Stick to baseball, 3/23/24.

At the Athletic, I wrote about a bunch of prospects I saw in the Cactus League, including two Breakout games; plus a list of six breakout candidates for 2024; as well as a Q&A with our fantasy expert Nando di Fino.

At Vulture, I wrote about the surge in cooperative tabletop games that started with Pandemic and then picked up during the … pandemic, really, along with a list of 14 of the best.

Now that this post is up I’ll begin the next edition of my free email newsletter.

And now, the links…

Stick to baseball, 9/23/23.

For subscribers to The Athletic, I posted my annual Minor League Player of the Year column this week, as well as my last regular-season scouting notebook of 2023, covering prospects I saw from the Red Sox, Orioles, and Nationals. I’ll head to Arizona in October for Fall League coverage, of course. My podcast will be back next week and I’ve already filed my next review for Paste.

And now, the links…

Stick to baseball, 5/20/23.

I had two new posts this week for subscribers to the Athletic – a minor league scouting notebook on prospects with the Brewers, Pirates, and Phillies; and a draft scouting notebook looking at Max Clark, Dillon Head, Mac Horvath, and more.

My guests on the Keith Law Show the last two weeks have been Max Bazerman, discussing his new book Complicit: How We Enable the Unethical and How to Stop; and Russell Carleton, talking about his upcoming second book The New Ballgame: The Not-So-Hidden Forces Shaping Modern Baseball. You can listen and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Just a reminder you can also find me on Spoutible and Bluesky as @keithlaw.

And now, the links…

  • The science behind reverse osmosis filtering was unclear, until a paper published in April upended the previous model and opened up the possibility of new membranes that make filtration, including desalination, more energy-efficient.
  • A conservative “foundation” recruited fifteen men at a Poughkeepsie homeless shelter to pretend they were veterans kicked out of a hotel to make room for migrants coming up from New York City. The plan fooled state Assemblyman Brian Maher (R), who fed the outrage machine until he had to admit he’d been had.
  • Bryan Slaton has resigned his post in the Texas legislature after it emerged that he’d behaved inappropriately with an intern. The Republican once introduced legislation to ban children from attending drag shows, claiming it was some form of grooming.
  • I agree with everything in this Mary Sue post about the disappointing S3 of Ted Lasso, which has none of the things that made the show good in its first two seasons. But at least the episodes are longer!
  • The Arab League has quietly reinstated Syria, more than a decade after the nation and its murderous dictator President Bashad al-Assad were expelled for violent reprisals against protestors leading up to the country’s 12-year civil war.

Stick to baseball, 3/11/23.

Nothing new at the Athletic this week, although I should have 2-3 coming up this week as my travels continue. I did hold a Klawchat on Thursday.

For Paste, I reviewed the game Gartenbau, which combines very simple rules with tight decisions that make it a real challenge to play it well.

On The Keith Law Show this week, I had my annual Oscars preview episode with Chris Crawford. You can listen and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I was going to send another issue of my free email newsletter this week but got tied up with some other writing (board game stuff, actually), so it’s still on my to-do list.

And now, the links…

  • The rash of anti-trans bills across the south and Midwest are the work of a network of religious-right groups that operated in secret while pushing their bigoted agenda, according to emails between those groups and South Dakota state Rep. Fred Deutsch (R) obtained by Mother Jones.
  • My wife and I watched the Oscar-nominated animated short My Year of Dicks, which is very funny and sweet, which led us down the rabbit hole of its writer Pamela Ribon, including this hilarious 2011 post from her now-defunct blog about how she might have become a new urban legend.
  • From January 2022: Ashli Babbitt, who some right-wingers want you to believe was a martyr, had a history of violent behavior prior to her participation in the January 6th insurrection.
  • Utah legislators have voted to change the law that made it nearly impossible for victims of sexual assault by doctors to sue their attackers.

Stick to baseball, 1/14/23.

My latest piece for subscribers to the Athletic went up last Saturday, a breakdown of the Phillies’ trade for Gregory Soto, a deal I quite like for Detroit. My podcast will return this upcoming week, and the top 100 prospects ranking is scheduled to run on January 30th.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the roll-and-write game Riverside, which just missed my top ten games of 2022 list (it was the final cut).

I’ve sent out two editions of my free email newsletter in two weeks (!), so you should definitely sign up now.

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: The Financial Times has a fascinating story on four women who work as spies in Britain’s SIS, looking at their actual jobs and lives (as much as possible) and the agency’s history of discrimination, often to its own detriment.
  • The Philly Inquirer looks at the successes and struggles of Mastbaum High School, a vocational/technical school in Kensington, a neighborhood often called ground zero of the city’s opioid epidemic. One unavoidable conclusion: the school is wildly underfunded given its role in the community.
  • You may have seen a claim about more athletes dying from cardiac arrest since the COVID-19 vaccines were introduced than died from the same in the preceding twenty or so years. It’s bullshit, and comes from a source-less site called goodsciencing that is probably backed by the CEO of conservative site NewsBlaze.
  • A fake tweet claiming a Florida doctor had made absurd pro-vaccine statements was amplified by a host of alt-right accounts, and Twitter refused to take it down, leading to a wave of harassment against her. VICE also covered the story, focusing on Joe Rogan amplifying the tweet.
  • Yet another fake AirBnB listing scam, this time in Philly, with renters showing up to find that the house was listed without the owners’ knowledge.
  • Right-wingers have been organizing for several years to take over school boards so they could push their theological, homophobic, transphobic, and even white supremacist agendas into public schools. The Philly Inquirer has a story about some progressives who are belatedly fighting back.
  • Smithtown, New York, the retrograde part of Long Island where I was born, decided to remove all Pride displays from its libraries back in June. This isn’t shocking if you’ve been there, as it’s as provincial a suburb as you’ll find. People there don’t get off the Island enough to realize there’s a whole big world out there.

Stick to baseball, 9/17/22.

My one new post this week for The Athletic is a scouting notebook looking at some Yankees and Red Sox prospects, including Jasson Dominguez, Yoendrys Gomez, and Cedanne Rafaela. I’ve had to push some things off, as I got sick on Tuesday and it turns out that my COVID number is finally up.

My guest on The Keith Law Show this week was Dr. Justin E.H. Smith, author of the book The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, A Philosophy, A Warning, which you can buy here on Bookshop.org. You can listen and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

My free email newsletter returned today after a long hiatus, describing my COVID experience so far and linking to a lot of the stuff I’ve written over the last few weeks.

And now, the links…

  • Hasidic private schools in New York City fail to provide even the most basic secular education to students, but have taken in $1 billion in taxpayer money, according to an extensive New York Times investigation. It would appear that various Mayors and Governors have declined to fully examine the issue for fear of alienating the Hasidic voting bloc.
  • Years of investigations by the Kansas City Star and other outlets appear to have resulted in the arrest this week of a former Kansas City, Kansas, detective who stands accused of raping two women, taking money from drug dealers, and framing innocent people. It’s unbelievable how long people were aware of what Roger Golubski was allegedly doing, yet he was able to continue to do it, and even retired from one department and got a job with another.
  • The co-chair of the Michigan state GOP referred to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as “a weak little girl.”
  • Fred Franzia, the winemaker behind the popular $2 wines known as Two Buck Chucks, died this week at 79.
  • An Iowa law on restitution for victims of violence means that a woman who, at age 15, killed the man who raped and trafficked her, owes his family $150,000. It is, literally, a law of unintended consequences. A GoFundMe for the woman has raised nearly three times that amount already.
  • Jennifer Rubin writes in the Washington Post that the Christian right is ignoring the biggest threat to their existence: Declining religiosity in younger generations. The younger you are, the less likely you are to identify as Christian, or as religious at all.
  • Noted liberal rag (checks notes) Bloomberg has an op ed arguing that the Texas judicial ruling that companies could decline to cover PrEP treatment for employees takes religious freedom too far.
  • Sagrada: Artisans, the legacy version of the great dice-drafting game Sagrada, is now on Kickstarter and already funded.
  • Age of Inventors, an economic/resource management game from a small Greek publisher, is also on Kickstarter and also funded this week.
  • Dune: War for Arrakis, an asymmetrical area-control game pitting the houses Atreides and Harkonnen against each other, is also on Kickstarter, and fully funded even with a higher goal. It seems like it’s designed primarily for two players, but with 3 or 4 the extra players control “sub-factions” loyal to one house or the other.

Stick to baseball, 9/11/22.

I pushed this post back a day so I could file another post for the Athletic, so you had two from me in the last 48 hours – a scouting post on some top Guardians and Nationals prospects, and a second edition of my looks at September prospect callups. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Next Station: London, a great new flip-and-write game with a route-planning mechanic that makes it a sort of a puzzle – the choices you make early in the game constrain your choices later. This is definitely the year of the roll/flip-and-write.

My guest on this week’s episode of the Keith Law Show was Wingspan game designer Elizabeth Hargrave, talking about her next big game, The Fox Experiment, now on Kickstarter (and already 500% funded in five days). You can listen and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The New Yorker looks at how Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and the Ottawa County police department have worked together to turn rape victims into defendants, putting one of their own on trial for accusing a cop – who has been accused by at least two other women of sexual assault – of coercing her into sex.

A column denying the extent of racism in Canadian society led to a successful effort to unionize the country’s conservative paper the National Post, securing gains for BIPOC employees in the process.

A Fox producer warned execs to stop Jeanine Pirro from airing her election-denial views, according to documents revealed in the Dominion Systems lawsuit against the right-wing juggernaut.

Billionaire Barre Seid has used his money to fund climate-change denialism and fight Medicaid expansion (that is, health care for our poorest citizens), while also funding a law school to churn out archconservative future judges, according to records unearthed by ProPublica.

One Alabama prison has been holding pregnant women there for weeks or months, in what appears to be a violation of basic Constitutional rights, to protect the fetuses from drug use.

David DeWitt of the Ohio Capitol Journal writes of the intolerable cruelty of Ohio’s total ban on abortions, including the suffering already of pregnant women needing essential medical care.

Nature’s editors write of the need for greater protections for scientists and researchers from threats and abuse, pointing at lawmakers and the executives running social media sites.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader, introduced a new “Commitment to America” that is short on ideas and long on Trumpian insanity, according to Alex Shephard of the New Republic, pointing to the lack of details for how it will achieve vague goals, emphasis on truly counterproductive policies (like increasing fossil fuel production), and kowtowing to election deniers.

Oxford scientists may have developed an effective malaria vaccine. Malaria has long resisted traditional approaches to vaccine development because it’s caused by a parasite, rather than a bacterium or virus, and the parasite changes form once inside the host’s body.

Count me among those Duolingo users who hate the app’s total redesign, as it has removed most of the flexibility the old structure gave users to set their own pace; I used the app to try to keep my Spanish skills fresh, but wouldn’t do those lessons at the same speed or rate as those of Welsh, which I was learning from scratch. The founder’s comments don’t give me much hope, as they betrayed a real disdain for their customers.

I knew Florida state Rep. Randy Fine in college, and am not surprised to see the person he’s become as an adult or politician – he was one of the most vocal Florida officials to rail against “woke” Disney, but is also happy to spend thousands of dollars on the company’s cruises and products.

An 18-year-old student was elected to the Boise School Board, in no small part because his opponent refused to denounce an endorsement from a far-right extremist group that arrives armed with AR-15s to public events, supports book banning, and refers to undocumented immigrants as “illegals.”

As many GOP candidates across the country are trying to scrub anti-abortion or other hard-right rhetoric from their campaign sites, Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano is leaning harder in that direction, becoming “Trumpier than Trump” in the words of Axios’ Jonathan Swan.

Lots of board game Kickstarters etc. this week, starting with the solo-only game Legacy of Yu from Shem Phillips, designer of Raiders of the North Sea and the North Sea and West Kingdom series of games.

Disney is introducing a new Magic: the Gathering-style collectible card game called Lorcana, and Polygon has images of some of the superb art.

Keith Matejka, designer of the Roll Player games, has a new title on Kickstarter called Dawn of Ulos, a tile-laying game for 1-5 players set in the Roll Player universe.

25th Century Games has a Gamefound campaign up for expansions to its Prehistories and Space Explorers games.

Stick to baseball, 1/16/22.

Still working on the prospect rankings – I started the actual writing this week, after several weeks of prep – which will run starting January 31st at the Athletic. I appreciate your patience. My podcast and my Paste reviews will return this week.

And now, the links…

Stick to baseball, 12/6/21.

We had a busy weekend of decorating the house, including acquiring the largest tree I’ve ever owned (since we have one room with exceptionally high ceilings, it seemed irresponsible to fail to take advantage of it), which means this post is late. I had a whole slew of posts for subscribers to The Athletic last week, however, including

Over at Paste, I reviewed The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, the sequel to the 2019 Kennerspiel winner, and I think a small but significant improvement over the original. At Ars Technica, I contributed twenty new entries to their Ars Technica’s ultimate board game gift guide.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter last week, with a story about being too judgmental and learning to get past it. And finally, with Christmas just three weeks away, here’s another reminder that I have two books out, The Inside Game and Smart Baseball, that would make great gifts for the readers (especially baseball fans) on your lists.

And now, the links…

Stick to baseball, 7/24/21.

I had two new posts this week for subscribers to The Athletic – an update of my ranking of the top 50 prospects in baseball, including recently-drafted players, and a look at which teams just drafted their new #1 prospects. I did include unsigned draftees on the former list, which is not my typical practice, but with the signing deadline so late this year (and maybe in all future years) I saw more value in this method than in pretending those players didn’t exist; if someone I ranked doesn’t sign, I’ll update the rankings with a new player.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Snakesss, the new social-deduction/trivia game from Phil Walker-Harding (designer of Cacao, Gizmos, Silver & Gold, and Imhotep). It’s quick and fun and appropriately silly, definitely the best party game I’ve tried so far in 2021.

On The Keith Law Show this week, I talked with Fangraphs draft analyst and prospect expert Eric Longenhagen about this year’s MLB draft. You can listen & subscribe on iTunes and Spotify as well.

And now, the links…

  • The New York Times explains how the quack Joseph Mercola, who has been spreading bogus anti-science information online for at least a quarter century, is now profiting by lying about COVID-19 vaccines. He should be de-platformed everywhere.
  • Anti-vaxxers love to claim that vaccine mandates violate “the Nuremberg Code.” They’re wrong, of course – but I’m sure they understand the power of invoking something related to the Nazi regime.
  • The Washington Post explains how the despotic ruler of Dubai and Prime Minister of the UAE used the Israeli spyware product Pegasus to track and abduct his own daughter after she attempted to flee the country.
  • PragerU, the right-wing extremist site that distributes conservative “educational” videos online, has been pushing its content into schools as well through direct outreach to teachers and parents.
  • An Alabama doctor wrote about patients begging for the vaccine as they’re dying of COVID-19. Where are the consequences for the politicians – like Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, who was quick to sign a bill that banned so-called “vaccine passports” just two months ago – who discouraged vaccinations, or the people spreading misinformation online about the vaccines? It’s easy to mock the ignorant, but someone had to put the wrong ideas in their heads.
  • It looks like Southern Republicans in power are belatedly getting religion on vaccines, as the threat of an unvaccinated South begins to undermine any progress we’ve made against COVID-19.
  • The great Dr. Peter Hotez explains the triple-headed monster that President Biden and all pro-vaccination efforts face – disinformation groups, the money that funds them, and state actors like Russia that help spread anti-vaccine nonsense.
  • A Trump-supporting vaccine denialist in Massachusetts died of COVID-19 last week.
  • Coal miners in Alabama have been on strike for over three months, seeking better pay and improved safety conditions. Why has there been no media coverage of it?
  • This may be an unpopular take, but I do not see the point of putting the couple whose gender-reveal party sparked a deadly wildfire in prison. It’s not going to undo any damage, it’s not going to bring the firefighter who lost his life trying to stop the fire back, and I don’t think it’s going to deter future idiots from doing the same thing any more than massive fines would. It’s a twisted sort of revenge, and just means the state has to incur the cost of keeping the couple in prison (if they’re convicted and sentenced).
  • A fundamendalist Christian church in Ireland with a history of spreading anti-Semitic views (e.g., that Jews are manipulating the stock market, and that Jews started the COVID-19 pandemic) has used an Irish law to have one of their critics arrested on charges of ‘inciting hate’ against them. Yes, a hate group is using a law designed to stop hate crimes to silence one of their critics.