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LCHorn

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Everything posted by LCHorn

  1. @Wulaw Horn has stronger feelings about him than I do; I'm mostly interested in upgrading over a comfort hire. Dusty had gotten independent in ways that defied the needed mind meld between GM and field manager; Espada promised to be a team player and had been in the org for five years so had familiarity with personnel. I didn't mind giving him a shot but he's a caretaker and we're not good enough to get by with that anymore.
  2. I’m relying on what Bobby or Gerry wrote previously (or misremembering), but I believe it was said we were willing to match the NIL commitment back when he committed.
  3. Re: Bochy, I’ll add that dumping Espada and hiring Bochy is exactly the kind of splash off-season move that Crane appears to get excited about (and possibly overruling his GM):
  4. This is silly: Bochy is going into the HOF once he’s eligible and I’ll be shocked if a fired Espada ever gets higher than bench coach again. Correa has two priorities-getting paid and winning. Organizing an affirmative action program for MLB management is going to be pretty low on the list.
  5. They are essential but presumably will be lightly staffed as unpaid TSA workers stage a sick-out. More troubling is the same action undergone by the air traffic controllers.
  6. Utilizing government agencies as propaganda delivery needs to be high on the list of corrupt practices addressed by a future Dem leadership. Right now, GOP house members are happy to hide behind the Senate because they don’t have enough votes for cloture. Once the GOP majority in the Senate eliminates the filibuster you’ll see shit in the fan in the House.
  7. Not to change the subject from unruly cyclists, but I would be happy to fork over $2k, $3k annually for a BART type rail line. I’m just confounded we can’t seem to build that kind of thing here.
  8. All three of these are obvious upgrades on a Dusty-esque year-to-year, let’s see how it goes contract. If Espada gets fired I’m going to particular enjoy the carnage in the Chandler Rome comment section as the general opinion there is he’s MOY. The Athletic comments are the absolute dumbest group of posters outside of every SEC school that isn’t us.
  9. I think that was just happenstance and/or management futility. Most mature, good teams end up being stars and scrubs, even before the CBT, just because owners end up holding the line somewhere on payroll. The author (really dating myself, but it was probably Gary Huckabay) was commenting on how teams like the Pirates (and then Royals) never commit to one strategy or another and end up signing mid-tier free agents so they can finish 3rd in the AL Central. You really don’t see that as much in the era of broadly adopted analytics even with minimum payroll requirements. Regardless, Crane/Brown need to get creative on the margins because there’s not a lot of payroll flexibility outside of maybe moving Walker or someone else that retains upside.
  10. First time for me, no kids. Spouse has already seen all top attractions so things like the Eiffel are a check in the box (for me) so that we’ve done it together. Plus, I’ve always wanted to kiss deeply with a girl on the tower and I doubt my wife will approve if it’s not her.
  11. That’s why I’m trying to not over-schedule šŸ˜€
  12. Stars and scrubs is in reference to an old Baseball Prospectus team building article and it’s more in reference to how to best optimize payroll across the team than as a judge of talent. We have a fairly mature roster with the veterans getting paid market, a few cost controlled assets with potentially large surplus values like Brown or maybe Smith, and a few JAG’s that need to be replaced once they get expensive (Dubon, Meyers). Dubon is probably worth it on a team with a lower payroll or less established veterans in the infield.
  13. So it looks like we’re going to spend 6 days in Paris broken up by three days in Aix. Have Septime booked for dinner, Eiffel Tower, Louvre, and Musee D’ Orsay booked (Notre Dame doesn’t accept reserves until two days before). Any other must-do’s that aren’t time consuming? Our hotels are in Le Marais if that matters.
  14. Haha, David Brooks being forced to face up to the emptiness of his understanding for anyone outside his bubble is one of my favorite NYT drinking games.
  15. Counterpoint-the Dems have been focused on policy solutions since 1992 designed to benefit Americans but blame GOP recalcitrance for a failure to implement popular programs about which they themselves are quietly unsupportive. I’m eager for them to pass a billionaire tax just because, and so are a lot of people. I don’t care if it’s unsound economically, or doesn’t really raise much in revenue. It’s simply good optics and the Dems need to remind voters which side of the fence they’re on. I’m avidly watching the potential candidates in 2028 try out different messages and I’m going to support whichever one gets their head around the idea that Trump has broken the norms sufficiently that preserving limits to power simply out custom is stupid.
  16. I actually think (and it’s very context dependent) this might be an area where I don’t trade.* There are 500 AB’s that went to Sanchez, Trammel, Hummel, and McCormick that were wildly below replacement level on offense. I know those weren’t all projected starters back in April, but Brown needs to have better depth in AAA for the inevitable injuries. Maybe that’s Melton once it’s realized he’s not starter material on a good team. *also, I don’t think the Leon’s of the world are worth anything.
  17. Cristian Javier’s performance in 2025 has all kinds of small sample size noise (big red flag, for example, is a HR rate half his career average). Hell, counting on him to even be healthy going into a 2026 playoff series is a riskier bet than I want Crane/Brown faced with. I don’t think you can rely on him, either. Forget health, his performance when presumably healthy in 2025 shouldn’t make anyone feel comfortable as a rotation piece. I get the general optimism because you can find things to like about these two (and Blubaugh), but each requires betting on a big performance jump in 2026. I know you know they don’t ALL have to hit, but it’s also a bad way to build a team. We’re also avoiding taking about a Brown regression and that’s certainly in the range of normal outcomes, too.
  18. I’ll add one more thought in regards to prospects for MLB consolidation trades-we tend to overrate our own around here, some of it supported by the diamonds in the rough that keep turning up and Brown’s bonafides as a scout. That said, I disagree with folks like @Snake Diggity that our farm is just a few stolen 1st round draft picks from being a mid-tier farm. Almost everyone with any prospect sheen has major warts, too, and I think now is probably a good time to not be over precious about trading away youth. I really don’t see anyone below the MLB roster that should be considered untouchable.
  19. On this point, I’m struggling with why Schumer and Jeffries don’t re-orient around it aside from the fact that they are captured by the Dem billionaire donor class. The author kind of makes the same point, that you need to make a Bernie if you don’t have one. Everyoneā€˜s favorite whipping boy Ezra Klein made the point that if Schumer and Jeffries can’t make a pivot* then the Dems need to find new leadership. *to be fair, he was referring to using a shutdown threat for real leverage against Trump. I think his bigger point, however, is Schumer and Jeffries aren’t good war time consiglieres.
  20. Good Opinion piece in The NY Times today-ā€œEat The Rich Is the Only Answerā€ TL:DR, Dems need to win back first priority economic voters and the way to do that is tackle issues like income inequality and the injustice of rich Americans enjoying too much of the bounty of US economic production. I know we’ve talked about it here plenty, but I continue to be befuddled that it doesn’t get more play because it’s very much the simple solution to breaking apart the MAGA coalition.
  21. I don’t want to re-sign him, either, but more than replacing his innings, we need a pitcher besides Brown that can reasonably expect to start in the playoffs. That usually means someone who can miss bats, and it’s why the Dodgers have been filling up their roster with high strikeout pitchers while taking a chance on the injury prone. I’d kick the tires on Chris Sale, heck maybe even see if the Braves want to get out of that Spencer Strider contract. Dylan Cease is going to want all the money but I’d inquire there, too. Crediting @Wulaw Horn on this, but he wrote a year or so ago that the window was open as long as the Astros could turn out cheap starters, but unfortunately injuries have made all our in-house options unreliable bets for 2026.
  22. Gemini says 1 WAR in 2025 is worth about $8m, and Dubon is about to get a bump in his last year of arbitration eligibility. That said, he’s 31 and most of that is for defense and ideally he’s getting no more than 300 AB’s (if that) as a infield sub. That makes me think there’s going to be little demand for him in the market at $7m, and even at that amount you maybe get a lotto ticket back as a prospect. Urias, for example, is basically Dubon at half the cost and his market (based on trade value) was a 19th round 2024 draftee pitcher in low A. Anyway, I think it’s worth pointing that out because the Astros are very much as stars and scrubs team at the moment and there’s a number of Dubons that need to go the moment they cost more than a penny.
  23. Sanchez is actually an interesting comp for Jacob Melton. Both were athlete over skills prospects with platoon handicaps. I will be very surprised is Sanchez has much trade value going to his third team after that second half. I think it’s more necessary to upgrade there than at second. Non-tender or trade Dubon, let Uriah play second and give Matthews a chance to either beat him out or see if he can play OF.
  24. Unfortunately that’s pretty emblematic of the Texas Dems; they ā€œwork their asses offā€ so should be forgiven for failure. Or do you think that the Dems best path to power demands that someone, whose main credential is affiliation with a union representing less than 1% of Texans be listed among the top leaders of the party?
  25. I’m sure we have the same goals for making sure a certain fidelity to truth accompanies the news, I’m just trying to correct this conclusion that media consolidation is to blame. It’s a little like blaming horse and buggy manufacturer consolidation when the internal combustion auto has become popular. Who cares if there’s only two options for yesterday’s tech? In large part social media is shaping popular consensus, the national agenda, and it’s where most marketing dollars are going, political and otherwise. If you’re worried about Disney pulling Kimmel off the air and that depriving his 1.6 million viewers of his anti-Trump views, you’re missing Theo Vonn’s 4.6 million YouTube subscribers and many more listeners of his podcast. Also, the reason I’m belaboring this is because it’s probably better than 50% of the reason the Dems lost in 2024. They have been habituated to mainstream media and that’s not where the majority of media consumers are anymore.
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