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LCHorn

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Everything posted by LCHorn

  1. I agree that’s a presumption that gets repeated by sports media, and it seems intuitively true. Fangraphs (I think) did an article last season on Justin Turner and made a case that his bat speed was shit but he made it work because he was so selective about which pitches to swing at. At the time I read it, Bregman was off to his usual slow start and I wondered if the same thing was happening to him (let’s recall that the exit velocity stats have never favored Bregman and I presume it’s partially bat speed driven). If you look at Springers stats, the eye is holding up and if his contact could improve enough to raise his batting average by 50 points he’s probably a fringe all-star (I’m not equipped to evaluate defense and if he’s fallen off a lot there I wouldn’t opine).
  2. Oh yeah, of course. The question is whether there’s a way to obtain discounted Wins taking older players and using them in unusual ways. A more common variation of this would be moving a mediocre starter to closer where they can pump velocity better in short stints. We haven’t really seen this tried much with position players, maybe because it doesn’t work, rosters are too short, etc. If I was trying to dream up how it might look, however, I would start with someone who was a terrific athlete like Springer and/ or someone who can’t stay healthy like Brantley. I don’t follow the Dodgers much but I think they attempted a variation of this idea with Justin Turner. I can’t recall the Baseball Prospectus writer whose dad was an orthopedic surgeon or something and he would write about injuries mostly, but they’ve been promoting the idea that health is the sixth tool for 20 years.
  3. I’ve actually thought this might be perhaps a little unexplored Moneyball frontier (declining players who might be more useful in different circumstances). It very well might be that playing Springer 3 days a week gets you 350 at bats of the best Springer and keeps him healthy, for example, and that outperforms a grab bat of AAAA superstars that the Astros might otherwise run out in right if Tucker is gone.
  4. I’m talking about Tarrytown and similarly priced ranged Austin buyers. Three years ago there was tons of people leaving elsewhere and buying in the most desirable neighborhoods in town. That’s stopped or suffered such a deterioration in demand that it’s impossible to ignore. I’m not sure how I feel about Austin itself-there’s a very real affordability problem living here that is remedied simply by moving a few miles down the road. People on the Reddit “AustinFood” group, for example, aren’t talking about how they can get good meals for cheap anymore, they are talking about how it was cheaper to eat in NYC. Austin MSA will be fine but that’s not helping AISD fund their campuses with declining enrollment.
  5. I want to echo this because I’ve made home loans to quite a few former football players. They are pretty much on their own, in fact, once their eligibility is up. Granted, the ones I’ve worked with aren’t trying to get on with Freeport McMoRan. The one exception I’ve seen is several Anglo players that parlayed their (presumably) football derived connections to get their foot in the door in commercial property and/or development.
  6. Hah! You and I both know trying to run a business losing money today because you *think* you might make more tomorrow sucks. I don’t begrudge Crane wanting to break-even or even make a profit. He needs a war time consigliere, though. I guess we’ll see if Brown can be that.
  7. Same, I never would have thought “As goes Gossett, goes Tarrytown.” I don’t want to say this out loud and wish it into existence, but I do think affordability at all price points, along with the loss of luster of Austin post-pandemic is not great for future growth. I think some of it is that is tied to Texas in general; you just can’t be this unfriendly (to women, to minorities, to just application of the law) and not have that impact immigration, particularly among high wage earners with the most employment mobility. I don’t think our addition of Instagram celebrities and life coaches makes up for it, either. Anyway, wanted to add that after I blamed rates and admit that not’s all of it.
  8. Looks like the Red Sox kept their best prospects back.
  9. The point is championships. I care who is in the jersey but not the expense of winning. I don’t really care what the budget is as long as it’s spent smartly. Tampa usually runs a payroll 25% of the Astros and wins a lot of games (and would be really good if their generational talent signed to a team friendly decade-long contract wasn’t a pedophile).
  10. Lest this become a thing, there’s no connection to the Wounded Warrior Project and Hegseth. Probably we can dig up some controversy on the former but I’ve also seen lots of actual charity from their fundraising for San Antonio veterans receiving treatment at BAMC. It’s pretty sad that a multiple amputee needs to have a charitable organization pay for remodeling his house so that he can move about in a wheel chair, rather than VA money, but that’s the reality.
  11. Anecdotal, but I know some small builders who aren't able to move their $2.5m+ West Lake homes, either. All of this is rate related and property tax related.
  12. You raise a good point and here's some corroboration. I was exchanging emails the other day with one of the commercial banks to whom we send borrowers for interim constructions loans and they are tapped out. Not because they've got too many home owner borrowers, but because they are also a provider of loans to smaller builders in Austin and they aren't able to move their inventory (bear in mind these are predominately infill spec builds $1.5m+ zips like 78704, so not your usual DR Horton buyer). The bank doesn't want the houses so they renew the loans.
  13. All that money and can’t afford to pay someone to tell him the truth about his hair….
  14. No thanks, he’s had a good start to the season but hasn’t had his inevitable 20-30 games of injury and he’s not the floor spacer a Green replacement needs to be. Keep holding out for Booker and a Suns collapse in ‘26 or the Pacers get dumb and want to move on from Halliburton.
  15. If you have money for down-payment on an investment property, maybe you have sufficient funds to make a few hard money loans? Also, if you hate dealing with tenants that much you can hire a property manager (I’m sure you’ve considered that already).
  16. Take it fwiw, but one of the comments on the Deadline trailer announcement claimed to have worked on the film and stated that’s not him.
  17. Turning it off after about two minutes and the third exaggeration. First off, fuck DR Horton. Second, when a builder includes incentives it’s not taking less in profit-it’s built into the sales price. Considering the video appears to have been published three weeks ago and DR Horton’s stock is about the same as then ($157 a share!), it doesn’t look like the market is expecting some cataclysmic result.
  18. Matt Shaw and Owen Caissie are your Bregman and Tucker replacements at minor league minimum and both are ready. Two top 50 mlb prospects and a few lotto tickets is the minimum I’d settle for. They can keep Bellinger or we take him for a bigger package in exchange for paying his stupid contract.
  19. What’s worse, is he ended up forgoing building his VP’s profile by making her his proxy. As long as the Democratic brand is going to be toxically attached to the social cause de jure, mainstream Democrats will need to run against it (Obama and Clinton both did this successfully). Another way to look at this is that the Dems have been very successful pulling the country left on a host of social issues, but it’s embittered a significant part of the electorate that would otherwise find common cause with them, particularly on economic issues.
  20. I liked your trade for Correa idea on Clutchfans (I'm with @Wulaw Horn that the Astros are out of trade pieces that don't hurt elsewhere, with one exception--spend Crane's money). I think we're all in agreement that the stars aligned in the building of the team; it's just historically unusual to to put together that much talent, much of it lowly touted, and have it coalesce into this much success in a modern era. I also think that's supportive of skepticism that it can be done again via hitting on draft picks and international free agent signings. If Brown adds value, it's likely in finding guys overlooked but those also don't tend to turn into 4.4 WAR players (which is what we lose, at least on the short-term, if Bregman bounces). They also take more time to develop and that's not aligned with our current window of contention. It's also a good argument for either going all in in '25 or trading Tucker and Valdez in support of continuing the run through when Alvarez gets expensive and/or becomes a Dodger again (you may have been considerate of the latter with your Correa suggestion since the contracts line up). I don't think you can plan on both.
  21. What you hit on is the evolving nature of NCAA football free agency and presumably it comes to mirror pro sports. At some point the teams will wise up and figure out the template of what works (i.e., proportionally the money needs to go to who can play early or can offer additional value, like a back-up QB willing to sit for a couple of years in the right circumstance). In the interim, a Yankees like ability to eat bad deals seems more valuable than smart deployment of money because there's too many parties (Aggie/Missouri) willing to be dumb with money.
  22. I keep finding this kind of thing curious. Missouri presumably gave him a big commitment last year. He’s also a local-why is there such a quick divorce?
  23. I have a suspicion that Crane will allow Tucker and Alvarez to walk with temporary fill-ins that effectively ends the championship competitiveness of the team during the Altuve/Alvarez/cheap starters window. The team will be stuck in mediocrity purgatory for several years until Altuve retires, Yordan departs, and then it can finally bottom out. Under Luhnow, you had guys like Elias and Megdal that would get on interviews with the baseball analytics community and they’d talk about this kind of thing-maybe it’s a little like fighting the baseball version of entropy but it’s secondary challenge to winning a championship (now that we know we can build it, can we keep it going forever). As chatty as Brown is, there’s no concept of a plan they seem to promote besides Crane’s stated aversion to long-term payroll obligations. And maybe all of that will prove correct or sensible in time. Without the benefit of that, it looks like Crane has internalized best practices that Luhnow 2019 might have supported but don’t make sense in 2025.
  24. No, they are going to find him out in a cave living like Jeremiah Johnson hunting the infected. I think the island where 28 days later ends and this film appears to begin is a colony he and black Moneypenny started but he left/disappeared from years ago. Maybe he’s even Kick-Ass’s dad. One other prediction is that Garland explores the idea introduced in 28 weeks that some people are immune from the virus but become carriers.
  25. Interesting that Cilian Murphy isn’t highlighted in the trailer. I wonder if they are using him for a cameo or a second act surprise.
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