→ June 30, 2018
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Stick to baseball, 6/30/18.

I’m back from a European vacation that took us to Dublin, southern France, Monaco (my daughter really wanted to see it), Genoa (to visit my cousins there), and Milan. I ate a lot of gelato, which is the most important part, isn’t it? Before I left I did file one Insider piece, the annual top 25 players under 25 list, and please read the intro because as usual many people didn’t.

Over at Paste, my review of Merlin, the really awful new game from Stefan Feld, also went up while I was gone. Feld has designed several games I love, including The Castles of Burgundy, so this point-salad mess was a huge disappointment.

Book signings! I’ll be at Politics & Prose in Washington DC, with my friend Jay Jaffe, to talk baseball and both of our books on July 14th at 6 pm, and will be at Paul Swydan’s new bookstore The Silver Unicorn in Acton, Massachusetts, on July 28th at 1 pm (waiting for the link but it is confirmed). I will also be at the Futures Game in DC on the 15th.

And now, the links…

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→ June 29, 2018
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American Animals.

American Animals is based very closely on a true story – the 2004 attempt by four college students in Kentucky to steal several rare books from Transylvania University’s special collection, including John James Audobon’s The Birds of America. Rather than unfurling as a traditional heist movie, however, the script focuses more on the four kids involved, interspersing interviews with all of them throughout the movie to try to get at why they tried something so stupid and so incredibly unlikely to work.

Spencer Reinhard (Barry Keoghan) and Warren Lipka (Evan Peters) are both friends living in Lexington, Kentucky, where Reinhard attends Transylvania and studies art, when he sees the Audobon book on an orientation tour of the library and learns it’s worth about $12 million. He tells Warren, and during one (or more) of their weed-fueled conversations, they decide to try to steal and sell it, less for the money than for the adventure, as Warren in particular talks about how pointless and empty their lives seem to be. They eventually recruit accounting student Eric Borsuk (Jared Abrahamson), who at least brings some rational thinking to the logistical planning, and Chas Allen (Blake Jenner), the getaway driver, and spend months cooking up a plan after doing “research” like watching old heist movies. The robbery itself goes very poorly and they’re arrested not long afterwards, but by that point in the film, the theft seems beside the point, as the unclear motivation of the four stooges overtakes questions of whether it’ll work.

The movie starts with confessional interview clips with the real Reinhard and Lipka, as well as comments from their parents and an old teacher or two, before shifting into the ‘fictional’ part of the movie (although the intro takes pains to tell us the story is true). Director Bart Layton continues to sprinkle comments from the four men, all since released from prison, throughout the film, and uses their differing recollections to show the same scene in two ways, and elucidate how unreliable our memories can be. The trick is clever, although I’m not sure it gets enough to what seems to be the main point of the script, which is that no one, including the four men themselves, can fully explain why they wanted to do this or thought it might work. They refer to it as an “adventure,” which sort of makes sense, until the plan starts to involve subduing the librarian through force, which should have snapped at least one of these four out of their delusion. They’re clearly not dumb, although the plan itself was; Reinhard and Lipka are both thoughtful and articulate, and with the more reticent Borsuk they all seem better able to express now how ill-considered the plan was and how remorseful they feel now for the people they hurt. But can being bored and maybe a little rudderless in life really take a kid like Reinhard, who appears to have never been in any trouble before this, and make him the co-mastermind of a multi-million dollar heist?

The problem with American Animals isn’t the story, but the direction by Layton, who also wrote the script. Layton, perhaps best known for the documentary Imposter, has made his first non-documentary feature here, and has far too heavy a hand, making his influence felt everywhere in the movie when he needed to just let it breathe. The constant rotating camera shots are beyond distracting to the point of dizzying – it’s clearly a gimmick for Layton, and it adds nothing to the film at all, especially since scenery is never the point here. The music is even more distracting; the movie uses few songs contemporary to the time of the planning or heist, with a ton of music from the 1970s, and the volume is often overpowering.

The actors playing the four thieves are solid, although Peters particularly stands out for his portrayal of Lipka as the driving force behind the plan – emotional, erratic, daring, and above all charismatic. Keoghan gets at the hesitation Reinhard expresses in interviews after the fact, although he gives the sense throughout the film of someone who’s physically and emotionally tired more than someone who’s bored and looking for a thrill. And nothing the actors do can touch the emotional responses the men give in confessional clips shown at the end of the movie, where several fight back tears (of shame or embarrassment) as they consider the consequences of their actions. Maybe American Animals would have worked better as a straight documentary, or just if Layton had eased up on the throttle and let the story drive the direction more.

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→ June 28, 2018
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Thoroughbreds.

Thoroughbreds (amazon • iTunes) is sort of Discount Heathers, with a girl playing the disaffected provocateur role, and a lower body count, plus an ending that doesn’t quite hold together as tightly as its obvious inspiration. Even with some of its flaws, however, it’s so tightly written and features two riveting performances by its leads that it’s worth seeing even if you, like me, have fond memories of the 1988 darkly comic original.

Thoroughbreds starts out with the two teenaged protagonists reuniting after several years apart, meeting as Andover student Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) begins to tutor the peculiar Amanda (Olivia Cooke), the latter of whom has apparently just killed her horse. Amanda has exceptional perception and quickly sees through Lily’s pretenses, while also confessing to extreme emotional detachment: Amanda is anhedonic and perhaps antisocial, feeling nothing whatsoever and showing it in her perpetually neutral expressions. Her gaze and her tone are both disarming, which leads to the first of many funny scenes when Lily finally cops to the fact that Amanda freaks her out.

The plot kicks into gear shortly afterwards when Amanda suggests to Lily that she kill her controlling and vaguely creepy stepfather, Mark, who is very wealthy and berates Lily’s ineffectual mother. (Although I thought the film implied early in the script that Mark was at the least leering at Lily, if not actually attempting to abuse her, that turned out to be wrong, and Mark is just an asshole, but not a criminal.) Lily is aghast at the idea, until she sees Mark verbally abuse her mother again and finds out he’s decided to send her to a different boarding school, after which she tells Amanda she wants to go through with it. They plan to use a lowlife drug dealer, Tim (Anton Yelchin in what I think ended up his last film role), as hitman, although his willingness and his competence are both open questions. As the plan progresses, it turns out that Lily isn’t quite the delicate flower – or lily-white princess – she appears to be.

Taylor-Joy is perfect as Lily, embodying both the perfect little white girl persona and the stuck-up prep school teenager, but it’s Cooke as Amanda who grabs the wheel and steers the movie all the way to the big finish. Cooke has to be convincing as this weary, wise, incisive kid who is fooled by nobody and who rigorously applies logic to every situation, including understanding why people will act in specific ways and how to use that to their advantage. And she is, to an exceptional degree – her delivery is so dry, and her face so impassive, that Cooke sells Amanda as a teenaged automaton, making everything that comes afterwards credible, because nothing in this film works without that character. Taylor-Joy works, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she had the bigger career of the two, but Cooke has this film by the throat and never lets go.

Cory Finley made his debut as both director and screenwriter with Thoroughbreds, crafting those two compelling characters and working in plenty of very dark humor, although he seemed unsure of how to stick the landing, and the film wobbles as a result before more or less staying on its feet. Amanda’s motivation at the climax is unclear or just hard to accept, and the brief coda doesn’t add anything to the story; ending the film in the final shot with Lily and Amanda together would have been more effective. There are also some extremely strong and unsettling shots of the girls’ faces that add to the noir-ish feel of the film without interrupting its flow. It’s a very auspicious first effort for Finley, however, marking him as a filmmaker to watch, as well as a star turn for Cooke.

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→ June 21, 2018
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The Other Side of Hope.

Note: I’m on vacation at the moment and thus not checking email or social media. I’m still writing a little, though, because I feel better when I do.

I only have a few 2017 movies I missed and still want to catch, including Israel’s Oscar submission Foxtrot (which made the shortlist but not the final five), but since I’m traveling abroad at the moment a few films that haven’t been released digitally in the US are suddenly available to me. One of those is 2017’s The Other Side of Hope, a really weird-ass Finnish film with a stark message about humanism and the European migrant crisis along with some of the strangest cinematography and editing I’ve ever seen. And that’s before we even talk about the sushi scene.

The film is barely 95 minutes outside of the credits, and the two main characters Waldemar Wikström and Khaled Ali don’t even meet until about an hour into the story. Wikström is an unhappy, apparently affect-less shirt salesman who sells his entire stock, takes his winnings to an illegal poker room to grow them exponentially, and then invests the bulk of it in a failing restaurant with the most incompetent staff you could possibly imagine. Khaled is a Syrian refugee who first appears in a pile of soot or dirt, applies for asylum, and enters the Finnish refugee system, which is depicted here as arbitrary and capricious. It is only when Khaled’s application is denied that fate throws him into Wikström’s path and the dour restaurateur decides to help the Syrian try to stay in the country illegally and eventually be reunited with his missing sister.

The story itself is straightforward if a bit unrealistic at several points – especially anything around the restaurant, which can’t possibly exist with the three stooges running it, including the laziest cook on the planet, the dumbest doorman on the planet, and a waitress who might be the most competent of the three simply because she doesn’t do anything. It’s the way the film is shot that is so jarring; if I didn’t know this was the work of Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki, I would wonder if this was the work of a precocious film student. Kaurismäki, who also directed 2011’s Le Havre has said this will be his last film, has a quirky, minimalist visual style that isn’t much more expansive with dialogue, much of it delivered drily to the point of atonality. That makes the Wikström plot line kind of hard to appreciate until Khaled shows up, since the refugee story unfurls with more emotion, mostly from Khaled telling his own history since he before he left Aleppo and from the friendship he forges with fellow asylum seeker Mazdak. There are weird, lingering shots of still faces and background items. People line up to talk to each other as if in a marching band, and often speak to each other at an obtuse angle that looks completely unnatural, using a flat tone and rarely expressing any emotion – no one cries in the film, and no one laughs.

Once the two plots unite, however, the movie takes a sudden turn towards deadpan humor, some of it extremely funny – including the aforementioned sushi scene, as Wikström attempts to turn the failing eatery into a Japanese restaurant, with preposterous results – even as Khaled’s safety is in danger both from Finnish authorities and from a group of neo-Nazis who attack him more than once on the street. The Finnish people generally come off as kind and open in the movie, despite the few outright racists running around, while the government itself comes off as heartless and ineffectual. The encounter with Khaled seems to light a spark of humanity in Wikström, and maybe even in one of the other employees (not the cook, who appears unable to boil water), but any hope there might be in the film comes from individuals, not form the institutions that, in theory, exist to help such people who have found no help from anyone else.

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→ June 18, 2018
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Incredibles 2.

Incredibles 2 comes almost fifteen years after the first installment’s release, but takes place immediately after the events of the previous film – literally, as we see Mr. Incredible & his family fighting the Underminer (John Ratzenberger making his obligatory appearance), which is how the first movie ended. That sets off a new story that bears a lot of resemblance to the original but flips the script so that Elastigirl is now the superhero out fighting crime, while Mr. Incredible turns into Mr. Mom and has to feed the kids, help Dash with his math homework, navigate Violet’s first foray into dating, and deal with Jack-Jack’s hitherto unknown array of spontaneously-appearing superpowers. It is just as good as the first movie, but without the boost the first movie got from being new. We know all these characters and we know how their world operates. The magic of meeting them all for the first time is now replaced by the comfort of seeing all the familiar faces and places and hearing those same voices (“daaaaahlink”) after so many years away.

The movie forks early on into two subplots that, of course, will rejoin near the end so someone can save the day – and really, if you can’t figure out where all this is going, you haven’t watched a Pixar movie before. Winston Deaver (Bob Odenkirk) is a communications tycoon, something Frozone explains to us in a clumsy aside worthy of an SVU episode, and a longtime fan of superheroes, just as his father was. He and his sister (Catherine Keener) have a plan to make supers legal again by launching a PR campaign around Elastigirl, putting a camera in her uniform and then letting the public see just what good work she’s doing fighting crime. She gets an opportunity to do so in suspiciously short order, saving a brand-new monorail from total disaster, which introduces her to a new villain, the Screenslaver, who says we’re all spending too much time looking at our phones (duh) so he’s going to cause chaos to wake us all up (good luck with that).

* I kept trying to figure out what the pun in his name might be, since its sounds like “winst endeavor” every time anyone says it. Google tells me “winst” is the Dutch word for profit, but of course it’s pronounced “vinst,” and that’s a long way to go for a pun anyway.

Meanwhile, on the home front, Mr. Incredible learns that parenting is hard. Some of the jokes are a little too familiar – yes, I’ve been through the new math versus old math thing, and still think the way my daughter’s school teaches long division is dumb – but most are at least funny, notably the sight gags. But it’s Jack-Jack who steals pretty much every scene he’s in. His numerous superpowers, a few of which were previewed in his fight against Syndrome (who, fortunately, does not magically re-appear in this film) at the end of the first movie, are pretty funny on their own. He also ends up in a fight scene with a tenacious raccoon that is by far the movie’s best sequence, busting out all of his powers and flabbergasting his sleep-deprived father – who, of course, decides not to tell Elastigirl about any of this while she’s out saving the world and trying to convince the public to make supers legal again.

The problem with Incredibles 2, other than the lack of newness – there are some new supers but they’re not that interesting, except maybe Void (Sophia Bush), who needed more to do – is that the villain is meh. You’ll probably figure out who it is fairly quickly, and then you’ll spend the rest of the film trying to figure out the villain’s motivation, which is not terribly convincing, and certainly doesn’t do enough to justify the plan to make supers illegal on a permanent basis. The exposition required to get to that point gives the film its one slow-down moment, and it’s not sufficiently credible to explain everything that the villain has done or is about to do.

The resolution, however, is a blast, literally and figuratively, with Jack-Jack again playing a critical role, as he and the family make use of his powers and his growing ability to control them. Brad Bird, the director and writer of both Incredibles movies, reprises his role as E in another fantastic sequence where she bonds with Jack-Jack (and, of course, makes him a new superhero costume). Even the ending leaves it open so that if they do decide to make this a trilogy, Bird can write the script right from the moment where the family takes off to go stop another crime. It’s very good, almost as good as the first one, but it could have been tighter.

The Pixar short film that airs before this – after the seven trailers, one of which was for Christopher Robin and five of which were for movies you couldn’t pay me to see – was Bao, a twisted, funny, and very sweet story about being a parent and letting go. The first ever Pixar short directed by a woman, Bao gives us a wife who makes exquisite xiao long baozi, the steamed dumplings that look a bit like a Hershey’s kiss in its wrapper – or, as it turns out, a lot like a little head, as one day the woman starts to bite into one of her dumplings only to have it cry out like a baby, sprout arms and legs, and then grow like a child. Eventually, the little bao starts to grow up and become a teenager and then a young adult who brings home a fiancée – blonde, and definitely not Asian – which really pushes mom over the edge. There’s one slightly demented scene in the short, which I thought was hilarious, but the end will have almost any parent in the audience tearing up. I know opinions on Bao are mixed but I think it’s one of their best shorts ever.

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→ June 16, 2018
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Stick to baseball, 6/16/18.

My one piece for Insiders this week looked at which teams just drafted their new #1 prospects, along with two teams that probably just drafted their new #2 prospects (although it’s debatable in both cases). I also held a Klawchat on Thursday, which will be the last until July because I’m going on vacation.

I spoke to John Conniff at MadFriars about the Padres’ draft and the state of their rebuild.

I’ll be at Politics & Prose in Washington DC on July 14th, with my friend Jay Jaffe, to discuss our respective books (Smart Baseball and The Cooperstown Casebook) and all things baseball. I also have a tentative signing set up at Silver Unicorn Books in Acton, Massachusetts, for July 28th, so stand by for more details.

And now, the links…

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→ June 15, 2018
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Crosstalk.

I adore the prose of Connie Willis, the brilliant and prolific American novelist whose Oxford time-travel stories include some of my favorite sci-fi novels, including To Say Nothing of the Dog, Doomsday Book, and the diptych Blackout and All Clear, which as a group won three Hugos, two Nebulas, and two Locus awards. She has, however, written other speculative fiction outside of the Oxford universe (which began with “Fire Watch,” a short story that also won the Hugo-Nebula parlay), including the light novel Bellwether and, most recently, the 2016 novel Crosstalk, which builds an entire comedy of errors on a single technological twist while also prodding questions about just how much we really want to connect to other people.

Bridget “Briddey” Flanigan is the very lucky protagonist, a rising employee of mobile phone manufacturer CommSpan who happens to be engaged to the extremely desirable bachelor and top executive Trent, who then convinces her to get an EED, a neural implant that is supposed to allow two people with a strong emotional connection to feel each other’s emotions even more potently. Her fiancé is in a terrible rush to have the procedure done, and Briddey agrees to it even though her family members warn her not to do so, as does the eccentric programmer C.B., who works at CommSpan in a dungeon-like basement office. When she has the implant, however, she finds that she’s suddenly telepathic, and the first voice she hears isn’t Trent’s, leading to a series of misadventures around trying to stay afloat amidst the deluge of voices in her head, to avoid letting Trent know what’s going on, and, hardest of all, to keep anything private from her unbelievably intrusive family.

Figuring out how Crosstalk would end was the least of its pleasures – it’s obvious she’s going to end up with someone other than Trent, and I thought it was obvious what side character was pulling many of the strings throughout the book – but, as with so many Willis novels, the fun is in the journey. She has a classic comic novelist’s knack of creating side characters who are exaggerated just to the edge of realistic, like Briddey’s sisters, both of whom classify anything as an emergency, one of whom is referring to her awful dating choices while the other is convinced that her daughter Maeve is into everything from Disney princesses to online terrorism. (She’s mostly just watching zombie movies.) They’ll exasperate you as they exasperate Briddey – and I often wondered why she even talks to her great-aunt, who seems to have less respect than anyone for Briddey’s privacy – but they’re all just slightly embellished versions of people you probably know in your own life, and watching her evasive maneuvers provides a good chunk of the book’s humor.

Willis can craft a clever mystery as well, and in all of her novels she tends to reveal the secrets of the main plot very gradually, which works extremely well in the time travel stories, but a bit less so here because she has characters who know the truth deliberately holding it back from Briddey. The EED doesn’t make everyone telepathic, or even close, so why does Briddey become so after the surgery? Why does she hear that one other character first, even though that person hasn’t had an EED? Once the specific character trait in question is revealed, it’s easy to figure out who’s pulling many of the strings and to walk all the way back to the first chapter to understand certain characters’ motivations, but I also left with the sense that Briddey herself had a right to know what was happening to her. Several people who profess to care about her don’t share what they know, and she’s left worse off until they come clean. That’s not a factor in the Oxford novels, where something generally goes wrong with the time travel mechanism and no one, not even the Professor running the program, can figure out why.

The time-travel novels and even the much lighter Bellwether all sucked me completely into their worlds, because Willis writes so well – like P.G. Wodehouse and Kingsley Amis with a dash of Jane Austen thrown in – and because she creates so many three-dimensional characters in all of her books. Crosstalk is a half-grade down for me, because of the issue with characters not telling Briddey what they know, and because the moral and philosophical questions Willis seems to explore here don’t feel very fresh even two years after the book’s publication. We’re all online too much if we’re online at all. We’re replacing personal connections with digital ones, at apparent risk to our emotional well-being. Willis takes that to its logical extreme, that two people who are glued to their devices decide to make their romantic relationship a direct, digital one instead. It was probably a risk Willis knew she was taking while writing the book, but reality has raced forward to the point where the book seems like a debate we might have had three years ago, replaced today by so many more social media worries and changes to how we all communicate with each other (or fail to do so) instead. It’s worth reading, because Willis is such a fun writer, but I would rate it at the bottom of the novels I’ve read from her so far.

Next up: Still reading Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood.

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→ June 14, 2018
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Klawchat 6/14/18.

My latest Insider post looked at which teams just drafted their new #1 prospects.

Keith Law: You look good when your heart is on fire. Klawchat.

DJ: Is O’ neil Cruz an infielder? Top 100 guy this time next year?
Keith Law: I highly doubt he plays anywhere on the dirt other than first base, and I do not think he’s a top 100 guy this time next year.

Kevin S.: Tim Tebow has struck out, popped up or hit a ground ball in a full two-thirds of his plate appearances this season. Can we please stop talking about him being a league-average hitter in AA or saying that he nearly projects as a major league reserve player, as BP recently did? Just stop the madness.
Keith Law: Every time he has a hot weekend, there’s a spate of crap articles saying he’s actually not awful, but no credible prospect outlet has ever fallen for this. He still has one of the highest strikeout rates of any full-season player this year – and nearly everyone above him is way younger than he is. (Pity poor Gareth Morgan.) But the Mets are going to call Tebow up, because that is what the owners want to do.

Tom: Steamer has Juan Soto as the 13th best hitter in the majors RoS by wOBA, sandwiched between Judge and Donaldson. Is that extremely optimistic or do you think Soto is already capable of that? Does he even keeping playing everyday with Eaton? I, personally, don’t see how he couldn’t.
Keith Law: Projection systems can only use the data that are available, and Soto has under 400 pro PA above rookie ball, total. I doubt any system would be reliable working off such a tiny sample of data on a player.

John: What are some college programs that treat their pitchers the right way? We tend to hear only about the bad ones.
Keith Law: Florida, Vandy, and LSU all come to mind right away. There are some smaller ones that just don’t get press … Nate Pearson was very well handled at the College of Central Florida, but of course that’s not a school you will hear about unless they have a top prospect.

Donald: Obviously Max Muncy isn’t this good, but can he be an above average (or even average) everyday player? The eye seems great, and he lifts the ball.
Keith Law: An average player, sure. I don’t think he’s going to sustain a 46% hard-hit rate (via Fangraphs), which would put him right outside the top 10 in baseball if he qualified.

addoeh: Do you think Jonathan India will pass Brian Jordan as the best player with a country for his last name? To be honest, I haven’t done a lot of research on this, only checking Ricky Jordan, Mark Portugal, and Al, Derek, and Greg Holland.
Keith Law: I can’t believe you’d diss Tommy Burkina Faso like that.

Rob: Thoughts on Tyler Stephenson’s season? Does he have a chance to be a top 100 prospect?
Keith Law: If he’s a catcher, he’s a top 100 prospect. I would say the majority of scouts I’ve asked think he’s not a catcher in the long run – he has arm strength, but a long arm stroke, and is a poor receiver. And then the question changes to whether he’ll hit enough to be an impact guy at a position like first base, and I would say the jury is still out on that. (I know the Reds believe he’s a catcher, and I think he’s still too inexperienced to give up on him.)

Rodney: Is my love for Matt Thaiss justified? He’s always got on base, but his 2018 HR total already exceeds 2017’s. Can he be an everyday player for the Angels next season?
Keith Law: He’s in Salt Lake now, a great hitters’ park. I don’t think this power surge is real, not at sea level.

Adam: Worried at all about Albies or is this downswing simply because hes like 12 years old and playing Major League Baseball? Has he shown he can adjust before?
Keith Law: What he did in April was never likely to last.

Adam: What should the Braves do with Fried? Its obvious the team likes Gohara more. Should he be in the pen or traded?
Keith Law: I prefer to see him starting in AAA and waiting for an opening than have him come up and barely pitch out of the pen.

Lyle: Eric Filia, while being something like the 6th-10th best prospect in the Mariners system and is probably in the 20s in the Red Sox system, still seems like a big overpay for a pitcher the Red Sox basically just wanted to get rid of. Thoughts?
Keith Law: No position really, but I do think he can hit and has major league value.

Brian: Keith, I find myself heading to THE BOARD on Fangraphs as well as MLB’s Top 100 pages quite often and was wondering if you’ve been giving thought (or your editors have) to having your rankings somewhere on ESPN. I realize the time and resources that would go into keeping that fresh and updated; just wondering if it’s considered.
Keith Law: I have zero interest in this. It becomes way too prone to recency bias.

Mark: Do you like espresso? If so, how do you drink the sparkling water served with it?
Keith Law: After the espresso as a palate cleanser. I assume that’s your question – like, as opposed to dumping the espresso in the sparkling water?

Jo-Nathan: Is the handling of Mike Vasil closing in on abuse? He was ‘needed’ for the final 4 outs Tuesday as his team was about to blow a 6 run lead, and his coach still planned to start him Wednesday. Lucky for his arm the game was rained out, but he’s scheduled to pitch today. It would be interesting to see a lawyer go after this coach in a civil suit when his arm blows up. Having said that this coach should be fired but instead it sounds like he’ll be celebrated for getting his team this far.
Keith Law: His coach refused to take responsibility for misusing Vasil two days before the start where the kid got hurt, throwing him a meaningless relief inning with no scouts present. If Vasil blows out, I hope parents and administrators look back at how he was mishandled this spring. You can never draw a straight line from misuse to injury, but we can at least point to the misuse as bad process.

Rex: Have you tried the new board game Bofa yet? It’s gotten pretty decent reviews, but I wanted to get your expert opinion before I buy it.
Keith Law: I have been on the Internet since you were an egg sitting idly in your mother’s ovary. You must be really, really stupid to think I’d fall for DEEZ NUTS.

Mark: Do you think a Brad Hand for Kyle Tucker trade is fair for both sides?
Keith Law: HAHAHAHAHAHA no.

Harold Kunz: Do you expect the Cubs to run away with the division this year?
Keith Law: No. Try asking less extreme questions, like, “do you expect the Cubs to win the division this year?” (Yes.)

TJ: So what happened with Liberatore? Teams didn’t know his price so they passed and then he signed for slot anyway?
Keith Law: I think his price was a little high for the teams in the top ten, and then he got to teams his adviser may not have talked to seriously, assuming they’d never get there. I know the Rays had no expectation he’d get to them.

Chris: Have you seen or heard anything about Oakland INF/OF Eli White? Total np coming into the year, did nothing in Stockton last season, but he’s putting up big numbers in AA. Anything there, or just the best 250 AB’s of his life?
Keith Law: Best 250 AB of his life. Not young, .404 BABIP, no previous performance.

Marc (DC): Is Dom Smith still a prospect? How badly has Sandy Alderson mismanaged the Mets farm system?
Keith Law: He’s not a prospect by my definition for rankings, but I still think he has a good major-league future ahead of him if they just let him play. Alderson et al have really worked against themselves with weird promotions/holding players back. Tebow sucks at two levels, still goes to AA; David Peterson rips apart the Pac 12, has to start in low-A and dominate for over two months just to see the Florida State League.

Santiago: Hey Keith, what are your thoughts on Orioles left hanger DL Hall? Ceiling? Likely role?
Keith Law: As is now, mid-rotation starter. Stuff has taken a half-step back.

Alex: Hey Keith, are you swinging by the Cape at all this summer? Fellow Long Islander interning with Y-D and would love to say hi
Keith Law: If I go, it’ll be the last full week of July, before I head to the Silver Unicorn in Acton for a book signing/talk.

Brian: Does Jeisson Rosario have a future as an average regular or more?
Keith Law: Yes, with low probability given his age/distance from the majors.

Sean: What would you say are reasonable expectations for how Loaisiga will perform while Tanaka is out?
Keith Law: He was in short-season ball last year, so I’d keep expectations low. Major-league stuff right now, future starter, not major-league command yet.

Archie: How quickly do you think Bart can get to the majors?
Keith Law: Within two years. Don’t think he’s a fast-to-the-majors guy.

Ben: Why hasn’t there been more made of Ryan Rolison’s advocating violence against President Obama? I realize that this isn’t remotely the same as Luke Heimlich but it would have been absolutely disqualifying for me. Why is he getting such a pass?
Keith Law: I actually don’t think anyone saw it until after he was taken. At least, I didn’t. Also, tip to future possible draft picks: Delete your social media accounts. Like, now.

Brian Anderson: What does my future hold? Rookie of the year this year? Beyond?
Keith Law: Not ROY for me right now. Future average regular.

Don: Do front offices consider it a failure if their top 5 pick ends up being a league average player?
Keith Law: Yes. In some drafts, of course, that’s not really fair – the 2008 draft only had two stars in it.

Chris: Gavin Cecchini is surely better than Jose Reyes, right?
Keith Law: I don’t think you can trust Cecchini on the left side of the infield. I’d love to see the Mets fire Reyes into the heart of the sun, but they would need a backup SS, no?

Brett : Could Kevin Smith develop enough to push Bichette to another position? What is his ceiling?
Keith Law: No, he’s not a long-term SS at all.

Reginald: Do you generally advocate for kids to skip college if they aren’t Day 1 picks but are Day 2?
Keith Law: Depends on what the bonus might be, their financial situation, and what their projection is – if you’re a kid who’s likely to get bigger and stronger in college, that’s a different answer than if you’re 5’11” and maxed out physically.

WhiteSoxAndy: Keith, do you follow the FIFA World Cup at all? (Please don’t respond with the soccer-hating tone that a lot of people I know do. My 2 favorite sports are baseball and soccer – both can be loved!)
Keith Law: With Italy out, I have no real rooting interest this year … and I find it hard to justify watching an event in Russia, bought and paid for by a country that has clearly interfered in our electoral process.

CD: What do you make of Austin Beck so far? Hitting for average, but no power. K rate has improved, but his BB rate has fallen. He’s only 19 so he’s young for the league, but I don’t know if this progress or not.
Keith Law: Power will be there. Not worried about that at all.

KW: Thanks for taking the time to do this, Keith. What are the chances Clemens’ dominance in the CWS leads him to reject the Tigers’ 3rd round signing offer and return for a senior year to chase a higher selection?
Keith Law: Zero. I doubt anyone is that dumb.
Keith Law: Plus he almost certainly agreed to a number already. Backing out of that won’t do him or his adviser any favors.

Jim: I have to confess that, outside of the obvious of being able to sit down together, I’m no overly impressed with the Singapore meeting. However, I’m not sure how muc of that is due to my total loathing of 45. So, style/no substance, impressive accomplishment, or another troubling case of enabling an authoritarian regime?
Keith Law: Right now, just enabling a murderous dictator – giving him the PR boost he wanted, the validation that comes from seeing the DPRK flag alongside the US flag, of seeing a US President saluting a North Korean general. We should judge all leaders on measurable progress, not on pomp and circumstance. (Now, if Trump follows through on ending the federal ban on marijuana, that would be real, measurable progress.)

Jamie: Is this peak Albert Almora and should he play every day?
Keith Law: This looks about right. Not a ton of power but strong AVG, high contact, 70 defense.

Erin: Do you know what’s going on with Jose Albertos? I know I’m not supposed to scout the stat line, but 18+ ERA after 5 starts?
Keith Law: Fairly certain he has the yips.

Joe: Think Loaisiga can hold his own in the bigs at this time? Would it have made more sense to call up Sheffield or someone else?
Keith Law: He was already on the 40-man. Gave him a big advantage.

Jo-Nathan: Is Josh Staumont starting to figure it out?
Keith Law: No. I swear people ask this every year.

Don: Who do you prefer, Nick Madrigal or Luis Urias?
Keith Law: Unfair comparison – AAA hitter with success everywhere vs guy who hasn’t played pro ball yet.

Jeries: Dylan Covey gained almost 2mph on his fastball and is throwing it way more, and is now a groundball machine. Were you ever high on him?
Keith Law: In high school. He was really mediocre in college, never got any better in pro ball.

Brett : Assuming you read the comments made by an NL executive who said Bryce Harper is overrated and a selfish player. Would love you insight on these comments.
Keith Law: I am assuming that cowardly “executive” has spent the last 48 hours furiously deleting all his text messages and emails.

Mike: How much draft day risk is there for a strategy like Toronto’s, where they pass on Liberatore, to take Groshans and then Koffenstein. What if someone took Kloshenstein instead?
Keith Law: Given what they paid Kloffenstein (third time’s the charm), he wasn’t likely to be selected. I think the advisor put word out he wasn’t signing for anything less than that, so teams passed.

Bort: What do you say to people who think bat flips = poor sportsmanship?
Keith Law: go watch golf

Andres: Any listens on the new Johnny Marr singles? Thoughts?
Keith Law: All fine but unremarkable – he hasn’t been great at crafting huge hooks, not since the Smiths broke up.

books: Have you announced yet what cities you’ll be in signing copies of Smart Baseball?
Keith Law: Only DC and outside Boston.

Phillies fan: On a scale of 1-10, how worried should I be about Sixto Sanchez being put on the DL for elbow issues?
Keith Law: Maybe 5. They’re also being super cautious with him. But he’s a little guy who throws 100, so there’s always some concern.

Bort: How fast can Alec Bohm move? Is a 2019 debut unreasonable aggressive?
Keith Law: I think that’s on the extreme optimistic end.

Joe: Do you think of any of the Giants’ collection of lesser/younger arms – Stratton, Suarez, Rodriguez, Beede, Black- can be as much as a No. 4 starter? Or any at least a 5?
Keith Law: A 4 would be a great outcome for any of them. If you mean Ray Black, he can’t even stay healthy or throw strikes as a reliever.

Amory: Devers just have growing pains or has your belief in his ceiling gone down?
Keith Law: He’s 21. He’s younger than Alec Bohm. Come on.

Amy: Is Jordan Beeks a ML starter? Can he be a decent 4/5, or is he just a depth piece?
Keith Law: I think he’s a depth piece, maybe a really good reliever, but you saw in that first inning he threw that there was some deception involved in AAA that didn’t work in the majors.

Brandon: Have you started a list of some kind of the college players you’ll try scout more in 2019 now that the 2018 draft is over? Any Vandy guys towards the top of that list?
Keith Law: I won’t bear down like that until the spring. If I can work in some Cape games, I’ll just go see whoever I see – I don’t target guys so much as just go to games and watch.

Sloan: Madrigal or Moncada as White Sox 2B for the next 5-7 years?
Keith Law: Madrigal is the safer bet. Curious what Moncada would look like in the OF, and I didn’t think he was bad at 3b in the AFL.

Jo-Nathan: Has Bo Bichette improved enough defensively to stick at SS long term?
Keith Law: Nope.

Kevin: After Hjelle signs would he be your no. 2 prospect for SF Giants?
Keith Law: I wouldn’t take him over Ramos right now.

Joe: I apologize if you already mentioned this, but who do you see as the first 2018 draft pick to appear in majors?
Keith Law: With the Tigers having no reason to push Mize, it’ll probably be some college closer like Feltman or Gilliam.

Humble Newsie: Hey Keith, thanks for the chat and all of your work. Do you think of Mejia in the top tier of catching prospects all by himself, or does one of Ruiz, Murphy, Jansen, Smith (or someone else) belong there too?
Keith Law: He’s well ahead of anyone else – but he might be such a good hitter he gets moved off catcher, too.

Chase : Jo Adell’s hitting ability coming around? He’s still not walking, but it looks like he’s adjusted to the Cal League while being quite a bit younger than his competition. I love the dude.
Keith Law: I have no issue with him not walking given his youth and other performance.

Brian: What happened to Buddy Reed? Looks like he’s still striking out a lot at ~25% but he appears to be crushing the ball and playing great defense in High A. what have you heard about him and has he elevated himself on the padres prospect rankings?
Keith Law: No, he’s 24, way too old for high-A, in a good hitter’s park. Age. Matters.

Adam: So Fernando Tatis Jr isn’t a bust anymore. That’s nice.
Keith Law: Yeah but has that one writer decided he’s more than an org player yet?

Paul: Are Folty and Newcomb here to stay as #2/3 starters?
Keith Law: Folty yes. Newcomb no. Hard to project a guy as a #2 starter when he’s barely throwing 60% of pitches for strikes.

Nick: Is Mets farm system not as bad as a lot of people say it is? I feel they have several mid rotations starters (Peterson, Dunn, Kay, Szapucki if he comes back healthy) and several interesting bats (Alonso, Giminez, now Kelenic). Obviously not a top system, but I don’t think that this is the disaster of a group that many people think it is.
Keith Law: I’ve said this for a while. Mets fans have many reasons to complain about how the team has been run, but the farm system itself is not the problem.

Chris: Florial, Andujar and Sheffield for DeGram-who says no?
Keith Law: The Yankees. I wouldn’t do that and I think Florial has been wildly overrated by people who haven’t seen him play.

Matt: Given that Kopech is knocking on the door and the rest of the rotation looks relatively solid with Rodon back, does it make sense to send Giolito back to triple A? Seems like the problem is that he forgot how to throw strikes, not sure if he needs to stay in the majors to fix that
Keith Law: I would; it’s not getting better just by rolling him out there every five days. I can understand them wanting to keep him working with the major league coaching staff on restoring his mechanics, but it’s mid-June and he hasn’t gotten any better since the team broke camp.

Wellington Jones: Bubba Thompson was drafted by the Rangers as one of their toolsy athletes who couldn’t hit. He’s K’ing a lot in A ball, but appears to be drawing a few walks and putting up decent numbers. Is there reason to be encouraged by his start?
Keith Law: “who couldn’t hit” is just wrong. He was raw, but didn’t have a 30 hit tool or the like. He’s a prospect, still raw, making some progress.

XxXxYyYyXxXxX: Rangers fans are up in arms over Texas passing on Liberatore for Winn at 15, when Liberatore signed for below slot. Defensible decision, or did the Rangers blow it here?
Keith Law: I had Winn in my top 10 and Liberatore at 3. For high school arms, that’s really not a huge difference. It’s also quite possible that the Rangers hadn’t spent a ton of time on Liberatore because they figured (as I did) he’d never get to 15.

Rob: Taking the family to the Jersey Shore this year? I’m a fan of the Sea Grill in Avalon.
Keith Law: Never been to the Jersey shore at all.

Brian: No mention of the Mariners in your recent insider article on team’s new top prospects. Is Gilbert anywhere close to the top of their weak farm system?
Keith Law: He’s not #1.

Bill: Josh Naylor seems to be settling in at left field in AA. Will he be the Pads left fielder by Labor Day?
Keith Law: I’d be floored if he were able to play LF at an adequate major league level.

Paul: If you were in Anthopoulos’ position, how would you handle the trade deadline?
Keith Law: If you think you can trade some pitching surplus for major-league help, consider it – they do have a few more arms than they can use in the majors right now, and there are guys like Wright, Wilson, Anderson coming fast. But I wouldn’t go all in, or try to trade for someone like Machado … fans pushing for that are delusional on several levels, not least how much impact one player might have in two months.

Chris: Let’s say Kershaw returns in a few weeks, pitches like his normal self and then opts out. What offer would you be comfortable giving him and would you pay a little extra if you’re the Dodgers given his importance to the organization and LAD’s seemingly unlimited monies?
Keith Law: I have a feeling this is what’s going to end up happening – the Dodgers will offer him more, because he’s Clayton Kershaw. Don’t you have to try to offer him at least an Arrieta-like deal – short duration, huge AAV, in the hopes that he gives you one or two Peak Kershaw years?

Brett : Acuna or Soto long term?
Keith Law: Still taking Acuna there.

Gabe: Do you think the Eduardo Rodriguez will ever be more than a back end starter?
Keith Law: I think he’s more than that right now.

Jesse B: Does Seuly Matias have enough hit tool to be a star?
Keith Law: Right now, no. He’s doing what Joey Gallo did in low-A, but with 2/3 the walk rate. And Gallo is still dancing on the edge of major league value.

Mark: Are there any board games that are two players against the game if that makes sense? Like a couple could play together trying to win against the game (jigsaw puzzle I guess, but fun)?
Keith Law: Lots of cooperative games – Pandemic, Forbidden Desert, Forbidden Island, Flash Point, Spirit Island (I still haven’t played that through), etc.
Keith Law: Oh, Elder Sign. Goofier, still very fun for 2.

Yinka Double Dare: What were the odds on Dylan Covey being the White Sox’s best starting pitcher this year? Velo ticked up this year, throwing a lot more sinkers, walks down, strikeouts up, hard to believe it’s the same guy who gave up 20 homers in 70 innings last year.
Keith Law: I would have said zero odds on that back in March.

Gary: Saw a Rosenthal article floating a Devers for Machado trade. 5 years of Devers seems like too much for a rental, even one as good as Machado. Would you do that from Boston side?
Keith Law: Absolutely not.

Dan: I hate to bring him up again but I’m genuinely curious about what happens to Luke Heimlich now. Two consecutive years of going undrafted and now his time with Oregon State is over. Does he go play independent ball somewhere and hope to sign with a team after some time goes by? Or are his aspirations of playing in MLB over?
Keith Law: Here’s my view on the matter: I don’t want to ever talk about Luke Heimlich again.

Jeries: Who has a brighter future in the outfield if they need to move there, Tim Anderson or Yoan Moncada?
Keith Law: You lose much more moving Anderson than you do moving Moncada, IMO.

John: Verducci had a recent article, advocating for (i) lowering the mound, (ii) limit the roster to 12 pitchers, or (iii) implementing a pitch clock. Any reaction to those proposals?
Keith Law: You lower the mound if you really want to get more pitchers hurt.

Kenny: If a 1st day guys were not going to sign, who is the most likely?
Keith Law: They will also sign unless someone flunks a physical (or the team discovers old tweets threatening to kill the President).

Michael : You had Kyler Murray ranked in the 30s pre-draft, but didn’t seem to have a problem with the A’s drafting him with the 9th pick. Was your ranking affected by signability issues, the fact that he’s a high risk/reward prospect, or something else?
Keith Law: He had ~100 AB total in between high school and this spring. He is very high risk, and high reward.
Keith Law: And he wasn’t close to the lowest-ranked player taken in the first round, either.

Trevor: Where is Kevin Maitan?
Keith Law: Still in extended spring training.

Seth: It’s been widely reported the Giants held a private workout for Bart in San Francisco. Is that typical for guys at the top of the draft to have private workouts?
Keith Law: Yes.

CD: Two part questions – just based on talent, forget football, do you like the Murray pick for Oakland? Also, just your gut feeling, will the pick end up being “successful” for the team and the player?
Keith Law: If I said he has, say, a 30% chance of being a successful big leaguer, I’d raise that to 40% if he’d just play this summer and fall instead of going to get his head bashed in playing CTE-ball.

Joe: Fair to see Witt as similar to Daz Cameron from a few years ago? I.e. a good player who gets a bit overhyped given his bloodline and the fact that his class hasn’t been heavily scouted.
Keith Law: Yes. That could change as we all turn our lonely eyes to the 2019 class.

Sean: Approximately what % of the time are you away from home during the season? Do you find this hard on your family? Asking as someone contemplating taking a job that includes a lot of travel.
Keith Law: I range between 50 and 70 hotel nights per year, concentrated in between Valentine’s Day and Memorial Day. The rest of the summer I do a lot of minor league work from the house – there are seven or eight teams I can round-trip in two hours each way or less.

Michael: For people interested in a career in baseball, do scouts and front office people ever see their families? It looks like most of them are married and have kids, but it’s gotta be tough.
Keith Law: Yes, it’s very hard on families. I travel less than most scouts & GMs do, and I know it still upsets my daughter when I have long trips.

Chris: Lamonte Wade tore up AA and just got promoted. Major league regular for you?
Keith Law: Extra OF for me.

Jesse B: Kevin Smith came out of nowhere. Is he legit? Possibly the BlueJays SS of the future?
Keith Law: Not a SS. And he was a college guy in low-A until June – you can throw out what he did for Lansing.

Keith Law Disciple: I just wanted to say I love you! Please keep doing what you’re doing.
Keith Law: Thanks, but really, I don’t think I could do anything else at this point.

Jake: So, were you of the same frame of mind when President Obama enabled the Iranian authoritarian regime? Going so far as to allegedly help them launder money to get around international sanctions?
Keith Law: but what about but what about but what about but what about but what about but what about but what about but what about but what about but what about but what about but what about but what about but what about but what about but what about but what about
Keith Law: (Also, that story is straight from the GOP.)

Harrisburg Hal: Do you cook, go out or have something prepared for you for Fathers Day?
Keith Law: I’ll cook. I’ve been eating out a lot lately, and have a vacation coming up, so it’ll be nice to cook & have a nice dinner at home.

Jeremy: Do you think the Mariners can keep up with the Astros throughout the long season? Hard to believe the Astros have over a +100 run diff on the M’s and have the same record.
Keith Law: I do not. Mariners might win the WC, but the Astros will win the division.

Jamie: No snark, can you explain how 50 games is small sample size for performance, but 1-2 games isn’t SSS for scouting?
Keith Law: Because scouting isn’t that kind of data. You don’t have the same kind of randomness – a pitcher who averages 94 isn’t going to throw 88 one game and 100 the next. A hitter’s swing isn’t going to vary wildly game to game. A player who’s an 80 runner isn’t going to run average on a Tuesday night.
Keith Law: Skills shouldn’t vary much at all. Performance is the result of the repeated application of skills against the skills of other players. Performance will vary.

Sean: Have you seen Frederick Keys outfielder Ryan McKenna this year? Reports are that he made some mechanical adjustments halfway through 2017, and he’s looked great this year.
Keith Law: I saw him for 2 AB on Sunday before the rainout. I liked what I saw, but would like to see more … the swing is good as is the body.

Chris: Re: the Harper comments. I’m not a Harper hater in the least. It appears he works hard, plays hard, etc. I do however think he is a tad overrated and there are probably 10-12 guys I would draft right now over him. Is that a more realistic and reasonable viewpoint than “he sucks, he’s a loser.”
Keith Law: I wouldn’t agree with you on that, but it is a reasonable, measured position that avoids insulting the player or making unfalsifiable claims.

Marc (DC): When will you be signing your book in DC?
Keith Law: July 14th at Politics & Prose with my friend Jay Jaffe.

Mike: Upside for Taylor Hearn – 4/5 starter or reliever for you?
Keith Law: Reliever. Good one.

John: Saw that you linked to a couple of things about Anthony Bourdain. To what extent were you a fan?
Keith Law: Loved his writing. Not a big TV watcher, so I was never big on his shows. I feel so bad for Eric Ripert, who had to find him, and Asia Argento, who’s been through hell herself the last year and now has to deal with this loss too.

David: Hi Keith! Thanks for not sticking to sports. When can we expect an update to your pizza ranking (unless it’s still up to date)?
Keith Law: Good question. I should add that to the long-term to-do list.

Joshua: What position do you believe Carter Kieboom eventually plays in the Majors, and do you believe his bat will play for whatever position you think he ends up at? Thanks.
Keith Law: Second base and yes.

Brett : From one Father to another, wishing you a Happy Father’s Day!
Keith Law: Thank you – Happy Father’s Day to you too, and to all the dads and dads-to-be out there.
Keith Law: I’m going on vacation next week, so this will probably be the last chat until July (the timing won’t work out well for a chat the week after). Thank you all for reading and for all of your questions – I appreciate your readership, especially at a time like this when I’m creating so much content and dumping it on all of you at once. I should have the top 25 players under 25 ready to go before I leave, so keep an eye out for that as well!

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→ June 14, 2018
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The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making.

Catherynne Valente first published her young adult novel The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making online, in installments; the book was a huge success online, winning the Andre Norton Award for young adult science fiction/fantasy, given by the Science Fiction Writers’ Association, and is still the only self-published novel to do so. It’s now the first novel in the five-book Fairyland series, which covers the adventures of a young girl named September who lives in Omaha and is visited one day by the Green Wind, who whisks her off to the parallel world known as Fairyland. Hilarity and peril ensue, as they would. I bought it for my daughter to read, but last month decided to give it a whirl myself, and it is witty, sweet, and written at a very high level for YA literature.

September is your typical YA fantasy heroine, a precocious child whose life is boring (to her) and whose family isn’t perfect (her father is away at war, her mother works long hours at an airplane manufacturing plant), so she is the ideal target for a being from Fairyland to come and rescue for a series of adventures – although Valente has a knack for making these adventures go sideways often enough that they’re not totally predictable. September then meets a series of eccentric characters from Fairyland after the Green Wind, including a wyvern who’s convinced his father was a library, a young ifrit named Saturday, a conjured servant made of soap, a sentient paper lantern, and plenty of others, leading up to the Marquess, a young girl who has become the evil queen of Fairyland after the death of the benevolent queen who preceded her. September ends up on a series of quests that generally don’t end well for her but instead lead her on a crooked path toward an eventual confrontation with the Marquess and a revelation about the true connection between Fairyland and our human plane.

Valente’s imagination is impressive, with crazy characters and amusing plot twists, but she writes in a high style that recalls 19th and 20th century British literature, from Lewis Carroll to P.G. Wodehouse, similar to the writing of Susanna Clarke but just a half-grade lower in difficulty. Reading it as an adult (by age, at least), I never felt that the prose was written for children or in any way condescending to the reader through simpler vocabulary or syntax. I’m unfamiliar with Valente’s other work – she’s a prolific author – but if this isn’t a near approximation of her natural voice, I’d be shocked. It’s perfectly calibrated to appropriately challenge a young reader without turning her off, and to appeal to an adult reader without seeming trivial or dumb.

There’s also quite a bit of wordplay within Fairyland, perhaps not quite as much as you’ll find in The Phantom Tollbooth or in the Harry Potter series, but a similar mix of straight-up puns and double meanings along with twisted loanwords from folklore and mythology. September meets a wairwulf, who is a wolf 27 days a month and a man the other three, and is married to two witches, one of whom gets the wolf days and the other the human days; the witches are named Hello and Goodbye, and the wairwulf Manythanks. There’s a quest for a spoon (alas, not the runcible variety), a dictum to avoid eating any food in Fairyland that quickly goes awry, an argument over the shape of the earth (“roughly trapezoidal, vaguely rhomboid, a bit of a tesseract”), and plenty of sly jokes about bureaucracy, pseudoscience, and air travel.

My daughter read this when she was 11 and both enjoyed it and said she had no real trouble with the prose; she read it on her Kindle, which, despite my affinity for dead-tree editions, does have the benefit of allowing you to click on a word and get an immediate definition. (And then you read a paper book and come across a word you don’t know and put your finger on the page and press and then look around and hope nobody saw you do that. Or so I hear.) Valente has hit that perfect sweet spot between writing for a young audience and keeping it smart enough to hold an adult’s attention. I ripped through the entire book in just a few hours while on a flight back from Europe last month, because I wanted something light for the long trip, but this was fun and sharp enough that I decided it was worth reviewing and recommending too.

Next up: I’m way behind on book reviews, but I’m currently reading Flannery O’Connor’s novel Wise Blood, which is just $3.55 for Kindle right now.

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→ June 13, 2018
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Compounded.

The board game Compounded takes its theme from the world of chemistry, asking players to gather five elements to assemble any of the sixteen compounds available at any given time on the table, while boosting players’ abilities to form and fill compounds as the game progresses. The core game play is pretty simple, although the rules are more detailed than they probably need to be, and there’s one rule I could probably have done completely without.

The elements that players will use to form their compounds are drawn at random from a bag, and no two elements appear with the same frequency – hydrogen is the most common, sulfur is the rarest. Compounds can be as simple as three elements, and can require up to eight. You can ‘claim’ one compound at a time, before you finish it, and can then place two elements anywhere on the tableau on a turn. Once you do finish a compound, you take the card, return the elements to the bag, earn three to seven points, and get to move up one of your four tracking tokens that affect how many elements you draw at the start of each turn (default is two), how many compounds you can claim at any given time, how many elements you can place on a turn, and how many elements you can store on your board (default is four). Some compounds also give you a bonus token or ongoing ability; for example, if you have three elements of any color, you can return them to the bag to take one element of your choice, but with the Pipette that ratio becomes 2:1 instead.

The game progresses until one player has scored at least 50 points – the scoring track is a separate board showing the periodic table, so you have to at least get to tin – or one player has reached the top of three of his four tracks, or the deck of compounds is exhausted. That can take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half in our experience, playing with three to five players. (It plays two with some rules variations.)

The one rule that I would gladly ditch is the lab fire, which doesn’t do much but add some randomness and a little ability to screw your opponents to the game. Some compounds have one or two tiny fire icons at the bottom of their cards, indicating that the compounds are flammable. The deck of compound cards has five Lab Fire cards in it, and when one appears, players must add one very tiny fire token to every compound on the table that has the icon on it. Once all flame icons on a compound have been filled, the compound explodes and is removed from the board, and all elements on it are scattered to adjacent compounds (at the discretion of the player who had claimed but not finished it). There are also a few volatile compounds in the deck that explode when they’re completed and have a similar effect on the tableau. Players can complete their fire extinguishers – two oxygen, one carbon and use them to remove one flame token from any compound, although I think it’s better to save it until the end of the game for 4 extra points. And you may earn a one-time use Bunsen burner token that you can use to light someone else’s compound on fire, which is just mean.

There’s more strategy required in Compounded that just figuring out which compounds you can easily finish; gaining the abilities to draw or place more elements each round is huge, and whichever player moves up the fastest on those tracks is going to have an advantage that will be hard for other players to catch. Getting those abilities does require some luck, however, as you have to draw the right elements to be able to complete the right compounds; we had one five-player game where one player never managed to finish a compound that would have allowed her to draw more than two elements at a time. There is a slight workaround – if you finish a compound with a graduated cylinder on it, you can then bump one track down a peg and another track up a peg, once per turn for the rest of the game – but it can lead to a serious imbalance if one player just gets the wrong draws from the bag.

I’m all for more science-themed games, and chemistry games seem to be especially scarce, so Compounded is a welcome entry to the field. I did find some of the rules a little fiddly, and the Lab Fire mechanic didn’t really work for me other than to add more maintenance and move through the compound deck a little faster. The core game play itself, trying to figure out how best to deploy the elements you’ve drawn, is the best part of Compounded, and you can certainly tweak the other rules to work with just that basic mechanic for a cleaner experience.

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