Uncategorized — Page 8

→ June 4, 2024
→ By keith

Music update, May 2024.

This list was pretty thin until the last eight days of May, when I think it doubled in length, with a bunch of new/surprise releases, including a couple of tracks from bands that were popular when I was still in grade school. May also included what is probably my #1 album of 2024 so far, two tracks from a band whose next album might be their big breakthrough, a posthumous release from Steve Albini, a fantastic cover I didn’t expect, some great new metal tracks, and more. You can access the playlist here if you can’t see the widget below.

Mdou Moctar – Oh France. Moctar’s latest album, Funeral for Justice, is one of the best albums of the year, fighting for my top spot so far with the Libertines’ latest. His guitar work is so strong that even without the typical aural anchor of the lyrics I still find his tracks running through my head, including this one, the title track, and “Imouhar.”

milk. – Don’t Miss It. I’m probably better at predicting success (or failure) for baseball prospects than I am for bands, but this Irish quartet with the SEO-unfriendly name would be a top ten prospect for me right now. Maybe I should do some sort of rankings like that for fun. Anyway, they’ve got a great knack for indie-pop melodies, and this is their best single yet.

Charly Bliss – Nineteen. One of two great singles from Charly Bliss to come out in May in advance of their new album Forever, due out on August 16^th. This is a powerhouse ballad with clever lyrics and a great vocal turn by Eva Hendricks, while the second single, “Calling You Out,” is more in their typical indie-pop vein. I’ve loved all three tracks from the record so far although I was disappointed to hear their single from last year, “You Don’t Even Know Me Anymore,” isn’t on it.r

Blushing – Silver Teeth. Straight-up American shoegaze, from Texas but descended directly from the original shoegaze sound – you could definitely drop this on a mix from 1992 and no one would blink.

Nice Biscuit – Rain. Psychedelic rock from Brisbane, here with a big crunchy guitar riff right from the outset before the dreamy vocals come in.

Miles Kane – Fingerless Gloves. The other half of the Last Shadow Puppets and the lead singer/guitarist of the so-called “landfill indie” band the Rascals (who put out one album in 2008 and disbanded when Kane left) has just dropped a new instrumental five-song EP, featuring this banger that doesn’t need any vocals at all.

Color Green – Four Leaf Clover. Spacey, psychedelic guitar rock that 100% could be the opening band at a Phish show, if Phish weren’t also their own opening act. Color Green put out a full-length album in 2022, but this was the first track I’d heard by them.

DEADLETTER – Mere Mortal. Post-punk with horns, like Madness but definitely edgier and angrier. I’m not surprised to read they’re fans of Yard Act – you can hear some shared DNA between the two.

Bad Omens feat. Bob Vylan – Terms and Conditions. I sent this to a friend who shares my fandom of old-school hip hop, and not only did he love it, he said it’d be a great walkup song because it’s fast and loud and no one else would have it. Also, how many rappers can drop a coltan reference in their rhymes?

GIFT – Going in Circles. More psychedelia, from the band whose 2022 track “Gumball Garden” made my top 100 from that year, with their second album Illuminator due out on August 23^rd.

Marble feat. Foxing – the monster. Marble is a six-piece band from the Pacific Northwest, calling their music “shoegaze/dreamo,” although this track, with Conor Murphy of Foxing taking the second verse, is neither – it’s bigger, clearer, more majestic, growing to a huge crescendo before a downshift in tempo at the finish.

STONE – Save Me. This hard rock/punk quartet from Liverpool announced their first full-length LP, Fear Life for a Lifetime, will be out on July 12^th.

The Lemon Twigs – Rock On (Over and Over). The Lemon Twigs can get overly twee and their whole affect seems … well, affected, but when they lean hard into that 1960s pop sound, they produce Barrels. This seems like the kind of song Susanna Hoffs would cover.

The The – Cognitive Dissident. Yep, that’s the great 1980s alternative band, whose original lineup included Keith Laws, now a neuropsych professor University of Hertfordshire. Matt Johnson is the only original member left, but it’s his voice that defines so much of their sound – and he sounds great.

The Chameleons – Where Are You? The Chameleons were also part of the original post-punk movement but had very little success in the U.S., breaking up in the late 1980s after three albums, reuniting for one LP in 2001, and then breaking up again. Their first album since then, Arctic Moon, will be out later this year, with two of the four original members on board, including vocalist/bassist Mark Burgess. I didn’t end up including it on the list, but another band who were big in the 1980s, Redd Kross, put out a new track, “Born Innocent,” which was the name of their debut LP from 1982.

Ducks Ltd. – When You’re Outside. This is a bonus track from the Harm’s Way sessions that didn’t make the cut, but I might like it more than anything on the record. Their jangle-pop sound is pretty much in my wheelhouse.

Hinds feat. Beck – Boom Boom Back. I thought Hinds were done, with nothing since their 2020 album The Prettiest Curse, but they’re back, back down to their original two members, with a new LP coming in September. This track has the same sort of chaotic feel as just about all of their previous work, but the production level is higher, and the music is tighter, without that sense that the members are all playing to slightly different times.

Idaho – On Fire. I know Idaho’s stuff from their 1990s heyday as leaders of the ‘slowcore’ movement, but totally lost track of them after either Three Sheets to the Wind or Alas, and had no idea they’d 1) kept going until 2013 or 2) reunited this year for their first new album, Lapse, in eleven years. I don’t know if I could sit through a whole album of this lugubrious sound, but the main guitar riff here is hypnotic.

Strand of Oaks – Future Temple. A spacier, synth-laden single from Timothy Showalter, his first new music since 2021’s In Heaven.

RM feat. Little Simz – Domodachi. RM’s second solo album, Right Place, Wrong Person, came out to rave reviews on May 24^th, and since I’m not exactly a BTS stan, you can imagine I found this track because the great Little Simz is on it.

Mach-Hommy feat. Black Thought – COPY COLD. Mach-Hommy is a Haitian-American rapper who hides his real identity and has been absurdly prolific, with Wikipedia listing 27 albums, all but two in the last ten years. I’m here for Black Thought’s verse, of course.

Slash feat. Chris Stapleton – Oh Well. A faithful, rollicking cover of one of the earliest Fleetwood Mac hits, written and sung by Peter Green. Stapleton’s vocals are desultory but I’m here for Slash’s soloing anyway.

Head Automatica – Bear the Cross. Head Automatica is a side project for Glassjaw lead singer Daryl Palumbo, but they’d been idle since 2012 and hadn’t released any new music since 2006 before this new single. There’s a mid-period Depeche Mode vibe to it, with that vaguely industrial sound from the Some Great Reward era.

Shellac – WSOD. Shellac’s final album came out just ten days after the death of guitarist/vocalist Steve Albini, which, from the reviews I’ve seen, has meant some less-than-objective commentary on the music itself, but I think this track is pretty great from the opening riff to Albini’s Mike Doughty-esque lyrics.

Cemetery Skyline – In Darkness. Cemetery Skyline is a supergroup of musicians from Nordic metal, including members from two major melodic death metal bands in Dark Tranquility and Omnium Gatherum, but this track is almost an anachronism – the vocals are clean, the tempo is moderate, and the whole thing has a NWOBHM/Sabbath-y vibe. It’s interesting to me to hear guys who lean too heavily on gimmicks like death growls and blast beats show they like and can play more accessible stuff.

Wheel – Submission. A sprawling ten-minute progfest from one of the best prog-metal bands on the planet right now, from their latest album Charismatic Leaders.

Pallbearer – Mind Burns Alive. The title track from the American doom masters’ latest album, which dropped on May 17^th and features six tracks, none shorter than six and a half minutes.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: alternative, doom metal, hip hop, indie, Music, progressive metal

→ June 1, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/1/24.

Nothing new this week at the Athletic, but I have a top 50 pro prospect rankings update slated for Monday the 3^rd.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the roll-and-write game French Quarter, from the designers of Three Sisters and Fleet: the Dice Game. I think it’s fantastic, although it’s harder than any of their previous games to play well.

I’ll be back on Stadium on Monday at 2 pm ET for Diamond Dreams and somewhere in the 2:30 pm show Unpacked for one more segment. We’ll discuss some of my new rankings on the first show and have an interview with Colt Emerson lined up.

A million bonus points if you know what today is, by the way. I’ll accept two answers, although one is more obvious than the other.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: You’ve probably seen this Guardian longread on the so-called “pro-natalist” family who, among other things, think nothing of physically abusing their children in the name of “discipline.” My issue with the piece is this: The parents claim that their parenting is “evidence-based,” yet they then do many things, including smacking their children, that are unequivocally contrary to all available evidence – and the piece’s author does not push back in any way. That is your job as a journalist.

This New York Times retrospective on Cass Elliot and the vicious hoax about how she died is an empathetic and thoughtful look at a major figure in pop music history who was, unfortunately, best remembered for that false rumor.

WIRED has the story of Jane Willenbring, the victim of sexual harassment by disgraced Professor David Marchant while they worked in Antarctica, whose willingness to come forward led to Marchant’s firing and the renaming of the glacier that once bore his name.

Two stories on the 19^th century state of Mississippi: In DeSoto County, a hospital transfers some patients to jail while they await mental health treatment, with the results you would expect. Meanwhile, Mississippi Today also obtained transcripts of WhatsApp messages from the soi-disant “Goon Squad” of racist, abusive cops who terrorized a central Mississippi County – including torturing two Black men and shooting one in the face – for a generation.

A new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found a strong positive correlation between public school expenditures and Black student achievement during school and later in life. They used data from that same backwards country of Mississippi, which has been busy trying to find ways to spend less on education.

A new paper in Nature shows how researchers used machine learning to help explain how insect wing hinges work. We know of four separate times when a species has developed the ability to fly, but insects are the only case where flight evolved without muscles or nerves in the wings.

Quanta has the story of two groups of physicists using machine-learning to try to understand the nature of the ‘missing’ dimensions required by superstring theory.

Splinter’s Jim Vorel looks at the slow death of QAnon and the even more virulent strains that have replaced it. There’s a strong sense of “When Prophecy Fails” here – when people realized they believed in a con, they don’t just come to their senses; they look for another con to believe.

Greenpeace sided with the anti-science crowd and blocked the introduction of the nutritious Golden Rice variety into the Philippines, claiming, among other things, a “human health risk” that has never been demonstrated with any genetically-modified foodstuff.

A nurse at NYU’s Langone Health hospital mentioned the genocide in Gaza during her speech accepting an award for her compassion in caring for mothers who’d lost their babies. The hospital fired her. They’ve said she was warned before “not to bring her views on this divisive and charged issue into the workplace.” The hospital took its name from Republican billionaire donor Kenneth Langone, who has previously compared critics of rising income inequality to Nazis.

UC-Irvine law professor David Kaye writes in the New York Times that we should allow the International Criminal Court to do its job after the Court announced charges against the leaders of Hamas and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. The U.S. has remained outside of the ICC for twenty years, even though we could do the most good by accepting its tenets and supporting its efforts to pursue war-crimes charges – as we have asked the ICC to do against Vladimir Putin.

Many students walked out of Harvard’s commencement last week, spurred by the University’s corporate board’s decision to overrule a faculty vote that would have allowed 13 students to graduate after they’d been suspended for their actions in the campus protests over the Israeli war on Gaza.

Even before Friday’s verdict, Greg Sargent noted that Trump’s anti-media rhetoric had turned more dangerous with the convicted felon’s apparent endorsement of a rant about how he’ll “get rid of all you fucking liberals.”

The Washington Post sat on the story of Samuel Alito hanging pro-insurrection and pro-nationalist flags at his house for several years. The New York Times has been reporting on the story now, including this very measured piece on what seems to have happened, including disputes over the order of some of the events in the neighborhood dispute.

The Republican candidate for Governor in North Carolina is a QAnon-touting, Holocaust-denying, antisemitic, anti-LGBT conspiracy theorist. Will he cost Trump a swing state he won in 2020?

A passenger on a United flight into Fresno this week has tested positive for measles. This should be a criminal offense – they put many, many other people at risk through their actions, like driving drunk.

Michael Hiltzik writes in the LA Times that now Democrats are just as bad at Republicans in putting political concerns over science, as Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-CA) continues his sham hearings promoting the debunked lab-leak hypothesis.

RFK Jr.’s turn into vaccine disinformation came after he spoke to and then totally ignored Dr. Paul Offit, co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine.

Pope Francis apologized for using the Italian equivalent of the f-slur and saying there was too much of that in the priesthood when arguing against allowing celibate gay men to take orders. I think there’s too much emphasis here on the word choice and nowhere near enough on pretty much everything that lies behind it.

Two board game Kickstarters of note this week: 25^th Century Games (who published French Quarter) just put up a new crowdfunding effort for a four-pack of smaller games that you can back as a bundle or individually.

Luthier is the latest complex game from Paverson Games, publisher of last year’s excellent heavy game Distilled. There’s a full site up for the game but the crowdfunding link isn’t open yet. I saw Luthier at PAX Unplugged; it’s gorgeous and huge, but my guess is it’s too long a game for my personal tastes and attention span.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, board game news, environment, gaza, harvard, links, longreads, measles, metoo, mississippi, physics, police, religion, scotus, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ May 31, 2024
→ By keith

Donut Shop.

Donut Shop is a light-ish new game from 25^th Century Games and Jeffrey D. Allers, designer of New York Slice and Heartland/Gunkimono, blending some set collection and tile-laying mechanics into a game with a short rule set but too long and amorphous a playing experience. It definitely looked more promising before it came out of the box.

In Donut Shop, players add 2×2 tiles to a common tableau to try to create patterns they can score by covering them with donut boxes that range in size from 4 to 12 donuts. There are five flavors, each of which can have sprinkles or some other decoration on them, as well as ‘wild’ spaces that show a little pile of five donut holes. On your turn, you must place the one tile in your hand fully adjacent to another tile on the tableau – at least one edge must fully line up with the edge of a single tile already on the table – and then choose one donut flavor to score. You get 10 cents for each donut of that flavor on your tile, plus 10 more cents for each matching donut orthogonally adjacent to the tile AND each matching donut adjacent to those.

At this point, you can end your turn, or you can take a donut box from the supply to cover part of the tableau as long as you have the correct cards to do so. The cards represent customer orders, and you must have one card for every flavor of donut you’re covering with the box – one card can cover as many donuts of one flavor as you need, although you may choose to play additional cards for more rewards. You get a fixed value for the box, plus an additional 10 cents if any of your cards show a sprinkles bonus on the bottom and you covered a donut matching that flavor that also has sprinkles. There are also coffee bonuses independent of donut flavors; if you trade in two coffee cards with one box, you get 15 cents, and if you trade in three you get 25 cents.

At the end of your turn, you must take a new donut tile and a new order card. You can do this in any order, as long as the first item you take is face-up, so the second is face-down. You may only have one tile at a time, but there is no limit on order cards. The game continues until the players either exhaust the donut tile supply or the order card supply.

There are two major issues with Donut Shop that ended up souring me on the game. The bigger one is its length: It takes way too long to get to the end of the game, by which point the very simple mechanics become rote and uninteresting. This game needs to be about half as long as it is, given the short rules and the overall theme, and when I played it with my seven-year-old and when my 11-year-old played with two friends, we all agreed it needed to end sooner – the second group didn’t even play till the conclusion.

I also don’t like how hard it is to set up any moves even a turn in advance. If you try to build towards a larger box, nothing can stop your opponent from just grabbing the space once they have the cards, and that’s really easy to do later in the game when both players will likely have a decent supply of order cards on hand at all times. In addition, while the supply of donut boxes is limited, but in a two-player game there are too many smaller boxes, so you have a very strong incentive to fill small orders early until those boxes start to run short, which feels very paint-by-numbers rather than strategic. It doesn’t penalize long-term planning, but it fails to reward it.

There might be a better game in here somewhere, even a smaller-box game, maybe if you weren’t all building the same tableau or were competing more directly for tiles and cards – if I could see you needed a tile and might take that first, that would be a different game but increase the interaction without it being as simple as “I’m covering the donuts you were going to cover next turn.” I also don’t think the 20-40 minute listed playing time is accurate – we had a two-player game run at least 45 minutes because it just takes too long to get through the supply, so perhaps an earlier end condition would help. I love tile-laying games but this one doesn’t hit any of the reasons I enjoy them.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: boardgames

→ May 29, 2024
→ By keith

Seven Games.

The title of Oliver Roeder’s book Seven Games: A Human History is a misnomer in two ways: It’s not really a book about games, and it’s far more a history of computers than of humans. It is, instead, a history of attempts to use what is now unfortunately referred to as “AI” to tackle the myriad problems posed by seven popular board and card games from human history, from chess to bridge. Each of these games presents the programmers with specific, novel issues, and while machine-learning techniques have succeeded in solving some games (like checkers), others have and may forever prove inscrutable (like bridge).

Roeder is a journalist for the Financial Times and clearly a gamer, and someone who loves the games for what they are beyond their competitive aspect (although it becomes clear he is a fierce competitor as well). He writes as an experienced player of all seven games in the book, even though he must have varying skill levels in each – I’d be shocked if he were much of a checkers player, because who on earth in the year of our lord 2024 is a great checkers player? His experience with the games helps infuse a book that could be a rather dry and grim affair with more than a touch of life, especially as he enters tournaments or otherwise competes against experts in games like poker, Scrabble, and backgammon.

What Roeder is really getting at here, however, is the symbiotic relationship between games and machine learning, which is what everyone now calls AI. (AI is itself a misnomer, and there are many philosophers who argue that there can be no intelligence, artificial or otherwise, without culture.) Games are perfect fodder for training AI modules because they tend to present short sets of rules and clear goals, thus giving the code and its coder targets for whatever optimization algorithm(s) they choose. In the case of checkers, this proved simple once the computing power was available; checkers is considered “weakly solved,” with a draw inevitable if both players play perfectly. (Connect 4 is strongly solved; the first player can always win with perfect play.) In the case of bridge, on the other hand, the game may never be solved, both because of its computational complexity and because of the substantial human element involved in its play.

In one of those later chapters, Roeder mentions P=NP in a footnote, which put an entirely different spin on the book for me. P=NP is one of the six unsolved Millennium Prize Problems* in mathematics, also called the P versus NP problem, which asks if a problem’s correct solution can be verified in polynomial time, does that also mean that the problem can be solved in polynomial time? The answer would have enormous ramifications for computational theory, and could indeed impact human life in substantial ways, but the odds seem to be that P does not equal NP – that the time required to solve these problems is orders of magnitude higher than the time required to verify their solutions. (For more on this subject, I recommend Lance Fortnow’s book The Golden Ticket, which I reviewed here in 2015.)

*A seventh, the Poincaré Conjecture, is the only one that has been solved to date.

You can see a thread through the seven chapters where the machine-learning techniques adjust and improve as the games become more complex. From there, it isn’t hard to see this as a narrow retelling of the ongoing history of machine learning itself. The early efforts to solve games like checkers employed brute-force methods – examining all possible outcomes and valuing them to guide optimal choices. More complex games that present larger decision trees and more possible outcomes would require more processing power and time than we have, often more time than remains in the expected life of the universe (and certainly more than remains in the expected life of our suicidal species), and thus required new approaches. Some of the attacks on games later in the book allow the algorithm to prune the tree itself and avoid less-promising branches to reduce processing time and power, thus leading to a less complete but more efficient search method.

Roeder does acknowledge in brief that these endeavors also have a hidden cost in energy. His anecdotes include Deep Blue versus Kasparov and similar matches in poker and go, some of which gained wide press coverage for their results … but not for the energy consumed by the computers that competed in these contests. We’re overdue for a reckoning on the actual costs of ChatGPT and OpenAI and their myriad brethren in silicon, because as far as I can tell, they’re just the new crypto when it comes to accelerating climate change. That’s nice that you can get a machine to write your English 102 final paper for you or lay off a bunch of actual humans to let AI do some things, but I’d like to see you pay the full cost of the electricity you’re using to do it.

I’ve focused primarily on one aspect of Seven Games because that’s what resonated with me, but I may have undersold the book a little in the process. It’s a fun read in many ways because Roeder tells good stories for just about all seven of the games in the book – I might have done without the checkers chapter, because that’s just a terrible game, but it is an important rung in the ladder he’s constructing – and puts himself in the action in several of them, notably in poker tournaments in Vegas. There’s also a warning within the book about the power of so-called AI, and I think inherent in that is a call for caution, although Roeder doesn’t make this explicit. It seemed a very timely read even though I picked it up on a friend’s recommendation because it’s about games. Games, as it turns out, explain quite a bit of life. We wouldn’t be human without them.

Next up: Dark Matter of the Mind: The Culturally Articulated Unconscious, a book by Daniel Everett, a former evangelical Christian missionary who became an atheist and turned to linguistics after his time trying to convert the Amazonian Pirahã tribe. He appeared at length in last year’s outstanding documentary The Mission.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: boardgames, card games, computer science, highly recommended, non-fiction

→ May 25, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/25/24.

One new post this week for subscribers to The Athletic, my ranking of the top 100 prospects in this year’s MLB Draft class. The Vance Honeycutt defenders have logged on, but they always seem to log back off when I explain why they’re too high on their guy.

I’ll be back on Stadium, in studio again, but on Tuesday this week due to the holiday and some travel on my end. Diamond Dreams airs at 2 pm ET, and I’ll likely do one segment as usual on Unpacked around 2:40. Both shows re-air often during the week, usually twice a day as far as I’ve been able to tell. You can watch via the app or with certain subscriptions to Youtube, Fubo, Roku, etc.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter this week, talking about my longtime hobby of playing the guitar and how beneficial I find it even though I’m usually playing for nobody but myself, as well as a little note on the adult I have successfully created after 18 years of hard work.

And now, the links…

ProPublica has the story of how a scientist within 3M showed decades ago that perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, known as PFAS, was a “forever chemical” that stayed in our bodies and the environment, but the company lied to her and the public about its effects.

Writing in the Boston Review, UCLA History Professor Robin D.G. Kelley exposes how the university stood by while peaceful pro-Palestine protesters were assaulted by white supremacists and so-called Zionists, along with outside agitators, and then charged the students with crimes. He also claims that UCLA Chancellor Gene Block has presided over a culture of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment while stifling any speech, including in the classroom, that might be considered derogatory of Israel. Block testified in a sham hearing before Congress, where Rep. Ilhan Omar (D) pointed out that he chose not to act to prevent the violence.

Some new data has changed cosmologists’ views on the nature of dark energy and the eventual fate of the universe.

NBC’s Brandy Zarozny goes inside the truly broken worldview of Nicole Shanahan, the VP candidate on RFK Jr.’s quixotic Presidential campaign.

Nature looks at the growing problem of harassment of scientists and how institutions are ill-equipped or unwilling to fight it. One solution I don’t see employed enough: Threats of physical violence are illegal in the United States, usually as federal crimes. Put resources into tracking those people down and prosecuting them.

A panel of experts on international law published an op-ed in the Financial Times supporting the ICC’s decision to pursue charges against Israel and Hamas for war crimes.

From March, this video from Rabbi Daniel Bogard looks at why American Jews feel connected to Israel; it’s part one of a very informative series on American Jewish culture and identity at a time when that has become incorrectly equated with Zionism.

Will Bunch writes that in the war on our democracy, we’ve already lost Texas. Marc Elias goes further, pointing out that we have no excuse when Trump has warned for years that he wants to take our democracy down.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) claims that she “support(s) babies, moms, and families,” but ProPublica details just how much she has denied support to those same groups – while, of course, killing her dog for not being the goodest boy.

OpenAI’s brazen appropriation of Scarlett Johanssen’s vocal likeness “gave away the game” on AI, according to The Atlantic’s Charlie Wetzel: AI advocates will do whatever the hell they want, and we can’t stop them.

Thousands of kids were prescribed the utterly useless and often harmful HCQ and ivermectin for COVID-19 infections, with Arkansas and Oklahoma doctors leading the way.

International negotiations on a treaty to try to prevent the next pandemic broke down due to nationalist and anti-science sentiments. The World Health Organization’s Global Health Law director argued that “Donald Trump is in the room” and if Trump wins he’d likely “torpedo” any future negotiations.

Police in Fontana, California, used “psychological torture” to get a man who reported his father missing to confess to stabbing and killing him … except his father was still alive and unharmed. The city will now direct nearly $900,000 of taxpayer money to Thomas Perez, Jr., for the pain and distress inflicted on him, during which police also told him they were killing his dog and led him to try to hang himself in custody. What I don’t see is whether any of these officers were fired or even disciplined.

A public safety officer at the College of Staten Island has been suspended for saying on camera “I support killing all you guys” to pro-Palestinian protesters.

Theresa Claiborne, the first Black woman to fly in the U.S. Air Force, retired this week from her job as a pilot for United Airlines. Note her comments on how children would react to seeing her in uniform in airports. Representation matters.

Two board game crowdfunding efforts of note: Stupor Mundi, the newest title from the designer of Darwin’s Journey and Newton, funded in about four hours; it looks like it might be a little lighter in weight than Nestore Mangone’s previous releases.

And Feudum, a 2018 game with a listed weight on Boardgamegeek of 4.58 out of 5 (!), has a crowdfunding page for a new edition that is over $300K raised. I actually hadn’t heard of this game, probably because anything of that weight and a playing time over two hours is of little to no interest to me.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, environment, gaza, israel, links, longreads, new york, physics, police, south dakota, stick to baseball, texas, vaccines

→ May 24, 2024
→ By keith

Night Watch.

Jayne Anne Phillips’ newest novel Night Watch was, as far as I can tell, a surprise winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in two senses: I saw nothing that anticipated its win, and I think it sucks. It is a ponderous, pretentious, pointless, predictable piece of fiction that was an absolute chore to finish and offered far too modest a payoff for the effort required to complete it.

The setup to the plot of Night Watch is far more complex than the plot itself, as if Phillips knew she had a scant concept and decided to mask it with time-shifting, insufficient use of quotation marks, and avoidance of pronouns. A man takes a woman who has stopped speaking for several years and her 12-year-old daughter to a West Virginia asylum several years after the end of the Civil War, cautioning the girl that he is not her father and telling her the story she needs to relate at the asylum to gain admittance for herself and her mother. The girl’s actual father went to fight in the War but never returned and the family received no word of his fate. From there, we jump back and forth to find out who the man was, why the woman stopped speaking, and what happened to the father, before we get to a conclusion that you can see coming from the first fifty pages, if not sooner.

This book thinks it has a lot to say, and that might be its worst attribute, even beyond the leaden, torpid prose and the meager characterization. (It also contains a long, graphic scene of sexual assault that stood out as one of the only scenes in the novel that has that level of detail about anything happening to any of the characters.) There could be a larger point here about the treatment of women during and in the aftermath of the Civil War, and how conflicts tend to save their worst impacts for the most vulnerable populations, such as women and children, which would seem to have a rather apt parallel today in Gaza. There could be something here about the poor treatment of the war wounded and the insane of that era. There could be any number of themes here if Phillips had the insight into the subject to lead the reader there, but she doesn’t. It revels in the misery of its setting like Andersonville, another Pulitzer winner about the Civil War – the judges for that award just can’t seem to resist that setting – without saying anything meaningful about any of it.

The characters are the book’s second major failing, as Phillips seems almost determined to prevent the reader from getting to know any of them. The man never gets a name beyond “Papa,” a sort of cruel joke in the circumstances. The father gets a name that isn’t his own, only after he’s wounded and loses his memory. The mother and daughter each have two names, their own and the false identities they assume when they enter the asylum. There’s also a woman and a horse who are both named Dearbhla, in case you weren’t confused already. They’re all thinly drawn enough that they exist only as one-dimensional villains (Papa) or victims (the mother and father) or sort of impossible fairies (the daughter). The daughter, named ConaLee but known at the asylum as Miss Eliza Connolly, is the closest character here to a protagonist, and is certainly its hero, yet she is a cipher inside her outlines: We only see her as her world has made her, never as who she is as a person.

The sum of these disparate parts may leave you rooting for any sort of happy ending for the central characters, and of course Phillips could not give you one – nor does this novel need one, to be clear. She simply chose the cheapest way out, rather than resolving the plot’s various threads in a way that actually says something about their lives or their time or, as is written in the guidelines for the Pulitzer committee, “dealing with American life.” That this was chosen over North Woods or Tom Lake is appalling, the second massive whiff in three years by the Pulitzer committees for the fiction award after 2021’s mind-boggling selection of The Netanyahus, which really hasn’t aged well. A great novel will justify its existence through its story, its prose, and its characters. Night Watch does none of the above.

Next up: Oliver Roeder’s Seven Games: A Human History.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2023 novels, american literature, civil war, disappointments, historical fiction, pulitzer prize

→ May 18, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/18/24.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I posted my first mock draft for 2024. I also held a free Klawchat on Wednesday to take questions on that and a few on some minor-league prospects.

I swear I’ll send out a new version of my email newsletter in the next day or two. It’s just been very hectic here lately. It’s not exactly slowing down – I may not go to any conference tournaments because my daughter’s birthday is this week and the Delaware state tennis tournament was delayed until Monday due to (a teeny tiny threat of) rain.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: ProPublica has the story of a mom in Texas who won election to her school board in Granbury on a platform of stopping left-wing indoctrination, only to find that none of that was happening. When she went public with her change of views, however, she found herself attacked by her former allies.

Defector’s Nick Zarzycki interviewed Richard Garfield about the creation of Magic: the Gathering and his disenchantment with how the game has developed and (in his view) devolved in its 30-year history.

This excerpt from Jacob Kushner’s new book Look Away: A True Story of Murder, Bombings, and a Far-Right Campaign to Rid Germany of Immigrants hooked me into adding it to my to-read list.It’s about a trio of white supremacist killers in Germany who robbed banks when they weren’t murdering immigrants, and also about the new rise of such racist violence across the west in the last decade.

Author Lauren Groff (Fates and Furies, Florida) has opened a bookstore in Gainesville, Florida, with a focus on banned and challenged books because of the state’s war on literature.

An unvaccinated child, under the age of 5, died of measles in the Canadian province of Ontario. There is no reason whatsoever to allow parents to neglect their child’s welfare like this.

RFK Jr. had quite a week, as reports found that in his divorce filing in 2012, he claimed a worm had eaten away part of his brain, leading to half-serious jokes that it explains how completely batshit his views have become. Slate has a short piece arguing that it’s just more evidence of how RFK Jr. is happy to lie his way through any situation. Scientific American explained that such “brain worms” are an actual global health problem, which you’d think the vaccine-denialist candidate would embrace since he claims to be so concerned with public health. Meanwhile, a new hire for his campaign appears to have been at the insurrection on January 6^th. And his VP candidate Nicole Shanahan just dumped $8 million of her own money into his flailing campaign effort.

The Beverly Hills billionaires who own the companies behind Wonderful pistachios and Fiji water are trying to kill a California law that helps unions bring farmworkers under their umbrella. The Resnicks donate millions to mostly liberal and Democratic causes, but would rather destroy workers’ rights than deal with unions at their Wonderful agricultural firm.

Saudi Arabia’s quixotic Neom project includes a 170 kilometer-long linear city called The Line, but the BBC reports that the autocratic nation has destroyed villages and murdered residents of the area to clear the path for the city’s construction.

Is Mexico City about to run out of fresh water? Maybe not yet, but the situation is dire there and in many other large cities that have overdeveloped and/or relied too much on a single water source, with climate change exacerbating the situation on multiple continents.

David R. Boyd, the outgoing United Nations special rapporteur for the environment and human rights, excoriated our reliance on exploitation of both humans and nature to run our global economy, citing climate change, plastic pollution, and declining biodiversity as critical issues that most people and governments are ignoring.

David Tennant remains my favorite Doctor, although I have yet to see any of Ncuti Gatwa’s episodes; I’m not surprised that Tennant has also come out clearly in favor of trans rights as well.

Tiffany Haddish, on the other hand, is not one of my favorite actors, and it turns out she used the United States’ lack of data privacy laws to dox people who criticized her online. There’s way too much personal information about us available to anyone willing to cough up a few bucks. Also, Haddish really needs to log off.

I tweeted this link when the story ran, but it’s worth reposting: Jackson County legislator DaRon McGee (D) helped put the Chiefs/Royals stadium tax initiative on the ballot. He also hit up the Royals for free suite tickets last year while he was involved in negotiations with the club.

The Supreme Court ruled that people whose property is seized in civil asset forfeiture cases have no right to a preliminary hearing to determine if the forfeiture was legal or justified, instead favoring the police’s so-called “right” to continue their “important law-enforcement activities.”

North Carolina’s far-right legislature passed a bill banning the wearing of masks in public, which likely violates both the First Amendment and federal disability rights statutes. The ostensible targets are pro-Palestine protesters, but even so, they also have free speech and free assembly rights.

Chad recently held the first free election in its 64-year history, although observers have said the election was not fair and at least two opponents have alleged fraud. The winner was Mahamat Idriss Déby, son of the strongman Idriss Déby who ruled the country from 1991 until he was killed in a coup in 2021.

The parliament of the European country of Georgia passed a Russian-backed bill requiring organizations receiving at least 20% of their funding from outside of the country to register as “agents of foreign influence”, over objections from the country’s western allies and protests from Georgians that have lasted for weeks.

ProPublica also explores Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s dubious claim that Israel has done enough to address serious rights violations by its military, such as the Israeli soldier who murdered an unarmed Palestinian and was sentenced only to community service.

Evan Urquhart at Assigned Media points out how many other anti-trans voices have found J.K. Rowling too toxic to defend, coming in the wake of Rowling bullying a trans woman who became the first openly trans referee in a major soccer league.

St. Petersburg, Florida, is banking on 7% annual growth to help pay for the stadium they want to build for the Rays, which is wildly optimistic in any circumstances, but I’d say even more so for a city right on the water in an era of rising sea levels.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: africa, banned books, baseball, climate change, first amendment, florida, gaza, germany, labor rights, links, longreads, mexico, north carolina, saudi arabia, scotus, texas, trans rights, vaccines

→ May 15, 2024
→ By keith

Klawchat 5/15/24.

My first mock draft of 2024 is now up for subscribers to The Athletic.

Keith Law: So you say I got a funny face. Klawchat.

Mike R: I loved the “Thick as a Brick” reference at the top of the last chat.
Keith Law: I was a big Jethro Tull fan when I was in college, then kind of lost interest for a while. They used “Teacher” in Baby Reindeer (deserves an Emmy for best use of a song in a limited series) and it got me back into them in the last few weeks.

J: Cleveland clearly likes-and is good at-acquiring and developing hit tool driven 2B. Assuming they have Condon and Bazzana graded equally do you think they should double down on that profile or take the player who’s profile would be unique in the org
Keith Law: They should take whoever they think is the best player. Period. You don’t pick first very often and you don’t want to screw it up like the Phils did in 2016.

James: With respect to James Wood, outside of the improved numbers, have you seen or gotten reports that he’s actually taken a step forward in some of the areas of concern that you had for him coming into this season?
Keith Law: His slider recognition seems to be way, way improved from last year. I’m a little skeptical of any player’s improved plate discipline with the ABS in play in AAA, but he seems to have made a real change.

Rick: I know this is about 2024, but as an Astros fan with a likely high pick, how strong is the 2025 draft?
Keith Law: I have no idea. I avoid worrying about next year’s draft until the current one is over, especially since such early impressions are often way off.

Neal: I’m a White Sox fan trying to warm up to the idea of taking a hitter without positional value (to be fair-our guys don’t really hit at the less valuable positions either). I saw Jac as 3 doubles this year. Is this a no wheels kind of slugger? I know he’s hit a lot of home runs, but Condon has 18 doubles by comparison. Thanks!
Keith Law: It’s a very all-or-nothing approach for Cags and I think that’s why some teams are just not on him in the top ten. He swings a lot, he chases a lot, and he’s trying to pull everything. That’s how you end up with all singles and homers but very very few 2b/3b – and you’re correct to worry about what it means going forward.

Punk in Drublic: any updates to the profiles of Owen Cassie, Thayron Liranzo, or Cam Collier based on their 2024 season?
Keith Law: I think all 3 have been pretty much as expected so far, other than Liranzo hitting a little worse on BIP. Was hoping Caissie would cut down on the K’s with the benefit of ABS in AAA.

Drew: It’s not Memorial Day and there are already two public videos of the Nationals coaching staff and CJ Abrams disagreeing about his approach at the plate. 1) how much should an MLB team be telling a player how to swing (feels very Stanford’y) and 2) how concerning should it be that there is such a visible disagreement between the staff and best player?
Keith Law: I hate that stuff becoming public regardless of the player and org – that belongs behind closed doors, IMO. It doesn’t reflect well on the coaching staff, including the manager. That said, it is absolutely the coaching staff’s job to work with players on their swings and their approaches.

Punk in Drublic: It feels like based on his stat line Jonah Tong has shown some marked improvement this season (specifically with his reduction of walks). Have you heard anything about him imparting a significant way or is it more SSS?
Keith Law: Yep, he’s legit. Would probably be a top 100 guy at this point. Fastball is easily plus in every way.

Dan: With Mitchell Parker and Jake Irving doing well (111 and 128 ERA+, respectively), Andry Lara blowing up seemingly out of nowhere–are the Nationals actually developing pitchers?
Keith Law: No – Parker’s start to his career looks like a raging fluke. He’s giving up more hard contact than the opponents’ avg would imply and is lucky he hasn’t allowed more homers. Both he and Irvin have large platoon splits already, and I would expect that to get exposed as teams stack lineups with LHB.

Sam: How much success does a prospect need to have with unconventional mechanics/skill set before it stops being a concern?
Keith Law: Kind of depends on the mechanics/skill in question. For pitchers with weird deliveries – and this year’s draft has a LOT – I think you focus more on the stuff, and how it plays, and make small adjustments based on your concerns about the delivery, rather than just saying “NOPE” to a guy like Yesavage, who I don’t think has ever had an arm issue and who is dominating with the FB/split. I think it’s more fair to be skeptical of, say, a hitter with a really unusual swing (Chase Delauter comes to mind, although the poor guy is hurt again), because that seems to be way more of an impediment in the majors than an unusual delivery.
Keith Law: Sorry for the non-answer.

Paul in SF: Thanks for all the hard work! This draft doesn’t have the top 5 of last year, so comparatively, how many “TOP 25” guys do you see overall? I would assume Condon and Bazzana, but anyone else? Just curious as to the difference at top.
Keith Law: That’s probably it. And I’m not totally sure that either of those guys cracks last year’s top 5.

M: Christopher Morel’s plate discipline has really improved – walk rate way up, K rate real down, some bad BABIP luck this year. OTOH his defense has been horrendous and he is on pace for 1 WAR again. Is this a player worth investing in?
Keith Law: I think he’s a DH. I did notice the plate discipline stuff you mentioned … he’s also hitting the ball on the ground a decent amount more often than last year, and I wonder if that’s all connected, that he’s trading some whiff for some less favorable contact. If Shaw, who’s also had some awful BABIP luck, performs well enough to get to the majors this summer, he should get the 3B job.

Matt: I noticed Skenes pitched 4 innings but had like 20 pitches that were over 100 mph. Wouldn’t it be better if he threw 96 but was able to go 6 or 7 innings? Or is there not a big difference in 4-5 mph with regards to stress on the arm? It just seems ill advised to throw as hard as you can all the time.
Keith Law: In theory, yes, I agree with you, but the unknowable variable here is how much it taxes Skenes’ arm to throw 100 versus 96. I’m hoping that the splinker helps take some of the pressure off him to throw 100, because the four-seamer doesn’t play as well at the lower end of his range – it doesn’t have much ride or run, while the splinker has a lot more vertical break and I think hitters are going to have a really hard time hitting it anywhere but into the ground.

Mj: Is Brett Bateman a prospect? No power at all, but gets on base at a really high clip and is fast. Or am I just dreaming of lead off men of my youth?
Keith Law: I’d really have to see him do something in AA given his age/experience before buying into it.

SCG: Keith, first of all, thanks for all your work put and also for the chats! Do you see Vance Honeycutt going in the first two rounds? Is it possible he moves into the first round?
Keith Law: It is possible he goes in the first, but on merit he’s a second rounder, and I know teams are well aware of his holes at the plate. He’s at a 30% K rate in the ACC this year, and everyone remembers Jud Fabian, who is punching out too often while repeating AA this year.
Keith Law: It’s a similar profile: ++ power, ++ CF defense, too much whiff.

Braydon: In your mock you said the class overall is one of the weakest you can remember. How does the Top 11 specifically compare to the top of recent drafts?
Keith Law: It’s weaker. A strong top of the draft will nearly always color our collective opinion of a draft.

Nervous Flyball Pitcher: Your latest mock has the Orioles pointing to several position players, but with Burnes heading out of town, DL Hall gone, and control/command question marks on Povich and McDermott, which pitchers would you have them draft?
Keith Law: I’d have them take the best player available, and in my mock I project what I believe teams will do, not what they should do. I don’t think the O’s have taken a pitcher in the first round under Elias, and I know from mutual acquaintances that the Appel-Aiken-Whitley picks have soured him on doing so again. (Who could blame him?)

Z Chow: Big fan of your work, Keith. Do you collect any baseball cards or memorabilia at all?
Keith Law: I do not. I’m not much for collecting; I do have a large board game collection, but I’d only say about 8-10 of them are ones I have “collected” versus games I like and think I might play again. I have a first edition of Egizia, for example, that is worth a decent amount, and the second edition changed some of the rules and the board in a way I don’t care for, so I’m hanging on to this.

Chris: What kind of trade package would you be comfortable sending over for Luis Robert? Vs what would you be asking for if you were the white Sox?
Keith Law: They should ask for the Juan Soto deal (the first one, with Wood and Gore and Abrams). He’s got three years left after this one, including two club options, and that is worth a TON – he’s under control but you have the choice to walk away if something goes wrong.

William C: What can the Athletics reasonably expect in return for Mason Miller? Follow up, what would you give up for him? I figure the answers differ given your thoughts on closers.
Keith Law: If I’m trading for Miller, I’m valuing him as if he had two years of control left, because his injury history says expecting anything beyond that is pure fantasy. Even that might be optimistic but if you think he’s only good for another half-season you’re just not trading for him.

Heather: Do you ever watch college baseball on television, or is that just a completely useless way of scouting?
Keith Law: I watch it but it’s not great for scouting – the angles are all wrong – more for just getting the feel for how the players are playing rather than breaking down mechanics. Can certainly see how a player is approaching an at bat, for example.

Matt: What’s with all these athletes being MAGA Chuds? Schilling, Butker, LT, Mariano Rivera, etc. It’s amazing, really.
Keith Law: Those guys don’t all have equivalent beliefs, mind you. But I think they all have similar religious backgrounds, and for some reason, the evangelical movement has moved very, very far to the right – even though I think that’s inconsistent with the secular aspects of Christ’s philosophy (omitting questions of his divinity).

Jeremy: Thru 119 PA, Rowdy Tellez is batting .178/.252/.234 (.486) with a 42 OPS+,42WRC+ after 351 PA batting .215/.291/.376 (.667) with a 81OPS+, 78WRC+ in 2023. How long will the Pirates take to finally start playing him less, and why hasn’t it happened yet?
Keith Law: I don’t know, and I don’t know.
Keith Law: Tellez has over 2000 MLB PA at this point and he’s almost dead replacement level. You have to have someone better than him in AAA or you’ve failed.

Santaspirt: I either miss your chats and remember the question I had for you, or I show up to your chats and forget what I wanted to ask you. There is no in between. Anyway, great mock. I only have the Athletic because of your writing.
Keith Law: Thank you! Maybe you’ll remember before 2 pm.

Rafael G.: What is Coby Mayo’s Ceiling? He is hitting the cover off the ball, but does he have a chance for passable defense at third?
Keith Law: If you’re betting on an ultimate position, I’d say RF > 1B > 3B. But I don’t think it’s impossible he stays at third, in a vacuum, assuming he didn’t die from the lack of oxygen. They just have a lot of infielders who are better.

Danny: The Yankees have pushed recent draft picks to play premium positions that the general consensus did not agree (Wells at C, Sweeney staying at SS and Jones in CF). Do you think they could do the same with Jordan, Waldschmidt or Moore?
Keith Law: Yes. Even when I don’t agree that the player can stay there, I think it’s a smart developmental approach. What do you lose by playing a guy at the toughest (and most valuable) possible position he could play? Very little, I think. And maybe you prove the consensus wrong.

Josh: Assume if the Guardians go well below slot at 1:1 it’s just a money saving move and a mistake? Those vanity senate runs by Matt Dolan can’t be cheap.
Keith Law: It would be to go after some over-slot guys with later picks. I’ve heard several times that this is their plan. I just don’t think this draft offers the same quantity of over-slot candidates that last year did, or even 2021 when the Pirates took Henry Davis well under slot and then got two of their top prospects today in Chandler and Solometo.

Joe: Possible we are seeing a delayed breakout for Clarke Schmidt or Luis Gil?
Keith Law: I had Schmidt on my breakout list this year so of course I’m hoping that’s true. Gil has always had a great arm, but he’s leading the AL in walks, and it’s especially acute vs LHB.

Dr. Bob: People complain about the Dodgers pricing other teams out of competition. I understand that contracts like they gave to Ohtani and Yamamoto might not fit their budgets, but they could spend much less money to build scouting and player development systems like L.A. has. That’s how they get players like Andy Pages and Teoscar Hernandez.
Keith Law: That so few teams have maintained scouting, development, and R&D staffs like the Dodgers is baffling to me. We can all joke about Dodgers Devil Magic, but jesus it’s right there in front of you. They employ more people in those departments, and they have those departments working together as well as any organization in baseball. It’s not a secret. If you made me a GM or President of BB Ops, I would copy them. Like, print the org chart, change the names, rock and roll.

addoeh: Ryan Sloan a second rounder or compensatory round candidate?
Keith Law: I’d say between picks 20 and 40. Over-slot if he gets past 30. I was supposed to see him last night but the rain was coming so I came home and saw Bryce Meccage instead.

Geoff: What is going on with Bazzana all of a sudden becoming the top guy in most recent mock drafts? Is it solely because of that report from ESPN? Or is there something that is going around that everyone knows about?
Keith Law: What report from ESPN? Bazzana’s been a 1-1 candidate all spring, and he’s had a tremendous year. He and Condon are the only two realistic candidates for 1-1 in my view, although I mentioned a third name in the mock today because I heard Cleveland might consider it.
Keith Law: BTW, I was able to see a live feed of Konnor Griffin’s game last night. It was tied, and with no one on and two outs, Griffin’s coach intentionally walked a batter – the potential winning run – only to see him come around and score. It has to be one of the worst unforced managerial errors I’ve ever seen.

Gabriel: Keith you were always a fan of Mathew Lugo. Is his current production a sign of him finally meeting expectations or is it just a player that is now too old for AA
Keith Law: He’s repeating the level and still striking out too often, but I do think the power surge is real. He might still find a way to the majors.

Justin Y: Kevin Alcantara just can’t seem to get over the hump it feels like. Is he just going to be a late bloomer?
Keith Law: He’s 21 in AA. He’s younger than most of the college guys about to get drafted.

Troy: Would sending Chourio down be a good idea or is there just not much for him to learn in AAA?
Keith Law: Don’t think he has anything to learn in AAA. The gap between that level and the majors is enormous. Teams have to adjust and be willing to let hitters come up and struggle for a few months as they adjust to better pitching. It was true with Holliday and with Henry Davis and Kjerstad too.

Guest: Hey Keith, thanks for the chat. A’s fan here who thought we should have drafted Shaw but not too upset w/Wilson. How would you rank Shaw last year vs other 2B Bazzana & Wetherholt this year? Thanks
Keith Law: Shaw’s comparable to those guys as hitters, probably more power than Wetherholt, less pure hit tool. Can’t comment on Wetherholt’s defense at this point since he’s barely played the field (and barely moved when he has).

Matt: When Harper was drafted, how did teams know he was a generational talent? What set him aside that everyone knew the Nationals were taking him as opposed to a normal draft where you hope the pick pans out?
Keith Law: We’d seen him against older competition since he was 15. He was as obvious a 1-1 pick as we might ever see.

Dugan: What is going on with Jack Leiter? He seemed to dominate AAA, but has been totally lost in all of his MLB games. Anything in particular going on?
Keith Law: Yeah, his 4-seamer has guys racing to the bat rack. He might as well walk to the plate and put it on a tee. Hitters will tell you if a pitch isn’t any good, and they’re telling us, loudly. At this point I’d send him down and see if he can throw a decent two-seamer because the four-seamer is way too straight and doesn’t have other attributes to make up for it.

David: Do you see any chance Condon or Bazzana fall to Rox at 3? and would they still take one of Smith/Burns if one of those guys were still on the board?
Keith Law: I did outline a scenario like that in the mock. I think they’d take the hitter if one fell.

Justin: You previously had some not so favorable reports about Jacob Gonzalez based on what you saw last year. There’s some talk of changes to his swing along with some pretty solid stats to start the year. Have you noticed a change in his swing and are you feeling better about him going forward?
Keith Law: No. He’s too advanced for high-A anyway and we’re not seeing a big change in outcomes.

Tom: Have you seen Tegan Kuhns pitch and what do you think of him?
Keith Law: Tried to see early, got rained out (2″ in two days), and since then I’ve heard the velocity has tapered. Think he’s slid out of any first-round consideration; there’s already a bias against 6′ HS RHP, and if he’s not showing elite stuff maybe he ends up at NC State and tries to be a top 10 pick in three years.

Matt: Does Max Clark have a chance at AA this year?
Keith Law: I think he’ll finish there.

Adam D.: With the draft class being as weak as it is, who would you say is the “best of the rest” after the top-tier guys? One pitcher and one hitter to look out for?
Keith Law: I’ll do an updated ranking next week – I was going to do one this week and the mock next Wednesday, but decided to switch them – but the hitter would be Tibbs and the pitcher would be Cijntjie.

Luis: Hi Keith! Great content as usual! Any new board games worth checking out to play with my 9 & 12 year old kids ?
Keith Law: Trio, Mycelia, Wandering Towers are the best fits for that age group I’ve played recently. I need to play Pixies again but liked it on first play.

cross: when you say you have teams on college bats, do you look at their draft history and traits that they like when you link them to a bat in said draft or do you go off of intel? (asking for the marlins / blue jays)
Keith Law: Both, but draft history only matters if the decision-makers are the same.

Jackie: Do you watch “The Amazing Race”? The contestants were in the Dominican Republic last week, and Bartolo Colon made an appearance. He looked good — I’d say about 30-40 pound less than his playing weight. Truth be told, I had no idea he had finally retired. If you had told me he was starting for the Mets last week, I would’ve believed you.
Keith Law: I was hoping he’d stage one more comeback because he was the last MLB player older than I am. (I do not watch the show.)

Matt: What’s really odd is these teams skimping on R&D will also go out and overspend on free agents. Like, you have the money. Put it to good use.
Keith Law: Right, I’d rather have all of that staff than an $8 million free agent who’s unlikely to deliver the same ROI.

Guest: What are your thoughts on Christian Scott? Looking like a legit #3 SP?
Keith Law: I could see that. I said he had above-average starter potential when I wrote him up this winter. But he’s never even thrown 90 innings in a season, so I have a hard time just saying he’s a legit #3 when we assume that pitcher is at least throwing 150-160 innings.

Dugan: Is Matt Wilkinson just overpowering lower levels, or are the skills there real and ready to play at higher levels?
Keith Law: I know in juco he was in the upper 80s and succeeded by changing speeds to get inexperienced hitters out. I don’t have any info from this year, sorry, but I’d be shocked if he was suddenly throwing gas.

Mike: How far out has Jenkins injury pushed him? Does this delay his progress by a year, or it doesn’t matter all that much? thanks,
Keith Law: Walker? Don’t think this matters in the long run.

Richard: Is Luke Holman a back end starter or does he have mid-rotation upside?
Keith Law: Delivery is really iffy for durability. I know he had a longer arm stroke before going to LSU … maybe someone drafts him and cleans it up enough so that he can be more of a back-end starter.

Justin: If you’re the White Sox, do you trade Robert, Fedde, Crochet, etc?
Keith Law: Yes. Anything that’s not nailed down.

Greg: Have you heard anything about an Owen Murphy breakout? I’m just scouting the stat line but it looks good so far.
Keith Law: No breakout, just a good command/control guy dominating hitters who don’t have the plate discipline to compete. He doesn’t have a swing-and-miss pitch in the arsenal.

J: I struggle with players like James Tibbs. I feel like if there was more confidence that he would be a true middle of the order bat, he would be grouped with Kurtz/Cags. But since he seems to be a tier below them, I’m wondering how valuable is a ~6 hole hitter with negative defensive value?
Keith Law: Is he a 6-hole hitter or maybe a 2-hole guy? I think that’s the question teams are facing. I know models love him.

Marc: Keith, the pirates have chosen to go with a 6-man rotation with the unstated but clearly underlying goal of limiting innings for their young pitchers. Is there any evidence that extending time between starts is good for arm health? Also wondered what you thought of Skenes’s first start in the big leagues. Thanks!
Keith Law: My understanding is that more rest is better than less, but I don’t know of evidence of whether six-man rotations are better than five-man. I’d rather see this, and then guys pitching a little deeper into games, than the alternative of a five-man rotation and Jared Jones coming out at 59 pitches.

Mike: Was hoping you could opine on WVU as a baseball program. Back 10+ years ago when i was there, they barely even had a program. Now with manoah, means, whetherholt and i think a few others, theyre generating a lotta talent. Any idea why?
Keith Law: Being in the Big 12 with a tremendous facility has to help from recruiting to development.

Nick: How does Condon compare to Kris Bryant as a prospect coming out of college?
Keith Law: I think Condon’s a better athlete – little twitchier, might stay up the middle – but Bryant had more raw power. HRs are up all over college baseball this year. Every time I go to a college game and see how the ball flies, I wonder, who’s been screwing with this thing?
Keith Law: That’s all for this week … plans may shift slightly with my upcoming travel but I hope to have a top 100 draft ranking up on Wednesday of next week. Thanks for all of your questions and for reading, as always. Stay safe.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: klawchat

→ May 4, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/4/24.

Two new pieces for subscribers to the Athletic this week, a breakdown of the Luis Arraez trade and scouting notes on Justin Crawford and other Phillies, Orioles, and Mets prospects. I’ve also got a draft scouting notebook going up on Sunday with notes on J.J. Wetherholt, Hagen Smith, Peyton Stovall, and Ryan Waldschmidt. And I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter last Saturday, so I should do another one in a day or two, in theory.

I’ll be back on Stadium on Monday at 2 pm ET for Diamond Dreams and then for one segment of Unpacked at 2:30 pm. The shows re-air throughout the week, roughly twice a day, as far as I can tell. You can watch via the app or with certain subscriptions to Youtube, Fubo, Roku, etc.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The Columbia Spectator, with the help of New York magazine, has a detailed look at the protests, the encampments, the police overreach, and more on campus, through hundreds of interviews with students and faculty across the religious and ideological divides.

In the Atlantic, Tyler Austin Harper writes of how colleges positioned themselves as activist havens when speaking to prospective students, only to find that those students believed them.

The LA Times has the story of a man who engineered the theft of millions of gallons of water from California’s limited resources, while enriching himself and his friends and lying on his income taxes.

ProPublica reports on the EPA’s decision to ignore its own scientists and approve a plastic fuel additive that is nearly guaranteed to cause cancer in anyone exposed to it regularly over a lifetime. Well, a shortened lifetime, I guess.

The Washington Post ran a long piece on the effects of sea level rise on the coastal U.S., much of it in states whose elected officials have denied climate change and fought efforts to mitigate it.

A research study by the Australian government’s Institute of Criminology examined how anti-COVID protests brought together numerous anti-government forces, including those beholden to conspiracy theories and extremist anti-authority sentiments (like so-called “sovereign citizens”).

Amos Goldberg, a Holocaust and genocide researcher at Hebrew University, writes about the assault on Gaza: “Yes, it is genocide.”

Sam Thorpe, a Jewish economist who works as a Senior Research Assistant for the Brookings Institute’s Tax Policy Center, wrote in a series of tweets that it is possible to be Jewish and oppose the actions of Israel in Gaza. He argues that it is imperative for believers to do so, as his faith teaches that all humans are made in the image of God.

Meanwhile, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the “total annihilation” of Gaza, after which Haaretz called for his firing.

Of course, the American media are more caught up in covering campus protests, and not even getting the angle right, such as the Indiana State Police’s excessive use of force – including setting up a sniper on a nearby building! – against protesters at IU. This link has an interview with ISP Superintendent Doug Carter, who doesn’t seem to have the foggiest idea of what freedom of speech means.

The LA Times’ Michael Hiltzik wrote that college presidents who rush to call in the police haven’t learned a damn thing since the 1960s. Today is the anniversary of the police murdering four students at Kent State who were protesting U.S. involvement in Vietnam, by the way.

Credit goes to the Philadelphia police, however, who declined Penn’s request that they come clear out student protesters unless the school could provide evidence of imminent danger.

CNN’s Dana Bash went on air and parroted a bunch of pro-Israel talking points while comparing pro-Palestinian protesters to Nazi forces.

Ken Klippenstein resigned from The Intercept and revealed some of how management there sought to spike stories critical of Jeff Bezos and other rich, powerful targets, all while apparently paying themselves more while laying off editors and journalists. I’ve linked to quite a bit of Ken’s work here and will probably sign up for his newsletter now that he’s going solo.

Andrew Huberman’s podcast is one of the most popular in America. It’s also rife with false information.

Florida has removed over 22,000 children from its version of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) this year, defying a federal law designed to protect them. I never though the wolves would eat my face!

Meanwhile, Florida’s farmers are suffering from a lack of labor thanks to the state’s draconian law attacking businesses that used undocumented workers, as are construction businesses, restaurants, and hoteliers, all major industries in the state.

Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) shared a video of white University of Mississippi students making monkey noises and shouting racist chants at a Black protester, saying “Ole Miss taking care of business” (while using the racist-derived nickname for the school). Collins has previously shared posts from neo-Nazis and suggested murdering migrants, so we shouldn’t be surprised.

Chicago won’t discipline nine city police officers who were (are?) members of the right-wing extremist Oath Keepers group, after the mayor and CPD superintendent had promised to do so.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that North Carolina and West Virginia can’t deny gender-affirming medical coverage to transgender people. North Carolina sought to specifically deny it to state employees and their dependents, while West Virginia sought to do so for people enrolled in Medicaid.

Arizona’s Kari Lake, running as a Republican for the seat that Krysten Sinema is vacating, is touting State Sen. Sonny Borrelli’s endorsement of her, even though Borrelli – the Arizona Senate Majority Leader has a history of domestic violence allegations against him and said just this March that women should put an aspirin between their knees as a method of birth control.

A second Boeing whistleblower has died. Joshua Dean, who was 45, died of a MRSA infection this week; John Barnett, 62, died in March in an apparent suicide, although friends and family have raised doubts that he took his own life.

The Guardian looks at how many bands make little to no money, even taking losses, from touring. With record sales in the toilet and tours unprofitable, what career is there in making music if you’re not a superstar?

I thought Netflix’s Baby Reindeer was outstanding, and am pulling for the two stars to earn Emmy nominations for their work, especially Jessica Gunning (who plays Martha). NPR’s Glenn Weldon argued that the series bungled its depiction of queerness; I didn’t interpret it this way, but I’m also straight and perhaps not the right person to answer this question.

Two new studies on the economics of sports and sport stadium financing: One that showed that policing becomes more aggressive where there are public subsidies of sports facilities, apparently to help make up for budget shortfalls; the other showed that sporting events lead to an increase in crime, and thus to an increase in spending on policing, two ways in which public subsidies for sports stadiums negatively impact the local economy.

ProPublica reports on a new effort at the IRS to identify illegal tax avoidance schemes by sports-team owners. It would appear these owners are happy to take taxpayer money, but not to pay back in the legally required portion of their profits.

Paris claimed it was going to use the Olympics as a spur to revitalize one of its poorest districts, Seine-Saint-Denis; instead it appears they’ve evicted impoverished residents and decreased the region’s air quality. The district was the site of the 2005 riots against the police that inspired the Oscar-nominated 2019 film Les Misérables.

Antiabortion zealots are trying to force the Amarillo, Texas, city council to pass a ridiculous, unenforceable ordinance forbidding the use of city streets for the purpose of leaving the state for an abortion. Find someone who loves you as much as these people love depriving other people of their rights.

Utah passed a transphobic bathroom law, and in the first week in which the site to report alleged violations was live, they received almost 4000 bogus reports and left a bunch of information unprotected for anyone to access.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, arizona, chicago, climate change, colleges, environment, florida, gaza, links, longreads, misinformation, mississippi, Music, olympics, paris, police, stick to baseball, taxes, texas, trans rights, utah, water crisis

→ May 2, 2024
→ By keith

Klawchat 5/2/24.

Keith Law: Really don’t mind if you sit this one out. Klawchat.

Brett: Is Ralphy Velasquez a guy, or could be a GUY?
Keith Law: The bat looks like a GUY, but he’s only playing first base now and that raises the bar significantly (versus catching).

Matt: How excited should I be about Wichrowski?
Keith Law: Great arm, up to 96-97 with a really sharp slider (maybe a sweeper, I hate that term), no pitch for lefties – it’s FB, SL, cutter, and the cutter isn’t great – so right now it’s a relief profile. Arm action seems fine to start; maybe he can learn a splitter or split-change to give him that extra pitch he needs for LHB?

Josh: Is Matt Wilkinson an actual prospect or just old for his level?
Keith Law: He’s definitely old for his level, and his season line is a bit skewed by one incredible start (6 IP, 15 K!). I’d rather say we just don’t know, and that he should at least be in high A now, given the results. LHB are striking out half the time they face him, which is a pretty good starting point.

Zirinsky: Hey there Keith. Thanks for doing these chats. I’m curious: how would you handle what’s going on on various college campuses (protests, etc.) if you were an administrator at one of them where there was a lot of activity?
Keith Law: I can tell you what I wouldn’t do: send in large groups of heavily armed police and hope I didn’t just create another Kent State. It’d be nice if they learned a single lesson from past protests. There’s also a great piece in the Atlantic today about how some of these same schools have touted their ‘activist’ credentials and talked up freedom of expression … and now they’re zip-tying professors and expelling students.

Dallas: Hi Keith- hope you are having a great day and I throughly enjoy your work. My question is regarding the development of the Pirates position players. We are in year 5 of the Cherington Era and several bats (Suwinski, Davis, Cruz, etc) are struggling mightily. Is there hope these guys can turn it around, or is the outlook as bleak as it appears?
Keith Law: Suwinski was never a ‘guy’ like the other two as a prospect; last year looked like a pretty big fluke. The others were very highly-rated prospects, for totally different reasons, but I think it’s fair to ask the question – and note that some of this goes back to the previous regime, as well. They really haven’t developed a hitter into an offensive star since Reynolds, who they got in a trade when he was 22 and already reasonably developed. Davis fits their mold of guys who can hit the ball hard, but don’t do it often enough. Cruz is unique among their guys in that it’s about approach and his unusual size, rather than too much weak contact.

Justin: Is there anything in Cade Povich’s arsenal thats actually improved from last year, or is this just a small sample stellar chunk where his true talent hasn’t really improved?
Keith Law: He’s working a lot more with a cutter now, and that probably explains a lot of the improvement, along with some good luck on BIP.

Justin: Over or under 60 wins for Oakland?
Keith Law: Over.

SamG: Cam Collier appears to have a nice start to the season. Obviously small sample size. Do you expect he plays the entire season in Dayton, or do you expect a promotion to AA if he continues to play well?
Keith Law: He’s 19; I hope they leave him in Dayton all year, or close to it. He’s performing very well overall, but obviously there’s some aggressiveness there early in counts that pitchers will exploit at some point.

J: Was Theo Gillen close to making your Draft top 50?
Keith Law: No, but he should have been, and he’ll be on the update in the top 30 or so.

Dana: Austin Wells isn’t terrible behind the plate! Not a Gold Glover, but somewhere between below average and average. Are you willing to issue a formal mea culpa on that one?
Keith Law: He is way worse than you are saying. Already a ton of balls getting past him. Also hard eye roll at “formal mea culpa.” The fuck does that even mean?

Matt K: Thank you for chatting, Keith. As a Brewer fan, very excited for the kids they already have up in the majors, and the ones to come. Do you think Sal Frelick will be able to start elevating more to get his ISO into a more helpful area – sorta what Tyler Black has seemed to?
Keith Law: Don’t think Frelick’s ever going to be a high ISO guy – could be a high average, high doubles type.

Matt: Should Drew Thorpe get called up to the majors soon, or is keeping him as far away as possible from Chicago best for his development (and general wellbeing)?
Woody: Are CJ Abrams and MacKenzie Gore making the leap this year? And where do you think Abrams’s long-term defensive home is? Second base?
Keith Law: Thorpe: No idea why he’s in AA. I would get him to AAA and see what happens there with his below-average FB. He’s not missing a ton of bats in AA right now, but he’s too good of a pitcher (in terms of feel, mixing pitches, command) for that level. I wouldn’t call him up tot he majors now or soon.
Keith Law: Abrams: He was on my breakouts list, so of course I hope this is real. I thought we’d see more hard contact, and we are, even though his top-end contact quality hasn’t changed.

Gore: I want to believe, and there are some things here I think are sustainable, like the improved strike-throwing, and at least some of the reduction in hard contact allowed. He’s such a good athlete that I figured at some point he’d get that delivery consistent enough to be a low walk guy.

Justin: Do we have any idea what’s up with River Ryan? Any chance this injury results in him having high quality bullets left in September for the big league club?
Keith Law: He was supposed to be out 4-6 weeks, I think. I am assuming we’ll see him rehabbing very soon, based on that timetable. I would not anticipate him pitching in the majors this year.

Guest: Alex Bohm has been hitting really well but his defense has surprised me. I am not saying he’s even average but his turnaround from where he was at his lowest has been a surprise to even get to the point where he is at now. What do you make of his defense?
Keith Law: I think he’s at least a 50 (average) defender now. He started to show a lot of this last year, and so far this year he’s been that guy more consistently.

Braydon: Brody Brecht has been much better his last two starts. Can his final few starts of the year improve his draft stock significantly?
Keith Law: I don’t think “significantly,” but maybe slightly. He’s probably the fourth college starter taken after Burns, Smith, Yesavage. Word is the Angels would just take Yesavage and rush him to the big leagues. If that’s true those three arms all go in the top ten, and then we may not see another pitcher taken until the back half of the round.

JT: How does Kurtz compare to recent bat first 1B draftees such as Vaughn and Torkelson?
Keith Law: He reminds me a lot of Vaughn, but he’s a LHB, and I think he has better bat speed right now than Vaughn did. Still a worrisome profile. Was very glad to see Kurtz come back from the injury and get way more aggressive – when I saw him this year and even last year I worried he was taking to take, happy to walk, rather than looking to do damage in advantageous counts.
Keith Law: Torkelson was a different profile – nowhere near as disciplined as the other two, more raw power, decent argument he was power over hit. I ranked him highly, so I don’t want to make it sound like I didn’t like him or think he was a good pick, but I didn’t think he was a great athlete and thought he was a guy who’d have to hit from day one because he may not make adjustments that easily.
Keith Law: Vaughn, BTW, may be one of the biggest busts in the last 20 years. That guy dominated in the Pac-12 for three years – the Pac-12 used to be a major college conference, kids – and there was nothing about the swing to make you doubt he’d at least hit for average with high OBPs. The White Sox definitely rushed him, but at some point he needs to make an adjustment, too.

Jibraun: I know it’s only been a month, but is it too early to think Goldschmidt is in age-related decline? He looks like he has lost bat speed, and he is compensating by cheating fastball and guessing.
Keith Law: I think that’s exactly what’s happening. He does seem to have lost bat speed. Father Time is undefeated.

Jordan Walker: What is going on? Why can’tI hit in the majors? A piece in the Athletic thinks hitting too low in the lineup is partially to blame. That can’t be true?
Keith Law: I don’t agree with that premise, and I think “can’t hit” is too strong. He hits the ball extremely hard, and he makes plenty of contact on pitches in the zone. I think there are some minor swing decision issues, and he hit the ball on the ground too often in the majors this year, but man, give the guy more than a month. It feels like they’re scrambling.

Aaron C.: It’s been 30 days. Small sample size caveats duly noted. Have you heard any indication that Jacob Wilson has been eating his Wheaties or hitting the weight room or otherwise gotten stronger? Am I trying to read too much into his hot start at Midland? WHO CAN SAY
Keith Law: Haha. I will say he’s doing all the damage at Midland, a crazy hitter’s park.

Jake: Surprised by the amazing start by Imonaga?
Keith Law: No. He’s a good pitcher doing really well in a small sample. I would be surprised if he did this all year, yes.

Jake: Any thoughts on Sasaki as a prospect or is it too soon?
Keith Law: No idea. He’s too far off the radar for me to worry about.

Louise: I re-read your piece on the Cubs signing Imanaga. Would you say you are feeling better about this concern?

“My main concern is that he cuts himself off in his landing and spins off his front heel, giving right-handed hitters too good of a look at the ball, which is how they tagged him for 13 of the 17 homers he allowed last season in NPB. Getting him even slightly more online plus using the splitter more to right-handers could be a remedy if that turns out to be an issue for him against MLB hitters.”
https://theathletic.com/5191790/2024/01/10/shota-imanaga-chicago-cubs-…
Keith Law: No, because we’re still looking at a tiny sample, and if you think he’s going to maintain a sub-5% HR/flyball rate or a 90% strand rate, well, good luck. He’s a solid major-league starter. When the weather warms up, will all those flyballs stay in the park?

Aaron C.: There’s a popular prompt that asks which pro athlete would you wish had a 100% healthy career. The best answer is usually Bo Jackson, of course. Since you’ve started scouting who is the guy(s) you most wish had been blessed with better health?
Keith Law: How about Byron Buxton?

Aaron C.: Whatcha got in the current weeknight dinner rotation? Looking to appease my beloved, but often ungrateful family.
Keith Law: Spring means more salads, for sure. My wife and I split cooking duties, so I cook about half of the nights, and I try to do at least one pasta dish a week. Sometimes it’s pasta alla vodka, sometimes pasta with fresh pesto (it’s warm enough now for the basil plants to survive outdoors), sometimes a pasta dish I made up with sun-dried tomatoes, white beans, and parmiggiano broth.
Keith Law: oh and pizza – once my travel dies down in 2-3 weeks I’ll get the Ooni rocking again.

mike: Do the BlueJays move on from Bo and Vladdy?? Right now their value is very low but Something sure isn’t working with both guys – and they have looked ordinary for quite some time.
Keith Law: I wouldn’t sell low, if that’s your question.

Ian: What are your thoughts on Marcelo Mayer’s start to the season? It looks like he is healthy and mashing. It felt like a bit of his shine wore off last year with the injuries.
Keith Law: I agree with your last two sentences. I think there was an overreaction to him not performing when he wasn’t 100% healthy. That said, in a limited sample, he’s doing all of his damage off fastballs, and he’s struggling against breaking stuff, especially sliders. Worth monitoring, although I am not backing off my top-10 overall ranking for him.

The Master Without Margarita: Roddery Munoz is obviously not this good, but can he be actually decent?
Keith Law: He walked a man an inning in AAA before they called him up. He walked 15% of guys last year across the Nats’ system. I do not believe he has suddenly found the strike zone on the bus from Jacksonville to Miami.

Tim: Tyler Freeman looks good under the hood – strong plate skills, good contact rates, consistently hitting the ball hard – but the results are dreadful to this point. Do you think the results eventually catch up to the process?
Keith Law: Until this year it’s been all groundballs – I mean, you can see a parallel to Walker, until you look at the two players’ bodies. If Freeman is actually lifting the ball more, he can probably end up an average regular somewhere. I have my doubts that this is really him.

Tim: Is Zac Veen back? Still a chance of an above-average regular here?
Keith Law: This is now his third partial year in AA. I wouldn’t get overly excited about a hot four weeks in a level where he played in 2023 and 2022.

Oscar W: Yoelqui “would be ranked lower as ‘bagodonuts” Céspedes is now playing independent baseball in Fargo ND. Surprised he’s out of affiliate baseball so quick? A lot of Cuban prospects are older but why such a high bust rate (Tomas, Rusney, Yoan L, etc). Even the successes are not as bright Yoenis/Moncada.
Keith Law: I give the White Sox a ton of credit for just moving on. He wasn’t happening, ever, so why waste the time and roster spot on him?

Sean: Have heard some buzz on low-A arms Santiago Suarez and Charlee Soto as early season breakouts. Do you see both as long-term starters? Either with mid or top of rotation potential?
Keith Law: Both have TOR potential, with low probability. Suarez > Soto, I think.

harry coffeeboat: keith – huge fan! what do you know about that palmquist guy from colorado? is it possible he finally becomes a legit rockies starter?
Keith Law: I think that’s a no-doubt reliever with his arm slot.

Mart: How was your trip to Pittsburgh to see WVU dominate the panthers
Keith Law: Great! Caught up with three of my old classmates from Tepper, and we got an absolutely perfect day for baseball. Plus I had a great lunch at Areppita’s downtown – I stayed right near there so I walked everywhere, including to/from PNC.

Guest: Thoughts on loperfido as a prospect?
Keith Law: Right here: https://theathletic.com/5263881/2024/02/14/astros-2024-top-prospects-k…

Guest: Do you consider cam fisher a legit prospect?
Keith Law: He’s 23 and striking out over a third of the time in the hitter’s paradise of Asheville. It’s power without hit.

Andy: How do you feel about Iowa’s strategy on high school baseball, with it not starting until May. It means you’re more likely to get more of the season in, but does it hurt when it comes to recruiting/scouting?
Keith Law: The real prospects end up playing for local travel teams or in the league Perfect Game runs out there, so they get seen anyway. I have mixed feelings; if the real purpose is to benefit the players, then starting later is clearly better, because you can’t bank on decent weather there until about now and you don’t want kids playing in cold and/or damp conditions.

Sedona: Have you watched Ranger Suarez’s starts this year? Do you think he’s turned the corner and perhaps the best 3 in the game or better?
Keith Law: He’s a 2 on just about any team.

CW Tampa Tarpons: Have you had a chance to watch Leo De Vries, and if so, what’s your first impression?
Keith Law: Got a look at him in spring training: https://theathletic.com/5352531/2024/03/19/scouting-mlb-breakout-games…

Sedona: We’re always looking for the next breakout Ace from the DSL in the Fantasy Dynasty Community. Who do you think has a chance to be the next Eury? Have you heard anything about Jeter Martinez?
Keith Law: I saw him in the spring … great arm, chance for a starter, didn’t love the delivery.

CW Tampa Tarpons: Any chance Justin Crawford makes it to the bigs this year, or is 2025 and beyond more realistic?
Keith Law: Zero chance. He’s in high A and is only 20.

Xander: You were the high man on Wilyer Abreu and that’s looking quite savvy at the moment – what kind of player does he settle in as? His continued BB% and K% improvement is really encouraging, is this a 4-5 WAR guy or more like 3 WAR?
Keith Law: I’d take the 4+ WAR.

PJ: Is Hayden Wesneski’s future as a 2-3 inning guy (like a Scot Shields type) or can he be a long-term starter.
Keith Law: I think he’s more of a bulk guy, but can make some spot starts.

andy: gimme a mlb floor and ceiling comp for charlie condon
Keith Law: I don’t really do player comps unless they are blindingly obvious to me. He’s got a chance to be a superstar – it’s 30 homer power with hard, hard contact and a strong eye. Probably ends up in RF.

Tripp: Possibly odd question about Caminero. Love the opposite field power, but he hits a lot of balls to right. Is him being routinely late a potential cause of concern? Could big time velocity be an issue for him?
Keith Law: Not that I’ve seen or heard.

Sedona: We see an uptick in young pitchers learning the splitter. Tanner Houck looks like an ace so far. Is this real?
Keith Law: I think so. I was always down on him as a starter because he had no weapon for LHB, and the lower arm slot gave those guys too much of a look at the ball. The splitter directly addresses that issue. I’ve been a splitter advocate forever, since I was with Toronto – I know of no actual evidence it increases injury risk, and if a guy can throw it, it’s a great alternative to a changeup (and straight changeups are losing popularity).

Justin Y: Will Warren looks like he can pitch, do you have the same concerns you had prior to this season?
Keith Law: I don’t know what you mean when you say he “looks like he can pitch.” Are you saying he has good control? He does. Command? Less so, but sure. My main concern on him going back to forever is that left-handed batters whack him around, and they’re doing so again (.500 SLG).

Bobby: Any of the international free agents looking better or worse to you than expected?
Keith Law: Most of them haven’t even played yet.

Josh: Any new thoughts on Andy Pages? He’s been solid in the bigs so far. Know you liked him in the past and was worried about the injury last year. Just wondering if there’s anything in his MLB performance that has you excited.
Keith Law: I overreacted to the shoulder injury. That’s my mistake. I’m buying, fully. Above-average regular.

Kevin W: Do you feel any different physically at 50 than 40?
Keith Law: Yes. Certainly slower to bounce back from exercise. I’ve got some compression in a disc in my lower back that’s probably age-related, but it’s become a chronic thing. And I need glasses more and more.

Brett: Which Dodgers OF are you higher on as of now, Josue De Paula or Zyhir Hope?
Keith Law: De Paula, same as in February.

Kevin W: How is the college application process going with your daughter?
Keith Law: She picked a school a few weeks ago, so it’s all done, and I think she’s more relieved than anything else. The New York Times has a great story from yesterday on what a shitshow it’s been this year.

Mike Trout: I’m seeing (bad faith) comparisons drawn between things like the college protests and the insurrection or Noem’s puppy killing and the treatment of the Biden dogs. How do we convince people that these things are not at all the same?
Keith Law: I am not sanguine about convincing people who are already convinced. I agree those are bad-faith comparisons, but people offering them aren’t coming from a place of critical thinking.

Adam D.: With Reggie Crawford at Double-A, am I crazy to think he could be a bullpen option for the Giants this summer?
Keith Law: They sure as hell seem to want him that way. At this rate he won’t be built up to start until 2029.

A Salty Scientist: In recent years lots of prospects have really struggled with the MLB transition. One hypothesis I’ve seen is that the reduction of minor league teams has bled out some of the veteran AAAA types that increase the challenge for top prospects. Not sure that I buy that, but curious if you have any thoughts.
Keith Law: I agree, and I’ve been saying so (based on feedback from scouts) since 2021. Mike Elias made very similar, pointed comments on it last week when they sent Holliday down. I also think that the rise of pitching labs & pitch design has made major-league pitching stronger than ever – and if you can make those adjustments, you don’t stay in the minors long, so the caliber of pitching down there hasn’t advanced as quickly.

Jimmy: Is ’Change Shapes’ more the in wheelhouse for Lauren Mayberry’s solo stuff?
Keith Law: I like it more than the first two singles.

A Salty Scientist: A formal mea culpa has to come from the Vatican, otherwise it’s just a sparkling apology. (not sorry)
Keith Law: I’ll allow it.

Rob: Christopher Morel is (unfortunately) floundering at 3B this season, both at the plate and in the field. If you were Jed, when would Matt Shaw start his decade long dominance at 3B for the Cubs?
Keith Law: I’m a Shaw believer but he has cooled off the last two weeks and I wouldn’t rush him to fill a need.
Keith Law: Meaning you don’t call a guy up from AA when he’s not hitting that well overall.

Frank: Why isnt Skenes in the majors? This seems like pure service time manipulation at this point.
Keith Law: It’s not service-time manipulation; that date already passed. That’s not a fair criticism. I think Skenes belongs in the majors, but I don’t think there’s a nefarious reason why he’s not.

John: Is Konnor Griffin to the Nats possible (I know it is early). Does he fit what Ciolek and Haas like? I hope they can get him to 10 similar to House in 2021. Thank you.
Keith Law: I’d be surprised. I don’t think that’s their type of player.

Tim: What’s up with Corbin? Sophomore slump or something more?
Keith Law: Last I looked he wasn’t making anywhere near as much hard contact as last year. Could be a fluke, could be he’s fighting some small injury we don’t know about.

Steve: I name you President of a small market team tomorrow (in a city with great food, just so we can keep you). What are the 3 things you are going to push the owner to spend on that will give him the most return on his spendings?
Keith Law: People. A full scouting staff, amateur and pro. Plenty of coaches and instructors in player development. The same for R&D, even though those employees are the most expensive. I do not believe you can McKinsey your way to a championship.

Steve: Question on Nolan McLean. As much as it’s 70 power, it looks like it’s a 30 hit tool. Do you think letting him continue to hit hurts his potential development on the mound, or do you keep letting him go until he fails enough to come to that conclusion on his own?
Keith Law: I don’t think it’s hurting him to hit a little because I think he’s going to end up in the bullpen anyway.

Steve: Hi Keith – process question for you. Given SSS, how do you go about updating your thoughts on prospects who start off hot or cold? If you see crazy stats (either way) for someone, do you call the team and ask, try to get in and see them, or just ignore until June/July?
Keith Law: There’s a reason I haven’t done that yet. I’ll probably update the pro list later in May or early in June, depending on travel. But right now it would be overreaction theatre, or it would just be me repeating stuff I said in February.

Tracy: I just finished reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. While it was certainly imaginative and well thought out, I found it long and plodding; it did not grab my attention and I had a hard time finishing it. Just my opinion. Anyway, I’ve always wanted to ask: is there an author whose prose style you enjoy so much that it doesn’t matter what the story is?
Keith Law: Ann Patchett.

CK: Do you find writing to be therapeutic, or not really because it is your job?
Keith Law: I love writing. Doesn’t matter what it’s about. And the more I write the better I tend to feel.

Chris P: I see JJ Wetherholt is back to hitting very well, but has he still been off the diamond or are they getting him reps at short?
Keith Law: I saw him stand at short on Tuesday at PNC Park. He should only be DHing. He hit pretty well for a guy with one leg, though.
Keith Law: That’s all for this week – thank you all for your questions and your readership. I’ll do another one at least when I update my draft rankings in a couple of weeks. Stay safe.

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