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

Featured Replies

4 minutes ago, TonyTexas said:

Ronel Blanco might be the next big thing. Struck out the side in his 1 inning today. In the Dominican winter league, he had 19 appearances, 20.2 IP, 27 SO, 0.00 ERA and a WHIP of 0.58. I wonder what he’s found at the age of 29. 

Wasn't he just as good last winter league?

  • Replies 5.8k
  • Views 347.7k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Most Popular Posts

  • henrygandorf
    henrygandorf

    love these articles and comments from the mlb media about marring a world series or how the baseball world will be critical of the astros for this move. get. the. fuck. out. with. that. nonsense.

  • MaybeACoordinator
    MaybeACoordinator

    Going through old pics because of the death of my grandmother / mom and came across this -- 1996, my son's first Astros game.

  • NSIAP, but 10000% of this.  

Posted Images

1 hour ago, rvm96 said:

Wasn't he just as good last winter league?

Yes. 

2:30 minute game time gives me a raging boner. This is going to be so awesome to get rid of all that time spent scratching and spitting and doing nothing else. 

  • Author

Blanco makes every other mlb roster 

if he was in pinstripes, mlb writers would be blowing him up 

1 hour ago, tx 3 putt said:

Blanco makes every other mlb roster 

if he was in pinstripes, mlb writers would be blowing him

FIFY

  • Author

These new rules give umps too much power and say in the game. They already have a huge impact, this only amps it up. 

1 hour ago, tx 3 putt said:

These new rules give umps too much power and say in the game. They already have a huge impact, this only amps it up. 

Pitch clock calls are not judgment calls. You’re either on time or you’re not. I’m more concerned about the tighter balk enforcement. Those can be a mystery. 

Edited by TonyTexas

40 minutes ago, TonyTexas said:

Pitch clock calls are not judgment calls. You’re either on time or you’re not. I’m more concerned about the tighter balk enforcement. Those can be a mystery. 

eh, plenty of nfl snaps happen with double zeroes. there’s a bit of judgment. 

ESPN+ might also enter the discussion for the Astros games. I've seen other MLB teams have their games on ESPN+. Ideally MLB.TV should take control, since the Rockets and Astros already tried to run a combined network, and that lasted like 3 months.

I went to some.minor league games last year that had a pitch clock.  I enjoyed it.  

3 hours ago, henrygandorf said:

eh, plenty of nfl snaps happen with double zeroes. there’s a bit of judgment. 

It's because the ref has to look at the clock and then look back at the ball to see if it's snapped

2 hours ago, FartingMonk said:

I went to some.minor league games last year that had a pitch clock.  I enjoyed it.  

Same, and honestly it was hardly even noticeable except every once in a while when I looked around and saw the unobtrusive digital clock counting down from :25. 

Look, I'm as old school as most everyone else and I'm firmly in the camp of "baseball is fine as it is, stop whining?" but the twitter/redditverse losing its mind over the implementation of this new rule in the first games of spring training tells me that few fans paid close attention at all to minor league games last year. Pitchers need to hurry up and pitch, batters need to stop fucking around with their batting gloves and wrist guards and step into the box. I don't recall any at bats in the games I watched last year that were affected by pitch clock violations (I'm sure there were some) but I definitely noticed a consistent and improved pace of play between pitchers and hitters. Umps are not going to decide big moments of games on these violations, but they are going to set a tone early to let players know they need to be aware of and honor the pitch clock rule. 

It's a welcome change imo. 

 

Edited by Gourmand

You barely notice the clock at minor league games.  It won’t be an issue before the all star break.

2 hours ago, kevwun said:

You barely notice the clock at minor league games.  It won’t be an issue before the all star break.

Yep. I offered to take all bets that there will be about 1 pitch clock violation per team per week by the time May ends. It’s really a silly fear. This thing is going to go off without a hitch and it’s going to go off without a hitch very soon (like affect Regular Season games almost not at all). And it is going to be glorious if regular season games click on st 2:30 and 2:40 like spring training games are. 
fans pining for non action and demanding more of it is just peak baseball silliness. The game was always played at this pace or faster up until the mid 90’s or so. 

Cross posting from another site after the Machado deal and what it means to salaries heading into this new world where RSN's are going bankrupt...

 

I think the Padres (especially with the RSN's going BK) have just fundamentally misread the market.  If MLB has to distribute carriage through their site and streaming and baseball becomes a subscription model almost every team is going to take a huge economic hickey.   I cant imagine the price point on an Astros sub being more than $100.00 a year for an individual team.  How many people they think going to pay that on top of their other cable bills and subscription services?  40K?  50k? 100K?  There are a shitload of Astros fans I know that are pretty serious about being Astros fans that won't switch to Direct TV to get them.  Will they do a separate $100 a year bill?  Maybe?  But I sort of don't think so.  So, lets say you get 100k people to pay you $100.00 a year.  That's all of 10M  And that's before you even get into cost to produce the game.  Can they get a million people around Houston to pay them $100 a year or 10 a month or something?  I'm highly skeptical.  Even if they could you are talking what 100M in gross?   Take out all the production costs (which teams don't currently pay and what do you have left? I don't know. But I suspect those salaries and carmeras and tech's and engineers and guys working in the truck add up to a decent amount of money.  
 
Team distributing itself (essentially through MLB) would get to keep commercial costs.  Typically that runs on local TV somewhere around $5-10 per 1,000 viewers.  Call it 100k views during a normal game and that makes every 30 second commercial worth about $500.00 per spot on the low end and $1,000 per spot on the high end.  Figure on about 40 or 50 available spots during the game plus pre and post game and you are talking about something like $50,000 per game game at the upper level I'd think.  So- $10M or so in commercial costs?  My suspicion is that MLB wouldn't even cover production costs with the advertising, but lets say they did- that makes it something like needing 700,000 paid subscribers to make up for the $70M they are currently getting from AT&T sports net.  Good luck. I don't see that happening.  And the Astros are at the top of the success cycle. How manly people in Pittsburg want to fork out any money to watch on a sub service?  
 
Yeah- this seems like a seismic shock that is going to make every deal passed out this winter look crazy.  
 
At the end of the day these guys are probably smarter than me- or at least they know more and have already identified the greater fool that's going to pay them for linear distribution and the sub is all add on and they will be ok.  
 
But, in the world where people cord cut every content producer is going to get hammered (and there's going to be a lot less content) as everything becomes niche like.  

Where are my assumptions wrong?  Where do the numbers need to be tightened up on revenue in or cost out?  This is all very preliminary back of the envelope math and hell- I'm open to the idea I could be off by a factor of 2 or 3
On 2/24/2023 at 7:26 PM, rvm96 said:

How does that affect the broadcast team?

This is my worry too.

  • Author

I don’t know if Correas brother is any good, but he’s been working hard. Good to see him get a spring training start 

  • Author

Sparky : kind of funny how the Astros minor league is rated so low and they keep pumping out top prospects 

 

🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

Slight derail, but I met Jose Altuve on a flight down to WPB last week.   He made a video for my 11 yr old.   Made his week plus and he keeps showing it off to anyone he can.   

 

  • Author
4 minutes ago, Nivek said:

Slight derail, but I met Jose Altuve on a flight down to WPB last week.   He made a video for my 11 yr old.   Made his week plus and he keeps showing it off to anyone he can.   

 


that’s pretty fucking cool 

Solid tattling Chandler. Keep it up and Drellich will throw you a retweet any day now.

 

1 hour ago, tx 3 putt said:

Sparky : kind of funny how the Astros minor league is rated so low and they keep pumping out top prospects 

 

🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

I don’t think it’s an Astros bias thing. I think it’s a well Framber only signed for 10k and he’s 20 thing. 
 

The scouting services love young players with huge signing bonuses drafted early. 

2 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

 

Marlins should pretend to have Covid or something.

23 hours ago, billfromlaketravis said:

Because of Rodeo, I'll never make it to spring training before March 19th or 20th. What's the scene like in late March? 

Hey man just wanted to say thanks for stoping by our cookoff tent yesterday. It was a pleasure meeting y’all. Hope y’all had a good time. 

Chandler has never written a positive title in his life. Also, not surprising Tucker isn't a fan..

 

 

Replace pitcher/pitching with hitter/hitting and put them on the mound instead of the box and you could have the same quote. It cuts both ways. Everyone will adjust.

Was it Gurriel that was red hot in spring training last year and then was in a slump for the first month?

  • Author

Lee and Dirden sounded great on the radio, both are smart, Astro type players 

8 hours ago, Wulaw Horn said:

Cross posting from another site after the Machado deal and what it means to salaries heading into this new world where RSN's are going bankrupt...

 

I think the Padres (especially with the RSN's going BK) have just fundamentally misread the market.  If MLB has to distribute carriage through their site and streaming and baseball becomes a subscription model almost every team is going to take a huge economic hickey.   I cant imagine the price point on an Astros sub being more than $100.00 a year for an individual team.  How many people they think going to pay that on top of their other cable bills and subscription services?  40K?  50k? 100K?  There are a shitload of Astros fans I know that are pretty serious about being Astros fans that won't switch to Direct TV to get them.  Will they do a separate $100 a year bill?  Maybe?  But I sort of don't think so.  So, lets say you get 100k people to pay you $100.00 a year.  That's all of 10M  And that's before you even get into cost to produce the game.  Can they get a million people around Houston to pay them $100 a year or 10 a month or something?  I'm highly skeptical.  Even if they could you are talking what 100M in gross?   Take out all the production costs (which teams don't currently pay and what do you have left? I don't know. But I suspect those salaries and carmeras and tech's and engineers and guys working in the truck add up to a decent amount of money.  
 
Team distributing itself (essentially through MLB) would get to keep commercial costs.  Typically that runs on local TV somewhere around $5-10 per 1,000 viewers.  Call it 100k views during a normal game and that makes every 30 second commercial worth about $500.00 per spot on the low end and $1,000 per spot on the high end.  Figure on about 40 or 50 available spots during the game plus pre and post game and you are talking about something like $50,000 per game game at the upper level I'd think.  So- $10M or so in commercial costs?  My suspicion is that MLB wouldn't even cover production costs with the advertising, but lets say they did- that makes it something like needing 700,000 paid subscribers to make up for the $70M they are currently getting from AT&T sports net.  Good luck. I don't see that happening.  And the Astros are at the top of the success cycle. How manly people in Pittsburg want to fork out any money to watch on a sub service?  
 
Yeah- this seems like a seismic shock that is going to make every deal passed out this winter look crazy.  
 
At the end of the day these guys are probably smarter than me- or at least they know more and have already identified the greater fool that's going to pay them for linear distribution and the sub is all add on and they will be ok.  
 
But, in the world where people cord cut every content producer is going to get hammered (and there's going to be a lot less content) as everything becomes niche like.  

Where are my assumptions wrong?  Where do the numbers need to be tightened up on revenue in or cost out?  This is all very preliminary back of the envelope math and hell- I'm open to the idea I could be off by a factor of 2 or 3

There is ad revenue in addition to subscription fees.  The games aren’t shown commercial free on the RSNs and they won’t be on the new model.  I don’t know how much money that will bring in but it will be significant.

Sports programming was a pillar of cable tv revenues and so it is a viable business.  Whether it comes in under or over in the new model I don’t know but I doubt it will be a major hit for the teams over the long haul.

Solid tattling Chandler. Keep it up and Drellich will throw you a retweet any day now.
 

Why do we keep getting beat writers that obviously fucking hate the team they cover? Do other markets have this problem?
25 minutes ago, rvm96 said:

Was it Gurriel that was red hot in spring training last year and then was in a slump for the first month?

No, because Gurriel was in a slump for the first six months.

9 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:


Why do we keep getting beat writers that obviously fucking hate the team they cover? Do other markets have this problem?

Do you not know of Kirk Bohls?

 

20 minutes ago, Snake Diggity said:

There is ad revenue in addition to subscription fees.  The games aren’t shown commercial free on the RSNs and they won’t be on the new model.  I don’t know how much money that will bring in but it will be significant.

Sports programming was a pillar of cable tv revenues and so it is a viable business.  Whether it comes in under or over in the new model I don’t know but I doubt it will be a major hit for the teams over the long haul.

I talked about he asked revenue in paragraph 3… it’s not as much as you’d think based upon what I read as 5-10 bucks per 1000 views on your local cable tv. 

Existing mlb.tv can't be bringing in much in ad revenue or they wouldn't just repeat the same 4 all season, LHN-style.  And a significant amount of between inning time is just dedicated to highlights too.

3 minutes ago, WBT said:

Existing mlb.tv can't be bringing in much in ad revenue or they wouldn't just repeat the same 4 all season, LHN-style.  And a significant amount of between inning time is just dedicated to highlights too.

Yep. It’s not a big number and if it has to go all to mlb.com getting on you have to talk about free falling revenue. I mean- if the mlb thing is an add on to what they were getting paid by the distributors it’s awesome. As a replacement it’s heinous. 

  • Author
46 minutes ago, TonyTexas said:

Do you not know of Kirk Bohls?

 

sucks the worst GIF

  • Author

Monday: Forrest Whitley 
Tuesday: Luis Garcia
Wednesday: Hunter Brown 

In 19 ABs last spring Yuli had a 1.423 OPS

Wife had a kid, missed the few first games of the season and the rest is history

 

1 hour ago, TexArcher said:

Show me an earned run.

Tune in to the top of the 1st!

1 H 2 BB 2 K 1 ER

14 hours ago, Wulaw Horn said:

I talked about he asked revenue in paragraph 3… it’s not as much as you’d think based upon what I read as 5-10 bucks per 1000 views on your local cable tv. 

Well, pardon me if I assume the owners and their front office execs have a little bit more information and forecasting expertise than you do.  I do not think teams would be doling out $300M deals like hotcakes if they thought there was any impending revenue collapse.  If anything, the spending spree would indicate the teams expect the opposite.  That said if I were making predictions, I would guess there will be a 1-2 year hiccup while things get sorted, but after that TV rights revenues would be at or above RSN levels.  There’s efficiencies to be gained by the league managing them directly and presenting them as a standalone product.

I think the bigger issue is the revenue disparity among the teams and the indications that there may be more revenue sharing coking, to the point that it would negatively impact the 2nd tier orgs like Houston.

I always take spring training performances with a grain of salt - especially if it's an established starter struggling when they are likely working on something and want to try it out in a game situation.

Case in point - in 2018 Charlie Morton seemed like he couldn't get anyone out in preseason then he went on and had the best year of his career (to that point - he was even better in 2019 with the Rays). 

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...
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.