Snake Diggity

Rounds 18-20 are usually when teams will take a guy in the off chance he changes his mind about his asking price, or as insurance a overslot guy they previously chose not signing. Witt should be safe to expect back to Texas.

Man we all got those, you’re probably doing a lot better than most. Like Too Short said, think positive everything else will flow. Gettin it.

Swap Belyeu in for Brown, doesn’t really change much, although I am a big fan of Brown. If he’s moving on I really hope he gives pro ball a shot.

Getting Witt and LBJ back is HUGE. Borba and Gasparino is big too. Been awhile since we’ve had this kind of ceiling on both sides of the ball. Guillemette and Porter Brown are the 2 unknowns at this point. 1B Thomas 3B Powell DH Borba C Guillemette* RF Brown* CF Cummings SS Flores LF Gasparino 2B O’Dowd Bench: Belyeu, Galvan, Duplantier, Sweeney, Sanders, Kennedy, Ardoin, O’Hara Im not banking on Witt though until after tomorrow. Lots of teams take guys in the 11th and offer them $1M+.

Can Powell play 2B?

Teams don’t usually draft someone in the top 10 rounds unless they’re really sure they can reach a deal. If they’re going to take a chance on a guy they’re not sure will sign, it’s usually on day 3 and most often in the last few round (18-20). Any Horns drafted today are very very likely gone.

Ok, so what is the best possible roster that is still in play? Something like: C Galvan, Sanders IF Thomas, Powell, Flores, O’Dowd, Borba, Duplantier, O’Hara, Sweeney, Ardoin, Kennedy OF Cummings, Campbell, Brown, Belyeu, Gasparino SP Witt, Gordon, Hurley, Sthele, Harrison RP Duplantier, Boehm, Tumis, Morris, Tole, Shaw, Whitehead, others Thats a stacked roster.

Erin Hogan, Craig Way, and Rob Babers should have a place in local sports radio. But otherwise everything else on The Horn was trash. I too am clueless about the economics of radio but sure seems like there’s a market for the product of 4-6 hrs/day of local sports talk radio broadcast over FM in Austin, plus obviously a huge market for FM broadcast of UT football, basketball, and baseball games.

Of course you never know what deals teams have worked out, but only 4 teams took players in the 1st round who appeared to be overdrafts that would sign for well under slot to enable their team to take an overslot player later: Cleveland, Dodgers, Astros, and Angels. Look for those teams to take one of the remaining top HS guys sometime in rounds 3-11. We shouldn’t start thinking Sykora will come to Texas until he is still not drafted when round 11 is complete.

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.

My current weather app forecast showing high of 101+ every day for the next 10 days. FML.

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.

Sykora, Witt, Gordon…pretty, pretty good weekend rotation.

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).

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.

I can’t believe he made it so you have to be logged in to even view a tweet. What a fucking idiot.

They are lies, but they’re not insane. Sane lies are how the GOP has won any national election in the last 50 years.

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.

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?

This roster fucks. Deep. Size. Athleticism. Experience. Inside scorers. Outside scorers. Inside defenders. This roster has no concrete limitations.

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.

“Profit recession”. LoL, can’t wait to see the layoff and pay freeze announcements citing that as the reason.

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.

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.

They’re gonna go 10-5 and win 8 of the last 9.