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Snake Diggity

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Everything posted by Snake Diggity

  1. The farm is below average, not terrible as those records would indicate. Theyve had to raid the AAA pitching staff more than normal, and that staff was already decimated by injuries and underperformance. Their lineup is deep enough. The AA roster is fine. Very deep lineup; Gilbert, Barber, Corona, Loperfido, Desenzo, and Daniels all have loud tools and have a chance to be good big leaguers. The pitching staff lacks ToR SP but has a couple solid BoR guys. The lower levels is really where you see the lack of depth, mostly from missing draft picks. But that should get fixed after they add 20 guys from the draft and pull up a few international studs from the complex. Depending on their deadline approach and how the rest of the draft plays out, I expect their farm to be solidly average heading into the offseason. I do wish they’d done a better job of stacking the rosters such that they’d had better records, since I do think a winning culture does have a material impact on the big league club. Wolforth is a driveline guy who was signed as a minor league fa for his ability to work with pitchers. He’s essentially the minor league Maldonado. As I noted above, the Hooks have 5-6 hitters who could be very good big leaguers. Their weakness is rotation depth after Kouba, Gordon, and Robaina.
  2. My current weather app forecast showing high of 101+ every day for the next 10 days. FML.
  3. The tandem system has been a great idea because it manages workloads and allows the org to develop more prospects as starters; JP France and Cristian Javier likely would have been developed as pure RP otherwise. I do think that it probably makes sense for AAA to be on a more normal 6 man rotation with 2-4 RP throwing multiple innings per appearance, so that their best SP prospects (and the ones who are likely to be in Houston in short order) are stretched out to 120+ ip/season prior to reaching the majors.
  4. Sykora, Witt, Gordon…pretty, pretty good weekend rotation.
  5. Deadline needs: 1. lefty hitting everyday OF (ok if it’s a rental) 2. SP capable of starting a playoff game (ok if it’s a rental) 3. High leverage RP (needs to be controlled beyond this season) To get those holes filled, the Astros can offer: an extra everyday caliber OF (Meyers, McCormick, or Julks), a extra BoR SP (Bielak, Blanco, Urquidy, or France), a solid group of 2nd/3rd tier prospects (Melton, Lee, Arrighetti, Loperfido, etc.), and some payroll flexibility. Even in a sellers’ market they should be able to get what they need, without trading away any of their core players or their top prospect (Gilbert).
  6. Not much in there. If you’re on an iPhone you can click the link and switch safari to “reader” mode (upper left corner) and it’ll give it to you.
  7. I can’t believe he made it so you have to be logged in to even view a tweet. What a fucking idiot.
  8. They are lies, but they’re not insane. Sane lies are how the GOP has won any national election in the last 50 years.
  9. Yeah, but I think combining the right anger with attacking Trump is also a losing strategy. (Also, Christie is a proven loser so he is not a viable candidate.). Had DeSantis or Haley come out of the gate focusing on how angry they are about the deficit and fentanyl and the border while ignoring Trump/wokeness/election fraud, I think that would have been a winning play. You have to avoid completely alienating Trump’s base until after the primary.
  10. Thinking about how badly DeSantis has fucked up his chance to win the GOP nom and how no one has been even remotely close to unseating Trump despite Trump being twice indicted and on track to be convicted, with polling numbers showing the majority of Republicans ready to move on from him. For some reason he thought he had to out-Trump Trump which to me was an obvious loser move. My current theory is that GOP voters demand someone “tough”. To them, tough means angry. (In reality I think they actually interpret fear as toughness.) Can a GOP candidate come across as tough without saying a bunch of insane lies? Why isn’t there someone who is showing anger about the deficit and the border and fentanyl without spouting stupid bullshit about election fraud and wokeness?
  11. This roster fucks. Deep. Size. Athleticism. Experience. Inside scorers. Outside scorers. Inside defenders. This roster has no concrete limitations.
  12. There is no such thing as water availability issues. There may be water transportation and water treatment/processing cost issues. But there’s more than enough water. Desal and wastewater reuse can solve any water availability issues. It just has to be needed enough to justify the cost.
  13. “Profit recession”. LoL, can’t wait to see the layoff and pay freeze announcements citing that as the reason.
  14. Was down in port an all weekend, it’s amazing the difference between 90 with a breeze and 105 with no breeze. On the way back to Austin this afternoon the car was reading 107. This shit is unbelievable.
  15. Long term growth is going to be in places that have plenty of the 3 W’s: water, weather, and women. Texas is only gonna have 1 of those.
  16. They’re gonna go 10-5 and win 8 of the last 9.
  17. I think it’s a loss of command mixed with some bad luck (his xERA is 2 runs lower than his era). His velocity is there. His k/bb rates are there. His hr rate is almost 4x what it was last season and his babip is 145 pts higher than last season. So even though his stuff is the same, he’s leaving balls where they get punished, and those hard hit balls are leaving the yard and finding holes more than normal. His 4 seamer is what’s gotten rocked the worst and it looks like he’s left it in the zone way more than last season. Given his contract and the fact that his velocity is there, this is on the pitching coaches to fix. I think he needs to throw his 4 seamer less and his sinker more, and he needs to be used only in extremely low leverage until he gets right.
  18. Getting a solid rain. Feels downright cool right now. Shit is crazy.
  19. RF Dirden (he is finally showing life in AAA) CF Dubon LF Diaz
  20. Man this is really really bad.
  21. I would imagine the extreme outcomes (depressions, booms) for stock prices are probably less likely than would have been estimated 20+ years ago. There’ve been pretty clearly demonstrated tools for preventing calamity, but I also think there’s a lot of things working against the probability of the highest end outcomes. I’m not sure how that should affect people’s risk assessment or expected overall returns.
  22. It depends on the market. There’s still 7-8 teams whose deadline approach is tbd, and what happens with them will set the market, especially for SP. As things stand I agree the price of a SP4 like Giolito will be too high to make sense for Houston. Same thing for a bat like Bellinger (who as of now is unlikely to even be available). I do think the RP market will be ok, because the teams already committed to selling each have 2-3 arms that teams will be interested in, and because buying teams evaluate RP so differently. But if 3-4 teams out of the Cardinals, Mariners, Red Sox, Mets, Cubs, Pirates, Padres, and Phillies decide to sell, the SP and rental bat markets will loosen up at which point it’ll make more sense for Houston to make those moves.
  23. Yep very weird. 70% chance of rain, 101 degrees. Wtf. I went outside 4 times today for about 10 minutes each time. I don’t recall ever feeling that hot in that short of a time. What I felt today easily felt as hot as anything I ever felt in the summer I spent in rural southern Iraq. This is fuckin bullshit and it needs to stop. (It’s not gonna stop, cause blastfurnace.)
  24. Deadline shopping list: 1. SP4 2. Above average bat capable of playing 1B/LF (preferably LH) 3. High leverage RP All 3 can be rentals and it might actually be better if they are. Next year’s rotation could be full with Framber, Brown, Javier, France, Urquidy, and possibly Garcia/McCullers. Plus both Bielak and Whitley will be out of options. If they think Gilbert will be ready then the bat they get should also probably be a rental. I wouldn’t want to give up any of their top prospects so I think they should shop in the 2nd and 3rd tier of the trade market. More than outside help, they just need their existing roster to get healthy and produce.
  25. Disagree. There’s definitely a gap. The few guys with high ceilings who started the season in AAA (Dirden, Leon, Perez, Lee) have disappointed. Same for the SP, as Whitley, Murray, Tamarez, Dubin, and Solis haven’t pitched well. But there have been several guys break out who are now in AA. On the position player side, Gilbert, Barber, Corona, Dezenzo, and Loperfido all have ceilings to be above average or even star players. And Kouba, Gordon, and Arrighetti have all looked great on the mound. They are all just another 3/4+ of a season away. But Houston’s current problem isn’t the farm. It’s bad luck with injuries (3 SP plus significant injuries to Altuve, Alvarez, and Brantley, 3 of their top 5 hitters), slumps (Bregman, Abreu, Montero), and poor lineup construction (Julks and Maldonado playing every day over better hitters).
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