: If you choose to wear that hat, you are doing so with the full understanding that many people will see it and find it offensive – and that, Mr. Luhnow, is “intent.”

Sean: I believe you really liked Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. Do you plan on checking out her new short story collection Grand Union?
Keith Law: Eventually yes. Read On Beauty and Swing Time, both fine, neither measured up to White Teeth.

Buscon Bob: How awful is the Cubs pitching development part of their farm system? Baltimore bad?
Keith Law: They haven’t drafted much pitching either – their strategy was always to draft bats and trade for or sign pitchers. Hard to kill their player development for failing to develop prospects they never had.

John: Did you read beyond the Three-Body Problem?
Keith Law: I didn’t; it was fine, but felt no need to move on from there. The whole unfolding-the-proton gambit was right up against the edge of the envelope for me … I was like, okay, I think I’m good here.

Dave: re Taubman – is it normal for front office types to be in the locker room during celebrations, etc.? Was this always the case?
Keith Law: Yes, it’s normal, and I have no objection to him or any other FO personnel being there.

Pat: Agree on capital gains, it should be higher taxed. Never understood why the tax rate is tied to how long you owned the asset.How about a sloped capital gains tax % based on amount gained, similar to income tax? Maybe the top tier is 50% for any gain over $5M or something?
Keith Law: Sure, at least that’s moving in the right direction – and while it will somewhat disincentivize capital investment, I don’t think that will stop anyone from trying to found the next Amazon or Facebook either. Set it at a rate where investors will still think they can get rich, even though they may give nearly half of it to the government in taxes.

Pat: Odds that Taubman was drunk in the clubhouse? That’s my hunch. Not that that’s an excuse, but it led him to say the quiet part of what surely was an internal talking point about this reporter continuously pointing out that Osuna is a scumbag out loud
Keith Law: If he was, well, in vino veritas.

Moe Mentum: Who was more musically innovative, David Bowie or David Byrne? How about most *influential*?
Keith Law: Don’t know their oeuvres enough to answer the first one but Bowie was certainly more influential.

Patrick: Who do you believe is the top prep righty in the 2020 class? Abel? Kelley?
Keith Law: Probably Kelley right now, with Abel 2. Definitely the top two guys.

Bruce: Thoughts on The Mets interviewing Eduardo Perez?
Keith Law: Very happy for him.
Keith Law: That’s all for this week. Thanks to all of you, especially the substantial portion of you named “Pat,” for reading and for all of your questions. Keep an eye out for my Paste list of the top board games of the 2010s, and for a formal announcement about my second book, The Inside Game, in the next few days. Enjoy your weekends!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: klawchat

→ October 23, 2019
→ By keith

The Queen.

If you’d like to win a free, signed copy of this book, sign up for my free email newsletter by this Friday, October 25, at 12 pm ET. I’ll choose one subscriber at random to win the prize, graciously donated by Josh and Little, Brown & Co.

Josh Levin has been writing for Slate since 2003 and has co-hosted their podcast Hang Up and Listen for a decade now. (I appeared on the show way back in 2013.) His first book, The Queen, has nothing whatsoever to do with sports, however; it is an engrossing profile and history of Linda Taylor, the woman tabbed by Chicago newspapers and made infamous by Ronald Reagan as a “welfare queen,” whose fraudulent activities were widely embellished by the media and conservative politicians … and who also probably committed other, far worse crimes during her long life of malfeasance.

Linda Taylor was a welfare cheat, and got caught multiple times doing so, although attempts to prosecute her weren’t always successful, and authorities didn’t always follow through even when she was caught because the laws didn’t adequately address this type of public assistance fraud. She used different identities to apply more than once for aid, and used the names of children who weren’t hers, or didn’t exist at all, to ask for more. It’s possible that she was among the most financially successful people exploiting the public aid system in the 1970s, and that that alone would have been enough to make her story newsworthy.

Levin does way more than tell the story of Taylor’s misdeeds around welfare, however. For one thing, he gives readers a detailed biography of Taylor, from birth to death, giving much-needed balance to her story. He explains the roles that uncertain parentage and mixed-race status in a time when that could leave someone ostracized from white and black circles had in shaping her life, while also using interviews and public records to show that Taylor was more than just a con artist, with credible accusations of kidnapping and even murder following in her wake. One of the more interesting threads in Taylor’s biography is her false claim that she was the daughter of a man in Chicago who died and left behind a maybe-illegal fortune, leading to a trial that hinged as much on her own history of lying as anything else.

That alone would make for a pretty good, if short, book, but Levin adds a second and more substantial layer to Taylor’s story by explaining how she became the front-page welfare queen whose thimblerigging became fodder for politicians and activist journalists in Illinois and, eventually, across the country. Levin details much of the life of George Bliss, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the Chicago Tribune, whom Levin credits with putting Taylor in the spotlight and helping create the image of her as both an extensive welfare cheat and a symbol of wrongdoing around the public aid system, both by recipients and by people working within the government. That was then picked up by members of the Illinois state legislature, who at one point managed to create their own extrajudicial investigative team to go after welfare frauds, and subsequently by Ronald Reagan in his 1976 presidential campaign.

Reagan, who had left office as California’s governor after two terms in 1974, was a primary challenger to Gerald Ford, who of course was the first unelected official to ascend to the Presidency and was seen as vulnerable for that reason and his tie to the disgraced President Nixon. Reagan began using the story of the “Chicago woman” who used dozens of aliases and the names of hundreds of children to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in undeserved welfare checks. He was referring to Taylor, but overstated the extent of her crimes and her takings, and continued to embellish the story as the campaign continued – even over objections of some of his own campaign staffers. Levin spins this into a larger point about Reagan’s penchant for dissembling, misrepresenting, or outright lying – and the lack of accountability even from the media covering his campaign at the time – and while Levin never draws the direct parallel to our current President or the contemporary environment of “alternative facts,” I found it impossible to read The Queen without thinking that even Trump’s original campaign was a direct descendant of Reagan’s. Trump is just more blatant about his lies, and perhaps more unrepentant about it, but he was hardly the first – especially when it comes to demonizing people of color.

And that’s the other significant theme of Levin’s book: This is very much a story about race. Taylor’s precise ethnicity is unclear, and she passed for white, black, Latina, and Filipina at different points in her life, but at a time when the “one-drop rule” still existed through the American south, she was generally seen as black. That made her the ideal target for politicians courting white voters angry over the stagnant American economy of the post-oil crisis 1970s and the societal changes that resulted from the civil rights movement. Race-baiting is hardly new in American politics, but Taylor’s race and the breadth of her actual or presumed crimes made her the perfect talking point for candidates looking to appeal to the “economically anxious” non-Latinx white voters who, in 1976, constituted 89% of the U.S. electorate. As I write this, we’re dealing with the current President accusing Democrats pursuing an impeachment inquiry of a “lynching,” invoking a term used almost exclusively to refer to the murders of black men across the American south between the civil war and 1981, when Michael Donald was lynched in Alabama by multiple members of the Ku Klux Klan. Levin makes the case that this sort of coded language is hardly new, and was widely used by a candidate who would go on to serve two terms as President, winning re-election by a historic landslide in 1984.

There’s quite a bit more detail in The Queen, including side threads on the officers who first brought Taylor to some measure of justice (and led to her infamy), Taylor’s daughter and her role in some of the ongoing scams, and comments from people whose lives were affected, almost all adversely, by Taylor’s involvement. The possible murder committed by Taylor for a modest financial gain is an appalling enough story, although Levin can only go so far with that subplot because Taylor was never even arrested for that crime, and the same goes for the accusations that she kidnapped children and either sold them or used their identities to gain more public aid while neglecting the kids. There’s a lot of misery in The Queen, some of it belonging to Taylor herself, but it’s also very much a story of the modern United States – of race and class divides, of lying and self-serving politicians, and of a media culture that still is learning the importance of holding people accountable for their words.

Next up: Just about done with the second book in Paul Theroux’s Riding the Rails trilogy.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: crime, highly recommended, non-fiction, racism, true crime

→ October 21, 2019
→ By keith

High Life.

Claire Denis’ dystopian sci-fi film High Life, which just hit Amazon Prime earlier this month, is a strange and brooding film that uses its setting to distill life to its most basic functions. By putting her characters into tense situations that force them all to confront their mortality in a more overt way than we would normally face, she explores the darkest sides of humanity … but it is a long, slow drag to get there, punctuated by some highly disturbing sequences.

Robert Pattinson plays Monte, the sole surviving member of an interstellar journey whose purpose becomes apparent later in the film. His only companion on the ship is a baby, the one successful child to come from the ship’s scientist’s artificial insemination program – a program that, of course, causes a lot of outrage among the rest of the crew – all of which is explained in flashbacks over the course of the film. Without spoiling too much here, the gist is that these crew members were all criminals, given the choice to go on a mission that takes them well beyond the solar system rather than face life in jail or execution. Living in such close quarters, with the added stresses of both the control of the scientist (Juliette Binoche) and her bizarre effort to breed the crew members, only increases the odds of conflict, which is graphic and violent when it comes.

Before then, however, we see much more of the quotidian lives of the crew members through flashbacks, including their work in the ship’s gardens, the favorite spot of Tcherny (Andre Benjamin), and the use of what fans of the film have called the “fuck box,” a masturbation machine used by most of the crew members but not by Monte. Denis appears to want to strip her characters down to the basics – food, sex, shelter – to dehumanize them, making it easier to follow some of them down into a bestial sort of madness that ultimately leaves all of them dead except for Monte.

I’m not sure why this film exists, though. Pattinson is excellent – he’s turned out to be quite a good actor – and does everything he can to prop this movie up, especially in the torpid first half, but by the end I certainly had no idea why Denis had taken any of us on this particular journey. What does the rising tide of violence that engulfs the crew actually tell us about people as a whole or these characters in particular? Are we just to think that once a violent criminal, always a violent criminal? Or are they driven to madness and violence by the realization that their mission can only have one possible end?

The look and feel of High Life far surpass the content of the film. The spaceship’s exterior has a barebones look by design, as Denis has said she couldn’t imagine this dystopian future country spending on anything superficial for a mission of this kind. The interior also looks stark and grim, again fitting the nature of the mission, also enhancing the general sense of dread around the story and the fatalistic outlook of the various people on the ship. There are little details around things like resource management – including, of course, how they recycle their waste products – that give the film a layer of additional realism that would have really paid off if the story were better.

In the end, though, I never got on board with High Life‘s plot. Pattinson is good, but I didn’t relate to the character, and I think Denis’ decision to tell the story via flashbacks ultimately robs the movie of any real dramatic tension. It’s an experiment, with a decent idea at its core, but the experiment doesn’t succeed.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2019 movies, disappointments, dystopian, movies, science fiction

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