→ September 19, 2018
→ By

Founders of Gloomhaven.

If you go over to Boardgamegeek.com and browse their enormous database of games (over 100,000 and always growing), you’ll see the #1 game is something called Gloomhaven, a mammoth, $140 game that, in my personal opinion, isn’t actually a board game: It’s a role-playing/miniatures game that comes in a board game sort of box, but isn’t something the average person would consider a regular tabletop board game. It’s expensive, huge (the box weighs 20 pounds), and requires playing over many sessions, while borrowing heavily from the mechanics of RPGs. It may be great, but that’s not a board game to me, or, I think, to most of my readers.

The designer of Gloomhaven, Isaac Childres, has extended the brand by developing a true tabletop game in the same universe as his hit title, one that is also still complex but plays very much like a regular, heavy strategy game, and manages to introduce some clever tweaks that produce a novel playing experience. This new title, Founders of Gloomhaven, somewhat de-emphasizes the Gloomhaven part – the title on the box has Founders in huge letters and puts the “of Gloomhaven” part in a tiny font that’s easy to overlook – but still comes with a million pieces and an elaborate set of rules and mechanics to satisfy the hardcore gamers in your group. The rules are not well written or organized, unfortunately, and my first playthrough was marred by a lack of understanding of the real point of the game, along with questions we had to head online to answer, but at least when I tried the game a second time I knew what my goal was and what basic actions were required to get me there.

Founders of Gloomhaven is a game of hand management and pickup-and-delivery mechanics that also works in tile placement, route-building, worker placement, a technology tree, and some basic economic elements, so … yeah, there’s a lot going on here. Each player controls two or three of the eight basic resources at the start of the game, and players will build resource production tiles of their own while also paying to get ‘access’ to the resources owned by other players so that they can build better buildings that require delivery of those resources. Eventually, larger “prestige buildings” will appear on the board, and players will earn larger point totals by delivering resources to those while also creating new actions for players to use with their workers.

The real core of the game is in how you connect these resource buildings to the upgraded buildings, which produce level 2 and level 3 resources, and to the prestige buildings, using roads, bridges, and gates. There are ornate rules about where you can place buildings – primarily that you can’t just place new tiles next to your own tiles already on the board – and you must use those connector tiles to create uninterrupted paths from the resources’ origins to their destinations. That means you will often want to forego certain actions or income to place more roads and thus create multiple paths to ship your goods around the board, especially if your competitors might have their own resource production buildings they’re trying to connect to the same destinations.

On a turn, you play one of the five action cards from your hand (six in a two-player game, with a card to collect Income added to the hand) to the table, take its main action, and then let other players take a similar but lesser ‘follow’ action. These include Construct, where you build a personal building like a house (freeing up a worker meeple), a bridge or a gate; Recruit, where you pay one or two coins to add an adviser card to your hand, giving you an upgraded version of one of the five basic actions; Upgrade, which lets you build an advanced resource building for either 4 or 6 coins, as long as you can deliver the required goods to it; Trade, which lets you place resource stalls on the board or pay to get access to someone else’s; and Call to Vote, which triggers a vote on the next prestige building to enter play, gives you some income or road tiles or influence tokens while paying more income to all other players. Your income increases as you bring more resources on to the board, so the game has an incentive built into the rules to keep the board growing and the pace moving along, although money is scarce within the game and you’ll make tough choices every round on what to do. (I rarely build houses, even though I’d get more worker meeples from them, because they’re pricey and I don’t think they pay off as well as upgrades do.) You can also use a card from your hand to take a basic action, like taking one coin, placing one road, or moving a worker to an open space.

Each player also plays as a unique race that owns one specific resource and that has a worker placement space on the main board for the player to use once s/he has built at least one house. The choice of race affects what other basic resources you can own at the start of the game, but beyond that doesn’t seem to have much effect on game play.

The points awarded for delivering resources don’t strictly go to the player who delivered each specific resource, which is one of the most important and most confusing aspects of the rules of Founders. If you deliver leather to a prestige building that rewards 4 points for that delivery, for example, but your leather production building took hides from someone else’s trade stall, you would have to give one point to the other player and keep just 3 for yourself. This means there’s a lot of accounting to do each time there’s a resource delivery, and it’s probably the biggest factor in increasing game time, because as the board fills up, placing any upgraded building or prestige building will likely result in a pause to figure out who gets how many points.

The game ends once six prestige buildings are on the board and completed, meaning someone has delivered each resource required by that building. Our first play-through, with two players, took about 2.5 hours, a little above the 120 minute time shown on the box. I also played a solo game that took an hour or so, although I am fairly certain I played a bit loose with some of the rules (mostly because I’d already had two drinks, which is not great for modeling paths in your head, it turns out). The solo mode has you playing against the clock, trying to complete seven prestige buildings in seven rounds, with certain costs increasing on you as the game progresses; either I missed a rule somewhere or there needs to be a better way to obtain income, both currency and influence tokens, to give you a fighting chance here. (I did “win,” technically, but again I think I skimmed some rules here.)

I see two fundamental problems with Founders of Gloomhaven, starting with the rules themselves. They’re not well written or organized, and terms are used to mean slightly different things – “own” in particular has multiple distinct definitions in the game, as does “import” when referring to resources. The BGG forums for the game are filled with rules questions like those, or asking about the multifarious rules on tile placement. The other is that it seems to be too hard to get roads to place on the board – if ever a game needed a card like Catan’s Road Building development card, this is it. You can forego money in the income phase to take and place roads, but that puts you at some disadvantage in the next round, and that is one of just two ways when you can place multiple road tiles at once, the other coming with certain adviser cards you must purchase. The game can’t work without a big network of roads connecting resource stalls and buildings around the board – you actually don’t have enough claim tokens to set up unique resource buildings in each section of the board – so all this shortage does is add some needless length to the game.

One last positive aspect worth mentioning is that there is some collaborative effort to the placement of buildings, especially prestige buildings, because multiple players can benefit from any such placement. That speeds the game up a little it, and also encourages players to work together on building the network around the board (which comes with two sides, one of which is apparently harder than the other). For a game of this depth and potential time requirement, a collaborative aspect is both welcome and necessary.

The game has a list price of $80 but I’ve seen it regularly under $50; amazon has it right now for $45. I imagine it’ll appeal to Gloomhaven players for its theme, but this is much more of a game in the vein of heavy strategy titles like Great Western Trail or Whistle Stop from last year, games that focused on tile placement but also required you to manage multiple other tracks (no pun intended) at the same time that you’re building out the board. It’s solid, and offers some novelty in the semi-collaborative aspect, but I don’t think I’ll pull Founders off the shelves before some other heavy strategy games that play more smoothly or are just more fun.

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→ September 18, 2018
→ By

Unquiet Spirits.

The character of Sherlock Holmes, like all of Arthur Conan Doyle’s writings, is now in the public domain, which has the rather unfortunate effect of letting anybody who wants to write something involving him do so without restriction. If someone wanted to write a story involving Holmes with the supernatural, which would be entirely antithetical to the character and to the author’s beliefs during the period when he was writing Sherlock Holmes stories, they could do so. That’s why I tend to avoid these ‘continuations,’ whether it’s completing an unfinished story or crafting something out of whole cloth – it’s too much to ask most authors to write a compelling story with someone else’s characters while also capturing the prose and dialogue unique to the original author.

Bonnie MacBird is one of many authors who’ve attempted to write something new involving the famous fictional detective, with two novels to date, including 2017’s Unquiet Spirits. She hadn’t published any novels prior to her first Holmes story, with the screenplay to the original Tron film her best-known work, but there’s no evidence here to indicate her inexperience with the form. Her prose is light but mimics the style of Conan Doyle’s late 19th century British vocabulary and syntax, and the story itself moves along quite well until the resolution. The problem here, however, is that she’s managed to turn Holmes dull, and Watson along with him, while also whiffing on the form and structure of the standard Sherlock Holmes mystery – not least by writing a novel of nearly 500 pages, twice as long as the longest of Conan Doyle’s Holmes stories, The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Unquiet Spirits is set mostly in a Scottish distillery and the castle of the family that owns the firm, the Maclarens, some of whom believe their castle is haunted by various specters, giving the title its wordplay and creating too many puns on the word ‘spirit’ within the text. A chance encounter takes Holmes and Watson to the south of France, where the central murder is revealed in gruesome fashion, after which they repair to the glens outside Aberdeen and investigate the crime. Aside from perhaps putting Holmes in more mortal danger than Conan Doyle did in most of his works, save “The Final Problem,” MacBird does a credible job unfurling the mystery at the book’s heart through the eyes of Watson watching Holmes investigate it, using observation, knowledge, and ability to extract truth from unwilling interviewees.

There’s a cadence to Holmes’ dialogue and a bent to his character that MacBird simply fails to capture, however, so in the process of writing this overlong story she manages to denude him of most of why his character remains so beloved. His discoveries and revelations are less wondrous than in the original stories, and his speech less sparkling, so he becomes tedious rather than charming. The mystery itself involves something from Holmes’ past, which is the same mistake many other Holmes adapters have made, including the creators of the BBC series – who seem obsessed with Holmes’ history, to the point that it’s truly taken away from the show more than once in the last two seasons – with MacBird going way too far in creating a failed romance, a lengthy back story involving prep school rivalries, and an emotional side to Holmes that simply did not exist in the originals.

The sheer length of the book makes the inventions and extrapolations all the harder to overlook. Unquiet Spirits needed an editor, badly, to trim much of the fat and perhaps simplify the resolution to the central mystery, which is both convoluted (not necessarily a problem) and far too personal to Holmes (almost always a problem) to be true to the spirit, no pun intended, of the character. Holmes is beloved because of how Conan Doyle wrote him – rational to a fault, observant of everything except how his demeanor and speech affected others, and exhaustingly brilliant. He’s still brilliant in Unquiet Spirits, but the rest of him seems to have been left somewhere in the Scottish highlands.

Next up: I’m nearly through Lauren Groff’s Florida.

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→ September 17, 2018
→ By

The Endless.

The Endless (just $0.99 to rent on amazon or iTunes) is very much my kind of horror film – which is to say that most viewers today would probably not consider it a horror film at all, since it includes precisely zero on-screen violence of any sort, and the horror is entirely of a psychological sort, primarily that the viewer mirrors the protagonists in their incomprehension of what might be wrong. It’s a film of creeping dread until the secret is revealed, after which the dread merely intensifies because it appears that the two heroes might have no way out of the trap, powered by a brilliant, subtle script by Justin Benson (who plays one of the two leads, with co-director Aaron Moorhead) that piles existential angst on top of the physical dilemma the two characters face.

Benson and Moorhead play brothers, conveniently named Justin and Aaron, who live a meager existence on the fringes of society, barely connected to anyone or anything but each other, whose lives are upended when they receive a video cassette from members of the cult from which the two escaped about ten years previously. Aaron, the younger of the two, is more disturbed by the video, which implies that the cult’s members expect to soon undergo “The Ascension,” which Justin interprets as a coming mass suicide, and wants to revisit the cult, citing the brothers’ pointless lives of empty work for a cleaning service and lack of any meaningful links to other people. Justin agrees to take Aaron there for a single day, which turns into a second day, by which point Justin in particular realizes something’s amiss at the cult’s campsite while Aaron seems to relish the presence of a community where he feels like he belongs. Justin encounters other people who live in the same woods as the cult but aren’t members, which shows him what exactly is wrong and why escape might never be possible.

The psychological horror story on the surface of The Endless is straightforward – the brothers may be trapped on the campgrounds with no route for escape, and it’s never clear if the cult members are trying to help or hinder them. There are totems marking the boundary of the property from which members can’t leave, and as the brothers explore the area they run into other people also trapped by the unknown force who urge them to flee before they’re imprisoned by it too. The cult itself is partly a red herring – the horror isn’t the cult members themselves, but is related to whatever they might be following; they’re just at peace with the situation while the other denizens of the woods are increasingly desperate to escape it.

The Endless is also a film about the bonds of family, and how losing can leave a person unmoored and grasping for some sort of connection. Aaron is especially lost and miserable before the brothers return to the campsite, and despite having only scattered memories of his life before they escaped, he slides back into a comfortable skin among the other members, serving as the (obvious) foil to Justin’s skepticism about the cult’s intentions towards him and his brother and their plans in general for some kind of mass event. The split between the brothers over the cult – including whether to stay longer than they’d planned – is predictable, but the script resolves this, at least partially, in an unexpected way that highlights the strength of familial bonds without ignoring the baggage that comes with them.

Aside from the two leads, the other standout performance in The Endless comes from Callie Hernandez as Anna, a sort of den mother within the cult, a character with a wide range of requirements for the actor depending on which brother is with her on screen. She’s the most interesting of the cult members, several of whom are depicted as if half in shadow to disguise their possible motivations or simply to amplify the uncertainty facing the main characters. (If her face is familiar, you may have seen Hernandez in La La Land as one of Emma Stone’s character’s friends in the “Someone in the Crowd” number.)

The Endless is apparently inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, particularly his Cthulu writings, but I’ve never read any of his stories and really just know them through the significant number of tabletop games inspired by that universe; Lovecraft fans may find even more here to chew on than I did. Even without that background, however, I found The Endless totally compelling from start to finish, with tension that crescendoed in the second half, and a resolution that gives you just enough information to wrap the film without attempting to answer every question you might have had about what happened.

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→ September 15, 2018
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Stick to baseball, 9/15/18.

My one ESPN+/Insider piece this week named my Prospect of the Year for 2018, with a number of other players who were worthy of the title but couldn’t unseat the incumbent. I answered questions on that and other topics in a Klawchat on Thursday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the new game Disney’s Villainous, a card game that resembles deckbuilders (like Dominion) in mechanics, but gives you your entire deck at the start of the game. Each player plays as a specific villain, with a unique deck and victory conditions, so you learn each deck’s intricacies as you play.

And now, the links…

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→ September 14, 2018
→ By

Lost Cities Rivals.

Lost Cities is one of the original, classic “couples” games, a strictly two-player game that’s quick to learn, has enough luck involved to allow someone who hasn’t played many games to compete fairly with an experienced gamer, and that has plenty of interaction to keep the two players engaged. It’s from Reiner Knizia, whose games are all built on a math foundation but keep that stuff under the hood. It has since fallen behind several other two-player games (notably Jaipur) in my own rankings & my house, but I’ll always have a soft spot for it because it was one of the first two-player games I ever tried and liked.

Kosmos has now released a new version of the game, Lost Cities: Rivals, that allows up to four to play at once, simplifies the scoring, and mitigates the luck factor at least a little bit so that players can strategize a little more over the deck. It still works with two players, but the design here, giving players money to bid on cards, is clearly aimed at getting the whole family to the table at once. It’s a nice filler game, nothing too novel, but again very easy for anyone to pick up and certainly appropriate for younger players (the box says ages 10+, but I’d say this is fine for kids as young as 8), and priced appropriately at $14.95 list.

The basic premise of Lost Cities: Rivals is the same as the original – players try to build ‘expeditions’ of cards in five colors by acquiring cards numbered 2 through 10 and playing them in ascending order. That is, once you’ve played a red 4 card, you can’t play the red 2 or 3 any more. The Rivals deck has two copies of each card numbered 2 through 5, and just one copy of each card numbered 6 through 10. On a turn, a player may uncover the next card in the deck and place it on the table for all players to see, or may bid on all face-up cards on the table, starting an auction that proceeds around the table until all players pass.

The scoring in Rivals is much simpler than in the base game. The original had you start with -20 points in any expedition you started, so you’d have to make up the deficit by playing enough cards to that expedition, with each card worth the points of its numerical value. That’s all gone in Lost Cities: Rivals, as you start with zero points in each expedition, score one point for each card you play to any expedition, and get a straight eight-point bonus for any expedition where you play at least four numbered cards.

Rivals also carries forward the ‘wager’ cards for each expedition; you can play one, two, or three such cards to any expedition before you play any numbered cards to it, and those increase your bonuses for each card to 2, 3, or 4 points. (The eight-point bonus for playing four cards is unaffected.) Each player begins the game with two random wager cards, while the remaining ten are shuffled into the main deck.

Players begin the game with equal stashes of gold coins – there are 36 in total, and you distribute them evenly among all players – to use to bid on cards on display. The deck is split into four piles, and when each of the first three piles is exhausted, the ‘bank’ of coins paid to buy cards is split evenly again among all players, with any remainder left in the bank. The player who wins the auction takes all cards but may discard one from the game entirely, and may not take any other cards s/he can’t legally play to his/her own tableau. Thus you may still want to bid on cards even if you can’t play some of them – there is value in discarding a card that’s valuable to an opponent, and there’s no penalty involved in winning cards you can’t play because you just leave them on the table.

The game moves very quickly since turns are short and decisions aren’t really that complex – it gets tricker towards the end when you’re hoping for certain cards and might preserve your coins to try to nab something important – with a full game taking under 45 minutes in our plays. It’s also very compact, like the original, something you could easily take with you on the road in its box or just by bringing the deck and throwing the coins in a small bag. I don’t think this will be in regular rotation here, though; it’s certainly light and simple, but I think we want a little more fun or strategy from games we’ll play often. This felt a bit too familiar, and other than the few times we were all seriously bidding on a set of cards, there wasn’t enough to get us laughing or taunting each other to make me want to pull the game out again.

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→ September 13, 2018
→ By

Klawchat 9/13/18.

My Prospect of the Year column is up for Insiders/ESPN+ subscribers, while my review of the board game Disney’s Villainous is up over at Paste.

Keith Law: I’ve got no time for private consultations. Klawchat.

PhillyJake: Vlad Guerrero, Jr. as your minor league player of the year? Why, he didn’t even warrant a September call up! <>
Keith Law: Exactly. Meanwhile the Blue Jays’ VP is subtweeting me and making up alternative facts about other sites’ rankings to distract everyone from the manipulation of Vlad’s service time. Baseball fever, baby!

Pete Alonso: Obviously I wasn’t going to unseat Vlad, but no mention of me at all in your writeup? First the Wilpons give me the shaft, now you! Explain yourself.
Keith Law: A .355 OBP and not low strikeout rate in an extreme hitters’ park doesn’t get you on the list.

Rowland’s Office: Wouldn’t the Braves be better off deploying Touki as a multi-inning weapon out of the ‘pen than as a 6th starter, his current role? Going forward, does he profile better as starter or reliever? Same Q on Bryse Wilson. Really hoping they dont opt to spend big on Kimbrel instead.
Keith Law: Both absolutely profile as starters. Three-pitch guys with command and good deliveries.

Dan: You have an NL ROY ballet. Soto or Acuna. Go.
Keith Law: I don’t have an NL ROY ballot (or ballet), and won’t give an answer to that until we’re right near the end of the season.

Dave: Are you ok with Lewis and Kirilloff missing the AFL?
Keith Law: They didn’t miss it – they weren’t chosen, probably because both played full seasons already.

Nick L: Crack Shack was…..just ok. Am I crazy?
Keith Law: I’ve never had a meal there (at the original) that was less than outstanding.

Jay: Upside for Anderson Tejeda?
Keith Law: He could be a star if everything clicks – certainly has the tools for it, but isn’t close to that yet.

addoeh: Great job yesterday with Skating Away On The Thin Ice of a New Day! Do you take requests? Maybe Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here?
Keith Law: Thanks! I don’t know if I’ll play again on Periscope but if I do I’ll keep that in mind (certainly one of the first songs I learned on guitar back in the late 80s).

Nick L: Willson Contreras is not slugging at all. Think this is a permanent issue?
Keith Law: I do not.

Bill G: Hi Keith. Thanks for answering my question a couple weeks ago regarding divisional structure when MLB expands to 32 teams. A follow up question – would you prefer radical geographical alignment or a more traditional approach, maintaining historical AL/NL structures? Thanks!
Keith Law: No interest in geographical realignment. This isn’t the NBA.

Eric: What did you think of J.P. Martinez’s campaign with Spokane?
Keith Law: For a 22-year-old, it was not impressive at all. You have to hope this is just rust from not playing for a little while after he defected.

Barbeach: Hope you had a great summer. Are either Bird or Voit the long term answer at 1B for the Yankees? Or should their off season plans include finding the answer?
Keith Law: Neither is the answer there.

Aaron C.: We know Oreos are your “guilty pleasure” food, but in your younger, pre-SABR days, who was your guilty pleasure as a ballplayer? Mine will always be Deion Sanders – a mediocre player who was a joy to watch (for me).
Keith Law: I loved guys who could run. Didn’t matter if they were good. Gary Pettis. Hell, Gary Redus. And the guys who could run and were good, like Rickey, Raines, or healthy Eric Davis – those were my favorites.

Aaron C.: Am I mistaken or is this traditionally the time of year when you write your annual “who I got wrong” column? Not trolling at all, but it one of my faves. (I swear I’m not trolling.)
Keith Law: I think that’s on the calendar for next Thursday.

Mark: At what point does Sandy Leon’s total black hole in the Red Sox lineup, outweigh the love he gets from the pitching staff ?
Keith Law: I feel like he’s a modern example of Nichols’ Law of Catcher Defense: If a catcher can’t hit, people will just assume his defense is tremendous.

Odubel: Can Kopech still be a #1/#2? I thought he looked really great up here, his fastball had a great spin rate. What a shame.
Keith Law: If he comes back 100%, sure.

Jeff: Hi Keith – I saw that you recognized Mike King as a runner up for your prospect of the year but note that he is “probably not a starter in the long run.” He just turned 23, and has made significant improvements in the last year. What would you need to see from him next year to suggest that he could be a 4 or 5 starter?
Keith Law: Given the delivery, I don’t see it at all. His age and those ‘improvements’ (I’m not sure what those would be) are not factors.

Bmosc: Our President is a pathological liar, a narcissist, and more than likely a sociopath. How are so many people ok with that?!
Keith Law: Because he’ll lower their taxes and pack the courts with theocrats.

Jeff: Should the Yankees sign Manny Machado or stick with Didi at SS and Andujar at 3B?
Keith Law: Machado is clearly an upgrade. The question I would have is whether he’s a $30 million upgrade, and I don’t think that he clearly is.

Bob : Do you believe Neidert will be one of the starting pitchers for Miami in 2019?
Keith Law: Yes. Also, so will you.

Wally: Resending: if you are Nats GM and this offseason you can either (1) re-sign Harper or (2) extend Rendon, sign Grandal and sign morton, which would you do?
Keith Law: The latter is the better use of their funds, since they have Robles to fill the vacant OF spot (although I’m not a big Grandal fan).

Jo-Nathan: Should Cleveland think about selling high on Triston McKenzie? He had forearm soreness to start the year then pitched 90 innings and was shut down due to fatigue. If he can’t gain weight (listed at 165 lbs at 6’5) I cant see how he can ever hold up over a full season in the majors.
Keith Law: I don’t know that his weight is necessarily the issue – and isn’t this is first bout of any arm trouble? I could be wrong on the latter but I don’t remember him getting hurt before.

Hank: In light of Alex Bregman’s breakout and his taking the job of Astros’ key offensive piece, do you see this season as an outlier or predictive of his future value? Long term is he a better bet than Correa?
Keith Law: I think he’s entirely for real – although his power spike, like so many, is probably more a function of the baseball than swing changes or strength.

Darin: Why do you disagree with my scouting of minor league stats for my favorite prospect?
Keith Law: Because I hate your favorite team.

Garrett: Did you think Trevor Story would be this good? Also is this his career year or can we expect this from him going forward?
Keith Law: I think this is a career year, and I don’t think he’s close to the same player if he’s not a Rockie. His career K% is *down* to 30.5%, and that’s without facing better breaking stuff or even more movement on fastballs while he’s home.

SeanE: If you are the Pirates what do you do at 2b and SS next year. Can’t see Mercer or Harrison coming back. Do you go with the Seinfeld boys Kramer and Newman. Do you give Frazier a shot at 2b?
Keith Law: I’d go with the Seinfeld tandem.

Doc: Keith, any thoughts on the shake-up in Phils’ minor league department? Jordan out, several hitting coaches fired.
Keith Law: Jordan left – he wasn’t fired.

Nick: When can we expect your early 2019 draft rankings? Who are looking like the top talents?
Keith Law: Probably not until the spring because the summer stuff was so unimpressive, especially on the college side.

Andrew: Is this PR death total comment the worst of all bad DJT comments? Sheesh.
Keith Law: “Very fine people” will be impossible to top, but yes, it’s terrible, and already there are toadies lapping it up on social media.

Jay: He won’t win it, but should Brad Keller be getting some consideration for RoY?
Keith Law: No.

Jordan: Do you see Justin Dunn as a guy who can be a 2-3 starter at the big league level?
Keith Law: I do.

Sandy Kazmir: What broad sweeping changes will we see enacted if the Rays win 90+ games and fail to make the postseason? Same question, but switch Rays to Yankees?
Keith Law: None … and none. GMAFB.

thatssotaguchi: Do you enjoy My Fair Lady or are you Satan?
Keith Law: I love old school musicals, and I’ll watch anything with Audrey Hepburn in it.

Ghost of Guy Fieri: Looking for a good knife sharpener that won’t break the bank, any suggestions?
Keith Law: I recommended one in my gift guide for cooks last November.

17 year old, Wander Franco: How soon until I’m the number one prospect in baseball?
Keith Law: You might be a few graduations away from that.

Gus Johnson: Does JP Crawford need to get away from the Phillies to fulfill his potential?
Keith Law: That is possible, although I couldn’t say for sure.

Craig: Is Mark Shapiro the first executive to (essentially) publicly call you “fake news”?
Keith Law: No, but it never ceases to amaze me when executives do that. I don’t think it works out well for them in the end.

Robbie: Is David Fletcher of the angels a starting 2B? Seems more like a bench guy with the lack of power.
Keith Law: Bench guy due to (wait for it) the lack of power.

SeanE: Are you sold on Musgrove as a starting pitcher? Has had a pretty solid year. What is his ceiling?
Keith Law: Fifth starter, sure. More, I wouldn’t expect.

Marty: Are we allowed to talk to you at the AFL?
Keith Law: Is … is there something I don’t know about? Like a force field around me or something? Yes, of course you can. I’ll nearly always be at each game a little early anyway, which is the best time to catch me.

Chris: Dodgers still win the West?
Keith Law: With the Rockies up 2 and only ~15 games left, you would have to bet on them over any other single team.

Adam: You mentioned Paddack has nothing more to gain from the minors in your newest post. What ceiling do you think he has? #2 starter? Ace if he develops his curve?
Keith Law: #2 starter, but I don’t think he’s developing that curve. That’s very rarely a pitch that gets better with development.

leprekhan: With the extra pick from not signing Carter Stewart, the Braves are at least in a position to make some noise in the 2019 draft. Overall, how deep does the 2019 draft class look and do you think the Braves could get a comparable talent with their compensation pick?
Keith Law: Worse, and no. I had Stewart #2 in the class. This class is worse and the odds are they won’t get the #2 talent picking 9th.

TC: Rosario’s raised his slash line from .230/.274/.346 to .253/.294/.386 since your snark comment to me on Aug. 9. Looks like he’s on the upswing! Thanks for still believing in him!
Keith Law: Players don’t develop on our timetables. Sometimes patience is rewarded. Sometimes patience just ends up looking like obstinacy.

Jd: Love your work. How’s the migraine today? Should the Sox have called up feltman? Will their bullpen and their inability to throw strikes haunt them in the playoffs?
Keith Law: Better today, thank you. Three hour nap yesterday + two Aleve + extra caffeine did it. I think you draft a guy like Feltman high because you intend to call him up, even if it’s just to start in mop-up work.

Michael: Is Daz Cameron a future everyday OF?
Keith Law: For sure.

Danny: Piggybacking on your article, are Deivi or King realistic rotation candidates next year or is the answer these guys are not really starters but they could be reliever options next year?
Keith Law: Deivi is a starter but has one career AA start. Next year is probably optimistic. King is very unlikely to be a starter.

Steve: Keith great chats. Numerous anonymous scouts have comped Jared Kelenic to a young Mike Trout. Your thoughts?
Keith Law: I love Kelenic but at his age Trout was in AA and about 280 days from his major league debut.

Dan: Dylan Cease no mention today, is his fastball overpowering and still lacking secondaries. I’m happy he made it all year.
Keith Law: Today’s column was the best performing prospects, not the best prospects. Two different things.

Shiraz: Hey Keith, would you hold Blake Snell’s innings against him if you were voting for Cy Young? Is 180 IP the new 200?
Keith Law: I wouldn’t vote for Snell over Sale, certainly. The lower IP total matters in that it’s less production – the more you pitch, as long as you’re above replacement-level, the more value you deliver to your team. Snell doesn’t top Sale in either variation of WAR, and I think it’s fair to assume at least some of his low BABIP is good defense/luck.

Doc: Who will get a larger free agent contract, Harper or Machado?
Keith Law: Machado is my guess.

William: Who do you believe is the leader in the NL MVP race?
Keith Law: A pitcher. Nobody wants to hear that, though.

Louis: What’s wrong, if anything, with Adam Duvall?
Keith Law: He was never really good.

Jesse: Will you be able to any book events at changing hands during AFL?
Keith Law: I didn’t ask because the book will be a year and a half old at that point, but if you have a copy at a game I will gladly sign it for you.

Joe: You’re in charge of the Giants. What’s your offseason look like?
Keith Law: That depends on ownership, but I think this is a rebuild situation, and that includes exploring the market for Bumgarner.

Guest: Have you played or seen the board game
Sol: Last Days of a Star? I played it for the first time last night and I’m intrigued by the mechanics, theme, and what seems like high replayability.
Keith Law: I have not. It appears to be out of print at the moment.

Preston : Cubs have right to be upset about 30 days in a row of scheduled games, right? That said, Brewers are better, healthier team.
Keith Law: Cubs have that right, yes. I do not agree the Brewers are a better team.

Will B.: A lot of talk this summer about Jered Kelenic’s successful first pro season. However did you get a chance to see fellow classmate Alek Thomas start as well? Looking like in 10years he might be the best OF from that class…
Keith Law: I was very high on Thomas out of the draft, and said the Dbacks got a first-round talent, but I think you’re reading way too much into short-season stats with that statement.

Matt: Your colleague Michael Wilbon said it would be “Garbage” if Jacob DeGrom won the Cy Young. I think he should be MVP. What do you think?
Keith Law: I think you’re much more on the ball than my colleague, who apparently hasn’t read Smart Baseball.

Rod: Any chance that MacKenzie Gore debuts next season?
Keith Law: I can’t see a scenario where that happens.

John: Do you have a solution for service time manipulation? I see why teams do it what is the best way to fix it.
Keith Law: I’ve suggested a one-year right of first refusal option for players who reach free agency with 6.000 (six years, zero days) of service, to try to encourage teams to call up the Vlad Jr’s and the Bryants for Opening Day, at least. I have seen suggestions of age-based free agency as well, although I think that would primarily help college draftees, not the 19-year-old wunderkinds like Vlad Jr is now or Wander Franco will be in two years.

Bob: Keith – you mention guys that could run – Willie McGee. I am not sure I saw anybody faster on a triple the part from 1st to 3rd. As for the Padres – is Mejia’s bat good for a catcher or all positions – meaning he can find a new spot if Hedges sticks at C and his bat still has value say in OF?
Keith Law: Hedges is just not a good enough hitter to push Mejia off to another position.

Jason : With talk of his possible retirement, is Joe Mayer a HOF player? Is he if he stayed at catcher?
Keith Law: If he retires now, he’s going to be a borderline case who struggles on the ballot because his traditional numbers don’t add up and because he doesn’t ‘feel’ like a HoFer, while folks like me or Jay Jaffe may end up banging the drum for him when he pulls in 21% of the vote in year one.

Jeremy: Following up on Nick L’s question. It’s looking likely that only 1 Cub is going finish the year with 30HRs. Less than you would have predicted right? What do you think is causing the power outage?
Keith Law: Less than I would have predicted, not sure it’s anything other than randomness.

Sam: As an A’s fan, I desperately want to expect Ramon Laureano to keep being this good. I think you pegged him as more of a 4th outfielder when he was traded. Is that still your read?
Keith Law: I really liked him out of AFL 2016, then the Astros changed his swing and he stunk. Fourth OF was a bit of a solomonic answer – I thought he had good tools, but when a guy doesn’t hit for a full year in the high minors, it’s hard to talk about him as a regular. I’d still say fourth OF, but at least now we can have a discussion of whether he’s more, given his tools and now some performance.

Jay: Been playing Small World with my kids. What a fantastic game. Do you recommend any of the expansions?
Keith Law: Yes – we use two, one of which is called (I think) the Ladies of Small World and has some clever new races that really alter the way you play.

Erick Fedde: Am I at least a # 4 starter going forward?
Keith Law: I could buy a #4. I wouldn’t bet on more; still pretty homer-prone, secondary stuff has never been good enough for me to call him league-average.

Andy : With the way the Braves have been aggressive with promotions, do you think there is a chance Pache makes the majors at some point next year? He seemed to make significant improvements in his offense.
Keith Law: That I could see, although if Inciarte is still around there may not be a logical place for him.

Michael: Hi Keith, of the Tigers top pitching prospects (Mize, Manning, Burrows, Perez, Faedo), which, if any, do you see destined for the bullpen?
Keith Law: Faedo and Perez have the highest relief risk of the group. Mize has the least.

Del: Best pumpkin related food or drink?
Keith Law: Pumpkin pie. Obviously.

Andy: Bobby Dalbec possible 50 FV? Or too much chase and swing and miss?
Keith Law: That’s an average regular. I can’t see that with a K rate above 1/3 given his age.

thatssotaguchi: Do you think illegalizing birth control would be enough to get the silent majority to get off their asses and vote in an election? I used to think so but now I’m not sure.
Keith Law: I would hope so, but apparently there are a lot of people in this country who want women they don’t even know to have zero right to control their own reproduction.

Marple: Do you think Griffin Canning can be a part of the Angels rotation next year and what is his long term upside?
Keith Law: I could see that if he’s healthy. Mid-rotation starter?

Tom: When does Yusniel Diaz make it to the majors, and whats his upside looking like?
Keith Law: Thought he might get called up this month. Everyday RF.

Jesse B: Can Myles Straw be an everyday CF who bats .250 with 60sbs?
Keith Law: So little power I don’t see an everyday player.

Michael: Is Alex Faedo’s drop in velocity this season something to worry about?
Keith Law: He wasn’t throwing as hard as reported as a college junior. I think this is just what he is.

TP: Which Padres arms currently in the minors will be in their rotation in 2019?
Keith Law: I assume Nix, Paddack, and Logan Allen are in the 2019 rotation for most/all of the year. Morejon should get there later in the year, as should Baez.

Oren: Jameson Taillon seems like he took a strong step forward this year. Is there anymore ceiling for him or is this right around where you expect him?
Keith Law: This is pretty close. He’s really come a long way given all of the health issues he’s faced. Great guy to root for.

Bob: The John Henry owned Boston Globe wrote an article about how deep the Sox are in the lower levels of the minors. PR move or legit?
Keith Law: I don’t agree with that. I think their system is better than generally claimed (it’s not a bottom 3 or bottom 5 system), but they have had a lot of significant prospects get hurt. Still keeping my eye on Scherff as a breakout candidate.

Andrew: Love the chats (and the periscope yesterday), thanks for doing these. Is Johan Camargo a 3+ WAR/yr. player going forward? If no, why not?
Keith Law: I’d take the under on that too. Add him to the list of guys who had no power until he got to hit with the MLB baseball.

Juan: With hindsight was the Quintana trade a smart one for the Cubs or did they get fleeced?
Keith Law: Smart one. They knew what they were paying, but Q was, at the time, one of the top 5 pitchers in the AL.

Gary : Time to really start talking about Jeff McNeil? Do small sample sizes (3/4 of a season) matter less when you’re talking about guys who made major swing changes/adjustments?
Keith Law: He hasn’t played 3/4 of a season. He’s played about five weeks.

ScottyD in Downingtown: Kiriloff starts 2019 at AA? Would a mid-2020 ETA in Minnesota be accurate?
Keith Law: That’s probably right – although really, he might be ready next September, and we’re all arguing about service time manipulation again.

JP: Thoughts on sites nuking their comment sections (ESPN, RAB). I know they are mostly cesspools, but there are some communties that develop.
Keith Law: Moderation is probably impossible. If you’re not willing to block or ban people fairly quickly, the least common denominator will generally win out.

Ryan: Keith – you were notably not on the Moncada hype train before his debut. At this stage, how much more can he realistically become? Thank you
Keith Law: I said on Periscope yesterday that I think he’ll have above-average years and below-average years, rather than settling in at one level of production.

Adam: I don’t understand the use of the opener. Why not pitch a starter twice through the order then go to the bullpen. What does getting the first three outs with a bullpen arm really add?
Keith Law: Because those first three outs tend to be three of the best hitters in the opponent’s lineup.

Devon: Keith, do you see Eloy as the top offensive prospect in the game now?
Keith Law: No, that would be Vlad.

Oscar: What’s a good boardgame for a large group of people (4-8) that’s relatively easy to pick up?
Keith Law: Citadels, Sushi Go, maybe 7 Wonders. If you want something more party game-ish, One Night Ultimate Werewolf or its offshoot Werewords.

Anthony: Any of Detroit’s pitching prospects beyond Mize you’re confident can start?
Keith Law: Burrows can start but may not have huge upside. Manning can start, with work to do on command and secondaries, but he’s around the plate again and still 91-95.

Franknbeans: Luis Patino sure looked good this year. Do you still have him far down the list in San Diego?
Keith Law: He’s exciting but young and kind of small to start. I don’t know where he is offhand on their list but I wouldn’t put him over Tatis, Gore, Mejia, Paddack, Morejon, Baez.

David: Hi KLaw! Would love to buy you a beer (or just say “hi”) at AFL. When do you plan on heading out there?
Keith Law: Looking at week 2. They’re only playing 4 days of games in week one, which means I get just 8 games rather than 10, because of that stupid (and when I say stupid, I mean STUPID) “hitting challenge” that nobody likes.

JG: Did you have a problem with the Donaldson deal?
Keith Law: Yeah, my problem is that the Jays didn’t get enough back.

Anthony: What do you make of Pivetta? His stuff and strikeouts look really good, but maybe he’s got terrible in-zone command?
Keith Law: LHB kill him, because he has no CH or split to get them out.

BK: I’m struggling with WAR. I get that its a stat that is generally good at approximating but it seems like it’s the answer now to certain questions. where I struggle is defense, I can’t understand for example how Cain is worth nearly 2x Arenado or 3x Baez.
Keith Law: I’m not seeing where Cain’s WAR is twice Arenado’s, or even just his defense is.

Jeff: Has your opinion about Reynaldo Lopez changed this year? Fairly small sample, but he’s looked really good lately.
Keith Law: 4.85 FIP this year sounds about right.

Big Tawn: Does Byron Buxton need a change of scenery for his bat to pan out? Can he realistically be a 50 hitter with 50 power?
Keith Law: I think he can be that guy, but I don’t know if he needs a change of scenery, or just, you know, major league at bats.

Kyle: Which is more likely? Keuchel resigned or Josh James being a fixture in the rotation?
Keith Law: Keuchel re-signing seems more likely. James has a tremendous arm, earned a mention in my piece today, but there’s reliever risk there due to the delivery.

Patrick: Any thoughts on the Lorenzo Cain (non)MVP candidacy?
Keith Law: I must have missed something on Brewers Twitter because I thought Cain was clearly a candidate.

Brent : Not to be that guy, but in your post today you mention Cease as playing for ATL and not CWS.
Keith Law: Probably an editor’s mistake. I just send in the file, man. I don’t post it.

Matt: Are Mauer and McCutchen and David Wright HOF players to you? I heard Buster talk about them on the podcast. Just curious.
Keith Law: Mauer will be close. The others I think are on the outside.

JR: Next time someone argues that holding a top prospect down is smart because you will get an extra year of control in 2025, you should suggest they go look at the opening day roster for their favorite team from seven years ago. At best, they might have 5-6 guys still on the current roster. Between injuries, trades, lack of development, regression, getting better players in your system, etc. rosters just turn over so play to develop top talent and win now and instead of 7 years from now. Also, I would argue calling a top prospect up in Sep and letting them get their feet wet is a better intro to the Show then pushing them back a couple weeks in April because they “aren’t ready” They would be ready if you called them up last Sep.
Keith Law: I think a big problem with the “we have to get that extra year of control!” mentality is that fans don’t adequately discount future production. You know where your team is right now, but you have absolutely no idea where your team will be in seven years. We can talk about windows of contention, but we don’t know how long any one window will last. It’s a delusion to think that we know right now where the team will be 7 or even 5 years down the road, and whether the added cost to retain the player will make sense for the club or not. Meanwhile, that prospect might be worth an extra win or more next year, when maybe you’re contending and could use the boost.

Adam: #PadresTwitter is currently ranking Paddack and Patiño ahead of Mackenzie Gore on their team’s prospect lists. Is there a legitimate argument to be made that this is the case or is this just putting too much emphasis on results?
Keith Law: Way too much emphasis on results.

Bill: JaCoby Jones is a lousy hitter but an excellent fielder. If you are the Tigers, can you look the other way on his bat given the number of runs he’s reportedly saves with his glove?
Keith Law: I think he’s just a bench piece, and not even a great one at that.

Rod: Is it possible the Braves win the World Series?
Keith Law: Sure. Any team that makes the playoffs can win, regardless of whether they’re the best playoff team or the worst.

Dr. Bob: Now that your guitar secret is out, can we add guitars to food, politics, games, and music to the chat? I’ve always thought that Skating Away could be done by fingerpicking, but that was never Ian Anderson’s style.
Keith Law: I almost never play anything by fingerpicking. It’s just never been as comfortable for me. I only do it if the song can’t be played any other way.

Jim: I know you were high on Logan Warmoth during the draft. What kind of upside do you think he has?
Keith Law: I was, and then he slugged .317 in high-A this year. Welp.

Matt: Thoughts on Ross Adolph, outfielder in the Mets system? Named Brooklyn’s MVP, any chance he could carve out a role in the big leagues?
Keith Law: He’s 21 and had a .348 OBP in short-season. Way too old for the level.

Robert: How difficult has it been to assess Luis Robert given his lack of playing time and injuries? I keep hearing that it is difficult to evaluate power when a player has had hand/wrist injuries. Is there anything you could see that would suggest the power would come once he is fully healed?
Keith Law: He might be the AFL guy I most want to see, because I keep missing him and he just hasn’t played that much, period.

Migraine Sufferer: As a fellow migrainee, what would you do if you were allergic to NSAIDs?
Keith Law: Try the so-called ‘daith’ piercing.

Jay: Kowar, Lynch, Del Rosario all have been pitching really well for Lexington. Any of those guys potential top 100 at some point?
Keith Law: Feels like Lynch might have pitched himself into that range, although, again, I don’t keep a constantly updated 100 list, so this is an educated guess on how they’ll line up.

Larry: Other than Mize do you think anyone from the 2018 draft will make your top 100 list?
Keith Law: Typically 12-15 June draftees make my January top 100.

silvpak: mondesi’s pop has been something of a surprise, yet his strike zone judgment is….lacking. thoughts on continued development in 2019?
Keith Law: I’d project a sub-.300 OBP next year.

Chris: Because we all know there are some crazy sports parents out there: has the parent of a prospect ever reached out to you after a negative report?
Keith Law: Yes. I do not engage.

Louis: Thoughts on CJ Abrams and Corbin Carroll? Two of the top prep guys for next year?
Keith Law: Yes to both.

Christopher: My 10-year-old son loves baseball but struggles at playing it because he gets paralyzed with anxiety. Among other things, he is terrified at getting hit, stemming from an incident about 2 years ago. As a dad (and coach), I struggle between encouraging and being honest and telling him only he can work through it. I’m very sensitive to this being a larger issue. This can’t be unique though, can it?
Keith Law: That sounds like something that requires therapy. He could easily be traumatized by whatever happened two years ago, and that won’t just go away with time.

Joey: After his NWL season, has your opinion changed on Joey Bart’s hit tool? Or does he still project as a below-average MLB hitter?
Keith Law: He was way too old for the NWL.

Pat D: Isn’t it great that we’re going to have a Supreme Court justice who has committed perjury?
Keith Law: This is America. Get your money.
Keith Law: That’s all for this week – thank you all, as always, for all of your questions. I’ll be back next week after the ‘players i was wrong about’ column runs for another chat. Enjoy your weekends!

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→ September 13, 2018
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On Chesil Beach.

I read Ian McEwan’s Atonement back in 2007 but strongly disliked how manipulative the narrative turned out to be, so I skipped the highly acclaimed film adaptation that came shortly after, with a then-unknown 13-year-old actress named Saoirse Ronan playing one of the pivotal roles in the movie. Ronan is now, of course, a three-time Academy Award nominee, including one nod for Atonement, and returned to McEwan’s milieu as the star of this year’s adaptation of his novella On Chesil Beach (amazon • iTunes), which covers familiar thematic territory but does so without the trickery of the earlier work, and builds slowly to a crescendo finish that ends with an gut-punch conclusion that speaks volumes with very little dialogue to punctuate it.

On Chesil Beach is an ostensible love story between upper-class Florence (Ronan) and working-class Edward (Billy Howle), told mostly via flashbacks on their wedding night as the two approach their first time in bed. A sweet, awkward romance emerges in scenes from their courtship, including stories of her frigid mother and angry, distant father, as well as images of his difficult childhood with a mother who suffered brain damage in an accident and has trouble with memories and with some basic social graces (including, as it turns out, wearing clothes when required). It eventually comes out that Florence’s wedding-night jitters are more than just tremors of anticipation, but that there is something extremely wrong beyond mere ignorance of the mechanics of sex. When Edward makes his first, clumsy attempt, the flashbacks turn darker – apparently the reason for her terror is clearer in the movie than the book – and the tone of the film turns abruptly into one of regret and shame for Edward as he details his life after the wedding night.

As with Atonement, one character’s rash decision in youth affects multiple lives, but here there is no pretense or deception on McEwan’s part – we know what happened in the ‘real time’ of the script, and there’s no sleight of hand to mislead us. For me, at least, that made the final half hour, from the wedding night, the revelation (to us, but not to Edward) of Florence’s past trauma, and the jumps forward to Edward’s future without Florence gutting to watch, as he realizes what his reactions in the heat of the moment – both out of anger and shame – have cost him over the remainder of his life.

Music is a recurrent theme in On Chesil Beach as well, including the use of classical music (Florence’s passion, as she plays in a string quartet) and early rock and roll (Edward especially loves Chuck Berry) to further distinguish the two main characters’ class differences. There’s also a scene about adding a fifth member to the group where we see a totally different side of Florence, a stronger, almost domineering presence at the head of the quartet, in full contrast to the timid woman shown in intimate scenes with Edward, as if to make clear that she’s not a nervous or weak person, but is repressed in a specific situation for a specific reason.

Ronan is superb, as always, although there are certainly scenes here where she’s reduced a bit by stilted dialogue to standing around in cute dresses; her character is by far the more pivotal of the two, and requires more restraint than the role of Edward, whom Howle plays as emotionally messy and underdeveloped, himself probably as unprepared for the institution of marriage and the responsibilities one has to a partner as Florence was for sex. The movie’s first hour or so is fairly slow going, I think by design, and some of the side characters are very thin, including Florence’s mother (played by Emily Watson), whose role in all of this could have used more explanation and whose attitude towards her daughters is itself hard to fathom.

At the 80 minute mark, I was sure I’d be calling On Chesil Beach a trifle, or even a bit dull, but the turnaround towards the end was so powerful that it forced me to reassess everything that came in the first 2/3 of the film. Nothing prepared me for how the story would wrap up, or how McEwan’s screenplay would shift the focus to make it clear that the blame isn’t on Florence, and that we’ve seen too much of the story through Edward’s eyes to understand how wrong he was to react as he did. The result is a potent, wrenching portrait of regret that also serves as a plea for understanding when someone we love needs it most.

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→ September 10, 2018
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Foxtrot.

Foxtrot (amazon • iTunes) was Israel’s submission for the 2017 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and made the December shortlist of nine titles, but didn’t advance to the short list of the final five nominees, with the honor eventually going to the Chilean film A Fantastic Woman. Foxtrot is now the eighth of the nine films I’ve seen – the Senegalese film Felicité is the exception – and wouldn’t have made my top five out of this set either. Its messages are powerful, its theme important, its symbolism fascinating, but it’s also jumbled thanks to a structure that breaks the film up into a disconnected short stories and doesn’t sufficiently arm the viewer for what’s coming or give enough context to much of what we see.

The film opens with a woman, Dafna, answering a knock at the door and immediately fainting upon seeing who’s there – two Israeli soldiers who, she correctly assumes, have come to tell her that her son has been killed on duty. Her husband, Michael, stands there impotently while the soldiers give his wife a sedative and carry her to a bed, and then gets the news himself and reacts in not too dissimilar fashion. This whole scene, with a grieving uncle and sister adding to the fray, goes on for a half an hour or so, until we find out the IDF screwed up: It’s the wrong Jonathan Feldman, and their son is actually still alive, after which Michael demands that the IDF bring him his son immediately, regardless of where he is or what he’s doing.

The action abruptly shifts to Jonathan’s side, where he and three other very young soldiers man a rural, ramshackle checkpoint, occasionally examining the ID’s of the few travelers to pass down their dusty road. It’s thankless, boring work, but eventually someone does show up and the boys incorrectly perceive a threat, which results in the deaths of the travelers, an IDF cover-up, and then the call for Jonathan to come home.

There’s a lot to unpack in Foxtrot, which was condemned by conservative forces in the Israeli government for its unflattering portrayal of the IDF. The film asks fundamental questions about the purpose of all of this security theater in Israel, and whether the country is sacrificing the lives of young people for little or no benefit. (The Palestinians themselves are merely props in the movie.) It also examines the weight of history, of what happens when we ignore our cultural heritage, and whether in this case MIchael has pushed his son to do something to satisfy his own weaknesses and insecurities.

The film practically overflows with symbolism, not least of which is the foxtrot itself, which appears as a dance and a word in several spots, and which Michael later explains as a dance where several steps never take you anywhere – you always end up back where you started. Mud appears repeatedly as a motif, both as something the soldiers can’t get rid of and a symbol of the futility of their attempts to make any progress, including the way the shipping container the boys have as their base is gradually sinking into the mire. Camels appear several times as well as a symbol for the absurdity of the fight against an enemy whose existence is known but prevalence is not.

The story, however, never coalesces into a coherent narrative, and the way that Michael and Dafna reconcile at the end – after Michael has seriously injured their dog by kicking it – was thoroughly unconvincing. (I don’t care what the reason is – if you can seriously injure an animal on purpose, I can’t even be friends with you, let alone married to you.) It feels like we’re getting two almost completely unconnected stories here, with the futility of the war the one thing that unifies them. It’s a better vehicle of metaphor than it is a functional movie.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,
→ September 9, 2018
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Stick to baseball, 9/8/18.

My one piece for ESPN+/Insider this week looked at the top prospects at last weekend’s Future Stars Series, including Daniel Espino, the top RHP for the 2019 draft, and Glenallen Hill, Jr. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

My annual minor league player of the year column is supposed to run this upcoming week, which means I need to write it (it’s not like the winner is a tough choice, but I like to highlight a few other dudes who had great years too), and I am hoping to get a new edition of my email newsletter out as well.

And now, the links…

  • Slate looks at the sustainability of The Athletic’s business model while raising critical questions about whether their content is actually as unique as they claim it is. (I’m an Athletic subscriber and happy to pay for good content, but I would say I read a very small number of writers on that site.)
  • Two longreads from the great investigative journalism site ProPublica this week. First, how Oregon keeps releasing violent criminals who were judged criminally insane, with several such convicts eventually reoffending for violent crimes.
  • Also, José Bacelga, a cancer researcher and the Chief Medical Officer at Sloan Kettering, failed on several occasions to disclose financial conflicts of interest when publishing cancer research in major journals. He was even editor-in-chief of one such journal that published his research yet broke its rules on disclosure.
  • I loved Will Leitch’s take on Nike choosing to ally itself with Colin Kaepernick despite the entirely expected outcry from the right. I also think they got more publicity value out of the announcement than they could possibly have bought. (Will is a friend of mine.)
  • Ars Technica, for whom I have written one freelance piece, has a short column asking BBQ pit masters for basic tips on pork butts and briskets. I’ve used the foil trick to get around the stall problem with pork shoulders, but prefer not to use it because it softens the bark that forms on the meat’s exterior.
  • The President’s increasingly overt racism shouldn’t be a surprise – he’s been attacking Elizabeth Warren for years by using ‘Pocahontas’ as a sort of racial slur to question her integrity. The Washington Post debunks Trump’s claims that she used her heritage to obtain promotions or admission to schools.
  • A trans woman of color was murdered in Philadelphia this week, and 2018 is shaping up to be an especially deadly year for trans people in the US, although it seems like hard data on the subject is hard to come by. I think it’s fair to say the trend isn’t good – such killings should be going down and they’re probably not.
  • Passengers on four Southwest Airlines flights may have been exposed to measles thanks to a sick passenger who traveled on those planes. The measles virus is extremely contagious and can be fatal at the time of infection or later in life. I would entirely favor a law criminalizing the woman’s actions: flying with a contagious, vaccine-preventable disease, thus putting hundreds of people at risk.
  • Ride-sharing services like Uber may be exacerbating traffic problems because riders choose them over public transportation, not over driving themselves. I do use these services from time to time, but not when public transit is available (and safe).
  • Twitter banned Alex Jones and InfoWars this week after months of pressure to rid the site of the hoax-peddling arch-right conspiracy theory factory and its corpulent founder. Jane Coaston covered these bans last month for Vox, looking at why YouTube, Apple, and Facebook took the same action.
  • Board games! Z-Man Games, an imprint of Asmodee, announced the latest extension to the Pandemic brand with Pandemic: Fall of Rome, which sounds a lot like last winter’s Pandemic: Rising Tide, another game that took the framework of the original Pandemic, added some clever twists to the rules, and shifted the theme away from fighting global epidemics.
  • Floodgate Games announced the Kickstarter for Bad Maps, a light family-level strategy game they demoed at Gen Con. It’s about 2/3 to its goal with 18 days to go. Floodgate also released the 5-6 player Sagrada expansion, which includes a private dice board to tweak the original’s dice-drafting mechanic, to retail this past week. It’s $25 on amazon via that link.
  • Starling Games announced a Kickstarter, opening to backers on September 10th, for Pearlbrook, the first expansion for Everdell, itself in the running for my #1 new game of 2018.
  • It seems like each week brings one great new(ish) comic on vaccine denialism, so here’s the latest.
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First Reformed.

First Reformed is a return to form for Paul Schrader, the writer of Taxi Driver and writer/director of Affliction, whose recent career has been marred by bad choices of projects, none worse than The Canyons, billed as a comeback project for Lindsay Lohan but a critical and commercial failure. (It also featured porn star James Deen, who was accused shortly thereafter of raping several women on adult film sets.) Featuring a virtuoso performance by Ethan Hawke, First Reformed asks powerful questions about the meaning of our existence, our responsibilities to the planet and to others, and whether people of faith can know or pretend to know the mind of God. For most of its nearly two hours, it is a taut, well-acted, Oscar-worthy film, but Schrader doesn’t quite stick the landing and I’m still not sure what to think about the closing scenes.

Hawke plays a minister named Ernst Toller, overseeing a dwindling congregation in a small rural town, subsidized by a megachurch called Abundant Life led by a charismatic minister named X (played by Cedric “The Entertainer” Kyles). Toller is visited by a woman, Mary (Amanda Seyfried), who is concerned about the mental state of her husband, a former environmental terrorist who remains obsessed with man’s destruction of the planet. She’s pregnant, and her husband wants her to have an abortion because he believes it’s cruel to bring a child into this world and the bleak future for humanity. When the husband takes his own life despite the counsels of Toller, however, the reverend is set off into his own dark night of the soul, reexamining his own past mistakes.

The movie is very much a showcase for Hawke, looking haggard and ground down by life in this role, who carries a drawn look throughout the film, the way someone fighting an inner torment and refusing to reach out for help or accept any offered might present himself to the world. We learn more about Toller’s past, and some reasons why he might act the way he does and be experiencing his own crisis of faith, but it is Hawke’s demeanor and intensity that carries the character and the film as a whole, as no other character, not even Mary, can come close to his role or his three-dimensional nature.

The choices of names in the film can hardly be accidents, and Schrader has cited specific films as influences (although I haven’t seen them, including Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light, and wouldn’t have caught those allusions). The real Ernst Toller was a German playwright known for left-wing views; he collaborated with anarchists and communists and served for six days as the leader of the so-called Bavarian Soviet Republic, but spent his last six years in exile before hanging himself in 1939; the film’s Toller is himself in exile, figurative and semi-literal (as he’s cloistered himself at the head of a scarcely-attended church). Mary is pregnant in the film, and the child’s father is known but disappears from the narrative, and while she first appears on the scene as someone trying to save her husband, she’s really here to try to save Toller – or at least allow him to save himself.

The ending is distinctive and shocking enough that I won’t spoil it, but I will say here that I’m not sure if what we see in the final scenes is real, and if it is, what it’s telling us about redemption or second chances. The last fifteen minutes or so include a dream sequence that could be a bit of magical realism, and an ending that is at least open to interpretation, especially the way Mary’s character appears in the last sequence, bathed in sunlight. The few reviews I’ve read or heard about First Reformed commented on how the ending doesn’t seem to fit well with what came before, and I mostly agree with that sentiment; I thought we might be seeing Ernst having a religious experience, but if that was the case it wasn’t well set up before or afterwards. It’s a very good movie with a solid script and a great central performance by Hawke, further punctuated by some of the wide shots contrasting Toller’s old but charming church with the antiseptic megachurch that helps keep his going. Whether it’s a great movie to you will probably depend on to what extent you buy the ending.

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