→ January 20, 2019
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The Guilty.

The Danish film The Guilty earned one of the nine spots on the shortlist for this year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, with an English-language remake coming at some point with Jake Gyllenhaal in the lead role. That Oscar category is loaded enough this year that I’d be surprised if it landed one of the five nominations, but The Guilty is a tremendous thriller, one that grabs you by the throat early on and never lets go, while also providing an insightful character study into the only significant person to appear on screen. It’s available to rent right now on amazon or Vudu for $7.

Asger Holm is a police officer who’s been accused of an unspecified violation on the job, the details of which appear much later in the story, and demoted to desk duty where he takes 112 (the Danish equivalent of 911) calls and doesn’t seem to take the job very seriously. After a few relatively minor calls, including one from a man who was robbed by a sex worker and doesn’t want to admit that that’s what happened, Asger takes a call from a woman, Iben, who manages to communicate that she’s been kidnapped by someone she knows and is being taken somewhere outside of Copenhagen in a moving car. She pretends she’s talking to her daughter, Mathilde, who is now home alone with her baby brother Oliver, while Asger navigates a conversation to try to get details on where Iben is – and then later gets a call from Mathilde as well. The film never leaves the call center and Asger is in every shot, just moving between two rooms, as he tries to figure out who took Iben and where she’s going, raging against his powerlessness in the situation while eventually confronting his own misdeeds that put him on desk duty in the first place.

The Guilty clocks in at just 85 minutes, and there’s no fat on this story: there’s the main plotline around Iben’s kidnapping and the subplot around Asger’s demotion and a court hearing the following day that will determine his fate and that involves his partner Rashid. The Iben thread twists and turns multiple times, with the tension ratcheted up by dropped calls, her kidnapper asking to speak to her daughter, and eventually Asger getting the kidnapper on the phone. Asger’s own frustrations, both over this case and over his career and personal life as well, boil over into his calls, especially as he feels like the dispatchers he calls aren’t taking the incident seriously enough – and again, he finds himself powerless to do what he’d ordinarily do if he were out in the field, but has been emasculated by his suspension from that role and can only work through others. Eventually, he makes a mistake, as any human would, and has to face the consequences in real-time as the kidnapping is still in progress.

Asger’s character is the only one of any significance to the viewer – Iben is there, on the phone, but we only see of her what Asger hears, and while he learns more about her as the story progresses, it remains superficial throughout. He seems unsympathetic at the start, sneering through his headset at the people who call for help because they’re stupid or did something while drunk, but his interest in Iben, and willingness to break rules and potentially endanger his own career for her shows depth to his character and makes him more sympathetic … but there are still layers beneath that one that will add to our understanding. He’s the hero, but a flawed one, and is flawed in a realistic, human way that informs his words and actions to form a coherent, three-dimensional rendering. Without that depiction, and the strong, restrained performance by Jakob Cedergren, the film simply would not work.

The Guilty has been highly acclaimed in Europe, earning Bodil Prize (the Danish Oscars) nominations for best film, best director, and best actor for Cedergren. I’m guessing, having seen three of the other eight nominees and read reviews and background information on the others, that this film won’t make the final five; Roma and Burning feel like locks, Cold War and Shoplifters bring incredible reviews and accolades from elsewhere, Capernaum is highly topical, and Never Look Away comes from the director of the Oscar-winning The Lives of Others. Of the four shortlisted films I’ve seen, though, it’s the easiest to recommend by far, because it’s the most straightforward and the most purely entertaining: this is a smart, concise thriller that sets out one goal and puts everything in its script towards achieving it. Because it’s so lean, the narrative never flags, and director/co-writer Gustav Möller instead conveys Asger’s frustration by only letting us see Asger and through the use of long pauses in most of the phone conversations. The story here is solid, boosted by a couple of twists, but it’s the way Möller tells the story and Cedergren portrays it that makes The Guilty such a great watch, even if you can sort of figure out where this is headed. I wouldn’t put it above the three other foreign films I’ve seen from the shortlist, but it’s easily the most accessible of the four, and does so without sacrificing its integrity or insulting the viewer’s intelligence to do so.

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→ January 19, 2019
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Stick to baseball, 1/19/19.

Nothing new from me this week, between prospect writing and a trip to NYC the last two days to attend a MEL magazine event. The prospect rankings will start to run on ESPN.com on January 28th and will roll out over two weeks.

And now, the links…

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→ January 18, 2019
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An Unkindness of Ghosts.

Rivers Solomon’s debut novel An Unkindness of Ghosts bears a blatant stylistic similarity to the writing of N.K. Jemisin in her Broken Earth trilogy, from prose to characterization to both writers use of old-time religions in futuristic settings. And both writers put young women right at the heart of their respective stories, with Solomon giving us Aster, a young adult on a ‘generation ship’ that has, over centuries of drifting in space to an unknown and possibly nonexistent destination, devolved into a caste system by ship deck that incorporates skin color into its stratification, resulting in something that looks a good bit like American slavery.

Aster is a self-made scientist and doctor’s helper, often working with the Surgeon General, Theo, as well as tending plants in her botanarium, even though she’s a low-decker on the ship Matilda. That vessel has been in space at least 300 years, and thoughts of its Golden Land destination are more remote and have become tied up in a sort of doomsday religion that most of the ship practices – or, perhaps, that the upper-deck castes use to control those on the lower decks. Aster is neurodivergent, although Solomon never identifies her difference in any specific way, and for reasons that are only somewhat revealed by the end of the book, she’s marked for especially cruel treatment by the Lieutenant, a sadistic leader who is poised to take control if the Sovereign in charge dies. (You can guess whether that comes to pass.) Lune, Aster’s mother, took her own life the day Aster was born, but left behind cryptic clues in a series of notebooks that Aster and her bunk mate Giselle start to decipher when they realize its code may contain clues about the ship, as well as a potential way off of it.

There is, as we say on Twitter, a lot to unpack here, as Solomon has written a tight 350-page novel that incorporates race, religion, class, sex/gender, sexual harassment and assault, how people (mostly men) use and retain power, and a healthy dose of science fiction. There are women in the upper castes, but every authority figure we see is male. Women and girls on lower decks have darker skin, and are also used, to put it bluntly, for breeding, so the ship will have an ongoing supply of workers. Officials and guards have the tacit authority to rape or abuse women as they please, and it’s implied they do so with boys as well. One scene where Aster mouths off (with justification) to an upper-class twit woman lays bare the societal strictures that hold the barriers between upper and lower decks in place, backed by the force of the guard.

Unlike so many science fiction authors, good and bad, Solomon doesn’t spend a ton of time building the world in An Unkindness of Ghosts, giving the readers just what they need to understand what’s happening in the story, or where the characters might be in the architecture of the ship, but nothing extraneous. (Somehow there is meat on the ship, quite a bit of it, and I’m not sure how that one would work unless it’s supposed to be lab-grown.) The result is that the characters are extraordinarily well-developed for the genre – Aster, Theo, even Giselle and the caretaker known as Ainy or Melusine, whose importance grows as the book progresses. Solomon also defies many plot conventions by, again to be blunt, having smart characters still make stupid mistakes, especially Aster, who often acts without foresight because of her youth or how her brain works. She’s the hero, without question, but she’s flawed in a different way than your typical flawed hero. She’s flawed because she was born that way, and her successes come both in spite of that and often because of it, because she makes the best out of who she is, and can thus do things neurotypical people probably couldn’t. All of this, and other aspects of her character including some unspoken history of abuse and her unusual connection to Theo, make her one of the most interesting protagonists I’ve come across in a long time.

Solomon can get caught up in some clumsy prose, another similarity to Jemisin’s writing, such as when they start trying to describe the physics of space travel in their universe, especially the discovery Lune made that changes everything for Aster and her comrades, or in the description of Baby, the ship’s main power source. Yet they also display facility with creating language, giving each deck its own dialect, much the way slaves in different parts of the South would blend their native tongues with English and create new patois, such as the Gulla dialect still spoken today off the coast of South Carolina. The culture and economy of Matilda feel impossibly rich for a book this short; even when I wasn’t gripped by the plot, I was enveloped in Solomon’s world. The book starts slow, but stay with it; the last hundred pages are a barnburner and the ending is satisfying without becoming sentimental or obvious.

Next up: Still reading Camus’ The Plague.

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→ January 17, 2019
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Milkman.

Anna Burns became the first Northern Irish writer to win the Man Booker Prize when her third novel, Milkman, took the honor in 2018. It’s an experimental novel, atypical for Booker winners, that reads like a more accessible Faulkner, and combines a story of the Troubles with the staunchly feminist narrative of its 18-year-old narrator for a result that is unlike anything I’ve read before.

Characters in Milkman go without names, including the narrator, a young woman who walks around with her head in a book and is literally and figuratively oblivious to the internecine warfare occurring around her, as well as the titular milkman – well, both milkmen. The milkman of the title isn’t actually a milkman, but rides around in a white van as if he were one. He’s in his 40s, associated with a local paramilitary group, and stalks the narrator while ensuring that everyone in their tightknit, gossip-ridden community knows that she is his, to the point where others, including her own mother, assume that she’s indeed having an affair with this dangerous, older man. There’s also a real milkman, whose role becomes apparent as the novel progresses; ‘maybe boyfriend,’ whom the narrator has been seeing for a year, who’s obsessed with cars, and whose life may be endangered by not-really Milkman; Tablets girl, who runs around poisoning people, including her own sister and eventually the narrator, but everyone seems to just take it as part of life; the boy the narrator calls Somebody McSomebody, who also tries to threaten the narrator into becoming his girl, which ends rather poorly for him in one of the novel’s few scenes of actual violence; and far more.

Burns layers a story of personal terror inside a story of the societal terror that affected Northern Ireland for decades. The narrator’s life is turned upside down by this unwanted attention from a man she barely even knows, but whose reputation in the community is enough to scare her and to convince everyone else she’s submitted to him willingly (even though she never submits to him at all). When the Milkman stalks her, he also inducts her, against her will, into a theater of the absurd that mirrors reality from that time and place, where violence split Catholics and Protestants, where any official authority was seen as essentially Ours or Theirs, where an act that shouldn’t merit a second thought, like going to the hospital, would be fraught with political and social implications. She’s suddenly seen to have taken sides, and even finds herself the unwitting beneficiary of the fear others have of the paramilitaries, which further underlines for her how potent the impact of this one man’s attentions towards her are.

Burns also surrounds her narrator with families who’ve been hurt by the violence in the community, directly or indirectly, including the one mother who, by the end of the novel, seems to have lost her husband and every one of her children to direct violence, related accidents, or suicide. The narrator’s father is dead when the novel opens, while her mother is a tragicomic figure who is convinced her daughter is a sinner, who believes every rumor she hears about her daughter (some from ‘first brother-in-law,’ who is both a gossip-monger and a creep), and who goes into hysterics over every bit of innuendo, which the narrator never wants to even acknowledge because it merely prolongs the agony.

Milkman is still quite funny and even hopeful in parts among the litter of tragedies and the ever-present specter of the stalker, although we do learn at the start of the novel that he’ll die before it’s over. The narrator’s third brother-in-law, while a peculiar man himself, takes on a protector role over his young sister-in-law, as does Real Milkman, whose interest in her is a side effect of his romantic interest in her mother. There are also signs of intelligent life amidst the gossips and harridans, including the “issue women,” a group of seven residents who embrace feminism when one hears of it in town and starts up a local women’s group in the backyard shed of one of the members (because her husband wouldn’t allow it in the house).

Of course, this is all set against the ever-present backdrop of the Troubles and you don’t need to know much at all about that conflict to appreciate Burns’ depiction of the effects of the sectarian violence on this particular neighborhood. Burns draws and redraws the picture of this time and place with swirling, inventive prose, in paragraphs that go on for days, often putting unlikely vocabulary in the mouths of her characters – esoteric or archaic words, or even words she’s just made up – to provide further much to the narrative. It’s not as difficult as Faulkner or Proust, but shows the influence of those early 20th century writers at the same time, both in a technical aspect and in how Burns uses her experimental sentence structure and vocabulary to contribute the reader’s sense of unease.

I’ve only read a few of the contenders for this year’s Booker but can at least understand why this novel won. It also feels like the third straight year where the prize has gone to a novel that does something different, as opposed to the prize’s history of going to literary works that still adhere to the traditional form and intentions of the novel. I could imagine this novel seeming abstruse to readers outside of the UK, given its setting during the Troubles, but that’s merely the backdrop for a rich, textured story that is as relevant today (with its #MeToo similarities) as it would be to a reader of that time and place.

Next up: A little light reading, Albert Camus’ The Plague.

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→ January 15, 2019
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Bohemian Rhapsody.

Bohemian Rhapsody is just not a good movie, no matter what the Hollywood Foreign Press wants to tell you, and it’s hardly a surprise given the movie’s tortuous route to the screen, with multiple writers, a director dismissed from the project due to harassment allegations, and the three living members of Queen holding veto power over portions of the script. The film tries to tell the story of the band Queen and the story of Freddie Mercury, either of which would have filled an entire two hours on its own, and then somehow devolves into the (inaccurate) story of how the band ended up staging the best show at Live Aid, which, had they committed to it from the start, would have been a better movie than this pablum.

Queen were worldwide rock stars for more than fifteen years, from when Freddie Mercury, who was born Farrokh Bulsara to Parsi parents in Zanzibar, joined the band in 1971 until his death from AIDS-related pneumonia in 1991. Mercury was a flamboyant personality who dressed in androgynous fashion and had an electric stage presence as well as a potent voice with a four-octave range, and was the subject of longstanding rumors about his sexual orientation (at a time of rampant homophobia) and, later, about his health (when fear of AIDS was a polite form of homophobia). He had a difficult and, by some accounts, unhappy personal life, with his twenty-year friendship with Mary Austin, to whom he was once engaged, one of the few highlights, with him calling her his “only friend” in a 1985 documentary.

Bohemian Rhapsody glosses over most of the important stuff and tells a sanitized linear story that is light on the facts but avoids painting any of the three surviving band members in any sort of negative light, and presents a two-dimensional portrait of Mercury that makes him by turns pathetic and bland. You can find plenty of breakdowns of the film’s loose relationship with the truth, but that’s hardly its biggest flaw. This is a bunch of well-shot concert scenes stitched together by snippets of dull back story, most of which shows the band making music (not really great cinema, gents) or the three musicians getting mad at Freddy for being late. Much of the first 110 minutes seems to be prologue for the Live Aid scene, which the film attempts to re-create shot for shot, and which is undoubtedly the best part of the film – indeed, had they just shown me those 20 minutes, and skipped everything that came before, I would have been far more satisfied with the experience. (Also, there was popcorn.)

Much of the writing in Bohemian Rhapsody is just plain lazy. The band didn’t break up before Live Aid, but the script has them do so to raise the stakes for the show as a reunion and give us a rather silly scene in their lawyer’s office. There’s a Wayne’s World reference that is groan-worthy and lazy AF, and of course it features Mike Myers in a bit of stunt-casting as a record executive who never existed. There are speeches and soliloquys galore, most of which I have to assume never happened because they’re so ridiculous. There’s a Rasputin-like character Paul, who was a real person, but is exaggerated to be the bad guy who drives the wedge between Freddie and the band and is dispensed with once his role as the villain is done. (He’s played by Allen Leach, so the whole time I’m thinking, that’s Branson with a porn stache.)

The movie’s worst sin is how it straightwashes so much of Mercury’s sexuality and, eventually, how he was sick for the last five years of his life and died of AIDS-related pneumonia. The movie shows him telling his bandmates “I’ve got it,” referring to the disease, before Live Aid, but all accounts have him unaware he was sick until at least a full year later, and he didn’t tell the other members of Queen until 1989. It depicts Mary Austin as his only female lover, which isn’t accurate, and then has her largely out of his life between the end of their engagement and the run-up to Live Aid, which also isn’t accurate – she worked for his private music publishing company. (Apparently the scene where he confesses he thinks he’s bisexual and she responds by saying she thinks he’s gay is accurate, at least according to Austin.) Mercury came off in many interviews as unhappy, and exploring why – perhaps as the gay son of a Zoroastrian couple, whom he never told about his orientation, who was self-conscious about his appearance and ethnicity as well, he had issues with identity and self-acceptance. The film just doesn’t bother with this material.

Rami Malek won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama for this performance, which is a good effort but ultimately, like so much in the film, an extended impersonation because the character is so underdeveloped. Still, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voters love impersonations too – they gave Gary Oldman the same fucking award last year for doing nothing more than donning a fat suit and mumbling his way through Darkest Hour — and it wouldn’t surprise me to see Malek get the same here, although if he defeats Bradley Cooper, Christian Bale, and Ethan Hawke it would be a damn shame, to say nothing of Stephan James or Joaquin Phoenix, neither of whom is likely to even get a nomination. As for Best Picture, I suppose anything is possible, but even considering the Academy’s disdain for foreign films in that category, I could give you two dozen better American films from 2018 without much effort. Giving this a nod over First Man, which is right behind it on Gold Derby’s odds page, would be criminal. It’s barely worth your time if you love Queen’s music, and you have to sit through so much nonsense to get to that stuff I wouldn’t even suggest you waste the gas money.

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→ January 14, 2019
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Hearts Beat Loud.

Nick Offerman is one of the few celebrities I follow on Twitter, and any movie or TV show becomes much more interesting to me if I find out he’s one of the stars. After seeing the trailer for last summer’s Hearts Beat Loud a few times, with Offerman playing one of the two leads and a father-daughter story around the hook of indie music, I couldn’t have been more jazzed to see it. I finally caught it this weekend, now that it’s streaming on Hulu, and it’s cute and kind of sweet and, to my surprise and chagrin, kind of boring.

Offerman plays Frank Fisher, a widowed father and former musician who runs an independent record store (as in vinyl) in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood, and lives with his teenaged daughter Sam (Kiersey Clemons), who is a few weeks away from heading across the country to UCLA to study pre-med. The store is failing, in part because the landlord (Toni Collette) has raised the rent beyond what Frank can afford, and there’s added financial pressure from Frank’s mother Marianne (Blythe Danner), who is experiencing some cognitive decline but still lives on her own. In one of Frank and Sam’s regular jam sessions (“jam sesh,” as Frank calls it to annoy his daughter), they write and record a song called “Hearts Beat Loud” that Frank likes enough to upload on to Spotify, where it has a little success and attracts interest from a local agent, which spurs a minor conflict between Frank, who wants to pursue it, and Sam, who thinks it’s a fantasy and by then is days away from heading to school.

The film has modest ambitions and modestly hits them, which works by keeping the story realistic but also means the stakes in the story are consistently low. The story is more slice-of-life than traditional narrative; the film ends when the store closes – so I suppose there was a chance they’d have the song save the store somehow – and Sam heads off to school, which does give a poignant moment when she breaks off her budding relationship with girlfriend Rose (Sasha Lane, great as always). Frank is a bit of a screw-up, which works in some ways – he’s not great with money, he drinks a little too much – but not in others – we get the Dawson’s Creek shtick where the kids are smarter than the adults.

Perhaps the most glaring flaw in the film is the lack of development or insight into Frank’s relationship with Sam, which would appear to be the heart (no pun intended) of the story. There are hints of Frank’s reluctance to let Sam leave New York for school, but no exploration of how he accepts that this is what she wants to do and that it’s right for her – the script skips right over that part, moving from a feel-good moment where the two play a mini-concert the night the store closes to a point after she’s already left. The backstory of Sam’s mother could give some insight into his hope that the band, which Frank titles We’re Not a Band after Sam gives that non-answer to his request for a suggested name, becomes a way to keep Sam both home and closer to him, but it’s scant and disappears from the narrative partway through. There’s a sideswipe at amazon, a fun cameo from a popular indie musician, a bunch of dumb weed jokes, and some nods to Brooklyn hipster culture, all in service of a goal I couldn’t identify.

Offerman is understated here, not in the Ron Swanson way but more in a way that underutilizes his comic gifts; there’s an early scene where he’s playing the cool dad trying too hard to annoy his daughter that was both very familiar (I’ve done almost the same thing and gotten the same reaction from my daughter) and a better use of his talents. He’s apparently quite a good guitar player, but that’s not a draw – there’s one scene where he uses a Boss Loop Station pedal to write and record a riff that they later work into a song, but the scene seems to go on forever, because watching someone write music is, unfortunately, not good cinema. Clemons is a breakout star, though, and has quite a singing voice. Collette and Ted Danson, Frank’s stoner bar owner friend, don’t have nearly enough to do. I wanted to like Hearts Beat Loud for so many reasons, but the total is so much less than the sum of its parts.

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→ January 13, 2019
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Vice.

For pure entertainment value, Vice is one of the half-dozen best movies of 2018. It’s funny, fast-paced, and packed with good performances from great actors, some of whom are disguised sufficiently to make you spend a good chunk of the movie asking yourself, “where do I know them from?” It’s also a movie that I think has the potential to sway a lot of viewers who remain ambivalent about the legacy of the Bush/Cheney administration, or simply prefer not to think about it, since so much of what the movie shows did in fact happen, and the consequences of that administration’s policies have been disastrous in so many spheres of modern life around the world.

That doesn’t make it a good movie, however, and Vice is, in fact, not a good movie. Vice is a farce masquerading as a satire; it is a polemic masquerading as political commentary. It is as subtle as a sledgehammer to the forehead. Its quick pace may be a feature rather than a bug, but it makes the movie feel unfocused and superficial, aided in the former by writer-director Adam McKay’s decision to jump back and forth in time between scenes from 9/11 and Cheney’s early years in Wyoming. (There is one truly brilliant part of this, however, around the 43 minute mark, that I won’t spoil, but it is one of the funniest bits in the movie.) There is so much for the viewer to unpack in this movie, but McKay barely gives us time to open the boxes, let alone sort through their contents, and this becomes most problematic of all if you take a moment – probably after the film ends, because you barely have any time during the movie to think – to ponder Dick Cheney’s motivations for just about anything he did in life. Vice has no answers for us.

Cheney, for the handful of you who might not know much of his history, started his political career as an intern in Congress, hitched his wagon to Donald Rumsfeld’s, and moved into the executive branch, eventually becoming Chief of Staff under Gerald Ford at age 34. When Jimmy Carter defeated Ford in 1976, Cheney changed direction, running for Wyoming’s lone congressional seat and winning in 1978, holding the seat for a decade before becoming Secretary of Defense under President George H.W. Bush. After an interlude as CEO of Halliburton during the Clinton years, Cheney returned to public office as George W. Bush’s running mate, becoming Vice President for eight years, during which he pursued unprecedented power for the executive branch as a whole and himself in particular, power that led the United States into the fiasco that was the war in Iraq, warrant-less surveillance, widespread torture of so-called “enemy combatants,” and more.

Vice focuses on how Cheney got to that point in his career, and what he did with the power he obtained. Cheney, played by Welsh actor Christian Bale, is first seen as a drunken screw-up who is lifted out of his own mess by his wife Lynne (Amy Adams, doing Amy Adams things). Lynne is ambitious but held back by the misogynistic political culture of the 1960s, so she wants her husband to succeed and ascend as her proxy, and throughout the film she is by his side at nearly every moment, and when she’s not, she’s there in spirit pushing him on. Cheney’s ambition may be organic, but it seems more like his wife’s making in this retelling.

That leads, after a lot of prologue, to the pivotal scene shown in the trailer, where he negotiates with then-candidate George W. Bush (Sam Rockwell, doing a spot-on impersonation) to take on the VP role but to redefine it to gain control over a wide swath of the executive branch, including defense and energy. Bush accedes, and Cheney, aided by his attorney David Addington (Don McManus) and aide Scooter Libby (Justin Kirk), sets out to consolidate power under a philosophy called the Unitary Executive Theory that sounds a lot like the divine right of kings – if the President does it, it must be legal. (I can think of one President who would very much like this philosophy to be valid right now.) This leads to the war in Iraq, which this film presents as both a question of settling a score from Operation Desert Storm and a way to enrich Cheney as well as his friends at Halliburton and Big Oil, at a cost of maybe 750,000 lives.

McKay seems so excited to tell this story that he can barely get the words out of the characters’ mouths fast enough before each scene change, never letting the material breathe or, as a result, letting the audience consider what Cheney’s motives might be. Instead, the film dazzles us with quick cuts, loud bangs, and some incredible impersonations and likenesses. Steve Carell does some very fine work as Donald Rumsfeld, and Eddie Marsan (Mr. Norrell!) does that same as his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. Lisa Gay Hamilton gets Condoleeza Rice just right.

The film is also stuffed with gimmicks, with the 43-minute one the funniest, but leans way too heavily on this kind of bombast to work as a coherent film. The Alfred Molina and Jesse Plemons gambits are both interesting on their own, but do not work in the context of the movie. In fact, the Molina scene might be the movie’s best sequence, but does not fit in the broader narrative; it feels more like a brilliant sketch from a comedy show that understands the power of brevity. The scene where Dick and Lynne Cheney begin speaking to each other in Shakespearean dialogue – I thought it might be from one of the two Richard tragedies, given Cheney’s name, but it’s not – doesn’t work in the least. McKay is trying to tell a story, but fantasy sequences in a movie that otherwise strives for realism, such as with costume and makeup, only work against the broader purpose.

There’s also material in here that is pretty questionable. The script very strongly implies that Lynne Cheney’s father murdered her mother, which doesn’t seem to be confirmed or even seriously suspected. The first Iraq War is barely mentioned at all, even though explaining the second one almost certainly requires it – especially the neoconservative faction who supported the second invasion without Cheney’s financial ties to companies that would benefit. The script frequently implies that losing a Cabinet-level position is a massive career setback, even though such people could waltz into six-figure speaking fees or lucrative jobs on television or as lobbyists or at think tanks. But no inaccuracy is as glaring as the film’s stark implication that the Bush Administration invaded Iraq in 2003 because the American public wanted them to do so. Yes, tensions were still high after 9/11, and people did indeed want someone to bomb – which we did, with results that are complicated, in Afghanistan. The idea that Cheney and his focus groups (including the feckless Frank Luntz, who gets lampooned appropriately as a soulless pollster) helped market the war to maximize support, which then justified the war itself, is not just inaccurate, but distasteful. The on-screen text at the end of the movie says that over 600,000 Iraqis died as a result of our invasion. Don’t put that on the American people, even if they did want the invasion. That’s on Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, and even Colin Powell – who weirdly gets a pass here – and everyone other cheerleader in Washington who signed off on the effort.

Bale won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy for his portrayal of Cheney, a hard to believe transformation if you saw his appearance and heard his voice at the awards, and he’s worthy of at least a nomination for the Oscar for the same. Adams should get a nod for Best Supporting Actress, and I could see Rockwell or Carell getting a node for Best Supporting Actor, although I could probably rattle off five more deserving names (Ali, Driver, Chalamet, Grant, Elliott, Kaluuya, Jordan … that’s seven). I thought Allison Pill was excellent in a smaller role as Mary Cheney, Dick and Lynne’s daughter who comes out as a teenager and serves as a plot point throughout the movie. And Vice seems at least even money to get a Best Picture nod, even though it’s not in my top ten or, in my opinion, worthy of the nomination.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t see it; Vice is a complicated movie to discuss, as the length of this review probably shows. There’s a lot to recommend about it, from the many jokes and gags that do land, to the serious and important point it makes about the dangers of concentrating power in too few hands. The script mentions climate change in passing maybe twice, in part to say that Cheney backburnered any talk of doing something about it at the federal level, and then shows a scene of people golfing in front of a massive forest fire at the end. That’s a big deal, and worthy of exploration, but that barely gets two minutes out of the film. You’ll leave angry, but if you leave understanding anything more about the man at the heart of the story, you’ve gotten more out of Vice than I did.

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→ January 12, 2019
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Stick to baseball, 1/12/19.

No ESPN+ content this week, as I’m working on the prospect rankings and saving those extra bullets in the hope that someone like Bryce Harper or Manny Machado will eventually sign. I did hold a Klawchat on Thursday.

My latest review for Paste covers the deduction board game Cryptid, one of my top ten games of 2018, in which each player gets one clue, and you need to deduce all other players’ clues to identify the one hex on the variable board where the Creature is hiding for that specific board and set of clues. It’s quite fun, like a board game with a puzzle at its heart.

And now, the links…

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→ January 11, 2019
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All the Birds in the Sky.

Charlie Jane Anders was a founding editor of io9, the Gawker subsite dedicated to science fiction and fantasy, so it’s no surprise that her debut novel All The Birds in the Sky combines those genres and works in many tropes common in those areas, especially coming-of-age novels from the fantasy realm. Despite a slow ramp-up that doesn’t hint at the novel’s greater ambitions, the story builds to a bold climax that recalls many pioneering novels in these fields without ever coming off as derivative or unoriginal.

Anders’ gambit in All the Birds in the Sky is to create two synchronous, intertwined stories, one of which draws from straight fantasy and one from realistic, hard science fiction, with one character at the head of each, and contrast the complicated personal relationship between the two of them with the growing and apparently inevitable conflict that will occur between their two forces. Set in the near future where climate change and runaway capitalism have led to catastrophic weather patterns and rapid societal breakdown, the novel keeps raising the stakes between its two protagonists and pushes them into difficult, sometimes dangerous choices that only might help save the world.

Patricia and Lawrence are those two central characters, both misfits in their junior high school, albeit for different reasons. Patricia lives with her overbearing, judgmental parents, and a too-perfect older sister whose bullying of Patricia borders on the sociopathic. Lawrence lives on the other side of town, with warmer parents who don’t quite understand him, both of whom gave up ambitions of bigger careers to settle into working-class malaise. Patricia discovers one day that she can talk to animals, if only briefly, and ends up following a chatty bird to a giant tree in the middle of their forest where the birds are holding their Parliament (which is not restricted to owls). Lawrence is a gifted hacker who scavenges parts and builds a supercomputer in his closet, giving it a machine-learning algorithm that allows it to grow by talking to real people online, one of whom is Patricia. Of course, both kids are badly bullied – to such a cruel extent that reading the first few chapters was painful – which pushes them together but later pulls them apart, something exacerbated by a guidance counselor who isn’t what he seems to be, and is acting on a vision of the future where the two lead opposite sides of a global conflict between science and magic that threatens to end the planet as we know it.

The prologue was tough sledding, but once Anders gets her characters out of school, thanks to a dramatic flourish where Patricia rescues Lawrence from misery and possible death at a military academy of dubious merit, the pace picks up and the nonrealistic elements, both magic and fictional science, contribute more to the development of both the story and the two characters. Both Patricia and Lawrence are flawed, due to immaturity and the challenges of each of their upbringings, and then are pushed into situations, Patricia by her classmates at magic school and Lawrence by colleagues at a Boring Company-like startup, for which they aren’t well-prepared. Anders’ greatest achievement in the novel is showing those characters’ growth even through failures, one of which would be particularly traumatic, so that they are better prepared when the climax of the story arrives and the decisions they must make have the largest consequences yet.

All the Birds in the Sky will remind you of many great novels in these genres without ever drawing too heavily on any one source. The entire tenor of the book brought the great Magicians trilogy to mind, including the emphasis on the flaws in the two characters and how events in our youth can have long-lasting effects on our personalities and life choices well into adulthood. The influence of the major YA fantasy series like Harry Potter or The Chronicles of Narnia is evident in the background, but never overt, and any similarities are muted by the presence of the parallel sci-fi strand around Lawrence. He’s something out of a Heinlein novel, but better, more well-rounded and a lot more aware of the existence of women as actual people than anything Heinlein ever dreamed up.

I expected the ultimate battle between science and magic in this novel to play out differently, perhaps as some sort of faith/reason allegory, but it doesn’t, and that’s just how Anders rolls – so much of this novel sets you up in a comfortable, familiar way, and then resolves matters in a way that defies expectations without cheap surprises. All the Birds in the Sky won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 2017, beating The Obelisk Gate (a result that was flipped for the Hugo), and I certainly agree with that result. It’s a fun, smart, compelling read, appropriate for young and full-grown adults alike.

Next up: Rivers Solomon’s An Unkindness of Ghosts.

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→ January 10, 2019
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Klawchat 1/10/19.

My latest game review for Paste looks at the deduction game Cryptid, where three to five players try to identify the location of the Creature by deducing the other players’ clues while trying to hide their own. It’s excellent.

Keith Law: It’s half past four and I’m shifting gears. Klawchat.

Bmosc: Keith, love the chats and content on the site. I always enjoy your levelheaded and logical takes on baseball and other issues. As a Yankee fan, who do you think would present more value, Harper or Machado, and how disappointed should I be that it seems Hal is more intent on pocketing the ridiculous revenue than he is on closing the gap b/w the Yanks and other contenders?
Keith Law: Either would be a big help – and yes, you should be frustrated. All owners have the money to improve, but the consensus among owners is that they should pocket more of the profits rather than passing it along to labor. Personally, I think Machado is a better fit for the Yanks, but if they signed Harper they’d make it work.

TE: With all the talk of Kyler Murray and the NFL draft, what does this mean for the A’s? Does he have to break his contract? Would the A’s get compensation? It seems like a pretty raw deal for them, given that Boras likely assured the team he would sign and play baseball exclusively (otherwise they wouldn’t have drafted him).
Keith Law: Right now it means nothing at all. He’s only declared for the NFL draft, which has no impact on the A’s or his baseball contract. It only starts to matter if he doesn’t show up for spring training/the season, or leaves the team at some point. He could owe the A’s the entire bonus, and no, they’d get no compensation. I suppose he’d make a lot more money in the short term, but there is no amount of money you could offer me that would make me consider risking traumatic brain injuries by playing football.

Ron: Astudillo have a roster spot this spring? Maybe should have one for being able to help out at a couple positions? Is the bat real? Thanks!
Keith Law: He can do enough with the bat that he should be on the roster. I don’t think he’s a regular, if that’s what you’re asking.

PA Prospects: You going to see Chris Newell play at any point this season? Any other SE PA prospects to look at?
Keith Law: Yep, I’ll see him and the younger Siani brother. Both are about 40-45 minutes from me.

dave from boston: Do you see the Redsox using Chris Sale once every five or six of his starts as an opener, pitching an inning or two only, in order to save wear and tear on him? Would you ever recommend something like this?
Keith Law: Not really sure that would do anything to help.

Chip: Does Houston’s recent draft history (hitting big w/Correa and Bregman and lots of hope for Tucker, missing on Appel and Aiken for various reasons) inform us at all as to what Elias likely does at 1/1? How does Rutschman compare to Wieters?
Keith Law: I don’t think it informs anything. There’s no consensus #1 (not Rutschman, not Witt Jr.) and they may simply try to cut the best deal among the pool of candidates and then try to go over slot multiple times with later picks, as the Astros did in the Correa year, and the Phillies and Twins did in ’16 and ’17.

Marvin: Instead of stalking that girl on Twitrter, do you think Trevor Bauer would have been better off tracking down where she went to school and/or worked, then tattling to her principal/dean and or boss while demanding that she be expelled or fired?
Keith Law: That would be seriously fucked up. What an entirely normal question.

Jo-Nathan: Hey Keith, is there any way to access to your work in Canada now that everything is behind ESPN+? I emailed and called ESPN weeks ago but I haven’t received a response. Very odd that they don’t want to take my money anymore (I get that its to block me from streaming content but I would gladly pay the same price to access writing content alone).
Keith Law: Unfortunately I don’t know of an answer yet. I’m sorry.

Susie: Do you see Ian Anderson as a top of the rotation type in the near future? Any concerns with the spin rate of his arsenal?
Keith Law: I do not have concerns about anyone’s spin rate unless the hitters start hitting it. The goal here is not maximizing spin rate, but maximizing results. If improving one’s spin rate gets better results, great, but when the results are good (as Anderson’s have been), why would we concern ourselves with his spin rate either way? (By the way, I have never heard anyone say his spin rates are poor.)

Dana: I think every MLB team should be forced to disclose their revenue and spend a certain percentage of it on player salaries. Agree?
Keith Law: Yes. You should go run the MLBPA.

Dusty: Any update on The Leftovers? I’ve been anxious to see what you thought of the 2nd and 3rd seasons.
Keith Law: I have no immediate plans to continue watching. I let my HBO subscription lapse a while ago.

Chris: What are your thoughts on all the Mets moves last weekend?
Keith Law: They keep trading dollars for 80 cents. Lockett is a waiver claim; Plawecki is at least a solid backup. The Houston deal was worse – Santana is a real prospect, Adolph has tools, while the return was an up and down type and an NP. I had multiple texts from scouts that day asking what the Mets were thinking.

Zarathustra: Do you have any book recommendations for someone who has read (and enjoyed) just about everything Richard Russo has written?
Keith Law: I would say Ann Patchett’s work – she lacks his wry humor, but her novels are also intensely humanist, with well-developed characters and real storylines built around the most universal emotions and themes.

Klentack: Which player fits better – Harper (due to LH power) or Machado (3B more position of need) for Phillies??
Keith Law: Again, either. I’m not sure there’s a club that couldn’t use both. Maybe the Rockies?

Lance: I just read an interesting article about Will Smith. I had no idea how effective he was last year. With his salary and control years, is it possible the Giants could get more for trading him than they would for Bumgarner?
Keith Law: I think the glut of relievers on the market would make that hard.

John: Hey Keith, did you ever write a review for D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow? Was curious to see your thoughts.
Keith Law: Never read it. Didn’t enjoy Women in Love.

Phil: Is Adames good enough at SS to stay there until Franco arrives, or does he move earlier?
Keith Law: I’m not sure either is a long-term shortstop; the best SS in the system is probably Fox.

Chris: Would the Yankees have been better off signing Dozier to play 2B and move Torres to SS instead of signing Tulo?
Keith Law: In the abstract, sure, but it’s an $8.5 million difference.

Jim: Hey, Keith. So reports are Dozier has signed with the Nats for 1/$9M. Good deal (2018 was an aberration) or bad (2018 was the first step off the cliff)?
Keith Law: Overpay, but the Nats probably have the greatest benefit from each marginal win, so it may not be an overpay for them specifically. Hell, I’m glad at least one GM is out there to win some games.

HugoZ: Now that the Braves definitely have the #9 pick this year, should it be a position player?
Keith Law: It should be the best player.

Jim: What is your take on the Braves firing Bridges and Clark?
Keith Law: Change in direction for the department. I know both guys, respect them quite a bit, and expect they’ll be out of work for about 20 minutes.

Joe Random: why do you think Kingery struggled last year? were there signs he will bounce back this year?
Keith Law: I don’t think it helped that he had to play so much on the left side of the infield, for which he is ill-suited.

Mark: Do you think it’s fair to judge past player performance on metrics that are valued more today for hall of fame consideration or does context of the era matter?
Keith Law: Other than maybe framing, what has really changed? People who claim OBP wasn’t valued are talking out of their asses – everyone knew making outs was bad. It was undervalued on the market, or as a tool for projection, but we have stuff back to Branch Rickey’s time about the value of getting on base.

BMonster: Do you have a target date for releasing your top 100? Thanks!
Keith Law: I believe I announced this last chat – it starts January 28th.

Mark: Do you think Andujar is a good fit for the Padres? Obviously 3B is a need, and they can be patient on his defense. What kind of package would it take to get him?
Keith Law: No, I do not.

Joe Random: how do you think Pache’s bat will develop? can he develop average power?
Keith Law: He already has average power.

Justin: Are you anticipating a labor strike with the way free agency has gone the past 2 years?
Keith Law: I’m anticipating a difficult negotiation, but that doesn’t have to be a strike/lockout.

Jay from southern IL: The local media is really talking up Cardinals prospects Malcom Nunez, Jhon Torres, and Joerlin de lo Santos. All are very young and far away, but I was wondering if you had opinions on these three? (Looking to eliminate the home team bias)
Keith Law: Torres is on my Cardinals rankings, which again you’ll see later this month.

Alex: Hi Keith.My girlfriend and i are expecting our first kid.any book recommandations to help with whats ahead?thank you
Keith Law: The Happiest Baby on the Block.

Chris: Would you rather give Bryce Harper a 10-year, $320M deal with a couple of opts out or a six-year, $240M deal with one opt out?
Keith Law: The six-year deal.

Nate: Keith, I find it almost incomprehensible that the reporting of only a few teams being in legitimate conversations with Harper and Machado. 26 year old generational talents hitting free agency just doesn’t happen. Do you think there is a lot more going on behind the scenes or is the new CBA really having that large effect on the way teams are looking to spend money?
Keith Law: The luxury tax cum salary cap is obviously having an effect, but it feels … collusive.

Andy: How disappointed were you in the golden globes, and do you think the Oscars will follow suit?
Keith Law: Disappointed is the wrong word – it hardly affects me at all. I do like seeing good work rewarded, whether it’s films, books, TV, music, because that can drive more of an audience to that work, and thus give the artists in question more money and opportunities to create more.

Rick C: Is there anything to the Bridges and Clark firing, or is it really just one of those proverbial changes in direction?
Keith Law: That’s all it is.

Dustin: I’ve finally begun work on Smart Baseball and am about 2/3 of the way through it. Will the final section include a best practices manual for making my father- and brother-in-law read it so we can have some intelligent conversations about MLB for a change?
Keith Law: Um …. yyyyyyyes.

Nils: Sorry, with the link: https://gizmodo.com/how-cartographers-for-the-u-s-military-inadvertent…
Keith Law: Thanks!

Justin: will there be a write up on the Brewers signing of Grandal?
Keith Law: Probably not. Prospect writing time.

Dagoberto Campaneris: $2 million for Shelby Miller — is there upside for the Rangers there? Or is Miller just irretrievably broken after all the injuries the past few years?
Keith Law: Coming back from TJ, very reasonable risk.

Justin: Assuming the Pirates have the ability to add, say, $15 million on payroll, what FA seems like an obvious fit for them? I’m specifically thinking they should take a shot on Lowrie for SS for a year (until Cole Tucker can move him to 2b), but you’ve always liked Newman.
Keith Law: I also don’t think Lowrie can handle short.

Brent: Hi, Keith, hope you’re well. Do you have a sense yet if Corey Ray is likely to reappear in your top 100?
Keith Law: Definitely not.

LukeM: You are going to get a million questions about them so Just get it out of the way and tell us who you predict Harper and Machado end up with?
Keith Law: Nah. I’ve never liked those predictions – it would be based on so little. When I talk to GMs or other top execs I don’t waste time asking them about that stuff. Their time is valuable and my access to it is finite, so I’d rather ask them about stuff they might really want to discuss candidly.

Jason: Whats the deal with grandal signing a one year deal? I love it as a brewers fan but couldn’t he have gotten a better multi-year deal?
Keith Law: On talent, sure. The market is bad this winter, and I think his poor October and reputation for not working well with pitchers hurt his market further.
Keith Law: That reputation goes back to San Diego, FWIW. I don’t think this is just “Kershaw hates him” or something.

Jimmy: Would it be a stretch to see Madrigal in the majors this year?
Keith Law: No, but I think his ceiling is really low.

Jack : Are you rooting for a Harper/Robles/Soto outfield for the next 6 years? I honestly think it has all timer potential if Bryce returns.
Keith Law: That would be tremendous, but it feels unlikely?

Tom: I think that Trevor Bauer question might have been in reference to something Darren Rovell did.
Keith Law: Ah. I missed that. I have contacted employers when I’ve thought I was threatened, though. I think that’s justified. Calling for someone to be expelled, though … jeez.

Canadian Jesus: Why isn’t the ability to have a high walk rate considered a tool? It doesn’t really seem like something that should be lumped into the hit tool with bat-speed etc…?
Keith Law: It’s a skill, but in Toronto we made it a separate grade on the scouting report, and I think now pretty much all teams do that in some fashion.
Keith Law: The tools are physical, though. Your plate discipline is a skill.

Kyle: Given all the recent issues with Facebook, do you have any misgivings about using it? Do you utilitize it for personal use or only work? I try to use it less and less (deleted the app) but so many friends and family use it for planning events or keeping in touch that it’s hard to step away. Curious how you feel about it.
Keith Law: I definitely have those misgivings. I do still use it for my public page (@keithlawwriter) and to communicate with a small number of friends who use Messenger all the time.

Stephen: In your opinion: Top 3 front offices in MLB? Bottom 3 front offices? Would love to see that list expanded in longer form too.
Keith Law: Nope. Never doing that.

Bradley: Thoughts on the Stewart grievance? Seems weird that his camp would claim he didn’t receive the 40% offer when something like that would easily be proved/disproved. Which apparently the Braves did as Stewart has already reported lost the grievance. Was this just spite? or was there something more to this? Any connections to the recent firings?
Keith Law: Was that his camp’s claim? I hadn’t heard that aspect. I thought the claim was that the injury didn’t merit the 60% cut.

Paul: How can mlb discuss pace of play when the off season has been a total snooze fest? Do you think these slow winters hurt the sport?
Keith Law: Yes. The winter meetings used to be a great time for the sport to grab headlines in the dead of the offseason.

Derek: Isaac Paredes – do you think he has a good chance to hit his way up to AAA this summer and debut sometime in 2020? Thanks for chatting!
Keith Law: Yep, that all sounds right.

Ed: Who is someone in the White Sox minors besides Eloy to be excited about thia season?
Keith Law: Cease finished in AA; he could debut this year. Basabe or even Luis Gonzalez could surface too.

Luke: Thoughts on Keon Broxton? Seems like the only deal that the mets didnt get fleeced
Keith Law: His defensive numbers last year were extremely fluky in a tiny sample and he’s probably a .280-290 OBP guy. Whee.

Raphael: Hey Keith, there’s an uncomfortable situation in the UFC at the moment as Rachael Ostovich, who admiringly decided to still compete next weekend despite recent injuries she sustained at the hands of her husband, is on the same card as known domestic abuser Greg Hardy (UFC’s first event with ESPN). I’m not going to ask for your opinion on the sport or of Dana White and his decision, but rather, for your thoughts on Ostovich taking the “everyone deserves a second chance” stance in regards to Hardy and her husband. Should we let victims decide how we should view abusers, or is this attitude, even if it belongs to the victims, simply part of why domestic violence is such a big issue, in that the victims are unable to accept their abusers for the monsters that they truly are?
Keith Law: I know nothing of this situation, but will say 1) we should always listen to victims but 2) it’s very common for domestic violence victims to ‘stand up’ for their abusers, such as declining to press charges. It’s complicated. Supporting victims is the one thing we could probably all agree on.

Mac: How did all 30 teams come to the same conclusion at the same time that they prefer profits over winning? Somethings not right.
Keith Law: It’s kind of weird, right?

PD: Thoughts on triple restaurant week?
Keith Law: should I know this? I think Philly’s restaurant week is coming up, actually.

Tom: What are your expectations for Shane Bieber? Think last year’s peripherals largely carry over and we see the ERA come down a fair amount?
Keith Law: Always going to be a big HR guy.

LukeM: Which board game, that you played for the first time in 2018, was your favorite?
Keith Law: Everdell. I wrote up my top ten for the year. That covers new games, but there were pre-2018 games I played for the first time and loved, including Sagrada. I also finally got and played Clank! in the last week and it’s pretty fun, if a bit luck-driven.

Gary: Is Ramos at 2/18m a better deal for the Mets than the 4/60m Grandal supposedly turned down?
Keith Law: Definitely. My favorite Mets move of the winter.

Clete: You a Tres Barrera guy? On any of the Nat’s catcher prospects?
Keith Law: He’s an org guy for me.

Marcus: I hate the “back in my day” person, but I’m lost on this one. My wife is doing a long-term sub position, and despite students refusing to turn work in on time–or even do it–she has been instructed not to fail anyone for anything. I can understand passing a student who may not do great work but is trying, but just shoving the problem on to the next grade…does that make any sense?
Keith Law: Sounds like a systemic issue – probably they don’t want the hassle of forcing a student to repeat a level. I don’t think that helps the child at all.

Matt: Did you see the movie Eighth Grade?
Keith Law: Not yet.

Andres: I know this is a sports/books/games/music type of chat, but in a simple answer — who’s most to blame for the government shutdown?
Keith Law: The guy who loves Wall and can’t stop talking about Wall.

Sloan: If you were Machado, and money was equal, would you join the Phillies, Yankees or White Sox?
Keith Law: The money is never equal. It’s just not – there are different tax considerations for each market, costs of living, etc.

Brandon: Do you think the recent signings of Grandal and Dozier to 1 year deals means that A.J. Pollock could be heading for a similar deal?
Keith Law: I’d be floored.

Sloan: Thoughts on the Herrera signing?
Keith Law: Surprised a guy who missed half of last year with an injury got that deal.

Alan: Do you think that Peter Alonso will be able to overcome his inability to field to be successful at the MLB level.
Keith Law: I think he’s a 40 defender right now. Either that gets a lot better, or he goes to the AL to DH.

Chris: Best case scenario for Tulo is to somehow stay healthy til Didi returns and give them a dead cat bounce half season, right?
Keith Law: Yep. Aubrey Huff had one of those for about four months. Then he cratered.

Thomas: What of peak offense year would you expect from Willy Adames given his hit and power tool? Is he a .300/.375/.475 type or is that overselling his power?
Keith Law: I think that oversells his power, not his hit tool, although with the silly ball maybe not.

Ben : I am so down with your take on Life and Times of Michael K. Couldn’t get engaged with it. Especially in comparison to the Road, which my eyes were like magnetically attached to.
Keith Law: Yeah, I enjoy fabulist novels but didn’t connect with that one.

Anthony: Grandal an overpay at 1/$18.25M?
Keith Law: No.

Mitch: Do you feel it’s likely that Edgar makes the leap into the HOF this time around?
Keith Law: No doubt.

Patrick: Waiting to board a flight to Chicago. Any restaurant recommendations?
Keith Law: Monteverde! Publican, Little Goat, any of Rick Bayliss’ places.

HugoZ: Well yes, but is the best player at nine likely to be a position player?
Keith Law: I honestly don’t know that at this point. It’s probably 55/45 that the best player available is a pitcher, because teams up top tend to avoid HS pitchers, so they get pushed down a bit. It’s also just a bad college crop.

Jeff: Are you a believer in the revamped swing of Kevin Smith (Blue Jays)? Is he a possible regular in the bigs
Keith Law: No. Utility guy.

John: Will Ross Stripling be back in the rotation and pitching like a No.2/3 guy this year?
Keith Law: I think he’s a 5.

Phil: Will smith or Keibert Ruiz?
Keith Law: That’s not close – Ruiz is an elite prospect.

Jordan: Do you think Conforto can return to an all star type of hitter this season? Had a really promising second half. Feels like the Mets rushed him back from shoulder surgery.
Keith Law: Yes and I think that’s probably the reason.

seanj8: MLB wants to expand, so what two cities make the most sense to be awarded teams? Mine are Nashville and Montreal. Portland gets some consideration too.
Keith Law: Nashville is growing like mad, but even so, it would be the second smallest market in MLB. Indianapolis actually has more people (not that I’d put an MLB team there either). Only Milwaukee is smaller. Austin and San Antonio’s MSAs are both over 2 million, and they’re 80 miles apart from each other. That’s a lost opportunity there.

Jeff D.: If you’re Andrew Friedman and offer Harper a short term/high value deal which he rejects, what’s your next move to improve the team?
Keith Law: Offer him a longer deal.

Jerry: Who do you see being the Astros 4th and 5th starters by June? Assuming no injuries of course….
Keith Law: Josh James and Forrest Whitley.

Granfalloon: How much responsibility do you think you and other saber-oriented writers, who spent the last 20 years arguing online that free agent contracts were bloated and that teams were overpaying for veterans, bear for the current state of things where franchises are being cheap and not fairly compensating players? In retrospect, do you think y’all shouldn’t have been making those arguments?
Keith Law: That’s dumb for a few reasons, not least among which is that more analytical writers have talked up players like Harper and Machado, hitting free agency at 26, and their markets are thin too.

Green Book : I am a piece of shit movie that is racially bananas. What is happening and how am I winning things when movies like Beale Street, Favourite, Blackkklansman, and Roma are out there. (Granted this was still a poor year IMO on the film front).
Keith Law: I think it was a tremendous year for movies. I have 40 films ranked over Green Book.

Chris D: What do you think about Nathaniel Lowe? Will he carve out an above average MLB career?
Keith Law: I don’t think so.

Frank Thomas (not that one): What would your solution be to fix what has become a major problem in MLB as far as owners spending on MLB talent? Salary cap? Higher floor? Less service time before a player hits FA? Limiting lengths and values of max contracts a la the NBA?
Keith Law: Speed up free agency, raise the minimum salary for 0-2 guys.

Mat: Who’s your #1 Prospect for the June 2019 MLB Draft?
Keith Law: TBD. There isn’t a clear one yet.

Ricky: Favorite meal to make during the week when you are tight on time?
Keith Law: You can spatchcock and roast an entire chicken in about 45 minutes. I also like to do simple chicken cutlets – sometimes just panko breading, sometimes adding sesame seeds and maybe some chopped sunflower seeds – as a main dish because they scale well and reheat nicely in the oven.

Mark: Would you ever consider writing a book about your experience as a GM? I think it would be very fun to read about trades, player development, constructing a team, etc…
Keith Law: I’d love to, but I’d need to be a GM first.

Sean: I’m thinking now is the time to go all in if I’m running the brewers. So close last year, why not trade for Bumgarner and sign Keuchel?
Keith Law: Don’t think they need two starters – they have Burnes and Woodruff, both good, both ready for the rotation.

Sean: Hi, Keith. Thank you for doing these and I hope all is well. I wanted to get your opinion on what the Padres should do this offseason. Stand pat? Focus on 2020? Go after an Ace? I still think we’re a year away and would hate to see us make another move like the Hosmer signing of a year ago.
Keith Law: Focus on 2020, try to dump one of Myers or Hosmer for a bad contract at another position.

Econ: Is there a space somewhere in between where “players deserve more” and “overpaying marginal players is a bad idea” that can exist?
Keith Law: The idea of overpaying free agents also oversimplifies the part about how the value of a marginal win varies by team. An extra win for the Nationals, who are in a decent-sized market and really should be a playoff team, is worth more than the same extra win is to the Padres, who are not contenders, or even the Reds, who need to pick up maybe ten or more wins to become contenders.

Everett L: Did Nico Hoerner change how you rate him based on his play in the AFL?
Keith Law: No. I like to watch and think about players there, but try not to make dramatic changes to evaluations off that look because it’s not normal minor league play.

AGirlHasNoName: Ok, I have a crystal ball, if the Cubs cut Russell they win 91 games and miss the playoffs, if they keep him they win 94 and make the playoffs. As a fan, do you still want them to cut him? Is there a point where the cost isn’t worth the benefit?
Keith Law: Then he’s more than worth his salary – the playoff berth is worth a lot more than the marginal $6.5 million or so to keep him. It becomes a moral decision. I personally would not employ a player who did what he did, such as choking his wife (which, I’ve mentioned many times before, is a major precursor to homicide).

Sean: Giants looking at signing potentially trading Panik and signing LeMahieu, that would be a net positive IMO. Thoughts?
Keith Law: Depends on what you get for Panik.

TomBruno23: If Bumgarner is available, I think the Cardinals should be all over that. Fits in well with their older player/short term contract roster and wouldn’t/shouldn’t cost too much in terms of a trade. Dakota Hudson for a year of Bumgarner?
Keith Law: Hudson’s probably a reliever so I’d do it.

Roma : I think I *might* be the easiest choice for Best Picture in the last 10 years. This is like Mike Trout competing against Mike Moustakas, Jean Segura, and a replacement level player who is also racist.
Keith Law: Yes, but I still think A Star is Born wins.
Keith Law: I’d vote for Roma among the likely nominees.

Canadian Jesus: I get your answer, but if plate discipline is a skill shouldn’t fielding be classed as a skill as well? There is obviously way more to fielding than just range or loose hips.
Keith Law: You’re being a little pedantic here, but also, much of fielding is determined by physical skill.

LukeM: Who is a comparable player to Nolan Gorman? Tons of power but strikeouts are a concern. Is a Joey Gallo or Khris Davis comparison fair?
Keith Law: I like him more than I ever liked Davis as a prospect. I think Gorman will hit a bit more than Gallo. Gallo has the most raw power I’ve ever seen on a prospect.

Adam: Is there any logic to the Padres signing Hosmer to that big deal last year and now going back to penny pinching mode? I get that Hosmer contract was a mistake but cant deter you from making any other big financial decisions.
Keith Law: Are they pinching pennies or just avoiding a second mistake?

Spiny Norman: Dinsdale?
Keith Law: He’s nailed to the coffee table.

Andrew Friedman: Who would you rather trade…Verdugo or Ruiz/Smith
Keith Law: Verdugo. I think he’s good but easier to replace than Ruiz.

Ridley Kemp: Thank you for your tireless…well, it’s probably pretty tiring…rebuttal of the antivaxxers. The real danger they represent needs answering, but it can’t be fun.

Have you had a chance to read Michael Pollan’s How To Change Your Mind? I picked it up when my therapist told me she was reading it for the third time. As a non-user of controlled substances, I still found it fascinating and I learned more about the the brain and depression treatments than I have anywhere else.
Keith Law: I haven’t. I did just finish Leonard Mlodinow’s Elastic (as an audiobook), about the power of ‘flexible thinking,’ which also gets into a lot of how we come to conclusions and refuse to change them, often because our brains don’t even accept other possible interpretations or evidence.

Noah Syndergaard: We’re going to get Biden vs. Warren as a sequel to Clinton vs. Bernie, aren’t we? Team Trump would love that.
Keith Law: Biden needs to step aside, now. Next generation, please.

Daniel: Considering the recent reports of MLB’s revenues, are there any competitive teams that can reasonably justify not being willing to spend above the tax? I’m a Braves fan, and considering those revenue reports, and the whole Cobb County/SunTrust Park thing, I really don’t understand why they’re not in on Harper. (Maybe they are, and AA is just really good at keeping it out of the media?)
Keith Law: I think that’s corporate ownership telling them not to spend.

Cjc: Thoughts on Chance Adams having a bounce-back year as a starter? Or is he just an up and down reliever?
Keith Law: Reliever only.

Dan: Hi Keith – thanks for all your work. With Kopech out this year and some important pieces that will at least begin the year in the minors, is 2020 a realistic expectation for the White Sox to start contending for their division? I’ll be honest, I have concerns with the development of Giolitto/Moncada/Rodon and others, and am afraid of the rebuild not panning out.
Keith Law: That division is weak enough that they should be doing what they’re doing – trying to go get a big star now, figuring he’ll be there for the next 4-5 years as the kids arrive and the team gets really good.

Matt W: So wait, do the Mets really not scout below full season ball?
Keith Law: That is correct.

Ben: Keith, you’ve been high on Willi Castro for a little while. But, others in the industry label him as a likely utilityman/fringe regular. Do you think he can be the Tiger’s answer at SS?
Keith Law: I do. High IQ guy, feel to hit, absolutely has to get stronger.

Biff: Do you have any insight into the slow development/ lack of improvement of Moniak ?
Keith Law: Swing issues, possible the team overrated the makeup.
Keith Law: Also, when I’ve seen him, he’s been unable to recognize spin.

Pat D: Since we expect the various veterans committees to make bad choices, which would be “worse”: McGriff getting in via committee (I think we all expect him to) or Vizquel getting in via BBWAA?
Keith Law: The committee’s picks nearly always suck. Vizquel getting in would be a real indictment of the BBWAA even as the electorate has been getting smarter.

Mark: Should cardinals offer Keuchel 1 year at 23M?
Keith Law: Shouldn’t every contender offer him that?

Archie: Any chance the Brewers give up Burnes or Hiura in a deal for Bumgarner?
Keith Law: No. That would be really stupid, and they’re not stupid.

BK: Does Brandon Marsh have any “star” upside?
Keith Law: yes.

JJ: what kind of pro does Kyler Murray project to be?
Keith Law: Enormous range of outcomes. Could make some All-Star teams. Could stall in AA. The guy is 1000 or so at bats behind where he should be at this age.
Keith Law: Maybe 800. You get the point.

Chris : Wouldn’t you rather have Plawecki as a back-up at a$1.5M than d’Arnaud at $4M?
Keith Law: Yes, because d’Arnaud is made of glass.

john: why do minor leaguers get paid so little??
Keith Law: Because MLB slipped a clause into the GOP Tax Bill from 2017 that protected them.

Concerned Teacher: You mentioned in a previous chat not having heard of the vaping company named Juul. I am a high school teacher and a parent I think you should familiarize yourself with them. Kids are entering high school already hopelessly hooked on nicotine because of these Juuls, which look very similar to a USB drive. They were the fastest start up company ever to reach $10B in.
Keith Law: I have now, of course. The Ringer called them a scam for Big Tobacco in a post today. Vile.

EG: Bryce harper will finish the year ranked top _____ in fWAR.
Keith Law: Ten.

Tony B: Is it better to vote for someone you view as a leader and can lead to unity in the nation or someone who you agree with their political views?
Keith Law: why not both girl dot gif

Aaron: Just curious, considering the options at most minor league ballparks, Do you ever eat at a stadium and if so what?
Keith Law: Almost never.

Joe: In general, I’m not a fan of relievers in the Hall of Fame. But if you go by the standards set by the guys already in, Wagner is a Hall of Famer, right? There are 7 pitchers who were primarily relievers in the HOF right now (including Smith), and I think it’s pretty easy to argue Wagner was more dominant than at least 3-4 of them. He just didn’t stick around a few more years and compile saves at the end of his career.
Keith Law: Wagner is better than Smith and probably better than Hoffman. I think he’ll sneak in.

Greg: Keith- Re: Kyler Murray. There’s been some argument that since he plays QB, and since the rules these days protect QBs to a nearly ridiculous degree, the risk to him is much less than if he played a different position. Jeff Samardzija playing baseball over being a tight end made sense, but QB is protected so much more than even two years ago. At this point if he were a catcher I think he’d take more foul balls of the head than he’d take hits to the head as a QB. I originally thought it was a bo-brainer to pick baseball for the reasons you mentioned, but the more I watch football and every roughing the passer penalty, it’s tough to imagine he’d rather ride buses for 4-5 years that be a starting QB in the NFL in 8 months.
Keith Law: It takes just one hit, even an illegal one, to wreck a guy’s life. And he’s small.

Sean: Did you happen to see Sean Doolittle’s thread on twitter regarding ways to improve the game? I think it’s great to see him interacting with fans directly, a lot of good points were made. Unlike Bauer, he seems to have a good head on his shoulders.
Keith Law: He’s one of the best humans in the sport and we are very fortunate to have him and Eireann as ambassadors for the game in general and for just being good, kind people.

Bob: Do you think Faedo can get back to a mid-rotation projection or is he more of a 4/5 type?
Keith Law: Probably reliever.

Andy: What do you think about the movie vice?
Keith Law: I’ll see it this weekend. Tried to see it Tuesday night but the showing was nearly sold out and I will not sit in the front row.

Michael: What did you think of Isle of Dogs?
Keith Law: My review.

Dan: What does the future hold for Sean Reid-Foley? He seemed likely to be in the opening day rotation but that was before they added Shoemaker and Richard to the mix.
Keith Law: Needs a better pitch for LHB or he’s not a starter.

Mark: Future value of Keston Hiura? Can he turn into a Daniel Murphy type player (high avg which helps the power play up, mediocre D)?
Keith Law: RHB so he won’t have the platoon issues.

Dell: Any chance Caleb Ferguson gets another shot to start? And are you out on Urias?
Keith Law: I’m not out on any Uriases that I can think of. If you mean Julio, we are in uncharted waters for someone with that injury.

Dan: Could you see Ronny Mauricio as a guy who could see a catastrophic rise in the rankings over the next 2-3 years?
Keith Law: That’s an interesting choice of adjectives there. He’s got enormous potential, though.

Bob: Any good books to help with anxiety?
Keith Law: Fully Present is my go-to recommendation.

Dr. Bob: What would happen if an MLB team bucked the trend and doubled the salaries of their minor league players?
Keith Law: A very angry phone call from Park Avenue.

Jake Lawson: Just FYI, if you ever check out the Round Rock Express, there’s a Salt Like BBQ in the parking lot. It’s not Franklin’s or Mickelthwait, but it’s miles ahead of most ballpark food.
Keith Law: I’ve actually been to that one. It was solid. Probably a 50.

Lou: Aside from Ruiz and Verdugo, have the Dodgers drained most of their elite talent from the farm?
Keith Law: No.

Rahn: I ask you this every offseason so here goes: Who is one Pirates prospect who most intrigues you and whose development you’ll be tracking closely?
Keith Law: Org reports run the week of February 4th.

Kacey: If a hs player was unknown and then hit their growth spurt and had an incredible year with their HS team, would they likely slip through the cracks because they aren’t known via their travel team?
Keith Law: No, unless he were in some really remote place that is generally undercovered – North Dakota, Alaska, something like that.

Archie: Is Billy Wagner the best small college player you have ever seen?
Keith Law: Dunno, Alex Bregman was a great small college player. He’s only about 5’8″.

Jim: How do you “speed up free agency”? Front offices would sign off on a deadline to signing players? How does that work?
Keith Law: A deadline would help, yes.

Bob: One report I’ve read on Kelenic warns he has some “tweener warning signs” in his profile. Is something you’d agree with?
Keith Law: No. Sounds like a bad source.

Danny: Do you think Deivi Garcia will be a starter and if not, can he be a set up or closer type?
Keith Law: Starter.

Dave: Did you do a review of into the Spider-Verse? Seemed to hate it during the Globes.
Keith Law: I didn’t review that or the two Disney entries. I found Spider-Verse cliched and unbelievably violent for a movie aimed at kids. It had a few laughs (Spider-Ham was legitimately funny). The resolution really didn’t do enough for the Miles character, either.

LukeM: Any thoughts on Malcolm Nunez for the Cardinals. Saw an article showing his ridiculous wRC+ this past year and he looks really promising. I know he’s super young and a long ways off but it’s fun to look for potential future superstars.
Keith Law: Do not use wRC+ to evaluate prospects. And Nunez went into the DSL with more real game experience than most of the competition. That’s not to say he’s a zero, but that this is serious stat-line scouting.

Mark: Did you do voices when you used to read to your daughter ?
Keith Law: Always. After a few books she’d demand it.

SpG: Unbelievably Violent? 80’a Kids were raised on Predator & Robocop, man… it was a love letter to comic book readers.
Keith Law: That doesn’t make it any less violent. And violence is a weak way to write your superhero story.

Kacey: When did white supremacist become an offensive term?
Keith Law: When did Rep. King’s party become comfortable with white supremacists in its house?

Mark: Just curious, given your love of gaming, have you ever played Magic: The Gathering? I know Longenhagen is a fan, and they’ve been making a push into eSports recently with their new Arena product.
Keith Law: No – not interested in CCGs as a genre.
Keith Law: That’s all for this week – back to writeups for now. Thank you as always for reading and bearing with me this month. Still more calls to make and words to write. I promise to give you the best words!

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