Elliot Krane lucidly explains the difficulties involved in diagnosing the causes of chronic pain.
Who can watch and listen to this video and still support our society’s inhumane policies toward those who suffer from chronic pain?
A truly civil society would find a better way.
Just one more thing. I promise.
Some things never change with regard to the Stros and the local media. Such as this most recent puff-piece by former Chron sportswriter and current MLB.com Stros beat writer Brian McTaggart with regard to Stros manager, Brad Mills.
Yeah, Mills has been dealt a bad hand and he shouldn’t be blamed for that. And he seems to be nice fellow.
But before characterizing him as a “terrific manager,” don’t you think that McTaggart ought to require that Mills at least understand how to implement a double-switch? Just another example of the local mainstream sports media’s vacuum of analytical ability.
Here’s hoping that the new owners will look beyond such tripe.
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With the announcement that Drayton McLane has finalized the sale of the Stros to a group of investors led by Jim Crane, my sense is that an overhaul is around the corner.
As regular readers of this blog know, I think McLane held on to the club way too long. He probably should have sold after the 2006 season failed to repeat the excitement of the 2005 World Series run and certainly after the disastrous 2007 season, when Crane’s first attempt to buy the club went awry, probably due to tightening credit markets at the time. Nevertheless, if McLane had sold then, he almost certainly would have gone done in history as the best owner in franchise history.
However, Bill James’ “Law of Competitive Balance” set into the Stros organization after the club’s improbable 2005 World Series appearance and McLane never fully recovered from that syndrome.
He did finally clean house and hired GM Ed Wade and scouting director Bobby Heck to resurrect a farm system that McLane had allowed to deteriorate from one of MLB’s best when he acquired the club in 1992 to one of the worst over the past five seasons. Although the Stros appear to have picked reasonably well over the past three drafts, most of those players are still developing on the lower-level farm clubs.
Rebuilding a barren farm system takes a long time. Just ask the Devil Rays.
Now that McLane’s dubious decision to allow the Stros farm system to erode has been fully exposed, that detracts considerably from the legacy of success that the club enjoyed under his watch during the Biggio-Bagwell era. Ballpark and television network assets aside, no one in their right mind could argue that the Stros baseball operation is in better condition now than when McLane bought it in 1992.
So, what should one expect from Crane, who appears to have paid a premium price for the club?
I think there will be big changes. Crane has more baseball knowledge in his pinky finger than McLane ever had, so Crane understands the importance of rebuilding the farm system. My bet is that Crane will take a run at keeping Heck, who is well-regarded in baseball development circles. I don’t think there is much chance that either Wade or team President Tal Smith will be retained, though.
Long term, Crane will emphasize a baseball operation that measures performance statistically much more carefully than McLane’s baseball operation, which flubbed in that area frequently. I’m not suggesting that Crane won’t make mistakes. But my bet is that they won’t be of the nature of paying Kaz Matsui $16.5 million or Brandon Lyon $15 million over three years. Or Clint Barmes almost $4 million and Bill Hall $3 million for one season. Or Brad Ausmus, ever.
And for that, Stros fans should all be thankful.
That’s the title of this important NY Times op-ed by Michelle Alexander, who who is the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New Press 2010). The entire op-ed is essential reading, but this excerpt focuses on one of the reasons why reforming the policy of overcriminalization has become politically difficult:
Those who believe that righteous indignation and protest politics were appropriate in the struggle to end Jim Crow, but that something less will do as we seek to dismantle mass incarceration, fail to appreciate the magnitude of the challenge. If our nation were to return to the rates of incarceration we had in the 1970s, we would have to release 4 out of 5 people behind bars. A million people employed by the criminal justice system could lose their jobs . Private prison companies would see their profits vanish. This system is now so deeply rooted in our social, political and economic structures that it is not going to fade away without a major shift in public consciousness.
Sentencing expert Doug Berman comments insightfully:
However, I strongly believe that liberty, not fairness, needs to be the guiding principle in this major shift. After all, one big aspect of the modern mass incarceration movement has been an affinity for structured guideline reforms and the elimination of parole all in order to have greater fairness and consistency at sentence.
What we have really achieved is less liberty as much, if not more, than less fairness.
The fascinating documentary’s website is here.
“Linotype: The Film” Official Trailer from Linotype: The Film on Vimeo.
So, you mean to tell me that now even exaggerated fishing stories are criminal?
That’s what the Texas Tribune is reporting (H/T Scott Henson):
Fraudulent fishermen better reel it in. The Senate passed a bill today to make cheating in a fishing tournament up to a third-degree felony, sending the measure on to the governor.
HB 1806 expands existing law to all fishing tournaments, from fresh to salt water. It would make it an offense for contestants to give, take, offer or accept a fish not caught as part of the tournament. It would also be an offense to misrepresent a fish.
“I’ve never altered the length of a fish,” says Sen. Glenn Hegar, R-Katy, the Senate sponsor of the bill. But he’s been told fishermen will cut the tail off a fish so it will fit the minimum length requirement. That way, they can add more fish to their bucket.
For minor tournaments, cheaters could be charged with a Class A misdemeanor and face up to a year in jail or a maximum $4,000 fine. But if the prize is more than $10,000, contestants could be charged with a third-degree felony, spend two to 10 years in prison and pay up to a $10,000 fine.
As Henson observes, Senator Hegar and the Texas Legislature apparently have not noticed the onerous overcriminalization that they and other legislative bodies have been imposed on U.S. citizens:
Texas had 2,383 felonies when the session started. No telling yet how many new ones the Lege will pass this year, but Grits’ pre-session prediction was 55. Nobody really tallies them all comprehensively until the parole board must assign new felonies risk categories later this year. But there are a bunch of them. You’d never know the Lege is broke because they seem to think more incarceration can solve any and every social problem: Even dishonest, exaggerating fishermen.
A truly civil society would find a better way.
Through only 34 games, it’s premature to characterize this season’s Astros team (13-21) as one of the worst in club history. There are actually some hopeful signs. However, a main trend line is not looking good.
As regular readers of this blog know, I like to use the RCAA ("runs created against average") and RSAA ("runs saved against average") statistics — developed by Lee Sinins for his Sabermetric Baseball Encyclopedia — to provide a simple but revealing picture of how an MLB club or player is performing relative to other teams or players in a particular league.
RCAA reflects how many more (or fewer) runs that a team (or player) generates relative to a league-average team (or player). An exactly league-average team’s (or player’s) RCAA is zero. Thus, an above-average hitter has a positive RCAA and a below-average hitter has a negative RCAA.
Similarly, RSAA measures how many more (or fewer) runs that a pitching staff (or an individual pitcher) saves relative to a league-average pitching staff (or pitcher). As with RCAA, an exactly league-average pitcher’s (or team’s) RSAA is zero, an above-average pitcher has a positive RSAA, and a below-average pitcher has a negative RSAA.
RCAA and RSAA are particularly useful because they provide a useful benchmark comparison across eras because it shows how much better (or worse) a team’s hitters and pitchers stacked up against an average team of hitters or pitcher staff during a season. That’s really the best way to compare teams from different eras because comparing other hitting and pitching statistics — such as on-base average, slugging percentage, OPS, earned run average, wins and hitting statistics against — is often skewed between teams of hitter-friendly eras (i.e., up until this season, the past 20 seasons or so) versus pitchers of pitcher-friendly eras (i.e., such as the late 1960’s and early 70’s).
As regular readers of this blog know, the Stros have not had an above-average team RCAA in any season since 2004, bottoming out with last season’s abysmal hitting club that generated 86 fewer runs than an average National League club would have produced using the same number of outs. That was the fifth worst performance in club history.
However, even without Lance Berkman this season, the Stros have a team 13 RCAA – a slightly-above average team relative to other NL clubs. Inasmuch as the Cardinals (and particularly Berkman) are the only club really hitting well so far this season, the Stros team RCAA ranks fifth in the NL. Here are the individual RCAA of the Stros hitters:
T1 Brett Wallace 9
T1 Jason Bourgeois 9
T3 Hunter Pence 6
T3 J.R. Towles 6
5 Michael Bourn 3
6 Matt Downs 1
7 Brian Bogusevic 0
T8 Clint Barmes -2
T8 Joe Inglett -2
T8 Jason Michaels -2
T11 Humberto Quintero -3
T11 Carlos Lee -3
13 Bill Hall -4
14 Chris Johnson -5
So, no on is striping the ball as well as Berkman (23 RCAA), but Wallace, Bourgeois, Pence and Towles are off to good starts and most everyone else has managed either to be about or modestly-below league-average. The question is whether this group can keep up that kind of production.
But the ominous signs are coming from the pitching staff, which has given up an astounding 51 more runs than an average NL pitching staff 34 games into this season. That level of ineptitude has real consequences.
This club’s pitching staff’s performance to date is already tied for the 14th worst performance in club history and is 28 more runs given up than the next worst staff (the Dodgers) this season. Here are the individual RSAA:
1 Mark Melancon 3
T2 Bud Norris 1
T2 Jeff Fulchino 1
T4 Aneury Rodriguez -1
T4 Wilton Lopez -1
T6 Enerio Del Rosario -3
T6 Wandy Rodriguez -3
T8 Fernando Abad -5
T8 Brett Myers -5
T8 Brandon Lyon -5
11 Jose Valdez -6
12 J.A. Happ -10
13 Nelson Figueroa -17
In short, only three Stros pitchers have been above-National League average so far this season and then only barely so. Happ and Figueroa – at least until the latter was banished to the bullpen – have been among the worst starting pitchers in the NL so far this season.
Is it likely that the staff will turn it around? Over the past several seasons, Rodriguez has pitched better as the season has worn on, so there is hope there. And Myers and Happ are certainly capable of improving their RSAA over the balance of the season, although both have been inconsistent from season to season throughout their career. So, don’t be surprised if they have a bad season this year.
What’s my prediction at this point?
It looks as if this club is similar to the 2007 team, which finished 73-89 with a precisely league-average hitting team, but a pitching staff that posted a horrifying -79 RSAA (Woody Williams, Matt Albers and Jason Jennings all posted over -20 RSAA that season). Frankly, based on the club’s performance to date, 73 wins is looking pretty good.
But even that awful 2007 club had Roy Oswalt with a 24 RSAA and Chad Qualls with an 11 RSAA and I don’t see any sure bets on the 2011 club’s pitching staff who can rival those performances. So, there is real chance that this club’s pitching staff will get worse than it has already been.
Folks, if that happens, then this season could get very ugly.