Jump to content
View in the app

A better way to browse. Learn more.

Surly Horns

A full-screen app on your home screen with push notifications, badges and more.

To install this app on iOS and iPadOS
  1. Tap the Share icon in Safari
  2. Scroll the menu and tap Add to Home Screen.
  3. Tap Add in the top-right corner.
To install this app on Android
  1. Tap the 3-dot menu (⋮) in the top-right corner of the browser.
  2. Tap Add to Home screen or Install app.
  3. Confirm by tapping Install.
Football ... Basketball ... Baseball ... Other Sports ... Futbol ... 🤫995🤫 ... Gambling ... Movies & TV ... Music ... Hobbies ... Lulz ... Food & Travel ... Daily Texan ... Business & Markets ... Cloak Room ... Help ... For Sale ... Board Discussion ... Advertise... Tailgate Donations

LCHorn

Full Members
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by LCHorn

  1. I’m repeating this from upthread, but I think there’s employment anxiety that wasn’t there one or two years ago and that’s even worse than high rates.
  2. That’s true of a Texas Lt Gov but only during the legislative session. What Abbott has been able to do (and Perry before him) is make the office of governor far more powerful because of their longevity in office, ability to control state agencies, and dominance over the state GOP (particularly fundraising).
  3. LCHorn replied to blacklab's topic in Austin
    Conan’s staff is in a competition with Thundercloud to see who can get the most stoned while on the clock. I no longer complain because it’s a good reminder of old Austin.
  4. $13m, that would put us over the tax.
  5. I think the jury is still out, moreover we don't know what else was available so we need to see excess value in return than we gave up. If we just go off the Astros roster last year, we most likely make the playoffs without making that trade. As a counter-factual, we're sitting on about 4 2025 WAR from the return that's still here in 2026 and the Cubs have a comp pick. And to be clear, I'm pro-trading Tucker and Paredes's profile is the stereotypical, early 2000's Baseball Prospectus saber darling that's easy to love. I have to balance that with the fact our outfield is hot garbage. I don't think Crane would sign off on anything less than a windfall return (again, due to a lack of confidence in the GM he hired). I know you grind on this shit either here, Clutchfans, formerly Crawfish boxes, etc., and I always appreciate the effort and love to read it (so if I'm disagreeing with you it's not out of pique). That said, you just confirmed what I wrote, which is that it's too early to tell. I think the likelihood there's no one drafted in 2023 or 2024 that extends the window OR has a place on the next generation of Astros is pretty high, and that's the bar (to me) for STRONG draft.
  6. I picked them more because of their notoriety, and because @Wulaw Horn still hasn't deleted his Forrest Whitley Google alert. Maybe a good rebuttal might be "he did just trade Melton and Brito for a major league pitcher", and "Brown sold high on Loperfido and Bloss", which would be fair. My point was mainly that if you're looking at the top three minor league systems in baseball, they all have contributions from moving guys the team no longer has in their plans for prospects that hit. Qualified disagree--I think it's mostly TBD, but first round picks do a lot of heavy lifting and Brice Matthews and Janek have arguably less value today than they did when they were drafted. I think it's really hard to evaluate drafts until four, five years post-draft, but this idea that his drafts are strong in light of a lack of evidence otherwise needs to be under more scrutiny. Agree here, I think it'll be akin to an acknowledgement that the success cycle is closing and they need to cut payroll.
  7. I think there’s two issues-one, he doesn’t appear to be have any particularly talent for running the organization beyond a high level of scouting competency, and two, Crane perceives this and doesn’t trust him to do more. I think Crane liked that Luhnow was willing to slaughter some sacred cows (and since it’s baseball, there’s a lot of them), take calculated big swings, and define high level organizational competencies that would have the Astros be trendsetters and not followers. He hasn’t extended that trust to Click or Brown, so they have mostly tried to do the best with the limited amount of power they do have. I think my main complaint with Brown is that he was supposed to be one of the best scouts in MLB, but our major league scouting seems really poor (and we seem totally unable to execute trades off guys like Pedro Leon or Whitely before their prospect sheen has worn off).
  8. I think Tulum is best enjoyed by staying on the beach and trying to be on that piece of shit road as little as possible. FWIW, I must have clicked on a Tulum subreddit at some point because I see a lot of complaints about it, with particular emphasis on seaweed and policia shakedowns. When we were there someone was shot at one of the bars we had been at the previous night, and when we asked our hotel for details they said the bar owner wasn’t paying the cartel for protection.
  9. My favorite part of these is when @closetojumping writes up his rebuttal and calls out the recruiting reporters for just repeating whatever they are told by the recruits.
  10. I listened to the Chandler Rome/Fangraphs podcast yesterday and he‘s going to die on the hill that Paredes will be traded before the end of spring training. He’s pessimistic about trying to rotate Paredes through 3b, DH, and 1b to spell others and still get him 400-500 at bats (his stated reason was less about the management of it and more about it cutting against the routine that ballplayers need to perform their best). He also made the point that Brown and Espada have very little job security, and that goes beyond their short contracts-Crane appears to be unpersuaded that either is a great fit and/or irreplaceable. Putting those two together, I think part of the Paredes problem is no one offering anything that improves the 2026 Astros and they aren’t trying to keep powder dry for 2027.
  11. Caveat is that I don’t recall ever watching him play, but he was on my radar enough to check out the Nets subreddit and it appears the consensus was either a) “I can’t believe we couldn’t get anything for him” and b) “Good riddance, absolutely atrocious D and an unwillingness to expend any effort aside from scoring.”
  12. Beef Bourguignon: Frying lardons Browning 3 lbs of chuck Onions, carrots, later garlic and tomato paste Châteauneuf-du-Pape Pre-oven Sweating the mushrooms (later adding pearl onions). Incorporation Serving Recipe If you’re attempting this (using the linked recipe), brown the meat on only two sides, maybe 30 seconds each. You want to give it crust but trying to brown all sides will dry it out. I prefer to use a full pound of mushrooms, extra carrots, and put in the whole bag of pearl onions. Also, every oven is different but I’d drop the temperature to 300 and shoot for 2.5-3 hours. It’s also better on day 2, and even better on day 3.
  13. To be fair, I think the choice to give up shooting for defense (outside of draft picks) was intentional. On the draft side, they went for upside and purer scorers like Whitmore and Green didn’t work out. I’m not inclined to defend Stone, but Morey is an MBS analytics nerd, and I wouldn’t presume that to be all that more equipped to scout basketball players than a JD if I’m just hiring off resumes. I think the bigger issue is that Ime’s hand are on every roster decision and I think it’s becoming increasingly apparent that he’s not Popovich.
  14. I think it was “either/or” for Detroit, and they decided to push their chips in on 2026. They have some studs on the farm, too, so I’d expect a big deadline addition (also because I think they over performed last year and their lineup has some big holes).
  15. To be fair, I almost included the Arrested Development “it might work for us” meme in my post. I do think presumptions that there’s some greater rule book like “never intervene, it always ends up terribly” as sacrosanct is a misreading of history that overly weighs Vietnam through Afghanistan. Iran is SO much more educated than those two, Libya, Egypt. Perhaps wishful thinking on my part, but they have more in common with Soviet Bloc countries after 1989.
  16. I think reluctance as a default is sensible, but spectacular failure is the result of the last 40 years of foreign policy in regards to Iran, with the only real win the fact they've been successfully hindered in their efforts at joining the nuclear club. I'm not real big on fixed ideologies to guide decision making; sometimes you need to be a realist, sometimes a neoliberal, sometimes a liberal internationalist. Regardless of philosophy, it's become increasingly clear that 90 million Iranians are held hostage by a few million regime loyalists and there's so much more potential for success there than there ever was in Iraq or Afghanistan.
  17. For anyone that cares, The Rest is History podcast just did the fall of the Shah-1980 in a four part series that’s a lot of fun (you’ll have the bear through the ep 1 opener of a Brit doing the absolute worst Jimmy Carter impression.). Some good shit on former Austinite Charlie Beckwith, as well. Not that this is unknown to anyone that’s familiar with Iran, but they will happily negotiate indefinitely if you let them and it’s worked out well for them for forty years. If this was the Harris presidency I’d be fully onboard with instigating regime change, including putting boots on the ground.
  18. I think the fact that he’s not all that funny is a greater hindrances than all of those. If you want to see someone with a little more charm, listen to Bobby Pulido’s interview from Sunday on Pod Save America. He does a terrific job of introducing himself as someone who cares a lot but isn’t taking it so seriously that every utterance needs to be peer reviewed and scripted. I think lacking THAT approachability is what is going to make it hard for Talarico to motivate lower propensity voters.
  19. Maybe @pyrohornIII has more insight, but I'm guessing a combination of Gina Hinojosa made her intentions known early, all the boys wanted to run in the Senate race, general Beto pessimism/fatigue in a repeat of 2022).
  20. You've got to quit looking at the Obama coalition as the path to victory. It's not there anymore. Also, unless you think the AA vote will split tickets, you're not giving them a lot of credit for being able to look at the '26 election and vote D up and down, even if they don't really see themselves in Talarico. I don't see how he's that different from Beto, or MJ Hegar, or pretty much anyone not Allred. Regardless, if Talarico can't fend off accusations of racism because of a benign insult in a primary he's simply not ready for a big boy campaign (and for the record, I thought his response was adequate).
  21. I like that he has an opinion and doesn’t try to exaggerate his fondness for a team when he’s covering someone specific like Baseball America was accustomed to doing. Longenhagen at Fangraphs is good at this, too, although his is couched more in his understanding of swing and throwing mechanics. I’ve read him since he and I used to exchange messages back in the alt.sports.baseball days when he was still in undergrad and I was in high school, and I think he’s always been excessively critical of the Astros, particularly post-Luhnow. And yes, he called Abreu early, sadly.
  22. I think you're touting development that was mostly earned (and deserved) for a period that was before 2024, with the exception of Kikuchi, and the fact he wasn't able to retain his success with the Angels I think evidence that he was just hot for ten starts for the Astros. I wrote this a few pages back, but most of the other contending teams have their own versions of Gordon, Arighetti, Blubaugh and Burrows. Eh, he's a national writer and he's had a long running dislike of the Astros. I bet you can find something more obviously inaccurate or offensive than that :-)
  23. Same, I don’t know where this “Eason is out of here” presumption is coming from.
  24. I would say it’s a waste of time for him to come here, but it can’t possibly be worse than indulging an overly fragile Gen Z influencer whose ongoing support appears entirely reliant on Talarico publicly rebuking James Carville.
Football ... Basketball ... Baseball ... Other Sports ... Futbol ... 🤫995🤫 ... Gambling ... Movies & TV ... Music ... Hobbies ... Lulz ... Food & Travel ... Daily Texan ... Business & Markets ... Cloak Room ... Help ... For Sale ... Board Discussion ... Advertise... Tailgate Donations

Configure browser push notifications

Chrome (Android)
  1. Tap the lock icon next to the address bar.
  2. Tap Permissions → Notifications.
  3. Adjust your preference.
Chrome (Desktop)
  1. Click the padlock icon in the address bar.
  2. Select Site settings.
  3. Find Notifications and adjust your preference.