Storm the Field

Dewpoints in the 40's and 50's for most of the week ahead. Gonna feel much, much better despite only being a couple of degrees cooler during the afternoons. Get out there and enjoy the mornings and evenings.

Deep cut here.

Welp, guess I'm gonna get another Sunday Swim in this evening. Heat index of 94 at 5 pm. Every weekend for about a month now, I think "might as well hop in the pool one last time this year." Dumbass. If the forecast is to believed, one more record-tying day tomorrow and then we get a stretch of uncannily identical days from Tuesday until late next week. Trapped in some bizarre purgatory between Summer and Fall.

Blastfurnace '24 not so much shutting down as getting dragged out kicking and spitting. Always fun to see the words "Record Breaking Heat" on the forecast for tomorrow and Monday.

Yep. It was noticeably more swampy than it has been in a while today. Not ideal for heading out to the Greek Festival this evening. Gonna be drenched in sweat when I get home. Being the first weekend of October, it's always a crap shoot on the weather, but rarely ever still dealing with heat indices in the mid-90's. 3 more days of this shit, then looks like we get an extended stretch of low humidity, highs topping out at 90, and lows back to the low 60's.

If I'm going out to splurge on a fine steak dinner, I definitely want one that comes with a side of corn niblets poured straight out of a tin can. Oh, and I won't be needing to see the wine list, just be sure to keep the blue powerades coming!

We've got some Spypoint cellular cameras set up our place. Academy puts them on sale pretty often and they're decent photo quality. The app is easy to use and comes with 100 pictures/month free per camera. Subscriptions range from $5/month for 250 pictures to $15/month for unlimited. I just stick with the free plan and only have it set to take pictures for about 90 minutes following the feeder going off. Also have it set to low sensitivity. Otherwise you get a bunch of random daytime pictures of nothing.

Avert your eyes WULAW:

The throwing arm on the feeder had gotten jammed up with some rust and hadn't been feeding for a while. Got it oiled up and moving again. Only been 3 days and they've already started showing up religiously at sundown. Doe passed by about 10 minutes before they arrived but quickly nope'd out, presumably upon hearing these turds rumbling that direction to gorge their fat asses.

Jake gets 1 more shot, so long Chas? IMO, cut bait with Chas. Trade/sign a starting CF and let Jake be the 4th OF.

Clouds and humidity return to the Houston area tomorrow and Saturday. Not a particularly nice weekend ahead, but solid improvement starting Tuesday. Looks like we'll be done with lows not making it out of the 70's for a while after this week.

Unfortunately, Pressly's option vested by making enough appearances this year. The $2M buyout is no longer an option. We're stuck with paying him $14M next year, and he has a no-trade clause. Hopefully they'll at least realize he's longer a reliable 8th inning setup guy. From parsing the quotes at today's post-exit presser: 1. They know we need to upgrade 1B and CF and likely replace Bregman at 3B. Sounds like they intend to fill one or two of those spots cheaply with players currently in the system in order to have flexibility to spend some $$ for a FA at the other. Brice Matthews and Jacob Melton's names were specifically mentioned as players that could spend time in Houston this year. I'd assume we see Dezenzo at 3B to start the year. Guessing maybe we sign a veteran FA at 1B to take over starting duties and demote Singleton to backup and hopefully trade for a CF. 2. Hitting coaches may or may not be on the hot seat. Both Espada and Dana talked about how we "got away from our identity" at the plate by being too aggressive and not drawing out longer AB's. We ended up 27th in BB taken and 29th in pitches per plate appearance. Despite being a Top 3 team in terms of getting hits, we were middle of the pack when it came to scoring runs. Far too many innings this season started with a leadoff single/double and then the inning would be over 6-7 pitches later without the runner advancing.

Whoops.

Bullpen obviously didn't work out as intended. I'm sure a lot of us (me included) thought that Pressly/Abreu/Hader was gonna be a lockdown back end. Figured we'd rarely ever drop games if leading late. All 3 recorded ERA over 3.0 and took a combined 16 losses. OF was a mess. Jake and Chas combined for a whopping 1.1 WAR over 700+ AB. Our one good true OF started out playing like an MVP and then a freak injury cost him the entire Summer, and he's still obviously not back up to snuff. We had to give several hundred additional AB to cast-offs or prospects not ready for primetime (Cabbage, Gamel, Heyward, Loperfido, Leon). Yordan's knee decided to crap out just in time for the playoffs. 1B was such a black hole for the first 2 months of the season that Singleton filling in with 0.3 WAR and .700 OPS was a massive upgrade. Starting pitching was really the one surprise strength, given how many innings had to be pitched by rookies, and the fact that 4 or 5 guys we figured would feature heavily either barely contributed or missed the entire season. Got a lot of work to do in the offseason. Get a real 1B, get a real CF, upgrade 1B, replace Bregman somehow.

Yeah, it sucks. Will be really weird not having 2-3 weeks of stressful nights pacing around my living room, refreshing Twitter. My liver will enjoy the break. I gotta dig up my post from a few weeks back, but this was a disappointing, yet fitting end to a very mediocre season. We only made the playoffs due to being in a shit division. Aging, injury-riddled team that was more frustrating than fun to watch. Zero grand slams, terrible with bases loaded, terrible in extra innings, dropped something like 30 1-run games. Just not a very exciting on-the-field product and a poor imitation of the quality we got spoiled watching for most of the past decade.

Looks like about 5 more days remaining in this stretch of NeverEnding September until October finally shows up. Though yesterday's voyage into the high 90's was likely the highest temperature we'll see this week, we'll only drop down 2-3 degrees today through Friday. Weak front looks to make its way down late Monday. Highs next week stay around 90 but lows drop back down to the low 60's.

Dead Space Remake is one of the free games for October if you have PS Plus.

Those bastards at McDonalds finally got to him!

Average high for Austin on 10/1 is 87. All time high is 99. It's not unprecedented, but a high of 96+ on 10/1 occurs very rarely. This isn't "same old shit, it's hot in Texas until December." This is prototypical La Nina. Not what I want, but it's likely to be a warm and dry Fall/Winter.

Don't get me started on all the dumbasses bitching about "maybe if these people were in Ukraine rather than NC they'd get help." I'm sure the folks in Asheville have a lot of use for HIMARS launchers, a couple hundred thousand artillery shells, and mothballed F-16s right now.