LCHorn

Leon, Loperfido, Corona, and that doesn’t include top prospect Melton. Most likely none of them are future all-stars but might have Chas McCormick level potential. In a lost season I’d probably give Trey Cabbage 200 at bats.

It appears that Soto is turning into an Astro killer on a level with Jim Edmonds.

I would trade Tucker and Valdez, at a minimum. There’s not really any reason to expect ‘25 to be much different than ‘24 with the same players, and your chances of a quick rebuild are far higher with the prospects or younger major leaguers. Plus, on paper we have outfielders ready for a tryout in the bigs and can afford to lose a starter (and Valdez as an immortal lefty will likely make me eat crow but he’s not the kind of young arm I’d want to commit long dollars to).

This is a good recap. You can kind of see the strategy of taking developmental candidates against the most polished/expensive guys that A&M coveted. You can argue that the developmental takes could have been better but it also might too early to pass judgement. I think if you get one more DT in 2022 and Bo doesn’t leave for LSU (and therefore we retain Robinson) we’d probably be back to bitching about Gideon.

All of this is also coinciding with Aggie buying up the market for two or three seasons preceding lawful NIL. We were at a pretty big disadvantage at DT, specifically, with Georgia, Bama, and LSU also willing to pay under the table when needed.

That’s just loophole exploitation, the kind of shit Luhnow popularized with the Correa draft. I just saw the Ben Dubose tweet linked to on crawfish boxes and he makes a good point-the team has really been mediocre or worse going back to last year.

I'd happily "settle" for Dave Roberts right now...

It sounds like what you're saying is that TCAD doesn't need to improve anything because taxpayers should expect their tax appraisals to be inaccurate and it's a systemic problem state-wide. I would offer that's uncharacteristic of you--I would think Bozo would see inaccuracies on both sides of present market value as problematic. If every valuation you've seen over 8 years was low, isn't that starving municipalities of revenue to which they are entitled?

I think Nixta also still has reservations for their ridiculously over priced Persian brunch (probably because $75 for three courses of Persian food and a date tart is obscene).

Another thing that was lost when Luhnow was fired--he took chances and Crane let him. Click and Brown both appear hamstrung by their backgrounds (Click by the Tampa method, Brown by the budget/Crane/customs of baseball). Luhnow was just so great at finding that balance between "my baseball people say we should do this," and "we're never going to win anything without taking risks". Whether it was signing Abreu, Hader, re-signing Montero, letting other guys walk, trading for Verlander, etc., almost all of it was common sense predictable and that doesn't cut it indefinitely. Case in point--look at the tear down and reconstruction that the Dodgers did over the off-season. That's a great example of a GM looking at the roster, record, and going "we're not winning championships doing the same thing as last year."

Personally I don’t care for any of those places (my greasy spoon Mexican diner of choice was Curra’s), but all of them are pretty crowded on a normal Sunday unless you’re really early. Mother’s Day is going to be worse… Loro is another one that doesn’t require a reserv

This-do you have a time machine? I made reservations a month ago and still didn’t get my preferred option. Your best bet is to go someplace like Paperboy or Sour Duck that either doesn’t take reservations or keep a bunch of tables available for walk-ins.

Unfortunately Paul’s lack of endorsement is only worth one vote.

Hinch is replaceable but Luhnow is one of a kind. I actually don’t like a lot of his drafting and there were trades that didn’t work out, but the logic was obvious and he was a far better strategic thinker and innovator than it appears we have on staff. I’m pretty sure he’d be pushing out guys like Tucker because you can’t let them go for compensation picks and expect to be successful. Either way, an acknowledgment that “we’ve got to be creative” would be helpful at keeping the faith with the fan base.

I get it; you’ve had an entire lifetime of men and media telling you (or implying) that you should be in control, that “real men” take control of problems, and if there’s failure a man of honor takes the blame. I remember a coach once telling me (after we did some role play), “Stop apologizing for everything.” And he was right; I would apologize for the market deterioration, that my processor sent too many emails, that we missed a deadline. Too much of that and a referral partner loses confidence. My old boss that does $60m a month (even now, in 2021 it was twice that) was very good about explaining “the why” and it worked (and I’ve copied that to lesser success). He was also very confident about his model and the value it offered to referral partners-if an agent didn’t have a good experience he’d want to know more (and he never got defensive), but he’d also do a great job of explaining the problem on his end and pivot towards a solution rather than have a pity party about the problem itself. He’d also never hesitate to make the borrower the scapegoat-unhappy agents will blame anyone but themselves and lenders are easy targets. it’s not hard to redirect that ire to the client that’s also made them sweat this paycheck.

Sure, it’s money. It’s all in the game. I will say that this is the reason my wife thinks our line of work sucks. “You do all this work for them and then they can leave you whenever they want?!?!” I said this upthread but I’ve experimented with all kinds of different scripting on the front end and none of it dissuades someone hell bent on getting the cheapest deal and willing to be ruthless to obtain it. I used to absorb a lot of this but had some mentoring that led to a far more effective approach. First, if you are clearly to blame and there’s not a scapegoat, own it. If it’s something small and you think it you can win accountability points, maybe own it. Everything else there needs to be a patsy or another party to blame. Some of that needs to be sincere, because you have your shit together and don’t make mistakes, but there’s a lot of gray in this business and you need to pass off blame if there’s multiple parties at fault or if it’s due to your inability to foresee 100,000 different outcomes. Borrower dragged their feet for two weeks upfront and that made the last three days before closing an adventure? First, you need to get the realtor on their ass in week one. Then you need to be telling the agent what you can’t guarantee anything because of the client. You’ll lose some referral partners because it got messy but that was happening anyway. What this will help with is salvaging those that want to like you and are willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.

I think all of those have their merits, and yeah, Captain America was pretty terrific and played great in the theater. Hulk was an attempt to do something different and it’s failure is probably part of why they’ve been willing to change up the character movie to movie (and to an extent, doing that also freed them up to do it with Thor). Weirdly enough, my kids seem to really like Iron Man 2 over the other two.

I figured the whole reason his agent was reported to be down there was to negotiate the buy-out.

On a personal level this was my experience, but that also that of the professional appraisers with whom consulted in advance.

I don’t want to make the claim that my personal experience is representative broadly (and I have zero knowledge of what Mackowiack might be saying pre or post election), but I do think system is flawed could use some scrutiny. And yes, TCAD is routinely making inaccurate appraisal valuations. It’s inevitable when they are automating the valuations in what’s an in exact process to begin with. A taxpayer shouldn’t need to be in my relatively privileged position in order to fight their value successfully. I actually saw the notice for that election too late but I would have thought really hard about running for one of the director positions (although it appears that those elected are pretty outstanding).

Thanks for putting me in the uncomfortable position of defending that blowhard, but what about his tweet do you disagree with? My arbitration for my 2023 valuation is Thursday and it’s been a rather unpleasant learning experience. Were I not in real estate and relatively well educated I’d be at a huge disadvantage, and would likely need to pay a third party. I know that TCAD doesn’t set the tax rates, but let’s not act like the various taxing authorities are trying to keep revenue flat in the face of rising values.

I think we, as fans, tend to overvalue our own prospects, but I can’t imagine Toronto making that deal.

Back when we had a servicing portfolio we’d allow it upon request on a conventional loan as long as you had 20% equity based on sales price or appraised value at the time of loan creation (I.e., you couldn’t use appreciation to get to 20% equity). Also, your escrow account is paying you interest, even if it’s not a lot of it.

Okay, just re-watched. I don’t know enough about film-making techniques to know why this is, but there’s something about the way this and Ahsoka were shot that puts the artifice so front and center that it makes it look amateurish.

previous trailer is superior.